Man Lived With the Corpses of His Mother and Twin Brother for a Year

A Minnesota man who lived with the decomposing bodies of his dead mother and twin brother for over a year said he could not bring himself to report their deaths to the authorities.

“I was traumatized,” Robert James Kuefler told The Associated Press on Saturday, Oct. 7. “What would you do?”

The 60-year-old was charged last week by police in White Bear, Minn., with interference with a dead body or scene of death.

Police discovered the two decaying bodies in September 2016 when neighbors reported Keufler’s house to be overgrown and asked police to check on the residence.

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Responding officers found the house in a stench of decay. They found the skeletal remains of his 93-year-old mother Evelyn in an upstairs bedroom, and the mummified corpse of his twin brother Richard in the basement, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Autopsies showed that both Evelyn and Richard died of natural causes, Richard in July 2015, and his mother a month later.

Kuefler told police he found his brother dead in a chair and “eventually moved the body to the bathroom as it was ‘in the way,’ ” according to a court document.

He told police he knew his mother was dying, but “didn’t want to be around when she died, so he left the house to drive around a couple of hours.” She was dead in her bed when he returned.

Along without reporting the deaths to the authorities, Kuefler also hid his mother’s and brother’s deaths from family members. He even reportedly sent out Christmas cards last year saying they were both in bad health and could not speak on the phone.

“I am not some nut ball,” the maintenance worker told the AP. “People think I am, but I’m not. I loved them.”

Police initially suspected Kuefler of using social security checks that were being direct deposited into Evelyn and Richard’s bank accounts but ultimately did not have enough evidence to convict him last year.

White Bear Police Capt. Dale Hager said authorities decided to file the misdemeanor charge against Kuefler in part to help get him some psychological help through the court system.

“This is our way of introducing this case onto the court,” Hager said. “We do believe his actions violated the law. Moving the body of his brother disrupted the death scene.”

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“We’re depending on our partners in the court system to make a good decision,” he said.