Man Found Living With Bodies of Mom, Brother: 'I Loved Them'

'I am not some nut ball. People think I am, but I'm not'
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Oct 7, 2017 3:19 PM CDT
Updated Oct 8, 2017 12:01 AM CDT
Man Lived With Bodies of Mom, Brother for Year
Robert Kuefler   (Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

A Minnesota man who lived in a house with the decomposing bodies of his mother and twin brother for about a year said he could not bring himself to report their deaths to authorities. "I was traumatized," Robert Kuefler tells the AP. "What would you do?" White Bear Lake Police Capt. Dale Hager says Kuefler, 60, was charged this week with interference with a dead body or scene of death because Kuefler moved his brother's body. Hager says 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 was overgrown and that it had been a long time since she had seen activity at the house.

Kuefler says 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." "I am not some nut ball," the maintenance worker says. "People think I am, but I'm not. I loved them." Hager says authorities decided to file the misdemeanor charge against Kuefler in part to help get him some psychological help through the court system. "This is our way of introducing this case onto the court," Hager says. "We're depending on our partners in the court system to make a good decision." Kuefler, who has no criminal history, says he needs no counseling. "I watched my mother die," he says. "She always said she wanted to die at home. She didn't have any burial plans."

(More Minnesota stories.)

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