The parents of a woman found “melted” on a badly neglected, maggot-infested sofa in Louisiana were each sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison after pleading no contest to manslaughter last month.
Sheila and Clay Fletcher of East Feliciana died after their 36-year-old daughter, Lacey Fletcher, was found dead in a foul-smelling crater of the family’s couch, covered in urine and feces. He was arrested in January 2022.
Lacey disappeared from public view in 2002 when she was about 16 years old, remained stationary for 12 years and weighed only 96 pounds when she was found, prosecutors said.
A stunned local coroner concluded she died of acute neglect and said two years later the trauma of the incident remains.
“In all my years in this job, I’ve seen all kinds of death and corpses, but I’ve never seen anything like what happened to Lacey,” Ewell Bickham told the Post last month. Ta. “No one deserves to suffer like that.”
The coroner said Lacey was “adhered” to the sofa through rotting skin and bones were protruding from her body when she was found.
“We respect the judge’s decision. If you had a horse in a stable behind your house, and you came back there and found that the meat was gone and the bones were exposed… They won’t even treat you like that,” West Feliciana District Attorney Sam D’Aquila wrote in an article for the Post following the verdict.
The Fletchers maintain their innocence and maintain that Ms Lacey was of “sound mind” despite suffering from severe Asperger’s syndrome and social anxiety that developed at a young age.
They told police she refused to leave the couch in the living room, so police brought her food and set up a toilet on the couch.
They also claimed that Ms. Lacey had locked-in syndrome, a neurological disorder that prevents her from moving any muscles other than her eyes.
However, people familiar with the incident and the family said that was false and that the blame lies squarely with the Fletchers.
According to the case file, Lacey’s parents took her to a psychologist around 2000, when she was 14, and told them she suffered from severe social anxiety.
When she took Lacey to see a doctor in 2010, she said she refused to leave the house and was urinating and defecating on the floor.
Doctors then advised her to consider hospitalization, but no further treatment was given.
Jess Easley, a close family friend who has known the Fletchers for 25 years, said she had no idea they had a daughter, even though they met weekly.
“Clay and Sheila seemed like model citizens,” he told the Post. “Okay, in a gentle tone. Or so we thought. I’m beyond shocked by what happened. I’ve never been so heartbroken in my life.”
Forensic pathologist Dana Troxclair said Ms Lacey’s body was riddled with pressure sores and she suffered from chronic bone infections, with “polarized fibers and maggots embedded in the exposed bone surface”. The Daily Mail reported that it was discovered that
“There were maggots in the perineum and bedsore areas. If maggots had appeared postmortem, there would have been at least minimal eggs and larvae in the eye, ear, and nose areas.” he writes.
The cause of her death was said to be sepsis, a combination of symptoms including a bone infection, prolonged immobility, severe malnutrition and “severe chronic neglect of a person with special needs.”
Prosecutors summoned victim advocate Dana Lovett to a prosecutor’s plea hearing last month, WBRZ reported.
“No one should have had to live as many years as she did,” Lovett said. “They had so many resources at their fingertips. I don’t understand why she didn’t take advantage of that resource when she was mostly working with people who could actually help.” you can’t.”
