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Thursday, May 18, 2000 4:00 PM UTC

Englishman smuggles dead relative onto tour bus

His fellow passengers are unaware the corpse is a corpse.

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Topics: England, British Election,

When English tourists boarded their bus to return to England from a rugby match in Scotland, they had no idea that one of the men among them was dead.

That’s because the dead man’s son-in-law had dressed him in a suit, tie and baseball cap to cover his face before smuggling him onto the bus, according to a Reuters report.

Why? Perhaps it was the stress of his 77-year-old father-in-law’s death. Whatever the reason, the dutiful son-in-law, after rising in his Glasgow, Scotland, hotel room to find his father-in-law gone to the big rugby match in the sky, decided to take him back home to England without alerting authorities.

So he dressed him in his best, managed to haul him onto the bus without attracting attention and sat beside him for the ride home.

“Apparently,” a Glasgow police spokeswoman told Reuters, “he pulled the cap down over the man’s eyes and the rest of the coach were unaware that the man was dead.”

They found out, however, when the son-in-law called his wife en route to tell her that her father had passed away. Police in England were alerted and promptly tracked down the bus to remove the body. The son-in-law was not charged with any crime.

What is it with dead people and buses? First, an Argentinean family uses a city bus as a makeshift hearse, and now this!

J.A. Getzlaff's Daily Planet appears every weekday. Do you have a tip or tale for J.A.? Send it to DailyPlanet@salon.com. More J.A. Getzlaff.

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