He is survived by two obit forgery suspects ...

updated 4:21 p.m. ET April 10, 2006

WATERLOO, Iowa - Two people who police say conspired to get off work for a few days by filing a fake obituary with a newspaper have been arrested.

James Ralph Snyder, 36, and Mary Jo Elizabeth Jensen, 33, both of Waterloo, participated in the scam by filing an obituary saying Jensen's 17-year-old son had died, police said.

Snyder was charged with tampering with records. Jensen was charged with being an accessory after the fact.

Snyder, claiming he was Daniel Reddout's father, submitted the obituary to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier in December, police said.

Snyder, who is Jensen's boyfriend, said Reddout died at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., after a lengthy illness, police said.

Later in the week, people who know the family and the teenager saw him at a downtown restaurant and called authorities, police said.

Snyder and Jensen, who worked at Tyson Foods in Waterloo, started taking time off work in December, saying her son was sick and in a hospital, police said.

They said the plot escalated and Tyson officials were told the teenager was on life support and eventually had died.

Company officials asked the couple to verify their absence from work, and Snyder took the obituary to the newspaper, police said.

The son told police about the plan, records show.

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