Son flees with his mother’s embalmed corpse across Britain and Ireland

A man in his 60s who drove across Britain and Ireland with his mother’s body in his car is thought to have returned with her remains back to this country. The son, who has not been identified, had arranged for the body to be flown to London from Malta after the 91-year-old died of natural causes while on holiday in September. But, instead of organising a funeral, he collected her coffin at Gatwick airport and drove to the Irish Republic without declaring the body at customs.

Police were alerted about two weeks later after the body was discovered by the man’s landlord when he went to clean the house the pair rented in Kenmare, Co Kerry. It is believed the son had kept the embalmed remains for about six weeks. The man, in his 60s and from southern England, had been living in the town for two years with his mother.



But, when the coroner in Ireland warned him on October 15 that he must deal with the body or it would be confiscated and placed in cold storage, he is believed to have fled with the remains back to Britain. ‘We believe he has returned to the south of England where the family burial plot is and a burial will take place if the body has not already been interred,’ said a police spokesman.

Kerry South East coroner Terence Casey said the man had first told his landlord he would be moving out because his mother had been taken ill on holiday. ‘When the landlord went to the house about a week later, he found the man there and he told him his mother had died in Malta and he wanted to live in the house again,’ the coroner said. Mr Casey said the landlord was told the body ‘was laid out in the bed upstairs if he wanted to pay his respects’. He added: ‘He didn’t realise how serious the matter was.’

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