Mummified body found in cupboard

Mummified body found in cupboard

Police called to a routine domestic dispute found a mummified body of a nearly naked man in a cupboard under the stairs, a court heard yesterday. The badly decomposed and maggot-infested body of 51-year-old Jeffrey Brown, wearing only an anorak, vest and socks, had been in the cupboard since his death five months earlier, Nottingham Crown Court was told.

Cheryl Godward, the resident of the house at Sneinton, Nottingham, and a friend of the dead man, told police she left him at her home with two prostitutes. Judge John Hopkin jailed Godward, 29, for four years after she admitted obstructing the coroner. Godward said when she returned Mr Brown was either unconscious or dead. She put him in the cupboard and nailed it shut.

The authorities were only alerted when, five months later, police were called to a domestic dispute between Godward and her current boyfriend and were met by a "pungent" smell.