JACHIMOWICZ: PENSIONER JAILED AFTER BURYING DAD IN THE BACK GARDEN

A pensioner who buried his elderly father’s body in the back garden and then continued to claim over £10,000 of his benefits and write cheques in his name has today (Fri) been jailed for 20 months.

Michael Jachimowicz, 70, told neighbours his Polish-born father Hierinom, known as Henry, had been sent to live with relatives when the 87-year-old disappeared from the family home.

In fact, he was buried in a basic grave under the patio in the garden of the family home they had shared, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

Jachimowicz had initially faced a murder charge, which was thrown out by a judge, and was then cleared of the manslaughter of his father.

But he was found guilty of obtaining his father’s benefits for over a year after his death and signing cheques in his fathers name, including a transfer of more than £10,000 to himself.

Passing sentence, Recorder David Radford said he accepted there could be no suggestion that the pensioner had buried his father to cover up an unlawful killing, following the jury’s verdict.

However, his burial in an unmarked grave was unlawful and ‘indecent’, according to the jury, he said.

‘Plainly, due to the many years that the body remained undisturbed by anybody in the grave you dug, no conclusion could be arrived at by pathologists,’ he said.

Jachimowicz has already served 237 days in prison on remand, meaning he is likely to be free within days.

The pensioner, who was the sole heir to his family estate, claimed that he had honoured his father’s dying wish to be buried at the family home.

Despite having substantial personal savings, he continued to claim benefits so his father’s benefits so that his death would not be discovered and the body removed, the court heard today.

‘I was using my father’s name with his permission to sign such documents for five years,’ Jachimowicz said at his trial.

‘Of course, I didn’t have his permission in 2006 because he was dead.

‘I didn’t forge his signature, I used his signature, he had given me carte blanche to do so.

‘I was the sole beneficiary.’

Jachimowicz was the sole carer for his elderly father, who was last seen alive on March 11, 2005.

He never registered his father as deceased, and allegedly told neighbours and social workers that Henry had gone to live in Lithuania, Poland or Bristol after his disappearance.

The pensioner had purchased a grave plot at Gunnersbury Cemetery, west London, where his mother was buried, and added his father’s details to headstone.

Police acting on a tip off dug up the elderly man’s body from the garden in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, in November last year.

It was accompanied by a handwritten note from Michael, stuffed into a milk bottle, claiming his father had died of natural causes and he had honoured his ‘dying wish’ by burying him in the garden.

It said: ‘Henry’s dying wish was to be buried with all the things that made his life worth living, viz: his beloved wire fox hair terrier (3 buried in this garden), his wonderful bees (six hives here) and his glorios [sic] garden of 20 fruit trees.

‘He held me to promise that come his final day on the good earth, that I would ensure his request be met.

‘To that effoc [sic] I have honoured his wish.

‘Found dead in bed on Sunday morning 13/3/05.’

The message ended: ‘All my love and lifelong respect. God be with you!

‘Signed, Michael, his only son.

‘P.S. I write this with tears in my eyes.’

He was arrested on November 4 last year, after neighbours tipped off police about their concerns.

Giving evidence, Jachimowicz had said that he found his father dead in bed on March 15, 2005.

‘Now I had a problem facing me. I thought “What am I going to do? Am I going to allow that to happen or am I going to honour the pledge I gave him to bury him in the garden”?,’ he said.

‘I slowly realised I had made a promise to him and that promise was that I would bury him in the garden.’

Prosecutor Hilary Neville said that in total, Jachimowicz had received £36,602 in benefits and cheques, though he had not been charged in relation to all the cash.

The benefits were finally stopped by the DWP after four interviews, in which Jachimowicz claimed that his father was still alive, but had moved away from the family home.

He had ‘benefited from general criminal conduct’ said Ms Neville, who added that he had been guilty of ‘dishonesty and repeated lies’ to conceal the fraud.

The court heard that Jachimowicz had continued to claim his father’s retirement pension, pension credit and attendance allowance in his father’s name.

In total, was found guilty of receiving £12,645 in benefits between 2002 and 19 July 2006, and more than £11,000 in false cheques.

He also forged four cheques in his father’s name in 2005, including a £200 payment to John Lewis and a transfer of £10,500 from his father’s Irish Nationwide account to his own bank account.

But he said he did not consider his actions to be dishonest, as he was the sole heir to his father’s estate and had been signing his cheques before the elderly man died.

His lawyer Jo Sidhu argued that the frauds had not been motivated by personal gain, but rather to stop his father’s body being moved on discovery of his death.

‘He felt that the only way he could keep the promise that he had made to his father was by committing another offence in essence, by lying to the authorities and accepting money into his account,’ he said.

Jachimowicz had ‘felt entitled’ to write himself cheques in his fathers name, knowing the he was the sole heir to the family’s will, he said.

He argued that the pensioner had made an ‘extraordinary’ decision to care for both his parents until the end of their lives.

‘One can only imagine for a man who was 65 at the time of his father’s death the effort, mental, physical, psychological and emotional, to have the discipline and compassion it would have taken to look after both his father and before that his mother, who was in poor health,’ he said.

Recorder Radford acknowledged that Jachmowicz claimed he had buried his father in the garden to ‘honour a promise’.

‘That may be so, but of course that did not mean it had to be an unlawful and indecent burial,’ he said.

‘It was and is a perfectly lawful if the right steps are taken to bury someone in a private garden.

‘You took no such steps.’

Jachimowicz had given ‘no adequate explanation’ as to why his secrecy abound the burial had led to him continuing to claim benefits for his father, he said.

The pensioner had apparently repeatedly told others that his father had left the country.

Jachimowicz, of (164) Furzehill Road, Borehamwood, Herts, was cleared of the single charge of manslaughter between March 11 2005 and November 10 2010.

At an earlier trial at St Alban’s Crown Court he was found guilty of preventing a lawful burial and three charges of obtaining a money transfer by deception.

The pensioner had admitted four charges of forgery, all of which related to signing cheques in his father’s name.

A charge of murder was dismissed by the judge and a charge of obstructing the coroner in the course of his duty was left to lie on file.

Jachimowicz was handed a 15 month prison sentence for preventing his father’s burial, and four months for each of the three obtaining money transfers by deception, concurrent with each other but consecutive to the first sentence.

He was also sentenced to a month for each of the forgery charges, concurrent with each other but increasing the total sentence to 20 months.

Jachimowicz was also subject to confiscation on £36,602.14, which the judge accepted was the total benefit from his crimes, and must also pay separate compensation of £25,546.39 to the Department of Work and Pensions within 18 months.

ends.