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Man pulled over with dead wife in passenger seat

Posted at 8:40 AM, May 15, 2019
and last updated 2019-05-15 08:40:27-04

A man told police his wife died on a road trip, so he strapped her in their car's passenger seat and continued on.

The explanation came Monday as Rodney Puckett, 70, of Oklahoma, was pulled over for a traffic violation along Interstate 10 in Arizona, reports the Arizona Republic.

When Eloy Detective Adam Edmonds noticed a woman who appeared to be dead buckled into the car, Puckett reportedly claimed his wife, Linda Puckett, 74, had died at a hotel in Texas before he moved her body to the car and kept driving. He was booked on a count of abandonment or concealment of a body.

Yet KNXV reports that the couple, married in 2011, was in the midst of divorcing. Linda Puckett filed for divorce Feb. 8, two days after she was granted a protective order against her husband.

Rodney Puckett is known to have bipolar disorder, according to a Silver Alert issued for him in April. The alert was canceled after he was discovered in a Kansas jail on a complaint of eluding officers, per KFOR.

Authorities are now working to determine how and when Linda died.

(This man cozied up to his wife's dead body for almost a week.)

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