Police say a 59-year-old woman buried her husband in their own backyard.
Deputies were called to her house for a welfare check on the woman's 63-year-old husband. They found the man buried in a shallow grave behind the house. The wife said that her husband had died several weeks ago. Unable to afford a proper funeral, she had no choice but to bury him in the backyard.
A neighbor claims he was unaware of the husband's death. The woman had hired him to paint their house. "From what she told me, he went back to his daughter in Orange County and was staying with them while she gets the place ready for selling, and that was the end of that," Steven Hastings said. The house was on the market for an asking price of $115,000. A potential buyer, who spoke to the wife, says she told him her husband was sick, and that she needed to be paid in cash upfront.
Police didn't see any trauma to the body, which may indicate that there was no foul play involved. The woman was not arrested pending a cause of death ruling from the coroner, says Cindy Bachman, spokeswoman for the sheriff's department.
"The distraught female said the man died at home and she did not have the resources to give him a proper burial," said the San Bernardino County, Calif., Sheriff's Department. The woman and her deceased husband have not been identified.
It is considered a state violation to bury a human body anywhere other than an approved and recognized cemetery.
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