Phantom mourner who gatecrashes funerals unmasked

This is the church-going pensioner unmasked as the phantom mourner who gatecrashes strangers’ funerals and raids the buffets.

Theresa Doyle, 65, is said to turn up at funerals before chatting to relatives of the deceased and pouncing on the spread laid on by the family.

Mrs Doyle, who lives alone in a council flat in Slough, Berkshire, spends her days going to funerals, church masses and Sikh temples where food is provided for the needy by volunteers.

She fills her Tupperware box with food before leaving on her purple bicycle. 

Unmasked: Phantom mourner Theresa Doyle (pictured) is accused of turning up to strangers’ funerals before raiding the buffets

Neighbours told how she was mildly eccentric but went to scores of funerals and wakes where she brazenly scooped up the food on offer into a Tesco bag or plastic box.

One neighbour said: ‘She leaves the house in her bright, daily clothes but tucked into the basket on her bike is a black funeral outfit which she changes into at the church venue.

‘When she arrives at the funeral she changes into the sombre clothes, goes to the wake and then helps herself to the food, bringing it back and putting it in her freezer.

‘Theresa has been doing this for about 14 years now but the bizarre thing is she gatecrashes strangers’ funeral and is completely brash about it.’

When challenged about her reasons for going to so many funerals, grey-haired Mrs Doyle said: ‘That’s my business. I have to go now, I’ve somewhere to be.’ 

She refused to say anything else about her mourner gatecrashing.

One of the latest victims of Mrs Doyle’s gatecrashing was Margaret Whitehead who spotted her at the funeral of her daughter Catherine, who died aged 42 years from Addison’s disease.

Three weeks after Catherine’s death friends and family gathered for the funeral at the Holy Redeemer Church in Slough but Mrs Doyle appeared on a bicycle and later began chatting to guests at the wake.

Mrs Doyle, who lives alone in a council flat in Slough, Berkshire, is said to spend her days going to funerals, church masses and Sikh temples

Mrs Doyle, who lives alone in a council flat in Slough, Berkshire, is said to spend her days going to funerals, church masses and Sikh temples

Mrs Whitehead said: ‘She got my son Kevin to give her a lift from the church to the Irish Centre for the wake.

‘There were a lot of people at the funeral from Catherine’s work so I just assumed she was a colleague. When I spoke to her though she told me she used to work with Catherine as a waitress. My daughter never worked as a waitress.’

After the service at the Holy Redeemer Church in Slough, Mrs Whitehead found out the woman is known locally for randomly appearing at strangers’ funerals.

‘She was eating from the buffet like there was no tomorrow,’ said Mrs Whitehead, of Warfield, near Bracknell.

‘At the end of the wake she took out a Tupperware box, filled it up with food and cycled off with it in the basket on her bicycle.’ 

Despite the woman’s alleged sense of religious duty Mrs Whitehead said her attendance was intrusive and not acceptable.

‘There’s mass every morning, she doesn’t need to go to funerals,’ she said.

‘She’s only going when there’s a cheap lunch. She intrudes on people when they are upset and sad.’ 

Father Noah Connolly, from Holy Redeemer, said Mrs Doyle told him she felt it her 'duty to attend as many church masses as possible'

Father Noah Connolly, from Holy Redeemer, said Mrs Doyle told him she felt it her ‘duty to attend as many church masses as possible’

Father Noah Connolly, of the Holy Redeemer Church, said the religious woman for some reason believed it was her duty to attend services.

He said: ‘Every funeral we have she comes and if there is a reception afterwards she makes her way to it without invitation. 

‘She is a Catholic woman and she is convinced she needs to go to as many masses as possible. She has been coming and going since I have been here for the past 14 years. I can’t exactly say ‘you can’t come here’.’

Mrs Doyle’s neighbours said she moved to her current council-owned home after her house in Ragstone Road in the same town burned down. They said it was rebuilt and she sold it for £600,000.

They also told how the petite OAP was regularly seen exiting churches and Sikh centres carrying a Tesco or Boots bag filled with food. 

Immediate neighours of Mrs Doyle at Myrtle Crescent, Slough, said it was the only food she would eat in a day, as she did not have a fridge or cooker in her small flat.

When they asked her why she did this, she told them simply: ‘I have not done anything to you.’

One of Mrs Doyle’s neighbours, a man who lives on the ground floor, said: ‘We had a funeral here for one of the residents and the wife did not want her at the funeral, so she didn’t advertise where the wake was going to be and the priest didn’t announce it.

‘Still, Mrs Doyle called somebody to give her a lift up there, and as per usual, filled up the boxes and brought them away. She has no shame at all. They went to great lengths to keep her away.

‘I saw her coming down the venue’s driveway on her bike, hide the bike around the back somewhere and, after a quick change she came out in a little black number. She went over to some bloke who was there but I don’t think she had ever met him before in her life. She escorted him into the pew.’ 

He said that when he had invited his friends from a forum for pensioners in Slough, she had gatecrashed the common room in the flats briefly to ‘stuff little cakes in her pockets.’

‘Everybody did their best to help her initially, before she started to show her true colours. Now she just takes advantage of everything and everybody.. She has no respect for anybody.’

Mrs Doyle has been crashing services at the Holy Redeemer Church in Slough, Berkshire, and then tucking into the buffet food at the wakes

Mrs Doyle has been crashing services at the Holy Redeemer Church in Slough, Berkshire, and then tucking into the buffet food at the wakes

He added he had heard a young woman tell Mrs Doyle she was the ‘least pious person she had met in her life’ after catching her gatecrashing an acquaintance’s wake.

A woman living on the same floor said: ‘She will go to all these wakes, she tags onto somebody she doesn’t know and gets them to take her into the wake – it can be anyone who is going to the wake.’  

A third neighbour, a woman living on the first floor, said: ‘I actually think she is a highly intelligent woman. It is the way she speaks, she has a nice Irish accent.

‘She goes into funerals with a carrier bag and then comes out with food. You know the Tesco carrier bags? I would say that is three quarters full.’

Describing the same funeral that the male neighbour attended, she said: ‘They didn’t tell her to leave, nobody would do that at a funeral. What she does is disrespectful, but that would be equally so.

‘The wife was really upset. She had just buried her husband and she wasn’t going to walk up to her and have an argument saying: ‘I don’t want you here.’ It just got left, but that is what she does.’ 

 

 

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