A Tombstone man was arrested Wednesday after authorities found the decomposed body of a woman believed to be his mother inside her home.

The Tombstone Marshal’s Office received a call Wednesday to do a welfare check on Jill Fattig, 68, at her home in Tombstone, said Marshal Billy Cloud.

A deputy went to the home but, when no one answered the door, he went to question the woman’s son, Timothy Fattig.

Fattig, 34, told the deputy that his mother was at a hospital in Tucson. When the deputy found this was not the case, he went back to Fattig, who eventually told him his mother had died about a year go.

After obtaining a search warrant, deputies found the skeletal remains of a woman inside Jill Fattig’s home, Cloud said.

Timothy Fattig was arrested on suspicion of negligent homicide and booked into the Cochise County Jail on a $40,000 bond.

Fattig told deputies that when he found his mother dead, he was so overcome with grief he never reported her death. Fattig had been telling people around Tombstone for several months that his mother was in a hospital in Tucson, Cloud said.

If an autopsy finds that the woman died of natural causes, any charge against Fattig will likely be downgraded to failure to report a death, a misdemeanor, Cloud said.

Fattig is an author and historian who wrote a biography of Wyatt Earp. His Facebook page says he works for Desert Screams Productions, which focuses on making and producing horror films.

Local FOX report