BENSALEM TWP., Pa. – A son who failed to report his mother’s death for more than a week entered a guilty plea in Bucks County last week.<\/p>\n
37-year-old Derrick Bouffard pleaded guilty on July 16th to abuse of a corpse. He will not serve any prison time but must serve two years\u2019 probation, according to court documents.<\/p>\n
Police say they responded to a well-being check at a Bensalem home back in October. When they arrived, Bouffard came outside and stated, \u201cI was just about to call you guys, my mom stopped breathing this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
When officers entered the home, they found the corpse of 70-year-old Cynthia Bouffard, Derrick\u2019s mother, in the living room on a mattress, authorities say.<\/p>\n
Responding police officers noted the house was in complete disarray, with flying insects and the odor of decomposing flesh present. Officers also noticed that Cynthia was very frail and emaciated, estimating she weighed no more than 50 or 60 pounds.<\/p>\n
The criminal complaint states that fans were placed to circulate the air, and baking soda had been placed around the house presumably to alleviate the odor. Officers say there was almost nothing in the fridge or food stores, even saying the freezer was loaded with insects.<\/p>\n
After speaking on the phone with Cynthia\u2019s brother, police learned that Cynthia had suffered from severe advanced dementia to the point that she could not walk, talk, or chew solid food. He also said that Derrick was her primary caretaker.<\/p>\n
The coroner later determined that Cynthia had been deceased for 7-10 days prior to police response, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
The Buck\u2019s County District Attorney believes the woman died of natural causes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BENSALEM TWP., Pa. – A son who failed to report his mother’s death for more than a week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[791,119,121,120,191,197,38135,65055,327,85232,24467,106504],"class_list":["post-248836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-abuse-of-corpse","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-bensalem","tag-bucks-county","tag-death-investigation","tag-derrick-bouffard","tag-guilty-plea","tag-natural-causes","tag-probation","tag-wellness-check"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}