Piano teacher accused of burying husband’s body on remote farm
A SCOTTISH woman is to stand trial accused of burying her husband’s body in the garden of their home in Portugal.
Piano teacher Louise Khan, 46, was arrested after the remains of Alyn Pennycook were found earlier this month on the remote farm where they lived.
Mr Pennycook, a 59-year-old Scot, is believed to have died after battling cancer.
Officers suspect he died in September or October but Miss Khan, who is originally from Lochgelly, Fife, failed to report his death to the authorities in Portugal or Britain.
She was arrested and held in custody ‘for the presumed practice of at least one crime of corpse desecration’ following the discovery of the body on February 9.
She has since been released on the condition she reports to a local police station and is due to stand trial later this month. She could face up to two years in prison.
Miss Khan, who had lived at the property in Linhares, near the city of Guarda, for more than three years, is being assisted by UK government officials.
A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman said: ‘We remain in contact with the Portuguese police following the arrest and subsequent conditional release of a British woman in Guarda.’
Neighbours grew suspicious when Mr Pennycook, a retired contractor, had not been spotted at the remote farmhouse for several months. Police located the body by using groundpenetrating radar on land next to Miss Khan’s home.
An autopsy is said to have shown no signs of violence.
One neighbour said Miss Khan and her husband ‘were a couple with an alternative lifestyle, much like the hippies’.
She was brought before a judge at a court in Guarda last week for a summary hearing where a lawyer asked for more time to prepare the case.
In a statement, Policia Judiciaria (PJ) in Portugal said: ‘A 46-year-old woman has been arrested for the presumed practice of at least one crime of corpse desecration.
‘The body is believed to be that of a 59-year-old Scotsman, found and exhumed by members of the PJ police and the Scientific Laboratory Police.’
Miss Khan gave piano lessons from the couple’s home in Lochgelly town centre before they moved to Portugal.
Neighbours have told Portuguese newspapers that the pair lived quietly in the 12th-century village and did not mix with other expats. Mr Pennycook is said to have regularly travelled back to Scotland for medical treatment.
A Portuguese television report said WH Auden’s Funeral Blues poem had been posted on a Facebook account in Miss Khan’s name last October.
‘Alternative lifestyle’