Wisonsin woman hid mother's body in basement for months so she could continue living off her social security checks
PESHTIGO, WISCONSIN: A Wisconsin woman has been arrested and charged after she hid her mother's corpse in her basement so she could continue benefiting from her social security checks and dividends.
Deputies from the Marinette County Sheriff's Office responded to the Peshtigo home of Paula Ann Bergold, 59, on September 18 to perform a welfare check on her mother Ruby, 89, after a neighbor reported that the former was "being evasive to where Ruby might be," according to WBAY.
The neighbor said she hadn't seen Ruby since May 2019 and had left several messages on the answering machine without response. She said that when she asked Bergold about Ruby's whereabouts, she would say that her mother was "alive and fine" but refused to let them meet as she "did not want to see anyone."
When officers arrived at the house, Bergold wasn't home and they found a note taped to the door that read "Ruby has gone out of town to visit some friends of ours. Paula," but became suspicious after they "got an odor of decay."
On investigation, they found packets of mothballs at each of the entry doors and "a large number of mothballs in the back of the vehicle that was parked in the driveway."
When the 59-year-old later arrived at the scene, she continued to insist that her mother was out of town and gave the deputies the key to check the home. While a search did not turn up the body, they did uncover a chair covered in borax and boxes of ammonia and bleach, as well as several bags of unopened barn lime.
On further questioning, Bergold admitted her mother was dead and told officers her remains were in a small plastic tub in the basement. She insisted that she did not kill the 89-year-old, and said she had found her dead in the chair upstairs—the same one covered in borax.
She also confessed she had been living off of her mother's income, which included social security, stocks, and dividends from her father's retirement. "Paula said that she was concerned about the money, and that played into her decision to not report her mother's death," a criminal complaint reads.
Bergold was subsequently charged with hiding a corpse, failure to report death, and obstructing a police officer, and made her first appearance in court via video from jail on September 23, where her bail was set at $10,000.
She is scheduled to make her next appearance in court on October 7.