Woman accused of leaving mother’s dead body in home for 1-2 months hoping God would ‘resurrect her’

A woman has been charged after allegedly leaving her mother’s dead body in a home for over a month, hoping God would “resurrect her.”

Charice Antonette Goude, 55, was charged on Thursday with one felony count of interfering with a dead body.

A criminal complaint says that on Dec. 30, 2022, Brooklyn Center police responded to a home on the 3000 block of 56th Avenue North for report of a 73-year-old woman found unconscious and not breathing.

When police arrived, they entered the home and found the woman dead in a bedroom. Court records say that she had been dead for one to two months due to the level of decomposition.

Law enforcement spoke with Goude, the woman’s daughter, who said that she lives at the home and is her mother’s sole caretaker.

Goude said her mother had died in November and told officials that “while she knew it sounded ‘crazy,’ she had not reported it because she was waiting on God to resurrect her.”

Officers viewed medical documents from Goude that showed her mother had last seen a doctor in April and that she was prescribed several medications, including for diabetes and high blood pressure.

Court documents note that when asked about the medications, Goude said she was not giving her mother any of them and wanted to treat her “naturally.”

Police searched the home and found eight prescription medications in Goude’s mother’s name, with the most recent one being filled in August of 2022. Most of the bottles were empty, according to court records.

Officers also spoke with Goude’s ex-husband, who owns the home and lives in the basement. He said that Goude’s mother was diagnosed with dementia and high blood pressure and that the last time he had seen her was before Thanksgiving.

He noted that he stays in the basement, except to use the bathroom and kitchen, and that on the previous Saturday, he noticed a bad smell and thought something might have died in the walls.

Several days later, he noticed the smell was strongest in the hallway outside of Goude’s mother’s room. He went into the room to check, found her dead and then called police, court documents show.

When officers were on scene, they noticed efforts to conceal the odor, including Glade plugins, Febreze bottles and candles in the kitchen. Authorities also saw the master bedroom windows were open and had paper taped over the lower windows to prevent anyone from seeing inside.

In January 2023, police spoke to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office and learned that no obvious cause of death was found during the autopsy due to an advanced level of decomposition.

The medical examiner’s report was released in March 2023, indicating the cause of death was undetermined, but contributing factors were hypertension, hypothyroidism and dementia. The complaint says that blood tests did not show any evidence Goude’s mother had been ingesting her prescribed medications.

Goude was charged via summons and is not currently in custody. Her initial court appearance is scheduled for March 11.