Police in Georgia responded to a welfare check earlier this month and found a 71-year-old man dead in a bathtub — then learned that a group of people had been living in the dead man’s home alongside his body.
According to WANF, police found Robert Westbrook’s body at his home in Smyrna.
“He was in a severe state of decomposition – it’s called mummification,” Detective Daniel Goduto said.
Goduto said investigators believe the body had been there for at least three months and apparently died of natural causes. But Westbrook’s home appeared to have been lived in far more recently.
“It was ransacked. Drawers were overturned, his master bedroom was completely just disheveled,” Goduto said. “But then there were items consistent with somebody still living there. The trash looked like it was taken out regularly. It looked like there was stuff in the garbage can that was fairly new.”
The day after the discovery of Westbrook’s body, a neighbor called to say there were people on the property. Police arrived to find four suspects with speakers, computer equipment, and mail loaded into their vehicle. And Westbrook’s car, which was at the home during the welfare check, was gone.
Police found it at a nearby gas station — with three more suspects inside.
“They had the victim’s credit cards. They had some checks from him,” Goduto said. “They had made purchases inside of the gas station. They were playing the lottery machines inside of the gas station with his money.”
Jarvis Darrell Ruff, Kristina Gale Coleman, Michael Richard Collins, Cherann Generra Cargle, Karla Sotoa Salazar, Sergio Gonzalez, and Anthony Manzella now face multiple charges, including burglary and fraud.
Goduto said that investigators believe that the seven initially thought the home, with wildly overgrown vegetation, “was a vacant house.”
“It goes to show their moral compass, if you will,” Goduto said. “I mean, they broke into someone’s home. They saw him deceased on the ground and instead of saying, ‘Hey, we messed up, let’s call 911, we found this guy dead,’ they decided to just live there.”
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