Wales<\/a> seaside town of Porthcawl.<\/p>\nHe regularly placed flowers on top of the freezer, which he bought two days after her death, and carried on talking to her about soap operas and horse racing.<\/p>\n
When police arrived to check on his mother, who was 89 when she died, he told them she was away in London, but they found her body after spotting flowers on the freezer.<\/p>\n
Phillips, a former company director, accessed his mother\u2019s bank account, made withdrawals from her savings and pocketed benefits, Merthyr crown court heard.<\/p>\n
Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke, the recorder of Cardiff, sentenced Phillips to two years and four months\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n
She told him: \u201cYou continued to collect her prescriptions and misled medical professionals about her whereabouts, lying when inquiries were made about your mother, repeatedly telling medical staff that she did not wish to attend appointments or undergo tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother\u2019s pension and benefits continued to be paid into her bank accounts, which you were able to access.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruth Smith, defending, said Phillips had been \u201cexceptionally close\u201d to his mother. The pair had lived together for 50 years of his life and Phillips had been the primary carer for his mother since 2008.<\/p>\n
Smith said the defendant had told police: \u201cI basically didn\u2019t want to let her go.\u201d She added: \u201cHe described talking to her as if she was still alive \u2026 sitting next to her, talking to her about television programmes, Coronation Street, the horse racing, just as they always did.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Phillips was a vulnerable individual with a vulnerable mental health situation at the time of his mother\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court heard Phillips had left work to become a full-time carer in the months leading up to her death in March 2023.<\/p>\n
He was caught after police carried a welfare check because doctors had raised concerns they had not heard from his mother.<\/p>\n
When officers attended the house in February this year, Phillips said his mother was in London with cousins. Officers pressed further but Phillips would not give the details of which cousins or where they lived.<\/p>\n
His mother\u2019s body was found covered with a leopard print throw and alongside it were roses and a birthday card reading \u201cTo Mum, from Christopher and Tina\u201d \u2013 the latter being the family dog.<\/p>\n
Phillips pleaded guilty to preventing a decent and lawful burial and two counts of fraud.<\/p>\n
He received a total of \u00a378,190.92 in state pension, pensions credit, attendance allowance, winter fuel payments, cost of living payments and housing benefit payments that would have ceased had his mother\u2019s death been reported.<\/p>\n
The senior investigating officer, DCI Claire Lamerton, said: \u201cThis is an extremely sad case where Phillips concealed his own mother\u2019s death and financially profited for a significant period.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy thoughts are with Sylvia\u2019s loved ones during such a difficult time, and I hope they have found some peace having been able to properly lay her to rest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been jailed for keeping his dead mother\u2019s body in a freezer at their shared home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-726116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}