Woman Found Living With Man's Corpse In Hotel, Used Candles To Mask Smell

A woman, who was living with a dead man's body for days in a Kentucky hotel, was arrested on Nov. 9, media reports said Tuesday.

Nicole McFall, 45, was currently facing charges of abusing a corpse, failure to report a dead body and tampering with physical evidence.

She was arrested after the Hillview Police Department found a body in "advanced stages of decomposition" at the Quality Inn in Brooks, WDRB reported.

The authorities do not know the man's cause of death, and reportedly awaiting autopsy results.

The officers had arrived at the hotel to conduct a welfare check when they made the discovery.

"They immediately noticed, in the area of the room where they were conducting the welfare check, a smell emanating in that area out into the hallway," Det. Scott Barrow with Hillview Police said, according to the outlet.

Inside the room, they found the man's body on the bed, covered with a sheet.

"They also noticed that the male had advanced stages of decomposition. There were several candles in the room, attempting to mask the smell inside the room," Barrow went on to say.

McFall, who was at the scene, told the cops that the unidentified man had been dead for five or six days before the police arrived. She told them she didn't know what to do with the body and had tried to use candles to mask the smell.

The man had been staying at the hotel for several weeks before his death, according to McFall's account to the police. The two were supposed to check out the same day the body was found or the day before, the officials said.

Officials also noted hotel operators noticed the foul smell before the cops discovered the body.

"The operators of the hotel did notice a smell coming from the area of where the room was," said Det. Scott Barrow, with Hillview Police.

The hotel management did not think there might be a dead body involved.

"I think there was like either a storage closet or a cleaning closet or something also in that area," Barrow added. "And they thought that maybe it was something coming from their storage closet, maybe an old bucket of mop water, something of that nature."

Officials currently do not know the nature of McFall's relationship with the man, but do not suspect any foul play in his death right now.

"At this point, it doesn't appear that there's any signs of immediate foul play as far as physical trauma that we could see or that was reported to the medical examiner," said a Hillview Police detective, as quoted by WLKY News. "So we're waiting on toxicology reports at this time to determine a cause of death."

McFall was arrested just after 6 p.m. on Nov. 9, and will appear for a preliminary hearing on Nov. 17.

"She has been cooperating," the detective added. "She spoke with the officers on scene. She came back to the police department and spoke with detectives here at the police department. And she cooperated as much as we could have hoped for."