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This case is a harrowing story about unimaginable neglect that details the life of a woman with special needs who experienced profound isolation & suffering. Because the details within this case are especially horrific, this case should be listened to with care.
When a 911 call came through shortly after the New Year on January 3, 2022, a couple reported finding their 36-year-old daughter deceased on their couch after a weekend away at their home at 2568 Tom Drive in Slaughter, Louisiana. However, as authorities responded to the home, they could have never anticipated the horrifying scene they would come upon. As they walked through the door & found Lacey Fletcher on the couch, it was immediately obvious that she had been there for an extensive length of time in an unimaginable case of neglect.
Lacey Fletcher was born on November 25, 1985 as the only child to parents Clay & Sheila Fletcher. As a young girl, she was described as vibrant, smart & fun while she could occasionally act somewhat immature for her age. She was a typical girl who loved music, especially Mariah Carey, she loved Disney movies, spending time with her friends & at 12-years-old, she was a member of the volleyball team at her small private school, Brownsville Baptist Academy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The Fletcher family of three lived in Slaughter, Louisiana, a small town with a population of about 1,000. Their home was situated on a 3.6-acre lot with plenty of privacy with an expansive, lush, green lawn.
Her friends & classmates saw her as a fun, normal kid who was one of the sweetest people you could ever meet. Although she was a quiet girl, she was also vocal about her opinions.
However, as Lacey transitioned into adolescence, she sadly began to struggle with various issues. According to Clay, their daughter was fine up until the point when she was 14 & started ninth grade, a time when she developed severe social anxiety disorder, Asperger’s & an array of phobias that left her debilitated. Her parents indicated that after seeing a snake inside of a toilet on TV, Lacey began to fear using the toilet.
As time went on, she became more & more isolated from her friends while her classmates began noticing a change in her maturity level. While her peers were evolving in their activities & interests, Lacey gravitated towards things they were no longer interested in, like watching Disney movies.
When Lacey was right around 15-years-old, Clay & Sheila took her to see a clinical psychologist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Dr. Donald G Hoppe. Here, she was diagnosed with autism, a below average IQ & severe social anxiety. It was clear to Dr. Hoppe that Sheila & Clay Fletcher were having a difficult time accepting the fact that their daughter was special needs.
Fearing that their daughter was being bullied at school for her differences, they withdrew her from Brownsville at 16-years-old, transitioning her to homeschooling. From 2000-2002 when Lacey was between 14 & 16, she had 12 sessions with Dr. Hoppe.
After this point, Lacey began to steadily fade away from public view & a neighbor of the Fletchers recalls briefly seeing her exercising in the street, carrying small hand-weights when she was 21-years-old. After this point, no one saw Lacey again, to the point that many of the neighbors had no idea that Sheila & Clay even had a daughter. A close family friend of Sheila & Clay’s, Jess Easley, had known the Fletchers for 25 years & never realized that they had a daughter despite their weekly gatherings.
When neighbor Robert Blades asked about Lacey’s whereabouts in 2017, assuming that she’d gotten married & moved out, Clay explained that Lacey still lived at home, but she was doing fine. Robert couldn’t help but notice that Clay quickly changed the subject & offered no explanation as to why she hadn’t been seen in so long.
In 2014 when Lacey was about 27-years-old, 9 years before she was found deceased on her parent’s couch, her friends from high school had received emails from her that sounded very much like Lacey. She seemed happy & sent them links of Disney videos, making no mention of any sort of distress or abuse.
In 2010, eight years after Lacey first law Dr. Hoppe, Sheila & Clay were back in his office, this time without Lacey, to seek his advice. They explained that Lacey refused to leave their living room & had been urinating & defecating on a towel they laid on the floor next to the couch. She rarely showered & they brought all of her meals to her on the couch.
Although Dr. Hoppe urged them to consider hospitalizing their daughter for what he believed to be acute psychosis, there are no records to suggest that Sheila & Clay heeded his advice. Dr. Hoppe explained that they could obtain a commitment order so that Lacey could be taken from the house even if she refused to go on her own. Not only did they not seek medical help for their daughter, but this was the last time Dr. Hoppe saw them.
When Sheila dialed 911 at 2:27 am on the morning of Monday, January 3, 2022, she told the dispatcher that her daughter was not breathing. She went on to say that she had been sick, but it was a long story. When asked how old her daughter was, she incorrectly guessed three times before settling on 31, a number that was incorrect as Lacey was actually 36.
When emergency services arrived at the Fletcher home, they were immediately accosted by a horrific odor that hung heavily in the air. It was an overwhelming smell of urine & feces that left first responders struggling to breathe.
Coroner Dr. Ewell Bickham III quickly responded to the tidy 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom white home with black shutters & although, as a coroner, he had seen every kind of death there is, he was completely unprepared for what he came upon. When he went inside, he compared the stench to that of a septic tank as well as death; something he had never experienced in his life & career.
He first noted Sheila & Clay standing in their kitchen that was positioned to the right of the front door & while Clay stood emotionless, Sheila’s head was positioned between her legs as she weeped a little bit.
Recalling what he witnessed when he entered the living room to the right & saw Lacey, Dr. Bickham is brought to tears. Her body was positioned in a worn hole on a brown leather couch with her legs crossed beneath herself with her eyes & mouth wide open, a haunting expression frozen on her face. She was naked from the waist down with her shirt pulled up over her torso revealing her breasts.
According to Dr. Bickham, Lacey’s legs were crossed due to contractures, something that happens when the muscles, tendons & bones stiffen from ongoing immobility. She was in that position because she had been in so much pain & had been trying to lift her body out of the hole, something she had sadly been unable to do.
The couch was absolutely saturated with urine & feces that had seeped through to the floor below to the extent that the hardwood beneath was warped.
Despite his line of work, Dr. Bickham went on to say that he had never seen a human being literally tortured & allowed to die while she had still been alive. Lacey’s body was not decomposed, she literally rotted in her own body in the hole that was the sewer of her couch.
Paramedics were haunted by the look on Lacey’s face & things only got worse when they realized that her body was fused to the material of the couch. Everyone involved was horrified by the young woman’s condition, her skin rotted, her bones exposed.
It was the worst case of neglect that any of the first responders had ever experienced. Lacey had feces in her hair, her mouth, on her face as well as in her ears. There were open sores in her ears & extensive pressure injuries across her body that were infested with maggots. Since there was no evidence of decomposition at the time of the autopsy, the medical examiner determined that the maggots were present prior to Lacey’s death & they had actually prolonged her life by consuming her rotting flesh.
Officials unintentionally caused postmortem lacerations to her body after she was peeled from the couch in order to place her remains in a body bag.
Lacey’s 5’1” emaciated body weighed only 96# at the time of her death. The entirety of the backside of her body was submerged into a depression in the couch that was also filled with liquid stool & urine. She tested positive for COVID-19, she had kidney failure & a bone infection, otherwise known as osteomyelitis, while sepsis & malnutrition were listed as the causes of her death. Although her official time of death was documented at 3:07 am on January 3, 2022, Dr. Birkham believes that Lacey died 24-48 hours before Sheila called 911. Her death was a direct result of severe chronic neglect.
In addition to her wounds, Dr. Birkham saw that Lacey’s hair was also infested with maggots & was so matted to her skull, a scalpel was needed to cut it from her head. She had spent such an extensive amount of time on the couch, 12 unimaginable years, that her tailbone had flattened from being in the same position for so long. Her fingernails & toe nails were long & extremely dirty with fecal material under them.
When the Fletchers were interviewed a little more than two weeks later, on January 18, Clay & Sheila told Lt. Garig that their daughter had been intellectually & mentally normal, but that she had some degree of Asperger’s. Asperger syndrome is a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) & is a term sometimes used to describe a developmental disorder. However, the name has officially changed & no longer exists as a medical diagnosis.
Those who have this type of ASD tend to struggle to relate to others socially, may have difficulty understanding emotions well or having less facial expressions than others, may stick to a very specific routine & have a narrow set of interests. Those who were diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome in the past would now be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
Sheila claimed that she & Clay had come back from their New Year’s trip away on Sunday, January 2, only hours before she placed the 911 call. At about 10 pm, she claimed to have made Lacey a sandwich & said that she also ate a half of a bag of Cheetos before Sheila fell asleep on the chair in the living room next to her daughter. When she woke up in the middle of the night, she realized that Lacey wasn’t breathing.
However, not only does this account go against Dr. Birkham’s estimation that Lacey died 24-48 hours before first responders arrived, but the autopsy found no trace of a sandwich or Cheetos in her stomach contents. The only contents of her stomach were foam from the couch as well as feces.
While Sheila insisted that her daughter had been of normal mind up until the day she passed away, she admitted that she had started eating less & less before her death.
Although Clay & Sheila admit they were aware of the extensive, deep pressure injuries to their daughter’s body, they said that Lacey hadn’t been to a doctor during her adult years since she was never sick. Sheila claimed that she had been routinely cleaning the wounds with a saline wash, antibiotic spray and zinc. She also said that Lacey would typically dress normally despite the fact that she was found nude from the waist down by emergency responders.
For twelve long years, more than 4,000 days, Lacey had been on the couch in her living room under the same roof as her parents, slowly rotting to death. No one could comprehend how Clay & Sheila could have stood by, watching the suffering until their daughter succumbed to the extent of the negligence that she’d endured.
Scratch marks were noted on the arm of the couch while an unused toilet was nearby as well as a table that contained items such as wipes, talcum powder & various ointments. Clay indicated that despite the fact that they put a portable toilet in the living room, Lacey was even too afraid to get off the couch to utilize it.
Apart from the unbearable stench of the house & the horrific condition of Lacey as well as the couch she was embedded into, first responders noted that the home was otherwise clean & tidy.
65-year-olds Clay & Sheila were arrested after being indicted by a grand jury in May 2022 & released on a $300,000 bond each. The judge dropped the indictment on a technicality, but they were re-indicted in June 2023 & released after their arrests on a $250,000 bond each.
According to Feliciana Parish District Attorney Sam D’Aquilla, Lacey had a mental disability that was progressively getting worse & her parents had done nothing about it. Although they may not have known how to cope with it, they certainly didn’t do anything to help. Sheila said that they hadn’t gone back to the doctor with Lacey because she refused to go & while Clay claimed that she was legally an adult & able to make her own medical decisions.
Clay said that once in 2007, when Sheila had been out of town, Lacey managed to dress herself which he believed proved that she had the mental capacity to make sound decisions & they didn’t have the right to do choose otherwise on her behalf.
The couple had been well-respected members of their community as well as their church. Sheila worked as a town alderman while Clay worked at a nearby nuclear power plant. After Lacey’s death, the community was stunned to learn that the seemingly nice couple had kept such a sinister secret for so long since many hadn’t even realized they had a daughter.
Sheila & Clay claimed that their daughter never left the couch because her debilitating agoraphobia made her believe that anything outside of the perimeter of the couch was considered outside. When Sheila testified, she argued that Lacey never complained that she was in any sort of pain so she did not recognize the severity of her condition.
Clay made the statement, Looking back, there are many things we would do differently, with hindsight being 20/20. It is clear now, despite her resistance to assistance, our love for her was unwavering & we never wanted her to die.
There are various theories as to why Lacey hadn’t moved herself from her position on the couch for twelve long years. Locked-in syndrome has been a consideration, but this rare, but real syndrome, which causes full body paralysis, would mean that Lacey had been physically unable to move. Locked-in syndrome is a serious neurological disorder that occurs when part of the brainstem is damaged, usually due to a stroke. Despite the fact that the person cannot move any part of their body with the exception of their eyes, the person is still conscious & has full cognitive abilities.
However, because Dr. Birkham found couch foam in Lacey’s stomach, he does not feel this is plausible. When a person is suffering from this syndrome, they are unable to chew or swallow, thus requiring a feeding tube for nutrition.
The second theory is that Lacey had been physically restrained to the couch during her teenage years to early 20s which led to muscle atrophy which made her gradually unable to move. The third theory is that her mental struggles had been so debilitating that, although she was physically able to move, she was psychologically unwilling to do so.
The final theory is the one that Sheila & Clay claim to be accurate, that Lacey simply made the decision to remain in the same spot for twelve long years.
Whatever the reason, because Lacey had been suffering both mentally & physically, it had been Clay & Sheila’s responsibility to do something about it. As parents & caregivers, they were obligated to help their daughter, who clearly had been unable to make sound decisions about her health & wellbeing.
There were also questions as to how Clay & Sheila lived with the absolutely unbearable smell in their home. How no one else smelled the stench on their clothing, hair or skin. Had they never had a single visitor come by their home in twelve years?
During sentencing, both Clay & Sheila pleaded no-contest to manslaughter, meaning they weren’t admitting to guilt, but accepting the punishment, which waived their right to a trial. Regardless, the prosecution presented hours of heartbreakingly gruesome testimony, an uncommon practice during a no-contest plea.
A psychologist who interviewed Clay & Sheila determined that they were not suffering from any mental health issues that would have caused them to neglect their daughter in such an unimaginable way. The psychologist did indicate that their ignorance may have stemmed from what is known as caregiver superiority complex, which allows people to believe that they know better than even professionals.
On March 20, 2024, Sheila & Clay were each sentenced to 40 years in prison with 20 of those years suspended. District Judge Betsy Jones went on to say, We can argue about whether or not this process took three months, six months or three years. I don’t really care. This was a tragedy. The truth is that Lacey laid on the couch & slowly died because she got no medical or mental health care.
Outside the courtroom, Sheila’s attorney, Steven Moore, made a long statement, defending his client. Although he admitted that both she & Clay were negligent, he argued that they loved her to death. He claimed that they cared for their daughter on a daily basis, saying that Sheila came home for lunch every day to care for & eat lunch with her daughter. He said that she slept on the couch with Lacey every night & their lives revolved around their daughter.
According to Dr. Patrice Berry, a psychologist who has treated adults with autism, although families may face barriers caring for adults with the neurodevelopmental condition, resources exist to help, including in-patient facilities & family support groups, something Dr. Hoppe recommended on the Fletcher’s last visit to his office in 2010.
Dr. Berry feels that Lacey did not appear to have the mental capacity to refuse care, so Clay & Sheila should have filed for medical guardianship & had her removed from the home to receive the appropriate treatment.
District Attorney, Sam D’Aquilla, views Clay & Sheila as cold & calculated & noted that they were shifting the blame on Lacey rather than seeking out the help that she so desperately needed.
While Sheila is serving her sentence at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, Clay is imprisoned at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center.
Lacey’s harrowing story is more than a tragedy; it’s a wake-up call for awareness, compassion & action. Her case didn’t entail a single violent act, but rather, years of inaction. Day after day, year after year, the neglect continued until it became fatal. The suffering & lack of dignity that Lacey experienced during the twelve years she spent on the couch in the center of her parent’s living room is one that is nearly impossible to imagine. Remembering her means being honest about how something like this can happen, so quietly & for so long, without anyone stopping it.
References:
- The Lineup: The harrowing & heartbreaking case of Lacey Fletcher: The girl who was left to rot
- WebMD: Asperger’s Syndrome
- Nationwide Children’s: Asperger’s Syndrome
- Daily Mail: Parents of emaciated Lacey Fletcher, who was found dead, fused to a sofa & caked in her own waste, face 40 years in prison after pleading ‘no contest’ to manslaughter
- WDAM 7: Graphic: Parents of autistic daughter who ‘melted’ into couch sentenced
- A&E: Lacey Fletcher’s parents let her die, but claimed their daughter, who had autism, refused care
- New York Post: Parents of Lacey Fletcher, who ‘melted’ into couch after not moving for more than a decade, sentenced to 20 years in prison
- NewsNation: Coroner wants graphic photos of woman ‘melted’ to sofa shown
- Zillow: 2568 Tom Dr, Slaughter, LA 70777
- Podscripts: Rotten Mango: #326: Woman melted into the couch for 12 years – Tragic case of Lacey Fletcher
- Cleveland Clinic: Locked-in Syndrome (LiS)
