Man Who Left Corpse In Car To Pay $500,000

POSTED: 11:02 am CDT September 13, 2007
UPDATED: 12:30 pm CDT September 13, 2007

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A man who left his girlfriend's body to decompose
in his Jeep Cherokee must pay her parents $500,000 for interfering
with their rights to properly bury her, a Jackson County jury has
ruled.
In 2005, Matthew C. Davis, 42, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to
seven years in prison for abandoning a corpse and 15 more for three
unrelated drug charges.
Police found the decomposed body of Amber McGathey, 22, in Davis'
Jeep on June 6, 2004. Prosecutors believed McGathey died of a drug
overdose four days earlier, when a witness saw a man wheeling a
shopping cart with what appeared to be a body in it.

On Wednesday, the jury ordered Davis to pay $250,000 each to Boyd
McGathey, of Parkville, and Debra Augustine, of Waterloo, Ill. They
had sued under a rarely used legal doctrine called "interference with
the right of sepulcher and burial."

Rooted in English common law, the legal principle has seldom been
used in Missouri and generally only in fights with funeral homes over
mistakes, lawyers said.

Davis, who lived on a trust fund income of about $8,000 a month, told
another person that McGathey died of a drug overdose, according to
court records. The medical examiner found opiates in her body and no
other obvious cause of death.
Boyd McCathey has said Davis lied to the family while they were
searching for Amber, saying she had left with a girlfriend.

The parents said they wanted their daughter to at least be buried in
a closed casket in a new dress and with her grandmother's ring on her
finger but couldn't because of decomposition.

The parents' lawyer had asked jurors for $1 million in actual damages
for each parent plus punitive damages.

The mother, Augustine, thanked jurors after the verdict and said she
was pleased.

"It's just a little more punishment for him," she said.

Defense lawyer Patrick Peters had argued that Davis, who was on
drugs, faced a tough choice after finding a body at his home. He
didn't bury it or throw it in the trash so the parents would never
know what happened, Peters said.