A MARRIED couple have been arrested for living with the dead body of an elderly man in a sick plot to claim his pension, it is alleged.
The woman, 50, believed to be the man’s daughter, and her partner, 60, allegedly kept the corpse in a locked room in their Spanish home.
Police discovered the 88-year-old man’s body in an advanced state of decomposition after a tip-off from a neighbour.
Social services had raised the alarm after locals reported a foul smell coming from the property in Torrelavega, near the Cantabrian Coast.
Officers reportedly found the man’s body in a locked room with the entrance blocked.
Torrelavega councillor Pedro Perez Noriega described the condition of the home “deplorable”.
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He said: “What we know for now is that the couple has been arrested and that they are also considering whether they suffer from some kind of mental disorder, because the truth is that the home was in a deplorable condition.”
At this stage there is no evidence to suggest the pensioner suffered a violent death, Spain’s National Police force said.
Investigators are probing how long the deceased man was kept inside the home.
The couple are set to appear in court on Monday.
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They are likely to face charges of abandoning a person in an at-risk situation as well as Social Security fraud.
The pair also face a charge of misappropriation of assets.
A source close to the ongoing inquiry told a local paper the couple had confessed to hiding the OAP’s body after he died of “natural causes”.
They also reportedly admitted to keeping the body so they could carry on claiming his pension, it is alleged.
The source said: “The conditions they lived in were not those of normal people, and the possibility that there may be something more is being considered, which is why they want to rule out other issues with an psychiatric examination.”
It remains unclear how much pension money the pair allegedly claimed before cops discovered the OAP’s body.
The dead man was a former worker at the Reocin Mine in Cantabria – once the largest zinc deposit in Europe.
The shocking case comes after an Italian man was accused of dressing up as his dead mother to fraudulently claim her pension.
The 56-year-old successfully pocketed thousands in pension payments before he was eventually exposed.
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His mother, Graziella Dall’Oglio, died three years earlier at the age of 82.
When she passed away, her son wrapped her body in a bed sheet, stuffed it in a sleeping bag and hid it away in his house.