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On this month's Oddities in the News Page:

Shades of Psycho: Woman lives with mother's corpse

IN THE ODDITIES ARCHIVES

Baby Born with Tail
Official Pentagon UFO Report
Two-headed Snake
Roswell in the News Again

Bedford, NH Woman Accused Of Living With Dead Mother For Five Months

By CBSBoston.com Staff, December 2021

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Kimberly K. Heller, 54

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The house where Kimberly lived with her deceased mother

BEDFORD, N.H. (CBS) — A Bedford, New Hampshire woman accused of living with her mother’s body for months after she died has been arrested.

Kimberly K. Heller, 54, is charged with abuse of a corpse, Bedford police said Friday. Officers arrested her on Nov. 18.

Police said they responded to the home on Ministerial Court where they both lived on Oct. 24, following a wellness check request from family members who had not seen Heller’s mother for months. No one answered the door.

Police said officers returned the next day but Heller wouldn’t let them in. They came back later with a search warrant, and that’s when they found her mother’s body.

“Bedford Police later learned that Heller’s mother died in the days before Memorial Day in May,” police said in a statement. “An autopsy by the State Medical Examiner determined that she died of natural causes.”

Police said they contacted the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General after discovering that Social Security payments to Heller’s mother were still being deposited into her bank account months after her death.

Psycho: The True Story That Inspired Norman Bates

Was 1960's Psycho based on a true story? Here's the unsettling story that inspired the author and Alfred Hitchcock when developing Norman Bates.

BY KARA HEDASH

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Was the 1960 horror film, Psycho, based on a true story? The movie was notably directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, garnering him an Academy Award nomination for his work. The film itself was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by author Robert Bloch.

Psycho has often been considered one of the first installments in the slasher genre. The movie followed Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a secretary who encountered Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) after staying at his family's motel. Marion was on the run to meet her boyfriend after stealing a large sum of money. While staying at the Bates Motel, Marion was stabbed to death while showering. Norman cleaned up the crime scene and later got rid of the evidence, as well as Marion's body. It was later revealed that Norman was the killer and he suffered from multiple personality disorder. He kept his dead mother's corpse and talked to her as if she was alive. Norman also impersonated his mother and claimed that she urged her son to kill women that he was attracted to.

The 1959 novel of which the film was based was loosely inspired by a true story that caught the attention of Bloch. The author accredited serial killer Ed Gein as the basis for Norman Bates. Gein lived less than fifty miles from Bloch's home in Wisconsin and the man shared similarities with Norman. Both Gein and Norman carried out their killings in rural areas. They also had oppressive mothers who they created shrines for, and they each wore women's clothes. Gein was eventually convicted of murdering two women and exhuming a number of bodies from graves. In 1968, Gein was found guilty but due to his mental state, he was put into a psychiatric institution.

The novel was passed to Hitchcock shortly after it hit publication. Hitchcock, then, bought the rights to develop the story into a film for under $10,000. He decided to film the adaptation in black-and-white as a way to hurry the project. It took a lot of negotiating, but after Hitchcock offered to personally finance the film, Paramount was fully on board.

Most of the screenplay was loyal to Bloch's novel in terms of the overall story. Norman's appearance received a makeover so that a younger actor like Perkins could portray the primary character. Some minor details were cut whereas some notions were expanded such as Marion's involvement. The film also trimmed some of the book's violence. For example, Marion was beheaded in the novel as opposed to her being stabbed in Hitchcock's reimagining.

See more HERE