Judge Says 87-Year-Old Woman Charged With Abusing Corpse Won’t Go To Jail, But Must Pay $10 A Month

An 87-year-old Maine woman who admitted to burying her best friend in her backyard and stealing tens of thousands of dollars in government benefits won’t serve a day in jail but was ordered to pay $10 a month in restitution Monday, a local judge ruled, according to WMTW.

Vernelle Jackson pleaded guilty in Oxford County Court to abuse of a corpse, theft and forgery after police said they found the body of 80-year-old Mae Shelton buried behind Jackson’s Norway, Maine, home in 2019 and later discovered Jackson had been cashing the dead woman’s benefits checks for years, WMTW reported. (RELATED: ‘Dude, Call The Cops!’: Caller Informs Radio Show He Found Dead Body 18 Days Ago. Host Stunned By What He’s Hearing)

“She very much has always wanted to respect her friend Mae’s wishes. But at the end of the day, she did have to accept responsibility for the financial aspects of the case and for the technical violation regarding the corpse,” Jackson’s attorney, Daniel Dubé, told the outlet.

State police unearthed Shelton’s body on Sept. 16, 2019, after a tip, and Jackson later told the station Shelton died of natural causes and had begged to be buried in the yard so she could “be close to you.” Jackson said she wrapped the body in a tarp, dragged it outside and spent two days digging the grave because “I have COPD. I couldn’t breathe that good,” according to WMTW.

Prosecutors said Jackson went on to collect more than $30,000 in Supplemental Security Income, Virginia retirement checks and food-stamp benefits in Shelton’s name and wrote over $8,000 in bad checks on her friend’s account, court documents cited by WMTW state. The judge called it a “sad case” and said Jackson would have faced much harsher penalties if she were in better health, according to the outlet.