{"id":16759,"date":"2026-04-18T20:02:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/16759\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T20:02:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:02:22","slug":"merseysides-horror-film-houses-where-dead-were-left-unburied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/16759\/","title":{"rendered":"Merseyside’s ‘horror film houses’ where dead were left unburied"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n

Forensic investigations take place on Madelaine Street, Toxteth, after a body was found in a house. <\/p>\n

Earlier this week a man pleaded guilty<\/a> to preventing the “lawful and decent<\/a>” burial of his mother whose body was found in a freezer.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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<\/a> was told it was believed Mrs Phillips died in 2023.<\/p>\n

Merseyside has seen several similar cases.<\/p>\n

Wallasey: Brookside extra kept dead mum in bedroom\"Olive<\/p>\n

Olive Hazel Maddock entering Liverpool Crown Court<\/p>\n

In 2011, Brookside and Hollyoaks extra Hazel Maddock, then 61, from Wallasey<\/a>, was jailed for failing to bury her 95-year-old mum for up to six months.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Hazel Maddock admitted fraud, taking a payment from Olive Maddock\u2019s pension after she died and preventing her burial. Daughter Jasmine Maddock, then aged 35, pleaded guilty to leaving the corpse of her grandmother unburied.<\/p>\n

Jasmine Maddock told Liverpool Crown Court: \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cLiving in that house was like the film, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? It was like a horror movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hazel Maddock was sentenced to 11 months in prison. Jasmine Maddock received a suspended sentence for her part in the “conspiracy of silence.”<\/p>\n

Toxteth: Grieving pensioner slept in same room as brother’s corpse for more than two years<\/p>\n

Grieving pensioner Donald Pollard slept in the same room as his brother\u2019s corpse for two years because he didn\u2019t want to be alone.<\/p>\n

Donald was arrested on suspicion of murder after Stephen Pollard\u2019s body was found at their shared Toxteth<\/a> home in 2018.<\/p>\n

He was charged with preventing a lawful burial and fraud when it emerged he had claimed \u00a323,000 of his dead sibling\u2019s benefits.<\/p>\n

When police officers came knocking at the Madelaine Street address, Donald answered the back door and when asked where Stephen was, \u201creplied calmly his brother was dead upstairs\u201d.<\/p>\n

His \u201cdecomposing\u201d body was found under blankets and when asked how long he had been dead, Donald answered \u201coh several years\u201d.<\/p>\n

Donald said he died of natural causes on January 1, 2015. His cause of death could not be established in a post-mortem examination.<\/p>\n

When interviewed by police, Donald said Stephen collapsed on the landing and he was frightened and didn\u2019t know what to do.<\/p>\n

Judge Watson said there was nothing to suggest an \u201cunlawful killing\u201d but Donald \u201cburied his head in the sand\u201d.<\/p>\n

He handed him a year in prison, suspended for 18 months, plus a 20-day rehabilitation activity requirement.<\/p>\n

Toxteth: Woman left to die in “worst condition of a living human”\"The<\/p>\n

The first picture of Valerie Wallach who was shockingly neglected before her death by husband Richard(Image: merpol)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Liverpool Crown Court saw Richard Wallach jailed for eight years in 2019 for neglecting his wife as she was dying in squalid conditions.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

Shocked neighbours said they “could not believe” it had happened near to where they lived, on Gwendoline Street.<\/p>\n

Wallach, 67, jailed for eight years after he was found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence in 2019.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Some Gwendoline Street residents heartbreakingly did not even know Richard had a wife living with him, they told the ECHO.<\/p>\n

Richard had been described as someone who “kept himself to himself” and did not cause “any bother” for neighbours.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“They just seemed like nice people, you would not think something like that would have happened.<\/p>\n

“You can’t say anything nasty about him, you can’t say nothing like that. He was just a nice fella you’d see.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Ellesmere Port: Flight attendant buried in concrete tomb under shed<\/p>\n

Air steward Christophe Borgye was murdered in April 2009<\/p>\n

Air steward Christophe Borgye lay undisturbed in a home-made concrete tomb in Ellesmere Port for four years after he was bludgeoned to death.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

His killers wrapped him in a duvet cover and tarpaulin, then entombed the Ryanair worker in a cement structure alongside their weapons.<\/p>\n

But mastermind Dominik Kocher, his cousin Manuel Wagner and paranoid schizophrenic Sebastian Bendou did not immediately leave Hylton Close.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile married dad-of-three Kocher who lived across the road, contacted Mr Borgye\u2019s family to tell them he had gone travelling to China.<\/p>\n

He sold off his victim\u2019s possessions, pocketing the cash, before the three conspirators moved to Warrington and then on to Dumfries in Scotland.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In May 2013, Bendou confessed to police and led officers to the tomb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brookside extra who kept dead mum in bedroom, a pensioner slept in same room as brothers corpse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[61,4742,5,6,7863],"class_list":{"0":"post-16759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-toxteth","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wallasey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116427498642081780","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}