An Italian man has said he kept his dead mother’s remains in a freezer to cover up her death and continue to collect her pension.

Sandro Mallus told police he put the body of Rosanna Pilloni, 78, in the family’s chest freezer after she passed away at home in the small town of Sarroch, near Cagliari in Sardinia, in January last year.

He made the admission after police began investigating concerns from neighbours that the woman hadn’t been seen for months.

According to local media, Mr Mallus continued shopping as if he was buying for two people, maintaining the pretence that his mother was alive.

Police are due to carry out a post mortem examination on Monday and have not ruled out the possibility Pilloni was killed, something Mr Mallus denies.

“My mother died of natural causes,’’ Mr Mallus told the newspaper, L’Unione Sarda. “I would never have harmed her.

“When I discovered her body I was desperate. I had no money for the funeral, so I locked her in there.”

  • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    That’s fair. If I had kids I’d want them to do this to keep collecting the social security I’ll never collect.

    • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
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      17 days ago

      We’ve been poor my whole life, and my mom is disabled. Our income consists of her disability and my paycheck, that I get from the state for being her caregiver. While I could never do this, she has literally asked me to do this out of concern for me should anything happen

        • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
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          17 days ago

          I’m half way through a bachelor’s at 33, and we’re working on applying for a home loan through the USDA. But honestly, I can’t really bear to think about it. She’s my life. I don’t know that I’ll make it through that.

  • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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    17 days ago

    This is sad, and poignant illustration of why we all need to implement some kind of universal basic income.

    UbI is cheaper to administrate, it makes more pro-community roles like artist, scholar and teacher more likely to be filled by more people, it makes the work force who can work more agile in finding their best jobs, it creates leverage for collective action against the worst employers (forcing all employers to behave better!) and it discourages people from hiding dead family members in a freezer.

    • seang96@spgrn.com
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      17 days ago

      Whenever the topic of UBI comes up please always mention the pro of not hiding dead family members in the freezer. Its so specific yet sorta random haba

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      I would not consider funeral costs as something to be entrusted to an income or to be solved by UBI. If the money comes in, it gets spent. That’s really the point, it’s basic, not pay for major life changes/events.

      If you’re going to go down the route of paying for all of these things then we’re going to need to extend social programs to burial costs, cemetery or other costs of public access to the deceased’s location, etc.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      17 days ago

      it makes more pro-community roles like artist, scholar and teacher more likely to be filled by more people

      Considering conservatives tend to attack education, I’m starting to realize another proponent for their resistance of UBI.

      • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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        17 days ago

        Yep. I was confused for awhile about conservatives being against UBI, since it enables a lot of libertarian ideal outcomes.

        I do think it’s because education would get better, and certain powerful people don’t want that.

  • DMBFFF@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Homicide: Life on the Streets apparently had something similar in S3 E16.

    I’d link a video, but the producers of the series has apparently done a lot of IP trolling on YouTube, and as shitty as YouTube is, DailyMotion is shittier.

    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6twq3q

    ≈27:11