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CRIME

Spanish man lives with dead mother’s body to collect pension

A Spanish man who allegedly lived with the body of his dead mother for up to a year to continue to collect her pension has been arrested, police said Thursday.

Published: 13 December 2018 17:51 CET
Spanish man lives with dead mother's body to collect pension
The address in Madrid where the grim discovery was made. Photo: Google Maps.

Officers found the woman's “badly decomposed” body at a Madrid flat on Wednesday after receiving a call from neighbours who reported a “strong odour”, a police spokesman said.

Police then detained the woman's 62-year-old son for fraud for failing to report her death aged 92 and continuing to collect her pension, he added.   

“The son did not do what he should have done,” the spokesman said, adding that the man lived in the flat with his mother's remains for “several months, possibly almost a year”.

The grim discovery was made on Wednesday in the flat at number 12, Calle Salvador Alonso in the San Isidro neighbourhood of Madrid. 

READ ALSO: Son and daughter jailed for neglecting 76-year-old sick mother

CRIME

Spanish police recover stolen Francis Bacon painting

Spanish police said Thursday they have recovered a €5 million ($5.4 million) painting by late British artist Francis Bacon that was stolen with four other of his works in 2015.

Published: 23 May 2024 14:09 CEST
Spanish police recover stolen Francis Bacon painting

The work is one of five portraits of Spanish banker Jose Capelo by Bacon, together worth over €25 million ($27 million), which were stolen from Capelo’s Madrid home in July 2015.

The thieves also made off with a safe that contained coins and jewels in what was described at the time as one of the biggest contemporary art thefts in Spain. Police recovered three of the five paintings in 2017.

In a statement, police said they had arrested two people suspected of involvement in the theft, which allowed them to recover one of the stolen works still missing at a property in Madrid.

Police have so far arrested 16 people suspected over the theft since 2015, including the person believed to have ordered the heist and those who carried it out, the statement added.

“Investigations are continuing to locate the remaining work and arrest those in possession of it, with the focus on Spanish nationals with links to organised groups from Eastern Europe,” the statement said.

Police did not provide further details about the people involved in the robbery or how they were identified.

Bacon is regarded as one of Britain’s greatest recent painters, with some of his expressionist works achieving record amounts at auction.

His triptych “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” sold for $142.4 million at auction in New York in 2013, making it one of the world’s most expensive works at the time.

Bacon often visited Madrid, where he spent time studying old masters paintings in the Prado Museum, and died in the city in 1992, aged 82.

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