Dead man renting

That’s the thing about roommates: when you get one that’s quiet and doesn’t make a mess, he tends to be unpleasantly rank. At least 86-year-old John Jones had a valid reason for his odour. It’s part and parcel of being a corpse.

Perhaps, had 40-year-old David Morse had a large enough refrigerator, the smell could have been avoided. Instead, when Morse found Jones dead, he just took Jones’s bank card and spent the next month using it to cash his rotting roomie’s pension cheques.

Police in Punta Gorda, Florida, say Jones lay dead in bed for at least a month while Morse padded his income. Morse told police he didn’t report Jones’ death because he feared he might be implicated in it, and knew for certain the arrest warrants against him for failing to pay child-support would prove to be a nuisance. It seemed wiser to just stay quiet and wait for Jones’s cheques. At least until someone came around to collect the rent, smelled something foul and called police.

Morse was charged with grand theft and fraud. Though autopsy results aren’t yet known, police say it appears Jones’s death was natural.

by Scott Saxon