Woman May Keep Corpses If She Builds Crypt

In This June 25, 2010 photo, Jean Stevens, 91, holds a photograph from the 1940s of herself and her late husband, James, outside her home in Wyalusing, Pa. Authorities say Stevens stored the bodies of her husband, who died in 1999, and her twin, who died in October 2009, on her property. As state police finish their investigation into a singularly macabre case, no charges have been filed, Stevens wishes she could be reunited with James Stevens, her husband of nearly 60 years, and June Stevens, her twin. But their bodies are with the Bradford County coroner now, off-limits to the woman who loved them best. (Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press / July 6, 2010)

Associated Press
7:21 a.m. EDT, July 7, 2010

WYALUSING, Pa. (AP) — A 91-year-old woman found living with the corpses of her husband and twin sister will be allowed to keep them if she installs a mausoleum or crypt, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Jean Stevens has indicated through her attorney that she plans to build an aboveground vault on her property to store the bodies of James Stevens and June Stevens, according to Bradford County District Attorney Daniel Barrett.

"If she does that, the bodies will be released for that purpose," he said. "Otherwise they will be re-interred."

Stevens' attorney, Leslie Wizelman, did not immediately return phone messages left at her office.

Stevens previously told The Associated Press that she kept the embalmed remains of her loved ones because she wanted to be able to see them and talk to them. She also said she's claustrophobic and couldn't stand the thought of their bodies in caskets in the ground.

State police have been investigating the bizarre case since the corpses were discovered in mid-June. Authorities found the body of James Stevens on a couch in the detached garage and the body of June Stevens on a couch in a spare room off the bedroom.

Stevens had them dug up shortly after they died — James in 1999 and June in October — and tended to their remains at her rural property outside the northern Pennsylvania town of Wyalusing.

Barrett said a decision on charges could be made as early as Friday, after he meets with investigators.

He said authorities are looking into several possible violations, including misdemeanor abuse of a corpse. He also cited possible summary violations of the state health code, which regulates how bodies must be disinterred.

"There were some things done here that were not lawful," he said.

Police haven't said who retrieved the bodies.

"Well, I felt differently about death."

Part of her worries that after death, there's … nothing. "Is that the grand finale?" But then she gets up at night and gazes at the stars in the sky and the deer in the fields, and she thinks, "There must be somebody who created this. It didn't come up like mushrooms."

So she is ambivalent about God and the afterlife. "I don't always go to church, but I want to believe," Stevens said.

Dr. Helen Lavretsky, a psychiatry professor at UCLA who researches how the elderly view death and dying, said people who aren't particularly spiritual or religious often have a difficult time with death because they fear that death is truly the end.

For them, "death doesn't exist," she said. "They deny death."

Stevens, she said, "came up with a very extreme expression of it. She got her bodies back, and she felt fulfilled by having them at home. She's beating death by bringing them back."

There was another reason that Stevens wanted them above ground.

She is severely claustrophobic and so was her sister; she was horrified that the bodies of her loved ones would spend eternity in a casket in the ground. "That's suffocation to me, even though you aren't breathing," she said.

So she said she had them dug up, both within days of burial.

She managed to escape detection for a long time. The neighbors who mowed her lawn and took her grocery shopping either didn't know or didn't tell. Otherwise forthcoming, Stevens is vague when asked about who exhumed the bodies and who knew of her odd living arrangement. She blames a relative of her late husband's for calling the authorities about the corpses.

"I think that is dirty, rotten," she said.

State police — who haven't yet released the identities of those who retrieved the bodies — will soon present their findings to Bradford County District Attorney Daniel Barrett. A decision on charges is expected in a few weeks.

Barrett said shortly after the bodies were discovered that authorities were looking into possible violations including misdemeanor abuse of a corpse. He also said violations of state health code provisions regulating how bodies must be disinterred are punishable as criminal offenses.

Stevens has talked extensively with both the police and Bradford County Coroner Tom Carman, who calls it a "very, very bizarre case."

But the coroner has nothing but kind things to say about the woman at the center of it.

"I got quite an education, to say the least. She's 100 percent cooperative — and a pleasure to talk to," Carman said. "But as far as her psyche, I'll leave that to the experts."

From: http://www.courant.com/community/west-hartford/hc-living-with-corpses-crypt-0708-20100707,0,7421304.story