- The police found the body of a mummified woman who died more than a year ago.
- Her son wants to continue receiving her benefits.
- The 66-year-old son admitted to freezing her body and wrapping her in a bandage.
The Austrian police said on Thursday that they found the body of an 89-year-old woman who died more than a year ago. Her son wanted to continue receiving her benefits and she mummified it in the cellar.
The police said in a statement that the mother believed to have dementia passed away in June last year.
They added: “The 66-year-old man kept her body in order to continue receiving benefits.”
The suspect lives with his mother near Innsbruck in Tyrol.
He admitted in questioning that after her death, he had frozen her body in an ice pack in the basement to prevent odor.
Then he wrapped her in a bandage to absorb any bodily fluids.
“He covered his mother with cat litter, and the body was finally mummified,” Helmut Guffler, who is in charge of the police’s social security fraud department, told the public broadcaster ORF.
When his brother came to ask their mother, he said she was in the hospital.
The suspect receives his mother’s benefits by mail every month, but recently a new postman asked to see the beneficiary.
When his son refused, he reported to the authorities that the body was found on Saturday.
Since June 2020, the man has earned 50,000 Euros (59,000 USD) from payments.
The autopsy ruled out the possibility that he killed his mother.
The suspect was accused of benefit fraud and hiding the body.
