Talk about digging up the dead… Genealogists joke about it all the time, but Jean Stevens literally dug up her husband and sister, took them in the house, and placed them on couches where she could see them…
The following teaser is from the July 6, 2010 edition of the Deseret News. The pull-quote below it is from the July 7, 2010 edition, stating that she “will be allowed to keep them if she installs a mausoleum or crypt…” Bizarre…
WYALUSING, Pa. — The 91-year-old widow lived by herself in a
tumbledown house on a desolate country road. But she wasn’t alone, not really, not as long as she could visit her husband and twin sister.
No matter they were already dead. Jean Stevens simply had their embalmed corpses dug up and stored them at her house — in the case of her late husband, for more than a decade — tending to the remains as best she could until police were finally tipped off last month.
Much to her dismay.
“Death is very hard for me to take,” Stevens told an interviewer.
As state police finish their investigation into a singularly macabre case — no charges have been filed — Stevens wishes she could be reunited with James Stevens, her husband of nearly 60 years who died in 1999, and June Stevens, the twin who died last October. But their bodies are with the Bradford County coroner now, off-limits to the woman who loved them best.
…
She kept her sister, who was dressed in her “best housecoat,” on an old couch in a spare room off the bedroom. Jean sprayed her with expensive perfume that was June’s favorite.“I’d go in, and I’d talk, and I’d forget,” Stevens said. “I put glasses on her. When I put the glasses on, it made all the difference in the world. I would fix her up. I’d fix her face up all the time.”
Read the full article in the July 6, 2010 edition of the Deseret News.
WYALUSING, Pa. — A 91-year-old woman found living with the corpses of her husband and twin sister will be allowed to keep them if she installs a mausoleum or crypt, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Jean Stevens has indicated through her attorney that she plans to build an above-ground vault on her property to store the bodies of James Stevens and June Stevens, according to Bradford County District Attorney Daniel Barrett.
“If she does that, the bodies will be released for that purpose,” he said. “Otherwise they will be re-interred.”
Read the full article in the July 7, 2010 edition of the Deseret News.
