'Traumatized' Minnesota Man Lived With Dead Mother And Brother For A Year

Prosecutors said a Minnesota man has been charged with interference with a dead body or scene of death as he had neglected to tell the police that he lived in a house with the decomposing bodies of his mother and twin brother for about a year, reports said Saturday.

Robert James Kuefler from White Bear Lake, Minnesota, said he could not bring himself to report to the police for a year that his mother Evelyn Kuefler, and his brother Richard Kuefler died of natural causes, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

"I was traumatized," Kuefler told the Associated Press on Saturday. "What would you do?"

White Bear Police Capt. Dale Hager said Kuefler, 60, was charged last week, however, the bodies had been found last year. The charges were brought against him as he was accused of moving his brother’s body. Hager confirmed both of them died of natural causes in 2015.

Kuefler told the AP that his mother, 94, died in August 2015 and his brother, Richard, died several months earlier to that. Court records claimed that the mother's body had been decayed and skeletal and the brother's body was "mummified." A criminal complaint also alleged that Kuefler went on a drive while his mother was left to die at their residence in 2015. By the time he returned, his mother was already dead, the complaint said, according to New York Daily News.

"I am not some nut ball," Kuefler said in a telephone interview to the AP. "People think I am, but I'm not. I loved them."

Several months after their deaths, Kuefler kept family members away from visiting their home and wrote to other family members in a Christmas card that both his mother and brother were in bad health, but alive and could not talk on the phone and did not want visitors.

Police finally found the bodies during a September 2016 visit after one of his neighbors reported that the family’s lawn had overgrown and it had been a long time since she had noticed any activity inside the house, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.

Hager also said the authorities decided to file the misdemeanor charge, in order to help Kuefler seek psychological help through the court system.

"This is our way of introducing this case onto the court," Hager told the AP. "We do believe his actions violated the law. Moving the body of his brother disrupted the death scene."

"We're depending on our partners in the court system to make a good decision," he added.

Kuefler appeared to have no criminal history, and told AP he required no counseling.

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

If convicted of the charge — interference with a dead body, which is a gross misdemeanor, Kuefler could receive a maximum sentence of a year and it might include a $3,000 fine, according to the Daily Mail.