A 54-year-old Arkansas woman has been arrested after her mother’s lifeless body was found wrapped in newspaper in their shared home.
Geanee Pike was arrested Monday, August 2, on charges of abuse of a corpse and financial identity fraud.
She is accused of living with the mummified body of her 73-year-old mother, Gloria Pike, and continuing to use the social security disability money that was being deposited every month into her mother’s account.
Gloria was reported missing on July 21, by her brother, George Maness.
Maness lived on the same property as Gloria, in a house next door to hers. He told the authorities that he hadn’t seen his sister since August 2020.
He said that Gloria was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and had been living with her daughter.
The police initiated an investigation and made several attempts to locate Gloria but their efforts were in vain.
On July 21, investigators spoke to Geanee, who told them that her mother wasn't missing, but was with an unknown friend at an unknown location.
She told the investigators that she didn’t have access to her mother’s bank account or check card.
Suspicious of replies, the investigators sought her consent to search her house, but she denied it.
During the investigation, Sgt. Autumn Holland, an investigator with the Washington County Sheriff's Office, subpoenaed Gloria's bank account records and found a transaction on July 27, at the Dollar General Store in Lincoln.
Upon inspecting the surveillance camera at the store, investigators "positively identified Geanee Pike using her missing mother’s check card", according to arrest records.
A search warrant for Geanee’s Nicewarner Road residence was written for financial identity fraud.
During a search of the house, officers noted the house was in "deplorable living conditions" with no running water. Human feces and urine were reportedly being collected in buckets and jugs throughout the house.
The officers discovered a woman's body on a bed in the living room/kitchen area, right next to Geanee’s bedroom, the report stated.
The mummified body was wrapped in newspaper from 2020 and bedding was wrapped over the newspaper.
Geanee was home at the time of the search, according to the report. She told Holland that her mother died of natural causes sometime at the end of 2020.
She said her mother owed her money and had promised to repay it from her monthly Social Security disability checks.
Geanee said she decided not to report her mother’s death and just covered her with a blanket. She then continued to use her mother's bank account after her death.
The body was sent to the Arkansas State Crime Lab for positive identification and to determine the exact cause and manner of death.
Meanwhile, Geanee is being held at the Washington County Detention Center.
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