I-Team: Women charged with using man’s corpse in bank withdrawal plead not guilty
ASHTABULA, Ohio (WJW) — The FOX 8 I-Team has found that two women now indicted for taking part in a bizarre scheme to drive a deceased elderly man to a bank to withdraw money are maintaining their innocence.
Loreen Feralo and Karen Casbohm both were indicted earlier this month on charges of gross abuse of a corpse and theft of a person in a protected class.
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They both entered not guilty pleas to the charges last Thursday, even though Casbohm can be heard on a recorded phone call from the jail saying she knew the victim, Douglas Layman, 80, was deceased when she took him to the bank. During the recorded conversations, Casbohm also admits calling for help to move his body.
“Because he died coming out of the house, Loree could not carry the body, so I got her ex to put his body in the car,” Casbohm said.
When asked why she didn’t call police, she said she “figured I would go to the bank and then go to the hospital and drop him off.”
A third person, Justin Kelly, has been indicted on a charge of gross of abuse of a corpse for helping the pair place Layman’s body in a car, so the two women could drive him to the bank and withdraw money from his account, according to officials.
Kelly is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday.
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The daughter of Casbohm told us that her mother and Feralo lived with Layman.
“He was ill,” said Taylor Woodring, noting she was told Layman had cancer. “He was a very sweet man and this shouldn’t have happened to him.”
Casbohm and Feralo are both due back in court soon.
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