A woman and her partner were arrested on suspicion that they buried her 93-year-old Holocaust survivor mother in the backyard after she died, in order to keep getting her survivor and social security benefits, the Israel Police said Monday.
After the pair was arrested on an unspecified date, the daughter’s partner took his own life, having realized police had discovered that he was the one who had hidden the body, police said.
Police are awaiting the results of an autopsy to determine how Maina Tolstikov died, the Ynet news site reported.
While there was apparently no immediate suspicion that the couple was involved in the older woman’s death, a senior police officer said that the pair had stashed the body in an old ice cream freezer before burying it in a three-meter deep pit in the backyard.
The 64-year-old daughter faces charges of fraud and interfering in a police investigation, along with failing to report the death.
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According to Ynet, the pair fraudulently received benefits worth some NIS 18,000 (approximately $5,400) per month in Israeli social security and compensation from the German government.
“They simply did not report her death, and for a year and a half they continued to receive the money into the joint account,” Chief Inspector Alon Reuveni, head of the Galilee region’s special crime task force, told Ynet.
Illustrative: A police car in Herzliya, August 15, 2025 (Tal Gal/Flash90)
Police said they began investigating the family in the northern city of Karmiel last month after relatives of Tolstiko, who had been receiving conflicting accounts from the daughter, expressed concern about her welfare.
The condition of the woman’s home, seen during a visit by police, led to heightened concerns for her wellbeing.
“The house was full of cobwebs and the windows were closed and sealed with cellophane tape — a very strange atmosphere,” Reuveni said.
The couple was detained after giving police conflicting reports about the fate of the woman, including that she had passed away in April 2024 and had been buried in a different city due to the ongoing war.
“The daughter firmly claimed that she was buried in Haifa. Her partner, on the other hand, told a different story — that he was the one who buried her in one of the kibbutzim in the north, and that he refused to reveal the location ‘out of fear for the daughter’s safety because of the war,’” Reuveni said.
Reuveni said that a breakthrough came when a workman remembered that there had been a large hole in the yard for an unknown reason.
Teams were sent in to excavate the yard, and the woman’s body was found.
“It turned out that for two days from her death until the decision to bury her, her daughter and her partner stored her body in an old ice cream freezer in the yard of the house,” he said.
Criminal proceedings against the daughter are ongoing.
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