Minnesota Man Lives With Deceased Mom And Twin Brother For Over A Year

Minnesota man, James Kuefler, has been charged after he was found to be living in a house with the decomposing bodies of his mother and twin brother for about a year. Kuefler claims that he could not bring himself to report their deaths to authorities.

“I am not some nutball,” the maintenance worker said in a telephone interview. “People think I am, but I’m not. I loved them, I was traumatized,” Robert James Kuefler told The Associated Press on Saturday. “What would you do?”

“I watched my mother die,” he said. “She always said she wanted to die at home. She didn’t have any burial plans.”

Authorities discovered the direct deposited social security checks of the deceastants sitting in the bank untouched.

White Bear Police Capt. Dale Hager said Kuefler, 60, was charged this week with interference with a dead body or scene of death because Kuefler moved his brother’s body. Hager said both the brother and the mother died of natural causes in 2015.

Several months after their deaths, Kuefler wrote to other family members in a Christmas card that both were in bad health and could not talk on the phone and did not want visitors. Police did not find the bodies until September 2016, when a neighbor reported that the Kueflers’ lawn in the Minneapolis suburb of White Bear Lake was overgrown and that it had been a long time since she had seen activity at the house, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported. source

Kuefler told the AP that his mother, 94-year-old Evelyn Kuefler, died in August 2015 and his brother, Richard Kuefler, died several months before. Court records say the mother’s body was decayed and skeletal and the brother’s body was “mummified.”

Hager said disability and Social Security checks for Krueger’s mother and brother were sent to their accounts by direct deposit and that it did not appear that any money was withdrawn, though federal authorities are still investigating. Kuefler told the AP that he did not tap the accounts.

Hager said authorities decided to file the misdemeanor charge against Kuefler in part to help get him some psychological help through the court system.

Kuefler, who has no criminal history, said he needs no counseling.