Topeka ? More than four months after she died in the home she shared with her elderly mother, Mary Shannon Smith has been buried in a Topeka cemetery. But many questions about the two women remain, including how Smith died and why her mother kept the body in the house for so long.

The death of Smith, 39, came to light in late June, several days after Juanita L. Smith was discovered to have lied for years about surviving one of the most brutal episodes of World War II.

Police went to the house June 28 after neighbors reported they had not seen Juanita Smith — whose age has been given variously as 83 or 86 — for two days.

Officers found Juanita Smith in the home, unresponsive, and also came across the daughter’s remains. Police later confirmed that the older woman wrote a suicide note saying her daughter died March 21 and that, unable to afford a burial, she kept the body in a bedroom.

On Monday, the daughter’s body was turned over to people involved with the Topeka YWCA, who had her buried that day in a small Topeka cemetery, said Sharon Mandel, medical investigator for the Shawnee County district coroner’s office.

The cause and manner of the daughter’s death remained undetermined Wednesday as results of toxicological tests conducted in conjunction with an autopsy weren’t yet available, Mandel said.

Juanita Smith worked since 1991 as director of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program for the Topeka YWCA. She resigned June 23 after admitting that in speeches to community groups and in a May 2 profile in The Topeka Capital-Journal, she falsely claimed to have been a survivor of the Bataan Death March as a U.S. Navy nurse during World War II.

Thousands of Americans and Filipinos surrendered to the Japanese on the Philippines’ Bataan peninsula in 1942, only to be marched more than 60 miles to a prisoner-of-war camp. About 16,000 of the 70,000 soldiers didn’t survive the march.

Smith said she began the fabrication when she arrived to live with her daughter after moving here from Washington state, where she had lived with her husband.

With the couple’s finances having been depleted by a lengthy illness that eventually killed her husband, Juanita Smith said, she applied for several jobs but was rejected. She started telling the story about the Bataan Death March in hope that it would make an impression in her job interview with the YWCA.

Juanita Smith’s whereabouts were uncertain Wednesday. She was taken in June to Topeka’s St. Francis Health Center, where officials said federal law prevents them from verifying whether she is a patient or has been treated there.

Neighbors have said the daughter drove Smith to work for years but that the elderly woman started taking taxis in March. She told neighbors her daughter had moved to Lincoln, Neb., to attend school.

Voter registration records listed the name of Juanita Smith’s daughter as Shannon N. Smith, but Mandel said Wednesday that the coroner’s office determined her name to be Mary Shannon Smith.