| Wednesday, November 28, 2007 7:06 PM CST |
Police: Woman put unreported dead mother in garbage bags by road
By Associated Press
OCALA, Fla. -- A woman wrapped her dead mother’s body in garbage bags and dumped it at the side of a road in order to cash her mother’s retirement checks, Marion County authorities said Tuesday.
Debra Loreth, 53, was arrested Tuesday and charged with failure to report a death, a misdemeanor, the sheriff’s office said.
According to Inspector Mike Mongeluzzo’s police report, Loreth first told detectives that her mother, 83-year-old Jeanne Vasa, died Sept. 4 and that she didn’t report it because Loreth was being evicted, the Ocala Star-Banner re-ported. Loreth said she asked a friend to call a cremation business and then moved out of the house, leaving her mother’s body behind, the report said.
Loreth later told investigators she put her mother in black garbage bags and placed the body in a U-Haul truck. She left the body at the side of a road and didn’t report the death “because she wanted to keep cashing a monthly retire-ment check that the decedent was getting,” Mongeluzzo wrote.
A couple spotted the suspicious bags Sept. 30 and called police.
Detectives have filed paperwork with the state attorney’s office seeking to charge Loreth with improper disposal of a body and uttering a false instrument, the newspaper reported.
Loreth was being held at the Marion County jail on $500 bond, jail officials said. She refused an interview request by the newspaper. Jail official Beverly Hance said late Tuesday that Loreth did not have an attorney listed.
An autopsy listed the cause of death as undetermined.
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