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New Jersey man is charged with killing his mother in her home and abandoning body in his car

Doris Templeton's body was found stuffed in a chest in an abandoned car after a worker at her apartment complex told police she hadn't been seen nor heard from in more than two weeks.

A police car at a crime scene.
A police car at a crime scene.Read moreDreamstime / MCT

A man has been arrested and charged in the slaying of his 77-year-old mother in her Burlington County apartment, officials said Wednesday.

Brian Templeton, 53, bludgeoned his mother, Doris, in the Edgewater Park apartment, stuffed her body in a chest, and put it in a car that was found Tuesday in the parking lot of the Willingboro pizza store where he worked as a driver, authorities said.

The investigation began Monday after an employee of the Courtyard Apartments, where the victim lived, called police to ask for a wellness check because the woman had not been seen or heard from in more than two weeks, Burlington County Prosecutor Scott Coffina and Edgewater Park Township Police Chief Robert D. Hess said in joint statement.

On Tuesday, investigators found the body and an autopsy determined that Doris Templeton had died of blunt trauma to the head, the officials said. They did not say when the woman was killed.

Templeton, who had been living with his mother, was charged Tuesday night with murder and desecration of human remains for allegedly putting the body in the chest and abandoning it in the car. He then began using his mother’s car for transportation, prosecutors said.

Officials said Templeton was being held under guard at a medical facility, where he is being treated for an unspecified condition, and would make a court appearance once he is released.