Women Try to Bring Corpse Onto Plane

Last Updated 2:30 p.m. ET

Police have arrested two women at a British airport after they reportedly tried to bring a corpse onto a flight.

Police said Tuesday the women were detained at Liverpool's John Lennon airport "on suspicion of failing to give notification of death" of a 91-year-old man.

The BBC and other British media reported that the women placed the man, Curt Willi Jarant, into a wheelchair and covered his face with sunglasses in a bid to get him aboard a flight to Berlin, after hiring a taxi to take them to the airport.

The two women - his widow, 66, and step-daughter, 41 - said they thought he was asleep.

The women (reportedly German nationals who live in Oldham) were detained Saturday and have been released on bail.

They have not been charged and police say inquiries are continuing.

In an interview with the BBC, Jarant's stepdaughter Anke Anusic denied that she knew the 91-year-old was dead.

She said Jarant, who suffered from Alzheimer's, had been released from a hospital, where he had been treated for pneumonia.

"He was fine," she told the BBC. "If he was not fine the hospital wouldn't release him."

She also discounted the suggestion that the women were purposefully trying to smuggle his remains on board. "A dead person you cannot carry to Germany, there are too many people checking and security. How can you bring a dead person to Germany?

"He was alive. He was pale but he wasn't dead," Anusic added.

Jarant's wife, Gitta Jarant, described her late husband as "the best man of the world - good man."