Man Gets Probation for Storing Mom's Body in Freezer

A man will spend a year on probation for storing his dead mother's body in a freezer in their western Pennsylvania home. Fifty-eight-year-old Philip Royer Jr. had pleaded no contest to abuse of a corpse earlier this month and was sentenced Wednesday. Cranberry Township police accused Royer of hiding the body after his 90-year-old mother died of natural causes in August 2006. Police say Royer hid the body so he could cash his mother's Social Security checks, but prosecutors dropped a theft by deception charge in exchange for the corpse abuse conviction. Royer's attorney has said failure to notify the government of the death isn't the same as hiding it. Royer says he froze the body until he could make funeral arrangements.