Man Who Left Corpse In Car To Pay $500,000
‘A man who left his girlfriend’s body to decompose in his Jeep Cherokee must pay her parents $500,000 for interfering with their rights to properly bury her, a Jackson County jury has ruled.
In 2005, Matthew C. Davis, 42, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison for abandoning a corpse and 15 more for three unrelated drug charges.
Police found the decomposed body of Amber McGathey, 22, in Davis’ Jeep on June 6, 2004. Prosecutors believed McGathey died of a drug overdose four days earlier, when a witness saw a man wheeling a shopping cart with what appeared to be a body in it.
On Wednesday, the jury ordered Davis to pay $250,000 each to Boyd McGathey, of Parkville, and Debra Augustine, of Waterloo, Ill. They had sued under a rarely used legal doctrine called “interference with the right of sepulcher and burial.”‘
