WYALUSING, Pa. — The 91-year-old widow lived by herself in a tumbledown house on a desolate country road. But she wasn’t alone, not really, not as long as she could visit her husband and twin sister.
No matter they were already dead. Jean Stevens simply had their embalmed corpses dug up and stored them at her house — in the case of her late husband, for more than a decade — tending to the remains as best she could until police were finally tipped off last month. Much to her dismay.
“Death is very hard for me to take,” Stevens told an interviewer.
As state police finish their investigation — no charges have been filed — Stevens wishes she could be reunited with James Stevens, her husband of nearly 60 years who died in 1999, and June Stevens, the twin who died in October. But their bodies are with the Bradford County coroner now.
“I think when you put them in the (ground), that’s goodbye, goodbye,” Stevens said. “In this way I could touch her (June) and look at her and talk to her.”
She kept her sister, who was dressed in her “best housecoat,” on an old couch in a spare room off the bedroom. She kept her husband on a couch in the detached garage.
Stevens has talked extensively with both the police and Bradford County Coroner Tom Carman, who calls it a “very, very bizarre case.” But the coroner has nothing but kind things to say about the woman at the center of it.
“I got quite an education, to say the least. She’s 100 percent cooperative — and a pleasure to talk to,” Carman said. “But as far as her psyche, I’ll leave that to the experts.”
