US woman kept father's body in icebox for years

A woman who kept her father s decomposing body in an ice box for years so she could continue to collect his Social Security checks was charged Thursday with mutilating his corpse and failing to lawfully dispose of his remains.Debra Fisher, 58, is currently being medically evaluated to determine whether she is mentally fit to face charges. She will be arrested upon her release, the sheriff s department said.Her long-time roommate, Heidi Todd, 44, also faces criminal charges."He apparently died while in bed," said George Bonnett, a spokesman for the St. Tammany Parish sheriff s department.

"She left him in the bed for quite some time. Once the body started to decompose, she then transferred him into the ice chest but before doing so she chopped the hands off and put them in a box in her freezer," Bonnet."The thinking there is that their plans were, we believe, to eventually dispose of the body. Why two or three years went by and they never did that, I don t know. What we re hearing is they didn t want the body to be identified through fingerprints."Fisher s father, who has not been identified by name, would have been 83. It s not yet clear whether he died of natural causes or how long his 6 2" frame was concealed in the 160 quart ice chest, which was kept inside the house.

His death came to light after Fisher and Todd refused to let an air conditioner repairman into the house.The repairman contacted the landlord, who called police and said he was concerned because he hadn t seen Fisher s father in a while."That wasn t unusual because he was bedridden," Bonnett said.But two deputies visited the home Tuesday to do a standard welfare check. While they noticed "deplorable" living conditions, their suspicions were not raised because the women said Fisher s father had gone out and would be back soon."They left with the intention of coming back later to check on him, of course never thinking to look in an ice chest for a body," he said in a telephone interview.About an hour later, the two women went to the local police station and explained what they had done.