Woman's Grandmother Is Found Frozen at Home

Cynthia Black is accused of keeping her Grandma's body frozen for 12 years
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted May 30, 2020 3:15 PM CDT

Sorry, Grandma's dead and frozen in the basement—but she can still collect Social Security checks. That's pretty much the scheme a Pennsylvania woman is accused of perpetrating in order to rake in tens of thousands of dollars from the feds, Local 21 News reports. "It's very satisfying," said a state trooper after Cynthia Black, 61, was arrested Wednesday. "This investigation took a lot of work and a lot of collaboration." The story goes back to 2019, when potential buyers of a home in Warrington Township, York County, found human remains in a freezer of an outbuilding. DNA tests identified her as 98-year-old Glenora Delahay.

Court documents say Black stuffed her in a freezer after she died in 2004, then moved the body when relocating from Ardmore to Warrington Township three years later. In the probable-cause affidavit, police say Black needed the Social Security money—which amounted to $186,000 between 2001 and 2010—in order to pay the mortgage. "It would hurt my family financially" to lose the money, she told investigators, although the Warrington Township property was in foreclosure and Black no longer lives there. She's been charged with abuse of a corpse, receiving stolen property, and unlawful taking. Police tell CNN she's out on an unsecured $50,000 bail. (More Social Security stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X