A Brookside extra who kept dead mum in bedroom, a pensioner slept in same room as brothers corpse for years and a flight attendant left in concrete tomb under shed
Forensic investigations take place on Madelaine Street, Toxteth, after a body was found in a house.
Earlier this week a man pleaded guilty to preventing the “lawful and decent” burial of his mother whose body was found in a freezer.
Christopher Phillips, 60, from Porthcawl, Wales, admitted to withdrawing money from his mother’s account and not notifying the authorities of her death. He was arrested following the discovery of his 89-year-old mother Sylvia Phillips’ body in a freezer in a house in Porthcawl on February 17. Cardiff Crown Court was told it was believed Mrs Phillips died in 2023.
Merseyside has seen several similar cases.
Wallasey: Brookside extra kept dead mum in bedroom
Olive Hazel Maddock entering Liverpool Crown Court
In 2011, Brookside and Hollyoaks extra Hazel Maddock, then 61, from Wallasey, was jailed for failing to bury her 95-year-old mum for up to six months.
Olive Maddock was left rotting in the bedroom of her three-bed semi-detached house on Saltburn Road, Wallasey Village, which she had shared with her daughter and granddaughter.
Hazel Maddock admitted fraud, taking a payment from Olive Maddock’s pension after she died and preventing her burial. Daughter Jasmine Maddock, then aged 35, pleaded guilty to leaving the corpse of her grandmother unburied.
Jasmine Maddock told Liverpool Crown Court: “The stench in the house was so powerful and my sense of smell so reduced and normalised to it that I could not detect any other smell.”
She added: “Living in that house was like the film, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? It was like a horror movie.”
Hazel Maddock was sentenced to 11 months in prison. Jasmine Maddock received a suspended sentence for her part in the “conspiracy of silence.”
Toxteth: Grieving pensioner slept in same room as brother’s corpse for more than two years
Grieving pensioner Donald Pollard slept in the same room as his brother’s corpse for two years because he didn’t want to be alone.
Donald was arrested on suspicion of murder after Stephen Pollard’s body was found at their shared Toxteth home in 2018.
He was charged with preventing a lawful burial and fraud when it emerged he had claimed £23,000 of his dead sibling’s benefits.
When police officers came knocking at the Madelaine Street address, Donald answered the back door and when asked where Stephen was, “replied calmly his brother was dead upstairs”.
His “decomposing” body was found under blankets and when asked how long he had been dead, Donald answered “oh several years”.
Donald said he died of natural causes on January 1, 2015. His cause of death could not be established in a post-mortem examination.
When interviewed by police, Donald said Stephen collapsed on the landing and he was frightened and didn’t know what to do.
Judge Watson said there was nothing to suggest an “unlawful killing” but Donald “buried his head in the sand”.
He handed him a year in prison, suspended for 18 months, plus a 20-day rehabilitation activity requirement.
Toxteth: Woman left to die in “worst condition of a living human”
The first picture of Valerie Wallach who was shockingly neglected before her death by husband Richard(Image: merpol)
In a tragic and squalid case that rocked Liverpool, Richard Wallach left his wife Valerie to die in a filthy armchair while flies and maggots took over her body.
Liverpool Crown Court saw Richard Wallach jailed for eight years in 2019 for neglecting his wife as she was dying in squalid conditions.
Emergency services said that Valerie Wallach was found with flies and maggots in a clutter-filled home and was the “worst condition of a living human they had ever seen”.
Shocked neighbours said they “could not believe” it had happened near to where they lived, on Gwendoline Street.
Wallach, 67, jailed for eight years after he was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence in 2019.
Valerie, 61, was found infested with flies and maggots and riddled with shockingly painful skin ulcers, which ultimately led to breast cancer and multi-organ failure.
Some Gwendoline Street residents heartbreakingly did not even know Richard had a wife living with him, they told the ECHO.
Richard had been described as someone who “kept himself to himself” and did not cause “any bother” for neighbours.
One neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: “They kept themselves to themselves, really. We didn’t see anybody, I didn’t even know it was them until I read about it on the ECHO.
“They just seemed like nice people, you would not think something like that would have happened.
“You can’t say anything nasty about him, you can’t say nothing like that. He was just a nice fella you’d see.”
The 84-year-old added: “We’re just shocked. If that had happened to anybody, you’d be shocked, but if it’s someone that lives on your street and you’ve known them, you just can’t explain it.”
Ellesmere Port: Flight attendant buried in concrete tomb under shed
Air steward Christophe Borgye was murdered in April 2009
Air steward Christophe Borgye lay undisturbed in a home-made concrete tomb in Ellesmere Port for four years after he was bludgeoned to death.
The 35-year-old was attacked with a claw hammer and stabbed twice before being hidden under a shed in the town in April 2009.
His killers wrapped him in a duvet cover and tarpaulin, then entombed the Ryanair worker in a cement structure alongside their weapons.
But mastermind Dominik Kocher, his cousin Manuel Wagner and paranoid schizophrenic Sebastian Bendou did not immediately leave Hylton Close.
Wagner and Bendou continued to live at the house where they buried their friend after smashing his skull to pieces for a further two years.
Meanwhile married dad-of-three Kocher who lived across the road, contacted Mr Borgye’s family to tell them he had gone travelling to China.
He sold off his victim’s possessions, pocketing the cash, before the three conspirators moved to Warrington and then on to Dumfries in Scotland.
They even told the new tenants at the house they were not to go into the outbuilding, as the landlord used it to store personal property.
In May 2013, Bendou confessed to police and led officers to the tomb.