The Horrific Case of Lacey Fletcher

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, kJ you're back for another episode of Unspeakable. How's it been.

1:01 How's it been going? It's been going well for me. I took off a couple of days of work because I was so so sick, as you can tell. But I got so much writing done it's just unbelievable. And if my boss is listening, no, you're not all right. Let's do some shout outs real quick. What do you think about that? So let's go all the way to Vernon, Texas. I've got Miss Jennifer Young. Hi, Jennifer, I hope you're doing well out there as well as in Orinda, California. Miss Tracy Hampton Hey, Tracy, what's going on. I hope you all are watching me podcasts so I can wave at you. And then Pittsburgh, Mississippi, Miss Julie Russell, Hey, Julie, Julie, how is it going? And then Ocean Springs, Mississippi. I got Mississippi in the house today. Amanda Akers, Hey, Amanda, how are you doing? How is it going over there in your neck of the woods. It's going pretty good over here. And then right here in my yard, Denim Springs, Louisiana, and a former student of mine to boot so Holly Meyers, Hey girl, I just saw her at that fall fest that we had. I had a booth there, and so I know she's doing well. And I just I get so excited when I see kids that I taught. It's so neat and they're doing well. So hey Holly. And then in Port Barrington, Illinois, Eileen Oaks, Hi, Eileen. So thankful to have you join so as usual, you know, saying thank you. There's only so many ways I can say it, but I appreciate every one of you from the bottom of my heart. You are helping make my dreams come true. I know I still have more shout outs to do, and I will continue to shout them out over the next couple of episodes. So y'all hang in there and listen for your name. I have not

2:33 forgotten you. Now. This case that I'm about to do is a Louisiana case, and I've had people ask me for it, and it was a kind of a big one. So we're going to jump on into this one, and I want y'all to go with me. Let's go together to East Feliciana together. And that is a parish in South Louisiana, and it's located in the southeastern part of the state, kind of on the Mississippi border. And it's basically, if you're not from here, it's what all non locals probably imagine all of Louisiana to be like from the movies. It's got big mossy oak trees and that slow charm that they always represent us as in movies and in films, and you know, people say ma'am and sir and thank you.

3:17 We actually still kind of like tip our hats and not hello whenever you pass. And it's probably one of the most beautiful places of the state if you ask me, super super rich history. It's got vibrant culture there and you know you're there when you're there, So between the food and the great outdoors, it really is a place to visit if you're ever over this way and you like historical type places to go and check out. And by the way, if you're a fan of the Beverly Hillbillies, you can see the final resting place of Donna Douglas, who famously played Ellieme Clampett. She is also buried there. But beyond all of this, there's just everyday people living their normal, everyday lives, just making it day to day, just like the rest of us. And one family that was doing just that was the Fletcher family. Their names were Clay and Sheila Fletcher. They were a married couple and they were parents to daughter, Lacey Fletcher, and they had a normal middle class America life, like I always say, like us, like the people who were listening, and Lacey was their pride and joy. She was born on November twenty fifth, nineteen eighty five, and had been making them proud basically ever since. And as a young girl, she was described as smart and fun, outgoing, and every single person that I read about spoke about her. They all said the same thing that she had this huge smile, and I guess we all know that's going to be

4:49 a problem. Whenever you say how great outgoing and someone has a great smile, you know that that's not going to go that well. So I just hope people, you know, if I'm ever killed, I want to lineup a room because we know that's always gonna go bad. Right. But she played volleyball for the Brownsville Baptist Academy team, and she had this tried and true group of friends that ever since a very young age. They were very close, extremely close, and kind of like they're what I call like meat and potatoes friendship. They go together and they were always together, and Lacey could be found listening to her music when she wasn't out playing and playing volleyball.

5:31 She specifically liked Mariah Carey and she just liked being a typical young girl. Now, when she grew into a teen, things began to change, and this specifically was around her ninth grade year, and that's when Lacey began facing challenges that her parents really didn't foresee happening. The school that Lacey attended closed down after her ninth grade year. They just didn't have the funds to continue forward, and so they were gonna have to shut down. So that forced all of these friends to transition to other high schools. And when Lacey was faced with losing her core group of friends that she had grown up with, she took it really really bad, like really bad, and she developed this severe social anxiety. And her parents did pick up on this anxiety that she was experiencing, and it got so bad that they said, you know, maybe we ought to just homeschool her. It might just be a better fit for her. And I do applaud parents that realized that their kids aren't doing well in a public school system or whatever and decide maybe we could bring them home and do better, you know, at our home, helping her.

6:42 I think there's nothing wrong with that, and I think it's a beautiful thing that we have all of these options. But before that homeschooling began, Lacey attended a new high school for roughly a month before all of that was put into place, and during that month, it was alleged that she was exposed to bullying, which she never experienced before at her former school. So the bullying, combined with the big changes of starting this new high school just were just too much for her. And before you yell at me and you go, well, Dan Kelly, you know we all got to grow up. We all have to learn to face hardships. I do want to add this in. When she went to the doctor around the age of fifteen, she was diagnosed with a social anxiety disorder and autism.

7:30 So you know that matters to me. I feel like that is a key component in this case. And her autism was described as a level two. Now I don't profess to be an expert in autism or any type of disorders, and so I did go do some research on it because I was curious what does it mean to be leveled two? And so here's a little explanation. There's three levels of autism spectrum disorder, and each autistic person is going to be diagnosed as either level one, level two, or level three, with level three requiring the most support and intervention in their lives. So Lacey was a level two. And so this type of person usually finds it hard to communicate or to socialize in ways that are considered you know, acceptable or understood by average society.

8:23 So for example, they may pace around, they repeat the same things over and over again. But mainly what stood out to me about level two is that these types of people tend to struggle with self regulation. And so this is just a brief explanation. It's obviously more complicated and there's way more that you have to add in and take into consideration. So if you are a parent of someone who suffers with autism, please know from my heart, I know that I'm not an expert in it, and I'm just trying to give a basic understanding to all of my listeners. So with their being more things to consider and that it could be more complicated than just what I've said in terms of a care plan, it's still important to understand that there should be some sort of care plan in place because they do need help.

9:12 And it kind of brought me back to this time when I was teaching. This was years ago, and there was a girl. I didn't actually specifically teach this child, but she was when I had duty on break. She was during my shift, and she came up to me one day very odd socially, and she asked me if I would read a book that she had written, and I was like, I don't really have time on on duty to read the book. She's like, no, you have to read it. You've got to read it right now. Please read it, Please read it. And she kept handing it to me and handing it to me. So obviously a light bulb went off, and I'm like, okay, we've got something going on here that's not you know, average, And I said, sure, no problem, and so I opened the book, and as I started reading it, I was like, holy shit, batman, because y'all it was robot porn that she had written, and I was not equipped nor ready at nine am in the morning to deal with robot porn.

10:00 Said stuff like looking down his metal, you know, triceps, he looked below and saw his USB core dangling, and I was like, oh shit, oh shit. So anyway, told her it was a great book. Keep writing this is wonderful, except that I don't think you need to share it with anyone at school today. And she was like, oh, okay, cool, and she kind of went about her way. But I kind of feel like maybe that was what Lacey was like. You know, she could obviously help herself in certain ways like eating and drinking and using the bathroom and going to class, but other than those core group of kids that grew up with her and understood her, she may would have been kind of outcast socially. So if you think back to the nineteen nineties, if you're old enough to which makes me sick to say, but if you think back to the nineties, then you'll likely agree with me that autism wasn't something that was spoken about or acknowledged the way that it is today, and diagnosis for this wasn't really like a big, big thing, and there certainly weren't many, you know, things in place to help assist people that might suffer with these struggles. And if I'm being honest, when I was a kid growing up, I grew up in the eighties and the nineties, you know, we just kind of took it as those kids act different, and we just kind of wrote it off as weird, not really realizing there was much more at play. We were kids were like, whatever, he's weird, come on, let's go play. And that's just kind of what we did.

11:30 And the Fletchers, the parents were no different than the rest of us in that way that their lack of understanding and then limited resources that they had like in their home for them, they just they seemed to miss the boat here, and so they didn't quite address the issues like we would attack them today. So where do I get that from? Well, Lacey's English teacher, her name was Jerry low Howell. She taught her in ninth grade, and I believe she actually taught her multiple years. But she was quoted as saying that she realized Lacey might be struggling with some type of learning disability and it was so obvious to the teacher that she did meet with her parents to say, look, you know, I know she's been progressing all these years, but now it seems like she's kind of not only plateaued, but she's kind of struggling and maybe going going down a little bit in her school performance, and to boot her mother. Lacey's mother was unhappy with Lacey's school performance and felt that she should have been doing better. And the teacher said, I got the impression that Sheila was in denial of what was going on with Lacey. And I can tell you firsthand experience, denial is real in parents who don't want to see things that are happening. It is so real.

12:48 And the teacher also said that she remembered Lacey as and these words are really particular to me, angelic and precious, and that she always had a look of innocence on her face. I don't think I've ever described a kid that way, which tells me she really thought about Lacey, and she really thought about how she came across angelic, precious, and always having an innocent look about her. And I wanted to tell y'all that to kind of give you an essence of Lacey. Now, Lacey did begin seeing a psychologist between the years two thousand and two thousand and two, but it's unclear just to exactly what the frequency was and how long doctors are required by law to keep their records affects why we don't quite know, because from what I understand and from what I read, doctors only have to keep their specific records for seven years, like the I guess their notes and such. And if that's incorrect, please a doctor, you can reach out and talk to me about it. But from what I read, that's why, and it would make sense because the doctor here didn't have the records from the time that the case is about to evolve here. So what happened was Lacey's father and mother grew a bit frustrated because they said Lacey began giving pushback about going to the doctor and going to the psychologist. And the doctor's name was doctor Donald Hopp,

14:18 and he is believed to have seen Lacey between ten and twelve times, which to me is not a lot, but he has it notated that it had to have been ten to twelve times. Now, the Fletchers thought, like I told you, that homeschooling would be best for Lacey because her emotional state and her anxiety continued to increase, and it seemed like her participation socially was just decreasing, and so from all outward appearances, it really seemed like it was a good move that they made because not only did she seem to do well with her online schooling, but she actually completed it and did graduate high school.

14:59 So when she graduate, her parents did, like everybody does, they threw her a party to celebrate her graduation. And it was limited though there weren't like a bunch of teenagers running around or anything. It was basically close family and Lacey didn't have any tight close friends anymore like she used to, and so family would have really been the only people that would have been invited. It wasn't because her parents said, no, you can't have friends. It's just kind of where she was in the moment. And so after her graduation, it seemed like she really just began sticking around the house, going outside, even like outside the doors became less and less. But one thing Lacey did really enjoy doing was swimming. She really liked it, and so her dad, Clay noticed this because Lacy would always want to go to the neighbor's house to swim they had a pool. Well, whenever he noticed how much she was liking to swim, he decided to put in a pool for her at their house. It wasn't an in ground pool or anything like that, it wasn't above ground pool, but nonetheless he put it in for her.

16:01 But Lacey never used it after he put it in. Matter of fact, she really stopped going outside much at all and would only, according to her father, look out the window at the pool, but she wouldn't actually go outside and get in it. And then Lacey also had developed some major phobias that were starting to have a huge impact on her life, and this included that she no longer wanted to sleep in her own bed. In her bedroom, she had become deathly afraid of the dark. And this was a legitimate phobia. It wasn't like, oh, I don't want to be by myself, No, she was afraid, and so she started sleeping on the couch in the living room. Eventually, once she started sleeping on the couch, she was really lied, not limited, but she limited herself, I guess, and would really only go from the couch to the bathroom and then back to the couch. It just seemed like she felt really safe there. Well, then one day Lacey was watching TV and she saw a show where there was a snake and the toilet on the TV, and this just erupted and spawned a new fear in her where now she no longer wanted to go use the toilet because she was scared of it. Well, this became a legit issue because we've got to go to the bathroom, and so the Fletchers went and got her a portable toilet and they put that up next

17:31 to the couch for her to use, kind of like old people, you know, the little portable toilets use. They got her one of those, and so she would use that and her mom would dump it for her. But sometime around twenty ten, Dad Clay went and saw the psychologist without Lacey, and he was very frustrated when he went to go visit the psychologist. He told him how Lacey wouldn't even leave the house now, wouldn't even walk outside, and she seemed to be continuing to decline. And he was also aggravated because, in his own words, he said that Lacey is now resisting us fully about coming or going to the doctor. Her activity levels were also slowing, and this was starting to stress him out. He wanted her moving more. He's that's why he put a pool in, was to make sure that she continued to move and have activity. But now she won't even go outside or near the pool. So the doctor listened to all that mister Fletcher had to say, and considering mister Clay, the dad said that, look, and Lacey's really not communicating much with us in helping us out. The doctor said, it looks like she's functioning at a really poor level and it's probably to a point now that we might need to have her hospitalized because this is just not normal and we've got to get her functioning on basic levels, I mean using a toilet, you know, her phobias are kind of getting out of control. We probably should hospitalize her, but that never happened. Lacey was never put into a hospital, nor was she you know, po seed or anything like that to facility. Now, the neighbors that lived next door

19:02 to them did say that at one point they did remember seeing Lacey outside for the last time. And this was she at one point before she stopped stepping outside, did have some little dumbbells that she would carry, little lightweight dumbbells in your arms, and she would walk about outside at times and they would see her walking with her little dumbbells and getting exercise and moving. But after that last sighting of her walking with those dumbbells, it seemed like Lacey just really disappeared. No one ever saw her again. The neighbors never saw her again. This sighting was around twenty twelve that she was last seen walking about with the dumbbells, and the neighbors pretty much felt like, Okay, well, she was old enough, mate. She probably moved off to college, or she moved away, maybe she got married. But you know, people grow up and they move out of the neighborhood.

19:55 Because she was not ever seen again by anyone ever, like ever again, no more sightings of her. Now. I don't want to gloss over this next part, but I kind of have to go quickly with it because I don't have any more to give you. But twelve years would pass without anyone seeing physically seeing Lacey. Twelve years. Please don't lose that in this story. Twelve years now. During this twelve years, Clay and Sheila remained a happily married couple. They would take trips, they liked to work in their community. They were very poignant I guess, fixtures in their community. And they lived in an area called Slaughter, which I know that sounds graphic or something, but that's just I don't know. I'm used to it. We grew up with Slaughter. But you know, it's not a very big community. I think the last census or something I read said there was like less like a thousand people or something like that. Not big at all. But the jobs that they had weren't just any jobs like McDonald's or something. They both worked in positions where they were considered to be respectable people. Sheila was an alderman, which is someone who's voted into office and they basically assist in local council duties and decision making, and they serve She kind of served as the right hand man to the mayor. And then Clay worked for a nonprofit called

21:26 the Baton Rouge Civil War Roundtable, which is an organization that educates and it aims to foster an appreciation for the sacrific sacrifices of all of those that were in the Civil War. And I mean, I consider that to be respectable. You're trying to educate on the history of the area. And then she's an alderman. People went to her with their issues and problems to be solved, all in all good wholesome jobs that showed true engagement in the community community in which they lived. They would also attend LSU football games together, go on trips. They lived their everyday, normal lives. But they never seemed to be with Lacy in any of the photos or the trips that they went on. So the Fletchers, I want you to fast forward with me now to twenty twenty two, and the Fletchers had gone on a weekend getaway to celebrate the new year. They were going to ring In twenty twenty two together, and when they returned from that weekend getaway. Everything in their lives would change forever. A call would come into nine one one from the Fletcher household on January third, twenty twenty two, and Shila Fletcher is on the other line telling the dispatcher her name was Darren Mullins, that her daughter had stopped breathing. Her temperament in this nine one one call, though, is weird.

22:50 It's like almost off putting because she is very, very calm. And I can tell you from trainings that everyone does act differently, people do respond differently. I mean, I know there's one audio I use when I teach of this dad who's you know, child is choking on a chip and it sounds like he's, you know, taking a nap. He's so blase about it because people do react differently. But she's not calling saying help me, my my my daughter's choking. She's saying, my daughter is has not been breathing. In essence, it's like she's dead. But she's very calm. Then the dispatcher says, okay, how old is she? And she says, uh, she's in her thirties. And it's like, what a strange way of identifying your only daughter's age, she's in her thirties, and then they try to nail her into okay, well, like how old is she? And she gives the wrong age like twice because Lacey was thirty six and her mom was just saying in her thirties and I think she said thirty one or thirty two?

23:53 How do you not know? How do you not know how old your child is? So then there's kind of a pause in the sequence of the call, and then Sheila says she stopped eating and she's an adult. So at this point, when she verifies that Lacy's not breathing, you know, standard protocol would be to get her off the bed or the couch in this instance, because she needs to be on a flat surface so that CPR could be started immediately, and we usually ask it, do you think that she's beyond resuscitation? I don't know exactly if that statement was ever said or not. I don't have that for you, but regardless, they were going to start CPR, which tells me they didn't feel like she was beyond resuscitation, and within literal seconds of identifying how serious the issue was, dispatchers would have an ambulance en route on the way to your house, which, by the way, the average response time is between seven and nine minutes for an ambulance or for police. That's like a national average.

24:53 So when they arrived, the scene was nothing like the responders expected. Yes, the woman was clearly beyond any resuscitation. The coroner was going to be called out because she was dead. But everyone on scene immediately knew that something was wrong. And when I say wrong, way wrong. For starters, the home was pristine on the outside. This was a home where you could tell that the people who lived there obviously cared about it. The yard was well manicured, it was clean, it was well kept. But inside the home, whenever they went into check on Lacy, it looked, I guess, like an average home. But the smell emanating from this home was a stark contrast to the visual surroundings. They did not make sense. There were also flies everywhere in this home. Smell was an overwhelming smell of urine and feces combined with rot and decaying flesh. Nothing like a nursing home. I want to be clear. This is not like when you walk into a nursing home and it stinks from adult diapers and all that kind of stuff, not that this was legitimate filth and rotting flesh, a

26:25 dead body round When they rounded the corner to the living room, there they found a couch. Now I'm about to get into some description here that is very direct, and it is not being salacious. It's the facts. But just prepare yourself. It was a brown leather couch, but in terrible condition, terrible, worse than anything you would see on the side of the road. Flies swarming this couch, swarming it. The wall behind the couch had droplets on it, like condensation droplets, I guess would be the best way to describe this to you, But the person on scene.

27:15 One person on the scene described it as almost having steam emanating from it. But it's believed that that steam that was causing those droplets was actually coming from the floor. So let me explain that to you. The floors in the house were wood. Under the couch was a towel that was soaked. When I say soaked, I mean completely and utterly soaked, unable to absorb anything else ever again, in its entire life, soaked in urine and caked up wet diarrhea, feces, And I'm not talking days of it.

27:57 I'm not talking months of it. I'm not talking a year's worth of it. I'm talking many years of human excrement, so much on the wood floors that they literally were buckled under the couch and the sheet rock was wet behind the couch. It was stunning, shocking at minimum, I mean just pure filth, absolute pure filth. And as the responders approached the couch, the true shock would really expose itself because there they found these severely malnourished, atrophied, and rotting body of thirty six year old Lacy Fletcher. So what in the world was going on here? Because according to the phone call just eight minutes prior, she had just stopped breathing, but she was looking like she was rotting.

29:00 So the coroner gets there. His name is doctor Yule Bickham, and he arrived within minutes of being dispatched. And y'all, he's a well put together man. He's balding on top, but he still has that brown hair around the lower half of his head and he sports a white beard with little spots of brown in it. Just a well put together man and usually a man of little emotion. Having worked death scenes for the past thirty years he's been responding to them, but this time he was not only stunned, but absolutely sickened by what he encountered. He was quoted as saying this was absolutely one hundred percent the worst thing that he had ever seen in thirty years of his career. And that says a lot. So I want you to listen to him explain this in his own words.

29:53 It still bothers me to day. And like I said, I've seen every kind of death there is. I've seen elderly people die of natural causes. I've seen suicides, homicides, I've seen everything there is. I've never seen a homicide like this. I have never seen an individual, a human being literally tortured and allowed to die while she is alive. So when he looked at that body of Lacey Fletcher, it wasn't a thirty six year old woman who laid down for a nap and just passed away unexpectedly. And I'll warn you this description I'm going to give you.

30:36 I'm telling y'all it's accurate and its entirety, and this is again not to sensationalize it. This is the truth, and it is gut wrenching. First of all, it was clear that CPR had never been attempted, as it was directed by that nine to one dispatcher. And how do we know this because she was still on the couch or I guess I should rather say in the couch. So I want to give you this visual. Imagine a couch. You're just looking at a regular couch, and there's three cushions right next to each other. The part that you seed on the seated portion, the left cushion was literally decayed like missing. It was there, but dugout. It had a huge hole in it, and it was down into that foam or where the foam should be. But the phone was now basically nonexistent, and the hole was basically a sewer where Lacey's bottom half of her body was submerged into it, urine, feces, flies, minstrel blood, whatever exited her body for the and are you ready for this for the last twelve years, remember the twelve years no boy saw her for twelve years. Whatever had exited her body was soaked into and layered into that couch where

32:09 Lacey's body had melted and literally fused into the couch. But she was alive during this entire time. Understand this. She didn't just die and this was a rotting body that was found. No, that's not what I'm telling you. She had been alive, suffering and unable to move at the mercy of her parents for food or water or any care that could have been taken of her. She was naked other than this shirt. I think it was blue and white striped, other than this shirt, but it was pulled up where her breasts were exposed. But she was naked from there down, and she only weighed ninety six pounds, very imaciated and in horrible condition physically. Now her legs were crossed, imagined in like an Indian style, but she had suffered what is called constrictor for a very long time, much longer than this day. So what happened was she had drawn her legs up into this Indian style position and then the muscle mass just went away.

33:24 They became super stiff and basically locked in that position. She couldn't move them, and so they were drawn up and pulled up under her elbows, almost in like a fetal position. But her legs were crossed, and the doctor, the coroner believed that this happened because she was trying when she still had enough energy to do it. She was trying to pull her knees up in pain, trying to readjust as she was sinking down into that hole full of wet feces which was burning her skin and then causing these massive opened wounds. It was her only attempt to try to get up and out of it. And the wounds, y'all, were full of maggots while she was alive. These were not post mortem. These wounds were full of maggots that fed on her for years while she was still alive. It was not an after death event.

34:20 There were mouse droppings all over the area. There were flies, larva, and maggots that were not new. This was a circle of life happening in her body. Her eyes and her mouth were wide open when they went into the house. It wasn't like she closed her eyes and peacefully went away. She died with the look of horror on her face, and she was covered in feces, human feces from head to toe. Her post mortem photos, when you look at her, she's covered in what looks like black. It likes it's kind of like like a mud mixture that looks like Think about a kid playing out in the mud and then it kind of dries. She's covered in it. She had feces underneath her fingernails, it was matted all in her hair, which also, by the way, was full of maggots.

35:17 She had shit all over her face, all over her abdomen. She had open wounds, massive bed sores that clearly had not been tended to, and she had just been sitting down in the sludge of fecal matter and urine and god knows what with open bed sores that were just eating away, burning and melting her skin day in day out, minute by minute. And there were multiple skin ulcers that had developed on her body. One was on her lower left side basically from not moving all those years, and one was on her tailbone, which you remember was submerged down in the sludge, and it went all the way to her actual bone. She had a massive hole in her bottom side. I mean, imagine how painful, how painful not only a bed sore is, but to have it sitting down in feces and urine. It makes me think about a baby in a diaper that hasn't been changed, that burning, red and flamed rash that a baby gets.

36:25 It's so painful. I mean, it's just unconscionable to think about a human being experiencing this for let alone an hour years of sitting in this and to tell you how long she had been sitting there, if there's any question, her tailbone was completely flattened from the pressure of her body weight and rubbing the couch. How long do you have to lay there in this situation for your tailbone to flatten? You do the math on that one. The other sore that went all the way to the bone was in her head, and both of these wounds had eggs and maggots in them, so it wasn't new. Her ear was missing skin from the way that she had been laying on the couch, so she was sunk down in it, and their head was to the side, so that ear where she was slumped over and where her head.

37:18 She didn't have the energy or the muscle to move or pick her head up. All she could do was kind of rub her head back and forth on that couch, and so the skin was basically gone from her ear from the constant rubbing, and the leather was also gone. The leather like the freaking skin of cow wears out in the sun. Every day. The leather was gone. It was rubbed down to the foam underneath her head. The wound was to the bone on her head. And then when the coroner was trying to lift her off of the couch, he couldn't even get her off of it because she literally was melted and fused to it. They had to peel her off of the couch, which removed all the skin from her backside. It just left you could just see the fat, the yellow fat on her back, which she didn't really have any fat, but you could see the layer of just underneath of the skin. And she was so stiff that she remained in that tight bent posture, even in her body bag. They couldn't even lay her out. When they got her on the table to do her autopsy. Her hair was so matted with feces, which, by the way, the coroner usually will wash the person if they're dirty or nasty. They'll wash your hair, and then they want to measure your hair before they cut it off or they examine your brain. Her hair was so matted they couldn't have brushed it if they wanted to, like it was not gonna happen. They could not get

38:49 a comb through it. It was full of maggots and crap. So what they had to do was get a scalpel and peel her hair off with the scalpel, like cutting it and peeling her head off, they'd escalp her. She couldn't even have the decency of having her hair remain. And then when they really got to looking at her, this is just gut wrenching to me. There was fecal matter packed in her ears, It was all over her face, and y'all, it was in her mouth. It was beyond obvious that her teeth had not been cared for or brushed in God knows when and when the coroner checked the contents of her stomach to see what she had eaten last, all that was in her stomach that she had eaten was fecal matter and pieces of that couch cushion where her face was laying. Y'all, she lay there starving, and to attempt to live, she ate her own feces and couch cushion. I don't know what that desperation must feel like, and God, I hope I never do, but that erupts an anger in me. That is not healthy.

40:15 I mean, I I don't even know what the words are to even try to comprehend that, you know, that's unbelievable. And clearly this woman had been neglected on a level that not only can I not comprehend, but police were like, what the shit? And they wanted some answers, like now, right now. So when the Fletchers were asked, we need some answers here, how in the hell did she get to this point? How does this happen? Please? Do tell us how does this happen? The Fletchers were adamant that they loved their daughter and that they had cared for her, adamant, and they explained how her mental health had been declining for years and years and years, and that they had seen a doctor about it, but Lacey was continuing to give so much pushback about seeing him that she stopped going.

41:17 And they alluded to her being in control of her life and that basically they were doing what she wanted. They were like, she's very controlling, very demanding, and so we just did what she wanted. Which I hope you're normal, Like, well, I don't know if I'm normal, but hope where we can just kind of agree on like normal thinking and that that dog don't hunt forever that dog died. That can't be. There's no way you allow someone. Maybe in the beginning she might have been when she was still able to walk, she may have been hard to get along with, but at this point I'm not buying that.

41:57 But they kept arguing that when her grandmother passed away, this would have been Clay's mom. This was in twenty twenty one. She died as a result of COVID. This was like a couple of months before Lacey died. And that's when Lacey got a new phobia, and she became overly obsessed with the fear of COVID and dying from COVID, which, by the way, if that's true, that shows me Lacey didn't want to die. If she's afraid of dying, just want to throw that out there. So she had become so obsessed with it that she was forcing her parents to double mask when they were around her, and they would have to double their gloves to be around her, and they were like and she wanted her her temperature taken twice a day every day to see if she was even spiking a fever. But my issue with that is, even if it may be true, I won't discount that maybe that maybe they were double gloving and double masking, but you're the friggin' adult in the home and it's your damn house. She can't be the boss from a shit covered couch, and to claim that is just absurd.

42:55 It's just borderline stupidity to argue that a girl covered in her own thess is running your household, someone who never gets off of a couch. It makes me think of people who call nine to one one when their five year old won't go to school, Like, what are you doing? You snatch their ass up and you be the damn parent. I don't care how old the person is. What do you mean that a person who's clearly suffering mental illness is running your household? No? Absolutely not. When Sheila was asked about all of this, she claimed that she had been driving home for lunch every day for the last twelve years, just to eat lunch with Lacey.

43:37 She said, I'll bring her whatever she wanted. She would sit down, They pulled up TV trays together, they would eat lunch together. She said, I would change her. I cleaned the towel that was underneath her, which even that is weird to me. Once you are refusing to use a toilet and you're shitting on a towel on a couch, that's a red flag. You're if my dog jumped up on my couch and pooped on it, hell is going to be paid. You know what I mean? You don't poop on my couch, and I only would expect an animal to do so on a bad day, not a human being. And something I have to bring up here though, is that I'm like, Okay, well, maybe this was true in the beginning, but there's no way that this has been true the last few months. But we have to note something. She had to have been getting food and drinks somehow, because she was able to continually defecate everywhere, and so she had to have been eating at some point, But you cannot convince me that this had been consistent up through her death. No way. She also claimed that she had fed Lacey a sandwich and a bag of Cheetos the night before she died. But you and I both know that that can't be true, because if it was, then there would have been more than feces and couch cushion in her daughter's stomach at her autopsy. It's a lie out didn't happen. And the reason I don't think it happened is because they were out of town. Remember, they did their little getaway for the New Year, while

45:10 she lay there dying and suffering and starving on a couch not fit for a maggot to live on. It would then be realized through their investigation that the parents had also been going to therapy sessions since her passing, and some time had gone by here obviously, I don't mean the next day, but they were going to a therapist after she died, and the therapist, one question, said that he felt like they were very genuine in the grief they were having for their daughter. They felt very genuinely disturbed that they had lost their daughter, and they would always say how much they loved her, and so it just doesn't compute. I don't understand the two. So the psychologist or the therapist said that he felt like they were suffering greatly from what is called compassion fatigue.

46:03 So I did look this up. I mean, I know what it is, but I wanted to give the legitimate, I guess, you know, professional answer to this, and so I looked it up on the National Library of medicine, and they describe it as compassion fatigue manifests itself with classic symptoms, meaning people who have this usually have the same symptoms, a decline and the ability to feel sympathy and empathy. Thus they lose compassion. So sympathy is saying I care about your suffering, Empathy is I feel you're suffering, like I've been there, I feel your suffering, And compassion is when you say I want to relieve your suffering.

46:46 So with compassion fatigue, the caring, the feeling, and thus the acts of compassion decline, and so the caretaker has this impassive detachedness to what is going on. And so once this happens, when you start losing you know, you get fatigued, and you lose compassion. There starts being a great deal of negative emotions. Some of those include anger, annoyance, intolerance, and outright resentfulness of that person. So if this is true, and it does sound like it could fit, maybe they got so aggravated with her that they lost compassion. But holy crap, Holy crap, I've lost compassion for people knuckleheads who can't get it right, and they just keep going back to jail over and over again. Okay, I get it, I'll lose compassion for your stupidity. But this is not stupidity.

47:39 This is someone in mental crisis. You don't have the luxury of having compassion loss, especially when it's your child. You don't get that luxury. So, if it's true, had the Fletcher's basically just gotten so frustrated taking care of her to the point that they just gave up, well, photos of the home would indicate that items that were necessary for care were near Lacey. What do I mean by that? There was a fresh set of clothes, clean clothes next to her, a cell phone, There were like adult wipes or baby wipes, and some other items that were needed for like wound care and stuff like that, but they obviously were not used like ever in the most recent history. The condition of her body tells you that.

48:33 So it makes you kind of begs the question, did they just put it there for Lacey to use on herself even though they know she's not able to Because if that's true, she obviously was unable to do it for herself. She couldn't make a phone call for help, She couldn't even get up. Her skin was fused to the sewer filled couch. She couldn't wipe herself. And y'all they lived their day in and day out passing her looking like that. And if the items that were there were being claimed to be used by the parents, that's a damn lie. There's no way they were using those. Look at her. Don't let stupidity outsmart your intelligence. Her mental state. When she first was diagnosed, her mother believed that she had as Burgers, but then later on says that she was upgraded to that more severe autism, so that like level two. But by the time of her death, she obviously was at a level three autism, completely unable to care for herself in any fashion. So did they just ignore her mental state or were they seriously that unaware that she was grossly incapable of taking care of herself.

49:51 And if you hear the anger in my voice, it's because either way, this level of ignorance is criminal. You don't get to be that stupid. We don't allow people to drunk drive, and if you do, you know better, we will not allow and we cannot allow a society that says, you know what, we've been taking care of for so long. We're frustrated and so we just stopped and let her die. I would not let my worst enemy die that way ever, ever, because we have humanity and we can't lose it. And this is when the Fletchers made their biggest claim yet. Their overall statement was that they were doing quote what Lacey wanted, and we're following her wishes because she was an adult and she was old enough to decide for herself. And that is just unbelievable to me. It makes I just want to throw my hands up in the air, like, what the fuck.

50:55 You can't be that dumb. I won't allow it. You can't be an Alderman and be that dumb. Even crazier, add this to your bucket of crazy. When asked if they had life insurance on her, guess what, they didn't. Wouldn't you think that'd be a motive to let someone just die like that, but they didn't have it. When asked if they were getting money from the state because of her condition or some type of you know, funding or anything, Nope, they weren't getting caregiver funds or anything like that. They were getting nothing for her, So the motive of money isn't there. It doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense. The Fletchers also were church going folks.

51:45 So when the Fletchers were arrested months later, I think it was like eight months later. They were arrested in May, and the word began to spread about their daughter's deplorable condition in that home. Church goers and coworkers of theirs started scratching their heads and started talking amongst theirselves because they were shocked, not just because of. The arrest, but because they didn't even know she had a daughter, or that Claire Shell had a daughter. How how do you not mention your daughter, your only daughter? How do you never mention her? Ever? That alone is disturbing and quite sad that the people you went to church with didn't even know you had a child. I don't care. She's thirty six, y'all.

52:34 I could be one hundred and thirty six, My kids could be one hundred. I'm still their mama, and they're still my babies. It'll never change. Ever. What about Lacey. You know that same old teacher that all those years ago, that same old teacher of Lacey's thought so much of Lacey that she came busting forward in this event, and she was full of anger. She had told the Fletchers of Lacey's increasing struggles, and she felt back then, like she obviously did right now, that they ignored her. And she felt like, and I'm almost inclined to believe her here, She felt like even back then that they would not acknowledge her struggles because they were embarrassed of her. They were embarrassed of what she was doing and not acting quote unquote normal. And so she was beyond this. Teacher was beyond disturbed when she found out that church members showed up in support of the Fletcher parents when they finally went to court. And I've got to tell you, I agree. How can you go How can you go to church every Sunday and listen to the gospel, the true word of the Man himself, and go home to your daughter in that condition? Because you can't. You cannot.

53:51 You cannot be a believer and think that that is okay. Ever, and I'm standing on business when I tell you that you can have compassion even they didn't, and you can have your heart can hurt because you loved those people. But when it comes down to it, this is not acceptable, no freaking way. And then to never mention your daughter ever. I have friends whose children have died at birth. And I have friends whose children have been murdered, and they never stop talking about them ever, And they're never going to shout out to my friend Ronda Champagne. Y'all know Ronda. Ronda, her two children were murdered in a previous episode. She's a good friend of mine, and she's never stopped talking about those kids and she never will. You know why, they're her children. She celebrates their birthdays at their grave site, you know why, because she's a good mama, and she's never given up on them, even if they're not here on earth. And these people never mentioned Lacey. What about Lacey, y'all?

54:54 She suffered greatly, horrifically damn near torture for twelve years, and somehow people are going to act like that's okay. It's unbelievable, because you can be stupid, you can be a moron, but you can't be that and criminally neglectful of a human being. And the level that their daughter suffered and then ultimately died is inexcusable. It can't be excused, y'all. I watched this coroner, the one that responded to this scene, in multiple interviews and multiple writings, and that man literally broke down and cried. A man that didn't even know her, a man that wasn't there when she was born, or watched her grow up in school, or went to her volleyball games or supported her. Ever, he only met her dead in a couch with shit all over her, and that man broke down and cried talking about it. He said that he was unable to eat or sleep for weeks after he picked up her little body. He was that devastated by her condition. And this is from a man who does this for a living and has done it for thirty year years. So why Lacey Fletcher met her demise the way that she did it still remains unanswered.

56:08 There are no answers to this. Her parents continue to maintain that they loved her and would eventually plead no contest to manslaughter charges, and they were sentenced to forty years each, with twenty years of those being suspended, which means basically not enforced unless they reoffend. So either way, these parents were both in their late sixties when they were sentenced, and so they'll be in their late eighties if they fulfill their sentence and are released. But this much I know I wouldn't let an animal suffer the way they let their only daughter suffer. Regardless of the pushback she may have given, she should have been placed in a facility to receive the proper and ethical care that she deserved as a human being. Failure to do something, y'all, it's a choice. Failure to act is also a choice, and for that they deserve the time that they got, if not more. And while they were out on their getaways and enjoying their days for the last twelve years, Lacey was in full decline, refused to a couch, eating her own shit. They didn't even try to clean her face up for responders, they didn't even try to clean her up. I don't feel sorry for them, And if that's love, all I can tell you is no thank you.

57:36 She deserved love, care, and continuous compassion, which it's clear was not happening. And just because she's dead right now doesn't make this offense any less. Just because she can't speak and tell you how bad of a time she was having, which is to put it lightly, does not make it any less. We have to as a society speak for these people, even when the parents are the ones that created the problem, and the sheer agony of the wounds and her laying in sewage for years tells me everything I need to know. Excuses be damned. If you were tired of caring for her, then get her some help. And also, don't ask me will Kelly was it because they couldn't afford it. Don't even come at me with that bullshit, because there's a million programs out there to help assist people. As well as the fact that I'd like to point this out, they were able to post seventy five thousand dollars cash bond to save themselves from sitting in a jail, which, by the way, the jail provided clean sheets and laundered clothes and toilets that worked much more than their daughter was being provided.

58:46 But they didn't want that discomfort. Give me a break. This is more than incompetence. This is criminal. So, regardless of why this happened, regardless of any psychologist's belief of their burnout as caretakers, to treat a human being this way, your daughter, nonetheless, and to leave her in a state of such filth, to me, is the ultimate disrespect. And the whole key to this story is that Disrespect on this level should close doors that no apology can never open.