Authorities say an Oklahoma City, Okla., man is facing charges after he was found living for more than a month with his father’s corpse and allegedly forging cheques in the elder’s name.
Out-of-state relatives made the gruesome discovery on Jan. 12, according to police, after having tried to contact 89-year-old William Little since at least Thanksgiving.
“They were repeatedly told by the caretaker son that he was unavailable, he was sick or he was not home,” Village Police Department Deputy Chief Russ Landon told KFOR.
Oklahoma County prosecutors charged Lynn Christopher Little, 50, on Thursday with forgery, embezzlement, neglect and desecration of a corpse.
“It didn’t take officers very long upon arriving to know that someone had been deceased for quite some time,” Landon added, referring to the smell of a decomposing body.
NBC reports that court records described the father’s body as being found “face up in an advanced state of decomposition, covered with bugs and (appearing) to no longer have eyes.”
Examiners concluded that the man had been dead for months, despite the son’s claim the death had occurred “one or two weeks” prior and that he was overwhelmed and “didn’t know what to do.”
Financial records were also investigated after relatives told police that Lynn had a large amount of cash in his possession.
“When the father was still alive, we noticed that just a handful of cheques were written for a couple hundred dollars,” Landon said. “But at some point — and we believe it was after the father was deceased — dozens of cheques were written for thousands and thousands of dollars.”
A man who identified himself as Lynn on the phone Friday told the Associated Press he was “not going to discuss” the case.
Court records don’t list an attorney to speak for the accused.
—With files from the Associated Press