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Woman Bought Freezer To Hide Dead Mom, Collect Her Checks: Police

   DailyWire.com
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A Florida woman lived for two weeks with the body of her 93-year-old mother before buying a freezer to keep her in — all to make sure she kept getting the dead woman’s disability checks, police said. 

Michelle Hoskins, 64, was arrested Thursday and charged with failing to report a death after she admitted to finding her dead mother in bed and allegedly purchased a deep freezer to hide the body in, the TCPalm reported.

“(Michelle Hoskins) found her mother deceased in her bed and decided not to contact authorities so that she could continue to receive Social Security disability benefits that she would not be afforded if it was known that her mother was deceased,” Detective Kenneth McDonough said.

Police conducted a welfare check at Hoskins’ home on April 27 after receiving calls from “concerned neighbors.” When police questioned Hoskins, she told them that Marie was seeing a doctor, but she could not explain how her mother got to her appointment.

Officers obtained a warrant and searched the house the next day , and made the grisly discovery.

On April 28, 2022, officers located 93-year-old, Marie Hoskins, deceased inside a chest freezer after a welfare check at 107 Paddock Street, Sebastian Florida,” Sebastian police said in a Facebook post

Police then asked Hoskins to come to the station for an interview without telling her they had discovered her mother’s dead body. Hoskins initially told detectives she had not seen her mother since the night of April 27, the day police first checked on her home, and thought she might be at another doctor’s appointment. She finally admitted that she had found her dead mother in bed but couldn’t remember the exact day of her discovery.

Investigators found that Hoskins purchased the freezer on April 21, and she said “it took (her) three to five days to get her mother’s body to the freezer in the garage.” Hoskins also hid her mother’s “heavily soiled mattress” behind “thick brush and covered by cut palm tree branches in the backyard,” according to police.

A medical examiner did not suspect foul play, determining Marie died from heart failure.

Hoskins appeared in court Friday and is being held in the Indian River County Jail on a $10,000 bond.

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