Minnesota man lived with bodies of kin for year

Says he was ‘traumatized,’ couldn’t call police

A Minnesota man who lived in a house with the decomposing bodies of his mother and twin brother for about a year said he could not bring himself to report their deaths to authorities.

“I was traumatized,” Robert James Kuefler told The Associated Press on Saturday.

White Bear Police Capt. Dale Hager said Kuefler, 60, was charged this week with interference with a dead body or scene of death because Kuefler moved his brother’s body. Hager said both the brother and the mother died of natural causes in 2015.

Several months after their deaths, Kuefler wrote to other family members in a Christmas card that both were in bad health and could not talk on the phone. Police did not find the bodies until September 2016, when a neighbor reported that it had been a long time since she had seen activity at the house, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.

Kuefler told the AP that his mother, 94-year-old Evelyn Kuefler, died in August 2015 and his brother, Richard Kuefler, died several months before. Court records say the mother’s body was decayed and skeletal and the brother’s body was “mummified.”

“I am not some nut ball,” the maintenance worker said in a telephone interview. “I loved them.”

Hager said disability and Social Security checks for Krueger’s mother and brother were sent to their accounts by direct deposit and that it did not appear that any money was withdrawn, though federal authorities are still investigating.

Hager said authorities decided to file the misdemeanor charge in part to help get him some psychological help through the court system.

Kuefler, who has no criminal history, said he needs no counseling.

“I watched my mother die,” he said. “She always said she wanted to die at home. She didn’t have any burial plans.”