Man accused of moving dead acquaintance’s body after overdose pleads guilty

In late October, Peyton Chambers reportedly overdosed on heroin at the Boise home of Tommy Basco. Talking to police last fall, Basco said he tried to revive Chambers by placing him in an ice bath and injecting him with meth.

Chambers reportedly got up and walked around, then went into another room to sleep. But Basco found him dead the next morning, and moved his body to Hyatt Hidden Lakes Reserve.

There, on the morning of Oct. 26, a passer-by noticed Chambers’ body inside a car parked in a gravel lot and called police.

Basco was charged with failing to notify authorities of a death, a felony. Thursday, at a hearing ahead of his planned April 10 trial, he pleaded guilty to that charge.

Basco’s sentencing is now set for June 1. The conviction carries up to 10 years in prison and up to $50,000 in fines.

Chambers, 19, was an avid skateboarder and voracious reader who “wanted to live somewhere warm and go to culinary school,” his father earlier told the Statesman.

His parents spoke of a son who loved cooking — particularly sushi — longboarding, concerts and reading about World War II. But Yousef Ramadan, who worked with Chip Chambers as a landscaper and briefly shared a duplex with Peyton Chambers, indicated the latter had recently fallen in with “bad role models” and drug use.

Basco, said father Chip Chambers was “not a friend.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2017 at 12:19 PM with the headline "Man accused of moving dead acquaintance’s body after overdose pleads guilty."