A 37-year-old man was arrested after, police claim, he was found to be living with his mother’s corpse in a Bensalem home they shared for a week or more after she died.
According to police, Derrick Bouffard, 37, of Levittown, was apprehended and has been charged with abuse of a corpse after his mother’s remains were discovered in a home they shared along the 5000 block of Hunter Court in Bensalem in October of last year.
Court documents note that the charges were filed on March 6, 2026, months after the body of Bouffard’s mother, Cynthia Bouffard, 70, was found in a home on Oct. 26, 2025.
On that date, at about 3 p.m., court documents claim, police visited the Bensalem home on a welfare check after receiving reports of suspicious conditions at the home after workers from Bensalem’s Public Works Department attempted to cut an overgrown lawn there.
Upon officers’ arrival at the home, court documents claim, Derrick Bouffard exited the property, telling the first responders he was just about to contact them.
‘I was just about to call you guys’
“I was just about to call you guys,” court documents claim Bouffard told officers. “My mom stopped breathing this morning.”
However, court documents claim, inside the home, officers found Bouffard’s mother’s body and it seemed that she had been dead much longer than that.
According to the documents, officers noted that the woman’s body was found on a mattress in a family room in the home and it appeared “severely decomposed, estimated to have been dead more than a week.”
The home, police reported in court documents, was in “complete disarray,” with a strong odor of decomposition and fans spread throughout the home, likely to dissipate the smell of the body.
Flying insects filled the home and, officers reported in court documents, that the woman’s body seemed “skeletal” and likely weighted about 50 to 60 lbs.
“There was almost no flesh on her bones, and her eyes were barely visible,” officers wrote in a report at the scene. “There were flying insects all over her body that emerged as soon as he lifted the blanket that was covering her, which had been covering her when officers first discovered the body.”
Also, court documents note, the officers found no evidence of food preparation for the deceased, the refrigerator at the home was nearly empty and a freezer on the property was “filled with spoiled food an insects.”
Bouffard’s mother, court documents said, suffered from advanced dementia before her death and could not walk or talk. Her son, police said, was her primary caretaker.
Before the welfare check, officials said, Bouffard’s mother was last seen alive, by her brother, on Sept. 23, 2025.
Bouffard lived with his mother’s body for days, police say
An investigation into the incident, court documents claim, found that, in the days that Bouffard is believed to have been living with his mother’s dead body in the home, he used his phone to search for how to report a loved one’s death and when he needed to notify the bank of her death, while he made daily orders to Uber Eats for food deliveries.
Court documents claim he ordered food deliveries from one to three times a day, and in order to get the deliveries, he had to walk by her corpse every time.
An autopsy conducted in February found Bouffard’s mother was likely dead between seven and ten days before she was discovered by officers.
However, court documents do not detail Bouffard’s cause of death.
Bouffard has been arrested and is in police custody as, court documents note, he awaits a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 8, 2026.
About the Author
Discover more from USA NEWS
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
