An arrest has been made in the rotted couch potato corpse case of an elderly woman whose live-in son left her to decompose on the living-room sofa after she died of unknown causes.
That gross discovery was made last month when Florida police performed a welfare check on 81-year-old Joyce Willis and detected a foul stench emanating from her house.
Upon entering and inspecting the residence a deputy found the missing woman’s body stuffed between two couches and covered with a pile of blankets.
Her 60-year-old son -- who had been actively refusing other relatives admittance to the property since January -- was then subjected to questioning, during which he insisted he had nothing to do with his mother’s passing and referred to her as his “best friend.”
But Michael Sticken has been under intense scrutiny ever since that afternoon because bank records indicate he’d been collecting Willis’s social security payments even though he alone knew that she was dead.
The two apparently shared a joint account where Joyce Willis’s monthly benefits were automatically deposited, although thousands of dollars worth of this year’s withdrawals were executed solely in Sticken’s name.
A Santa Rosa medical examiner has estimated that the rotted couch potato corpse of the suspect’s mom may indeed have been stashed in the living-room for many months, but a cause of death has not yet been pinpointed.
Following a weeks-long investigation into the weird crime, Michael Sticken was finally arrested on Thursday and now faces charges of failing to report a death and grand theft.
