Disabled Woman's Rotting Body Melts Into Couch Covered In Feces: Coroner

A disabled woman's rotting body, which had melted into the padding of a couch, was discovered at her parents’ house in Louisiana, with the coroner calling it the “worst form of medical neglect.”

A grand jury will meet on May 2 to determine whether the parents of the victim, Lacey Fletcher, 36, will be held responsible for her death, said Sam D’Aquilla, the district attorney for the 20th Judicial District.

Lacey’s body, weighing only 96 pounds at the time, was found on Jan. 3 at her parents’ home on Tom Drive in Slaughter.

Officers “deemed it was obviously a deceased individual so they called me, and I was out there within 10 minutes,” Dr. Ewell Dewitt Bickham III, the East Feliciana Parish Coroner, told WAFB.

Bickham revealed that he found Lacey’s remains on top of a 1960′s style sofa that was covered with urine and feces.

“When I first walked in the house, it smelled of feces, fecal material, however you want to put that politely, it stunk. And when I got to the body, the individual was basically sitting in a hole, filled with liquid stool and urine,” Bickham told the outlet.

Lacey’s body, from top to bottom, was covered in feces and had insects all over, sources told WBRZ. The couch was a “latrine,” and it is unclear when Lacey was last mobile. However, sources that spoke to the outlet estimate that she sat in the same place on the couch for years.

The coroner said an autopsy ruled Lacey’s death a homicide. He believes she suffered “at least a decade of medical neglect.”

The sheriff’s office did not arrest Lacey’s parents, Sheila and Clay Fletcher, because of the pending grand jury hearing on May 2.

Neighbors said they did not even know Lacey had passed away until the WBRZ Investigative Unit spoke to them.

One neighbor, Robert Blades, said he used to see Lacey outside the house until about five or six years ago.

"I asked him one day a couple of years ago because I hadn't seen her," Blades told the outlet. "Yeah, she still stays here."

Blades was shocked to hear that Lacey’s parents kept her death a secret. "They go to church every weekend... and do anything for anybody," Blades added.

The grand jury will decide whether the parents should be held accountable for Lacey’s death.

“We don’t even treat animals like this,” D’Aquilla reportedly said about the discovery of her remains on the couch.

Potential charges that Sheila and Clay Fletcher may face include second-degree murder, manslaughter, cruelty to the infirmed, negligent homicide, or none.

“It’s the worst form of medical neglect I’ve ever seen. I don’t know any other adjectives or adverbs to add to that,” Bickham told WAFB about the case.

“That literally turned my stomach as bad as it did,” he added. "It literally got me emotional, and I’m a strong person."