London - A daughter lived with her mother’s corpse for up to three years after embalming her body in road grit.
Police visited the cottage once shared by the pair over concerns about the compulsive hoarders’ welfare. The ‘uninhabitable’ property was so full of rubbish that the body of reclusive widow Gaynor Jones, 83, was not found for a week after officers forced their way in.
An inquest heard that Mrs Jones had not been seen for three years before the grim discovery in March 2018.
Her daughter Valerie, 57, was found collapsed and dehydrated in the home in Aberaeron, west Wales, which had no electricity or running water. She had failed to tell anyone about her mother’s death – but did buy four bags of salted grit at Christmas 2015. The inquest at Aberystwyth Justice Centre heard Miss Jones is now in a mental health unit.
Coroner Peter Brunton said Mrs Jones died between December 2015 and the end of 2017, but no cause of death could be ascertained. Recording a narrative conclusion, he said she most likely ‘died of natural causes. Her daughter took measures to embalm... her body because she was unable to report the death.’