Each Thought Other Was Caring for Her for Last Year : Siblings End Feud, Find Mother Long Dead

DULUTH, Minn. —  A brother and sister who feuded for years didn’t know their 80-year-old mother had died until they asked each other where she was and went to her home. Her body was found in the living room, where it had been decomposing for a year.

“It sounds dumb, but that’s what happened,” said Ken Evenson, the son-in-law of Blanche Hansen, who was found Wednesday in her locked and dilapidated bungalow.

Neighbors said they thought that Hansen, a widow who cursed “like a lumberjack” and often shooed visitors away with a broom, had moved. No one had seen her since the summer of 1983.

“Everybody thought she had gone away to live with her daughter or in a nursing home,” one neighbor said. “There hasn’t been any activity over there for a couple years, at least.”

Evenson said the lack of contact between Hansen and her children, Carol Evenson and Robert Hansen, both of whom live in the area, caused a mix-up as to who was looking after her.

The silence was broken when brother and sister got together Monday night to settle the estate of their mother’s brother, who died Jan. 29.

Ken Evenson said that when the children ended their feud, “(Robert) asked, ‘So, where are you keeping Mom?’ And we said, ‘We thought you were taking care of her.’ ”

Evenson said his wife and her brother had avoided one another since an argument years ago involving the family’s lake cabin.

He also said their mother had been a recluse for many years and often wouldn’t let her children in when they did visit.

Evenson said his wife and her mother quit seeing each other three years ago at the mother’s request but that Carol Evenson continued paying her mother’s property tax and utility bills. The mother also had refused to reinstall the telephone she had removed 10 years ago after the death of her husband.