Rotten Mango - #326: Woman Melted Into The Couch For 12 Years - Tragic Case of Lacey Fletcher

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Dr. Bickham was the coroner for the small town of Slaughter. For the past few decades, he had looked death in the face - that was what the job required, and he was good at it. Until January 3, 2022.  He was called out to the small white suburban house with the well manicured lawn - he could tell someone had died there judging by the smell. He walked into the living room and there in the center was a couch.  The living room was organized and tidy even, except this couch was at the center covered in feces. The smell was stinging his eyes. He walked closer, and he saw - melted, into the couch the body of a young woman.  She was unclothed, maggots in her hair, rotting flesh eaten off her bones, and she was sitting there with her eyes and mouth open. She had been sitting on this very couch, alive, for the past 12 years.  Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bramble. Lacey Fletcher could probably hear them packing for their New Year's trip. They're going to celebrate ringing in 2022 by going out of town and leaving Lacey to rot by herself. It's hard to say if Lacey felt relief in that moment knowing that they're going to be gone or if she felt fear because what if they don't leave her food? Would she just starve to death? What if they didn't leave her water? You she just starve to death? What if they didn't leave her water?

You can go longer without food but not water, right? Just a few days? What if they don't even come back? What would happen to her then? All she could really do in that moment is sit in that chair and watch them leave. I mean, what are their choices she have? She's trapped. Unable to leave her prison, unable to see the sun, Lacey can't walk outside.

She can't talk to her friends anymore, go to school. She's not even able to walk into the kitchen to grab food whenever her stomach rumbles. We don't know if she even knew what day it was, or if she could hear the New Year's Eve fireworks. Would she work it out from the fireworks that it's 2022 now, or would the loud noises just terrify her? We don't know any of this for certain. We just know that Lacey Fletcher was a prisoner of the couch.

She had been left there, hungry, covered in feces, naked, unable to eat, unless one of them decided to bring her food. Her body was dying while she was still alive. There were parts of her flesh that were rotting. There were maggots crawling in and out of her hair, in and out of her bones, munching down at her dead flesh and she's still alive. If she looked down, there would have been certain parts of her body where she could see straight through her skin, her tissue, her muscle, and see her bones. There were giant holes all over the lower half of her body.

She was completely covered. In feces, there was feces in her stomach, inside her stomach, in her mouth, and even her ears. She had been trapped on this couch for the past 12 years of her life. By the time that she was found, she had melted through the couch into a hole and her skin was fusing with the brown leather. The only contents found in her stomach would be sofa foam, sofa cushion foam, and feces. Did she eat it out of desperation? Was she fed it?

We don't know. The worst part is, we're still unclear why any of this happened. There are theories that range from locked-in syndrome where someone is fully conscious but unable to move their bodies trapped inside their own minds. There are theories of full-blown torture, with lacy being a victim for someone sick, sadistic pleasure for over a decade. There are a lot of wild theories, but we have no definitive answers. All we know is, lazy fletcher would die in one of the worst, slow, torturous deaths imaginable, and nobody helped her.

As always, Full Shownuts are available at rottonmangelpodcast.com. One of our wonderful researchers that worked on this case is Autistic and she was instrumental in the process of gathering data for this case. She's also provided us with links to autism resource pages that will be in the show notes. Now with that being said, as with all cases, please let us know if you have any thoughts or any additional details about the case down in the comments. And with that, let's get started. There's a very rare condition out there. It's called locked-in syndrome. Less than a thousand

people in the United States have it at any given point. Most suffers are victims of a stroke or a traumatic brain injury. And even though it's a very, very rare condition, it seems to be a big fear for a ton of people. I mean, maybe it's the nature of the condition. Maybe it's because of the natural human fear of not being able to communicate with one another. It's terrifying. And it's exactly how you picture it. Locked in syndrome. You're awake. Your mind is flowing. It's going a million miles an hour. If you're lucky, you can open your eyes and look around. See what's around you. But really, only as much as you can move your pupils, that's it. When you try to talk, nothing moves.

You can't push out the words. It's like when you're in a dream and you're trying to scream for help, but no words come out and you start getting so flustered and frustrated with yourself, but you wake up and you realize that's just a nightmare. This is locked in syndrome. You can't even move a single finger. You can't even swallow your own saliva and soon drool is gonna be seeping out of your mouth while doctors and loved ones look at you

concerned worried because they don't know how this happened. You're trying to give them a sign of hey I can see you. I can hear you. I'm here But there's nothing that you can move. Your body is locked, and you are locked in your brain. 90% of people die within the first four months that they're locked in. And a lot of doctors can figure out that they're locked in, but can't find a way to get them out. One survivor of locked-in syndrome stated, My cognitive capabilities were 100%.

I could think and hear and listen to people, but I couldn't speak or move. The doctors would just stand there at the foot of my hospital bed and talk like, I'm not in the room. And I just wanted to scream like, Hey, people, I'm still here. But there was no way for me to let them know. He remembered hearing the doctors tell his family in the room that he had a 2% chance of survival. And even if he did survive, he would be completely comatose. He remembers hearing the conversation and seeing his wife break down and beg the doctors to not turn off his life support machines.

And he was just screaming, no, I'm right here, don't turn it off, I'm right here. But nobody could hear him. He could have moved his lips, he could have moved his mouth. Another survivor said, I could do nothing except listen, and I could only see the direct area in front of me based on how the nurses would position me in bed. So if they flipped me over to the left, I could only see that point of the room. He reported that he could feel every jolt and twinge of pain. He could even feel itchiness. You know, you have that itch in your back. He said it was miserable. He's

in constant pain, but he's completely at the mercy of his doctors for pain meds. And this is a miserable way to live, but there's no choice. You don't have the choice of exiting your life or telling someone, hey, I can't do this. He said, I couldn't tell anyone if my mouth was dry, if I was hungry, if I had an itch that needed to be scratched. I felt disgusting all the time. I was constantly drenched in sweat. My skin was so sensitive to minor sensory changes. it felt like it was burning all the time. It

felt like it was on fire. He was in constant pain. He was afraid of dying, and that's all he could think about all day, but worse than that, he was afraid of being trapped inside of his body forever. All he could do was talk to himself. He said he had to create another voice to talk to himself. Two voices. had to create another voice to talk to himself. Two voices. He could calm himself down. He would say things like, how are you doing, Jake? Not too bad, just waiting on my meds. It's coming soon. Don't freak out, Jake. You're gonna be okay. When Jake wasn't talking to himself, he was talking to the nurses. They just didn't know it. They would ask him, hey, Jake, can you hear us? And he would be screaming at the top of his lungs.

I can hear you, I'm right here! But nobody could hear him. And the highlights of his day was when nurses would come in and talk to him, even though they had no clue that he was quote in there. The ones who sang to him were his favorite. While they would flip him over, they would sing to him. But most of the days, he would just lay there in a completely empty room, unable to move.

Sometimes his family and loved ones would come over into the hospital room and they would just scream at each other about what they were gonna do with him, fighting about him as if he's not right there listening to all of this. That's terrifying. Yeah. And there's no way of these people,

there's no medical equipment that can detect that. I think right now, eye fluttering is the quickest way that doctors will detect it. It still takes about a few days for them to even find out that you're locked in. Yeah, so most of these people, these survivors, they said it took multiple days. For the doctors to be like, oh my gosh,

I think he's blinking. Like, please blink twice if you can understand what I'm saying right now. I mean, I can only imagine there must be so many who couldn't control their eye movements either. So we don't know just how many of people have passed while they've been locked in. We're not sure.

And once they're locked in, they remember everything. These survivors, they remember everything in detail and they were cooperating it with the nurses and doctors So it's not just like hallucinations that they had these are real events They're completely conscious. There is a device right now I think that they're working on where it can try to communicate with you through your brain That's what I was thinking. Yeah, there's got it. Don't it's there's so many like brain scans They can check like what areas moving and stuff.

I imagine it's very expensive. Right, right. So, there was a man in France who wrote a whole book just by blinking one eye to someone who was transcribing it and then he passed almost immediately after it was published. Jake said other times he was so bored, he would just count to 1,000 and then start all over again. One to 1,000. It was absolute hell, he felt like he was being tortured. He always wanted to know what time is it, what day is it, how long has it been, but he can't even ask anyone.

And then there's just so many depressing thoughts in his mind. There were days where all he thought about the entire day was his own funeral, who's going to show up, what it's going look like, who's gonna say what? For Marsh, the other survivor, he said he was really lucky. His wife and children were there all day, but even that was just lonely. He said during the day I was lucky, I never spent a single day with my wife and one of my kids wasn't there. But once they left, it's just, it's lonely, not in the way of missing people, but loneliness

of knowing there's no one who really understands how to even communicate with you. Martian Jake were two of the lucky ones. There were rumors last year in 2020 that a woman, a young woman in Louisiana was not as lucky that she had been locked in her own brain for the past 12 years and all she could do was sit on the couch and stare at the wall until she passed. So in 2022 this story goes crazy. It's a horrifying story that's coming out, but it was made even more terrifying by the fact that that woman probably didn't even have locked in syndrome.

So what does that mean? Why would someone sit there on the couch for 12 years? She's able-bodied. Why didn't she get up? Also, she's not chained or trapped. We don't know. So that means if she's not locked in, there is something worse, more sinister that made her unable to move from the couch for the past 12 years of her life. Slotter Louisiana has a population of less than a thousand people, but it does have a very interesting name. They were briefly part of a small internet discourse because of their unfortunate police department name. The slaughter police? Yeah, so not great from a marketing standpoint. And there was this question of, why the hell is there a town name slaughter anyway?

There were some rumors that the area had some of the first slaughterhouses in Louisiana, or that something very ominous happened there, giving it the name Slotter Louisiana. But it's actually just named after the original owners of the land, Mr. Will and Joe Slotter. But it's a very, very, very small town, less than a thousand people, about an 800 people, and it's the type of place where you don't have to leave the town for anything. There are schools, two churches, pharmacy, food mart, small businesses that sell farming goods, a rehab facility, short and long-term care for the elderly, and even though it's the definition of rule, the houses are super spread out so you

can have as much privacy as your heart desires. Slaughter has that small town comfort. Where you're like, okay, my dog is missing. Guess what? Likely all 800 residents are gonna come out and help you search for your dog until they're back home. It's just one of those towns. I mean, they even have like a small government with residents voted in as what they call aldermen and these aldermen will help vote on issues

affecting the community. So the aldermen, there's supposed to be approachable figures of community that you can turn to for literally anything. Like if you have a disabled family member and you think's supposed to be approachable figures of community that you can turn to for literally anything. Like if you have a disabled family member and you think there needs to be better accessibility at some part of the town, you go to the Alderman. If you think your job that has nothing to do with the government requires better sexual harassment policies, like you work at a fast food chain, you're like you go to the Alderman.

Even if you have a deeply personal issue where maybe you have an anxious relative who won't leave the house and is becoming reclusive and is not socializing with anyone, you go to the Alderman. They literally went to the Alderman for anything. Sheila was probably the best Alderman to go to. She was also the vice mayor of the town, literally was voted into that position.

So if the mayor couldn't attend a meeting, Sheila would show up in place of the mayor. Her husband Clay was also well-known in the community. He works for a nonprofit called the Baton Rouge Civil War Roundtable. They would organize events and feel trips to historic sites to quote, provide nonpartisan atmosphere to foster learning and respect for our civil war heritage. There's a lot of red flags and some of the members joining the official Facebook group would post, quote, non-judgmental pictures of the KKK

and make racist jokes about the Obama's. So, I don't know. It doesn't seem like Clay was the one personally posting those or endorsing that kind of activity, but just to give you a preface. Now, Clay and Sheila, they're the go-to's for the community. Anyone's got a problem, you go to Clay or you go to Sheila. They're church goers.

They've got the mindset of wanting to help others. They would probably help you first with your oxygen mask on a plane before putting their own on. Always asking, how's your day? How's your sick grandma? Well, if your grandma needs anything, just give us a ring. We're right down the street. But who asks how Sheila and Clay are? Robert Blades, senior, we're right down the street. But who asks how she let in clay are?

Robert Blade Senior asked. He lives across the street from them, and he remembered the couple having a young daughter, and he hadn't seen her in like, geez, I mean, God knows how long, right? Over a decade for sure, maybe like 15 years ago. Last he saw of her, she was exercising down the street, running around with some dumbbells in her arms. I mean, she did that a lot, and then she stopped one day. He just kind of assumed like all the other kids in the neighborhood, though she got into college, moved into the city, met a boy, got married, started a new life, and then never found the time to visit

small old town slaughter ever again. Right? Or maybe she did, and he always missed her. So one day, this daughter would have been about 30 years old at this point. Robert was on his front lawn, talking to Clay, lawn talking to Clay about things going on in the neighborhood and he thought to ask, oh yeah Clay, how's Lacey? How's she doing? Which she up to now, moved away? Oh, no, she's still here. She still lives here, she's fine.

Clay quickly changed the subject. At that moment, it was very likely that Lacey was unable to walk, fused to the couch, trapped. And death has a smell. When the body starts to break down and decompose, there are over 800 chemicals that react with the air and with each other, and it creates a very distinct scent. And we always hear about it in cases, the investigators could smell death. That it's a scent that once you smell it, you can never forget it. In two a degree, I feel like we can all kind of. That it's a scent that once you smell it, you can never forget it. In two a degree, I feel like we can all kind of imagine

what it's like. I'm sure it's not a pleasant scent, but people actually say it's more than that. It's really distinct. It's not just the worst scent that you've ever experienced, there's so much more to it. Death has a sickly sweet scent. So underneath the smell of fecal matter, waste, decay, like you would imagine a piece of

raw steak left outside in hot, humid cabin air would smell like after three months in the summer. It's like that, but underneath it, there are almost these sweet notes. Everyone describes it differently. I went down a lot of forums with a lot of coroners and crime scene investigators, crime scene cleanup crews. Some describe it as a thick, it's almost like it hangs in the air like this thick honey scent underlying this rotten meat garlicky fecal matter said. It's like honey, but you want to throw up. Others say no, it's almost a little floral. Like you know, when you are around flowers

that have a very unique scent, and you almost want to gag, kind of like that? Some say, actually, it's that all-mindiness. That sweet, almost kind of nuttiness. And then there's that overpowering, fishy, even sour scent that overtakes it all. One redditor, an EMT, describes it as, it smells like if you left cheese out in the hot sun for a week and then you put it

into a stale sweet tea iced tea mix and then you just let it sit in that mix, hot iced sweet tea mix for another week and then you smell it. It's actually even thought that humans and other animals evolved disgust for the scent. So the main underlying scent is called putrizine and it's a chemical compound associated with decomposing bodies. And apparently humans evolved into being so literally primitively disgusted by it because it protects us from disease and predation from scavengers. Studies go even further to suggest that it triggers a fight or flight response in humans just the smell of a dead body. Even if you

don't know, it's the smell of a dead body. You smell it, way out in the woods, you have a fight-or-flight response. That's what some people believe. And there is a company out there that just recreates the scent of human death. That's their whole business model. The scent of human remains and they sell a formulated version of it. And to put it simply, they bottle up The scent of human remains and they sell a formulated version of it and to put it simply, they bottle up the scent of human death and sell it. The website describes it as quote represents odor of two 140 pound cadavers for the low, low cost of $850. And it's not for any weird sinister reason. Well, hopefully that's not why most people

are buying it. It's mainly used by cadaver dog trainers so that they don't have to use real human remains to train cadaver dogs to find dead bodies. But there's actually a lot of cadaver dog trainers that don't like to use these sets. They'd rather go to a body farm and purchase body parts. Because they argue it's just not the same. Like you tried to replicate it with the chemicals that is created from decomposing bodies, but it's so difficult to replicate the smell of death precisely. It is such a unique scent. I mean, there are so many varying factors.

The scent depends on the person that died. The surrounding conditions is their wildlife where the body is, the temperature, the humidity. They said humidity is the worst on a dead body. And slaughter Louisiana was a humid hot town. I'm not sure how much Dr. Brickham knew when he drove up to the little White House on January 3rd, 2022. I wonder if the neighbors Christmas trees and all the New Year's decorations were still up making the drive feel, I don't know, even more airy, right?

But once he parked that car, he gets out. He walks past the well-manacured green lawn. He opens up the front door, and it's like he's hit with this invisible force field. It's a smell. He couldn't breathe, he said. He said there was a stench and odor, feces, fecal matter. You couldn't hold your breath. Dr. Brickham had smelled death before, but this, feces, fecal matter, you're in, you couldn't hold your breath.

Dr. Brickham had smelled death before, but this, this smell, it's literally embedded into the fabric of the house. That's how thick and pungent it is. It felt like the scent was going to follow him home in linger for weeks. Dr. Brickham enters the living room, and you know when you spot something that just feels out of place, it makes you feel very unsettled. Like you can't quite put your finger on it, but it just feels weird. Imagine it snowing outside and there's someone standing there out in the snow, staring at your house with nothing but their swimwear on. And you're just looking out the window like, I feel like

this is odd. Like yes, I'm worried that they're going to get sick, but there feels like there needs to be a sinister explanation for this because it's just that out of place. Dr. Bickham walks into the living room. Most of the living room is pretty tidy, a little clutter like any normal house, but all over, it was pretty well organized. I mean, it's pretty evident that someone in this house is maintaining the living areas, making sure that they're always well kept cleaning up, organizing everything, except the couch in the center of the living room.

The dark brown leather couch was the source of this smell, and Dr. Bicum had been hit with it when he walked into that house, and he could almost see steam like emanating from it. The couch looked like it was melting. The couch was soaked with urine and feces, human excrement. The waste was seeping through the couch bottom onto the floor where it looked like any second, the floor, nobody cleaned the floor underneath the couch. It looked like the floor was going to crumple in on itself from the gathering of all the liquid and feces.

There was an 18-inch gap between the couch and the wall. The wall looked moist. Like it looked like there would be condensation droplets on the wall from steam, from liquid. And the couch just looks so out of place. I mean, you wouldn't even expect to see this type of couch in an abandoned home. It looks like a regular normal living room, and then they just have this couch that everyone in the family and visitors go and pee and poop on and then nobody cleans it up. That's what it looks like and it's just melting.

It's like a weird time capsule. Just the couch is rotting. It's bizarre. And this is the living room of a couple that's pretty well respected in the community. In a house where the rest of the place is extremely well-capped and there are signs of life. And this is the couch that's in the center of the living room. But as Dr. Bickham got closer, he found who he had come here for. Lacey Fletcher was laying in the living room couch. She's not laying on the couch, she's laying in the couch. There is a huge person sized hole in the leather couch almost to the floor. I would imagine it and

there are pictures, there's like one or two blurry pictures, right? Just imagine your dog nod through all of the sofa cushion fluff and there's just a hole in the couch. She's literally in the couch. She's slumped to one side, sitting cross-legged. Her eyes are wide open, her mouth is wide open, she's completely nude, except a small blue pattern top that's pulled over her chest, so her chest is bare. Dr. Beckham could see her bones, not because she was that emaciated, which she was a very malnourished, but parts of her body had been rotten and eaten by maggots while she was alive. I can't, I mean, just think of the mental trauma for someone who would be alert and aware if they were to look down and see their own flesh being eaten by maggots. There were maggots crawling in and around her hair all over her body.

She was covered head to toe in feces. It was found in her mouth and her stomach and her ears. She had been eating it or she had been fed it, we don't know. The sofa arms were covered in scratches. This is not a situation where Lacey's body was left on the couch to decompose after her death, and the feces in urine, it came out during the decomposition process. This is not that situation. Lacey was kept alive on that couch for 12 years.

She had been alive for 12 years, not able to get up to even use the restroom. She had been soiling herself and then either eating or being fed her own feces while being trapped on this couch for 12 years. Her flesh had been rotting while she was alive. Magitz were eating away at her while she was alive, and she had just recently passed away. And the two people who lived with her? Her parents? The ones who walked past that couch every single day?

Walked past its head into the kitchen to the garage to the backyard? Sheila and Clay fledged her? They were now standing in the kitchen kitchen with no explanation on what the hell had happened. Lacey was pronounced dead at 3.07pm on January 3rd, 2022, but it's likely that she passed away at least 24-48 hours prior. She could have passed away New Year's Day 2022. The world around her would have been celebrating the start of a new year, something fresh, and

Lacey would have been laying dying in her own excrement. Sheila Fletcher got a little bit more talkative at the police station. And side note, this isn't even immediately after authorities took Lacey's body away. Sheila was interviewed January 18th. Lacey's body was found January 3rd. So the police didn't do anything until 18th? They really did not treat the parents like persons of interest or even suspects. So they, I mean, it's a small town, right?

So they all know each other. Now, Sheila tells authorities, January 18, that Lacey had social anxiety and had met with a psychologist over a period of three years when she was back a teenager. Lacey was 36 when she passed. So you're talking about like decades ago. Eventually, she stopped seeing her doctor decades ago. She

Lynn Clay contemplated getting Lacey committed into a specialist medical facility, but for whatever reason that never happened. In the interview with the police, Sheila insisted that Lacey refuse to leave the couch. It was a personal choice that she made. So she and Clay, they did their best to accommodate her on her wishes, like they set up a toilet for her, like one of those portable toilets that you see at hospitals. They put it right next to the couch, with some baby wipes, baby powder, a fresh change of clothes, a stack of Lacey's favorite movies to watch.

They were all there. All Lacey had to do was get up. But she didn't ever want to leave the couch, ever. That's what they said. Maybe it's laziness. So they gave Lacey a towel on the couch to use as a toilet. She listed that she would have to take the towels from Lacey, the ones covered in feces, clean them, and then bring her new towels.

I mean, there's a whole thing. I'm Glen and Doyle, author of Untamed and host of the podcast We Can Do Hard Things. On We Can Do Hard Things, my wife Abby, my sister Amanda, and I talk honestly about the hard parts of life. Join us and guests like Michelle Obama, Tracy Ellis Ross, and Bernay Brown, as we have refreshingly honest conversations. New episodes are out every Tuesday and Thursday, so listen to and follow We Can Do Hard Things, an Odyssey Podcast, available now for free on the Odyssey app and everywhere you get your podcasts. She will also stated that she would have to clean Lacey's body and bed sores and not once did Lacey ever complain about pain, which I don't know, is just really unbelievable

and even if someone doesn't complain about pain, if you can see someone's bone, she listed that Lacey had lost her appetite last autumn, so back in 2021. But when they, the Fletcher's, because they went on a New Year's trip, when they got back from their trip from New Year's, on January 2nd, the day before Lacey died, she listed that she made her half a sandwich and gave her a bag of Cheetos. She stayed at Lacey Aided. Then according to Sheila the mom, Sheila went to sleep on the chair on the living room next to Lacey's couch, near Lacey, near the rotting hole in the sofa, and at around 10pm when Sheila fell asleep for the night, Lacey was still alive. When she woke up the next morning, Lacey was dead.

That's what Sheila Fletcher said. But Sheila Fletcher is a liar. In my personal humble opinion. Sheila stated, January 2, 2022, Lacey ate half a sandwich in a bag of cheetos. This is not what would be found in Lacey's stomach during the autopsy. All they could find in her stomach was sofa foam and feces, no sandwich, no cheetos. And if Lacey had been sitting there on that couch for 12 years, that means this hell would have begun around 2010, and she would have almost certainly been in

pain since day one. They said that she's been sitting there for 12 years? They said that it's been years. They didn't give an exact estimate, but the coroner said about 12 years? They said that it's been years. They didn't give exact estimate, but the coroner said about 12 years. Now skin exposure to urine and feces is painful and can start stinging within hours. It happens more frequently with infants. It's actually called a diaper rash, and it can get very serious if not even kill infants.

And it's not even done purposely, most of the times, that babies have diaper rashes, it's not abuse, it's typically just because they're very sensitive. Now, the main symptoms are red rashes on the buttocks. If left unaddressed for too long, it can quickly escalate into a full body fever, full body chills, and a full body rash. Urine and feces contain ammonia.

Now, ammonia is very corrosive. If your skin is in contact with ammonia for long periods of time, it can cause irritation and even burns. That could have happened within the first few hours of the first day that Lacey had soiled herself on that couch. Now, if a diaper rash is left untreated, the skin starts to swell. It can transform into these rashes that have these white bumps all over that ooze

clear fluid. And then the skin starts to peel causing these open sores. It's very painful. And if there's still urine or feces that's there to make contact with those open sores, you're at a dangerous risk of infections. Yeast infections might be one. Yeast dermatitis could be another thing. Those are dark red areas of the skin, usually filled with these raised yellow fluid-filled pustules. This is likely all happening near the private regions because she was found sitting cross-legged. So she's genuinely sitting in a pile of her urine and feces, which makes everything much more sensitive and painful because these are your private parts.

Side note, if Lacey still had her menstrual cycle at the beginning of all of this, she may not have due to malnutrition or other reasons, but if she did, that means they would have also been blood rotting into the sofa and blood attracts flies. Flies would have been attracted to Lacey and her wounds that were all primarily again in her net like down regions Also infections for the private regions are incredibly painful and that is just the beginning This is still when everything is treatable fairly easily painful, but not like life threatening typically Even without urine and feces the high risk of painful infections Just sitting or laying in one place is horrendous

for the body. Bed sores. Have you heard of bed sores? There are going to be one of the first things to show up. Bed sores occur when there is continuous pressure on parts of the body, usually by sitting or laying in a single position for an extended period of time. So you're cutting off blood supply to that specific area, which causes the surrounding tissue to start dying.

Within two hours, the tissue starts dying. Humans are very sensitive because that tissue is not getting enough oxygen because blood has oxygen in it and you're not getting blood flowing there and it can happen in two to three hours. So you're like, okay, well why don't I get bed sores when I'm falling asleep? We're constantly moving. Even shuffling like this is moving. So if you're sitting on a chair for eight hours studying, if you're moving a little bit, it's hard to get bed sores. This

stops it from developing. But if you're unable to move around, a bed soar is going to happen because there's a lack of oxygen. Like it's not preventable. The skin will die and the bed soar will just look like a red blotch on the skin. So it starts looking like a sunburn and it feels a little hot to the touch, kind of like a sunburn, warm. It might even be a little itchy, very similar to a sunburn, but eventually it turns purple.

And by that point, if left untreated, the skin will break open. And you're just gonna have this painful wound that becomes easily infected, and then it collapses on itself. It's like a crater-sized blister. Some bed sores, I saw pictures on Reddit, I honestly don't know, I should not have gone down that route.

There's like dinner plate-sized bed sores, and you can see all the way to the bone. And it's not just skin deep, that's the problem. These bed sores collapse, and they go deeper and deeper until you literally have Swiss cheese like holes on your body. They reach into the muscle all the way to the bone. If you see a really bad picture of a bedsor, you can see muscle, tendons, bones, joints,

just in a hole in someone's body. It's like an exposed tunnel for people to see inside of you. Once a bedsor develops, you have to treat it and dress it every single day multiple times a day. It is absolutely horrendous for the patient and the caretaker. And bedsores are very, very, very slow to heal. With bedsores genuinely prevention is the only key.

All you can do is move around. So that's why when you have bedbound patients, one of the first things that caretakers or nurses learn is you have to flip the patient every two hours. There's no question about it. And that's why when you go to nursing homes and maybe your grandparents have a bed sore, it's taken so seriously because when you hear the word bed sore, you're like, okay, it's not that big of a deal.

But it's a very clear indicator that there could be abuse happening. Some really bad bed sores take days, months, even years to heal. Some may never heal. They may need surgery. And when it's super serious, bedsauurs can lead to death. Once they get infected, it leads to sepsis and death. Bedsauurs cause the death of more than 24,000 people each year. And again, the saddest part is, most of the time, bed sores are completely preventable.

I feel like it's very safe to assume that Lacey went through all of that, and more. By the time that her body was found, the flesh on Lacey's bottom had been worn away and eaten. It was gone. Like, she had no thighs, no butt. Her back and butt area, it was impossible to tell what part was a human being. Her skin and flesh were so rotten and half eaten by maggots. There were other areas that maybe looked a little bit more like human skin, but it was

completely yellow, which is typically a sign of infected skin. Lacey had bedsoars that went all the way down to her bones. Her skin was rotting away from constantly sitting in a mess of feces and acidic urine. She had a severe case of gangrene, which is when your flesh is dead. So the tissue changes from red to black and then you're left with dead tissue, which is very dangerous because again, you're at risk of infection which can kill you. The only tiny bit of relief in all of this is hopefully with her injuries being that deep into her skin.

Hopefully it destroyed her nerve endings. There's a chance that it might not have, but there is a chance that it did. So maybe she had lost feeling in some of these parts of her body around the injury sites. We don't know for sure, but we can only hope that she didn't feel what was slowly happening to her body for 12 long agonizing painful years. And it wasn't just the lower part of her body. Her entire backside was a mess of raw rotten flesh. She was completely covered in raw red blotches and lacy's wounds were being cleaned, not by her parents but by maggots.

maggots were crawling in and out of her consuming her dead flesh, and for this case, the maggots. maggots were crawling in and out of her, consuming her dead flesh, and for this case, the maggots did more to help Lacey than her own parents. Like I know usually we talk about maggots and it's not in a positive light, but maggots have a very important role in this world. So they eat dead flesh. In medical history and sometimes even today, maggots have been used as a way of helping clean wounds. So maggots, they leave, usually, they leave healthy flesh alone and just feed off of dead flesh, which needs to be cut away anyway because you're at risk of infection. And in Lacey's case, it seems to have worked to the point that she did not die of sepsis and infection for the first 12 years. The

maggots kept her alive by eating the dead flesh on her wounds. While her parents did nothing for her, in my opinion, we know that Lacey was left with no real food or water in reach, and Lacey on some level was aware enough to know that she needed to eat. Her body seems to have grasped for anything that she could get, and the sofa foam was the only thing in reach.

That end feces. Because that was what was found in her stomach. Not half of a sandwich, or Cheetos. That's just the physical trauma of her body. We don't know to what extent and how bad the emotional and mental trauma was for 12 years. We don't know if this is even the full extent of her physical trauma. Technically, there could have been things that happened to her years ago that wouldn't be present during the autopsy now. Dr. Bikam's official report stated Lacey died of sepsis. As a result of severe medical neglect which led to chronic malnutrition, acute starvation,

Lacey only weighed 96 pounds at 36 years old. Immobility, acute ulcer formation, bone infection, which ultimately led to sepsis and death. And one last thing about Lacey's autopsy, Sheila Fletcher stated she never took Lacey to the doctor because Lacey had never been sick. Which like, let's not even unpack how ridiculous that statement is, like we don't even need to go there, but that alone seems to be another lie, or at least a very misguided statement, because Lacey had COVID when she died. Most of Clay and Sheila Fletcher's friends did not even know that they had a daughter.

But there were people that remembered Lacey, the ones who went to school with her in slaughter Louisiana, or the ones that saw her running around the neighborhood when she was younger, they all just assumed that she had grown up, moved out of slaughter, maybe settled down nearby in Baton Rouge, got married. The ones that knew that the Fletcher's had a daughter, they remembered Lacey as being a very friendly kid. She was fun to be around, she had a lot of different interests. She was, you know, like a lot of people obsessed with Disney. She loved anything Disney-world, Disneyland, Disney movies, characters, that's her happy place.

She would send friends' links to videos of Disney, also Mariah Carey and country music, very interesting mix, but she was someone that just had a very wide range of interest. She's very active, she loved bowling, volleyball, those were her favorite activities, and everybody's favorite word to describe Lacey was just, just sweet, like a sweetest can be. she never acted out She didn't seem like she was creating trouble or you know When you have younger kids there can be certain things that they do or say or maybe they're acting out that might Indicate that something darker is happening within maybe it's happening at the house There's just these little indications, right?

Lacey didn't have any of that. She was a happy, go lucky kid, but liked her fun. Now, side note, Lacey was diagnosed as autistic when she was younger, and just to give you a bit of context, autism is a neurological condition, it is not an illness, and it's a lot more common than people think. Around one in 36 children were diagnosed

as autistic in 2023, and it generally affects the way that people communicate. For a few reasons, and I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just a different way of communicating. Many autistic people report feeling their sense is a bit more, so what seems like a quiet room for some people can actually be sensory overload for an autistic person. Some autistic people report having excellent memory for facts and very strong problem-solving logical minds, but they might struggle with social cues or small talk. Or some autistic people have reported finding it difficult to read facial expressions and

eye contact. There has been a lot of stigma and prejudice attached to autism for a very long time, and I think there still is today. But I think being able to see the world in slightly different ways is a great thing. Different world perception is not necessarily better or worse. It's just different, and I think we need different perceptions. There's a common saying in the autistic community. If you've met one autistic person, then you've met one autistic person.

Because it's not really something where you can generalize and say, oh, if you have autism, then you feel ABC and D. It's such a white spectrum that people can be very different from one another with very different needs and different ways of communicating. So keep that in mind, because Lacey's parents would often tell people, yeah, Lacey's just super quiet and withdrawn and she doesn't like socializing. But her friends at school were so confused, they're like, are we talking about the same girl right now?

Are we talking about the same lazy? I mean, sure, I guess she's kind of quite compared to the class clown, but she would go out of her way to welcome people and try to build connections. I mean, she's very opinionated and very passionate about a lot of things. She loved new experiences and she loved a change in her routine. So I don't know what the parents are saying. To a lot of Lacey's childhood friends, it felt like her parents didn't even know who she was. Inside note, her parents

were allegedly wishy washy with her diagnosis. Sometimes they would state that Lacey had Asperger syndrome, which is no longer used as a diagnosis anymore, by the way. Sometimes they would describe her autism as quote mild. Other times they would describe it as, quote, severe, which, side note, from what I've been told, the better verbiage to describe autism is higher low support needs. But these are allegedly the verbiage that Lacey's parents used. So this is not me describing Lacey. Lacey's doctor, Dr. Bickum. Dr. Bickum, the one that went to Lacey Fletcher's home to find her, was her primary care physician when she was younger. Wow. He was friendly with the Fletcher's, like he knew the Fletcher's, he was their doctor. He's also the town corner.

Small town. Yeah. Dr. Bickum would even describe her diagnosis as quote, severe autism and social anxiety. But again, this just doesn't really match the way that Lacy's friends describe her. So it's confusing. And just to clarify, Lacy did have unique interests, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with autism, like just flat out. So one of Lacy's old classmates would say,

yeah, I saw her around 15 years ago and she was definitely different from other kids her age. I mean, I knew that she wasn't your typical teenager. This is all a direct quote. She was smart. She was smart as hell. But I guess the best way to describe her was, she wasn't as mature as us. She still likes childish things, like not teenage things.

When she was 17 or 18, she was more into Disney movies and country music. Which again, I don't know how that's very different. She would invite us over to watch Disney movies despite being more withdrawn, but it's just not my forte. I used to ride motorcycles. Again, she just had her own interests. I would hardly call that strange or a reflection of her diagnosis. So a lot of Lacey's friends, they're shocked when at 16 years old, Lacey gets pulled out of public school at the end of ninth grade, and she started to get homeschooled. Her parents stated that she had to be pulled out of school

immediately, but it's so unclear like why. Side note, back then, homeschooling was not very common, and the fletchers they never gave examples of why, at least not yet, of what made them think, you know, this is it. We need to pull her out of school for her own good. We need to pull her out of school for her own good. We need to make sure that her sports, her friends, her socialization, we need to cut it off. All they said was that Lacey's autism got worse. Which is strange, because autistic people can struggle in a rigid school environment and they may need to be homeschooled either permanently or for a short period of time.

But usually it's very important that there's a support network in place. Because literally every human on this earth needs a support group to help manage stress and keep up with interpersonal relationships so that they don't get isolated, but they just cut off all of Lacey's friends. Even if a kid is homeschooled, it is in the parent's best interest to let them keep their already established friendships. But allegedly, none of that happened. Allegedly, once Lacey started getting homeschooled,

she was seen outside less and less. In fact, it just seemed like the couple stopped bringing Lacey up in conversations even. The last time someone distinctly or at least reports remembering Lacey being brought up in conversations was in 2010. Lacey would have been 23 at the time. The Fletcher's walked into Dr. Bickham's office

without Lacey and stated, our daughter Lacey is becoming reclusive. She never wants to leave the house or the couch. Interestingly, the Fletcher's could have easily taken photos or videos to show Dr. Bickham what's going on. I mean, that seems like the very logical common sense thing to do, but they brought along no footage. Just told him, we don't know what's going on. Based on the Fletcher's description, it sounded like Lacey was dealing with extreme and set in agoraphobia, which is a disorder when people are afraid of open spaces like public areas.

On the milder side, it can be someone that has very extreme social anxiety, does not want to be in places that they're not comfortable with, or cannot deem as a safe space, which public spaces, you know, they tend to be a bit more unpredictable. But on the more extreme end, you have people who never leave the house, they deem the home, or even a certain room of the home, to be the only safe space in the entire world for them. And even stepping outside of that safe space could result in a panic attack. So this is very serious. Now, typically, agoraphobia is more likely in people

that already struggle with anxiety. And it can get worse over time if it's not helped or treated. Someone safe space can actually get smaller and smaller. So when it used to be the whole house, someone with agoraphobia can be like, actually, now it's only at the back of the house. Actually, now it's only the whole house. Someone with a Gorrophobia can be like, actually, now it's only the back of the house. Actually, now it's only the living room. Which we have no idea if this is even what's happening to Lacey.

All we have are her parents at her doctor's office saying she doesn't want to get off the couch and she's being anti-social. For all we know, she could have been tied to the couch. Side note, that is a theory later that comes up. And another side note, some people have just put the autism as a blanket statement over anything going on with Lacey at the time and why she was pulled out of school. And again, sure, maybe, maybe something was going on with Lacey,

but we don't have proof. And autism doesn't suddenly change a person drastically. An autistic person who can speak, make friends, have hobbies, go to school, use the restroom by themselves, they don't just suddenly wake up one day and don't do those things. But a lot of people are like, oh, autism. Like that's not how it works. We have no idea why Lacey was pulled out of school. We have no idea what caused her parents to pull her out of school. So just to recap, Lacey is pulled out of school at 16.

She was last seen by Robert Blades Senior exercising outside when she was 21. The Fletcher's tell Dr. Bickum that she stopped wanting to leave the house at age 23. Lacey was emailing a friend of hers at 27 and Robert Blades Senior asked Claire about Blaysie and he said that she was fine and at home and then changed the subject when Lacey was 30. Six years later, Lacey Fletcher was found dead on the couch at 36 years old. Lacey Fletcher sat down on the couch one day, whether it was against her will or not, will be argued later, but she never got back up. How is that even possible? The first theory that came about online was that Lacey had locked in syndrome, which we

talked about earlier in the episode. Because when this case broke, a rumor started that she had locked in syndrome and everyone including major news outlets they just ran with it, they said that she had locked in syndrome. Because it just answered all the questions of why and how is an able-bodied woman sitting in her own waist for 12 years until the couch fell apart. Locked in Syndrome was kind of this neat little package that answers every little question and gives people peace.

But it's not true. Lacey did not have Locked in Syndrome. She was able at some point to email her friends or at least dictate what she wanted to email to her friends. She was able to feed herself and even swallow the sofa foam and feces. So even if you have Locked in Syndrome and someone is force feeding you something, you cannot swallow. You have no control over any of your muscles except maybe your eyelids.

You are fully locked into your body, which it appears Lacey was not. Side note, Dr. Bickham would later state that he had never heard of locked in syndrome in his entire career, refuting the idea that Lacey Fletcher had this syndrome, and while she may not have had locked in syndrome, it is a very real thing that does exist. It's just very rare. But it doesn't seem like Lacey had it, which leads us to the most confusing question of all of this. Then why didn't she just get up?

There are a few theories on why, but the belief is, regardless of how it started, her leg muscles probably atrophied to the point where she could no longer be able to get up, even if she wanted to. So she started off able bodied, but her leg muscles might have been completely dead. Let's say, for whatever reason, you're unable to get up from a sitting position,

whether that be from inter-mental or outside physical force, you cannot get up. Your physical body is going to react to that. Have you ever slept and your leg fell asleep where you've been in one position for so long that your leg goes numb, and then when you finally take the pressure off that leg, you feel that tingling pins and needle feeling,

and it's just uncomfortable. And if we realize it's happening, most of us can do something about it. If we're able-bodied, but if Lacey had been sitting in that same position for long enough, her leg muscles would have atrophied on their own and started wasting away,

becoming locked into place, paralyzing her. Over time, the pain and rotting of the flesh in her thighs and buttocks would have further paralyzed her muscles as well. Lacey was found in her legs crossed in a position that most people would actually deem and describe as defensive rather than comfortable. Like how long can you actually sit crisscross applesauce without getting uncomfortable?

So let's just say that's how she first sat down on the couch. Again, we can't say for certain if this was or was not against her will because there are online theories about it, but let's just say she sat down like that. Soon, within minutes or hours, blood would flow more slowly to this area, which can lead to what I talked about, the bed source, but it gets worse, because this loss of blood is basically a crushing injury.

Not as a description, but that's what they call it, like as if you're getting crushed. It just gets more and more dangerous over time as well. The tissue around her legs and butt were dying. If it gets really severe, surgery, or even amputation would be necessary to correct the problem. At a certain point, since Lacey had been sitting for that long, even just getting up could kill her. So it's not like her parents are saying she just didn't want to get up from the couch.

She could die by getting up from the couch. Not to overcomplicate it, but if you have a crushing injury like compartment syndrome, when there is high enough pressure on a limb or part of the body that blocks blood flow to that compartment of the body, for example, lacy's legs and behind area, potassium starts to build up. And then when you get up or the pressure is suddenly taken off of that area, all that potassium has nowhere to go except straight into your bloodstream and this rush of massive amounts of potassium causes a heart attack. And you can die. Lacey had been on that couch for 12 years.

By year one, it would have been shocking if Lacey was even able to use her legs at all. She would have been fully paralyzed. This is likely what could have happened to Lacey's physical body. But again, why? Why did she sit down and never get up? Even if she must have felt extreme discomfort in that position, why didn't she just move or reposition herself or get up entirely? Okay fine, let's say that she didn't want to get up from this couch. This couch is her safe space. There was some sort of mental barrier. Why didn't she change her positions around.

There are two theories that people have considered online. Either there was a mental or emotional reason Lacey did not get up or she was physically tied down in the beginning until her legs atrophied. Let's explore the first theory that she chose to be on the couch, and just to preface, even if it was Lacey's choice, the fact that her parents didn't do anything to help her, that's not okay in my opinion, if this theory is even true. I think it's still a tragic horrible case of neglect, neglect that borders abuse because of how severe it is.

But some people theorize that Lacey had developed agoraphobia at 16 and it escalated, developing worse and worse every single year until it reached a point where Lacey's only safe space was the couch that she was on. She didn't want to get off the couch. And the theory goes that the Fletcher parents didn't know how to handle this. They felt Lacey was being this lazy teenager who didn't want to socialize work or go to school and it started off as a Stubbornness problem. Well, if you don't want to get off the couch, we're not gonna take care of you But eventually that evolved into the Fletcher parents building resentment and denial towards Lazy and the condition

This is again a theory. This theory is the kindest towards the Fletcher parents It's the theory that her parents became so overwhelmed by her quote issues that they just kept ignoring the quote problem for 12 years until Lise died. Some people argue that caregiver resentment is very real and that maybe her parents weren't nile about how bad it was getting until it was too late. One detail that I guess supports this theory, not really, because I have a hard time getting behind this theory, but anyway, a supporting detail I guess supports this theory, not really, because I have a hard time getting behind this theory, but anyway, a supporting detail I guess you could argue,

is that Lacey was still emailing her friends in 2014 when she was around 27 years old. A few of her old high school friends received emails and they sounded very much like Lacey. They were filled with passion and she was sending them links of videos from Disney, not of her at Disney, but of Disney. There was no hint that she was trapped anywhere or being abused.

We have no idea if Lacey was given her phone, had access to her phone to send these emails. We have no idea if she told someone what she wanted to say in the email and someone sent it. We have no idea if someone wrote the email for her. We have no clue. We just know that these emails were sent under her email address and they sounded very much like her. And I guess the people that are in support of this theory, they think, if Lacey's parents

were actively abusing her or torturing her in some way, would they want her to have her phone to message her friends? Like, what if she told them something? What if she reached out for help? And then a few years before that, Lacey's parents went to Dr. Bickham, and remember to talk about how Lacey was becoming very socially reclusive.

Why would they do that? Why wouldn't they just act like she went to the big city, moved on, got married, went to college? Side note, I saw arguments as well that some autistic people struggle to explain when they're in pain and explain exactly how much pain they're in, which has led to serious issues. But I don't know how that applies because that's usually for injuries that can't be seen

from the outside, like appendicitis. I want to include it because it has been mentioned, but I just don't think that autism really has anything to do with this case other than the media reaction of justifying and almost answering Lacey's death by just saying, oh, blanket statement autism. to do with this case other than the media reaction of justifying and almost answering Lacey's death by just saying, oh, blanket statement autism. But other than that, I don't see how the fact that she was autistic applies to the questions that need to be answered. Lacey had sores all over her flesh that was rotting.

Maggets were eating away at her, consuming her right in front of her parents. Who cares if she was autistic or not? Like, I don't think anyone needed for her to verbally say, Hey, guys, I'm in pain. And there have been theories of how Lacey went from being a socially active 16 year old girl to not leaving the couch. One of the more popular theories are severe agoraphobia. Some people speculate that Lacey could have also developed schizophrenia with the

average age of onset tending to be around 20 to 30 for women. So they're like, what if she was schizophrenic? And perhaps schizophrenia was causing her hallucinations that made her terrified to leave the couch in fear of some sort of perceived danger out there, or maybe she had some sort of brain injury that caused her to suddenly behave differently, and her parents had no idea how to give her care. Another supporting theory is that Lacey was kept alive for 12 years. A person can usually only live about a few days without water and a few weeks without food,

and although Lacey was severely malnourished, she was getting enough food and fiber to at least defecate. Which side note, this is a big part of life, extreme constipation can actually cause death on its own by blocking the intestines and the colon. So Lacey was getting enough food to defecate and pass urine. She also had all of her front teeth when she died, so someone whether it was Lacy or her parents, someone was helping her brush her teeth for her. Could the parents have been in so far in denial that they just didn't understand that Lacy

could no longer move and get up on her own or even use the toilet right next to the couch. Maybe they thought even in year 10 that her legs had not atrophied even though they were completely run and eaten by maggots. They just thought that she was being stubborn and a lazy kid. Or they thought that they were being good, authoritative parents. They're like, you're stubborn. Well, we're not going to do what you want us to do. After all, some people argue that the parents

clearly brought her a toilet to use and put it up right next to the couch, provided her with baby wipes and baby powder for her, as well as an option to have clean clothes that were sitting right next to her and her favorite movies laid out on the side. Someone's brushing her teeth, which caregivers have stated

brushing a patient's teeth, is actually a very strenuous, stressful process. Why would they do that unless to a degree they cared about her? That's the theory. I don't believe it, and I'm very reluctant to state when I don't believe the theory strongly. I just don't see this one. It doesn't answer any questions from me. Like, never say never, so sure. Maybe this is how the Fletcher parents felt personally, but it's still not really acceptable in my opinion. I mean ignoring someone's depression, maybe I could try to understand it a little more, maybe they're locked in their room and they don't talk to you, they don't communicate

with you, that's something where I'm more kind of like maybe the parents didn't fully understand it or maybe they're very ignorant about these mental illnesses. But when someone has sores down to their bones, like their body has a mixture of holes and black and blue from tissue death, and there are maggots crawling around eating your child, consuming your child's flesh. How can they be in denial? Even in very rare cases, we might sometimes hear once in a blue moon, stories of people keeping their loved ones' deceased bodies.

Like no matter how much decomposition is happening, because these people are in denial of their loved ones' deceased bodies. Like no matter how much decomposition is happening because these people are in denial of their loved ones' death. But that denial typically extends all the way into other aspects of that person's life. They will be in denial about their loved ones' death. They will still talk to them. They will still talk about them with other people as if they're still alive. But for the Fletcher parents, they were completely normal when they went outside to socialize. They never spoke about Lacey later on.

It's as if she didn't exist. Most of their friends didn't even know that they had a kid. If they were in denial, wouldn't they talk about Lacey as if she's still alive and doing well? She's just being a lazy kid and not melting into the couch.

It's like they're hiding it, in my opinion. You know, people online have stated when parents love their kids and will do anything for them, but their circumstances are just really bad, they don't have the funds to get their child to proper care. The state won't help. There's no other option.

They feel lost and heartbroken that they can't do more for their child. That is clearly not the case with the Fletcher's. The Fletcher's would have enough to pay bail for both of them. That amounts to $72,000 in cash. They could have easily found Lacey a long-term facility to help her because they can't be the ones to help her. So it's not that they had a lack of funds. Not only that, they live in slaughter Louisiana.

The community there is incredibly strong, everyone wants to help their neighbors, and they're popular members of the community. You're telling me that the community wouldn't have rallied together to help Lacey, but the point is, the fletcher doesn't even try. So while denial, I think is a powerful thing, and being a caretaker is a very complex role, I don't believe that the fletcher could have been in denial for 12 years. Every parent that I personally know,

even seeing their child sick with a cold, a flu for a day, it physically and mentally pains them, but it is a theory, so I have to tell you about it. One of the Fletcher's neighbors even stated, the Fletcher's are good people who just made bad decisions. One that is in commentant on the case and said, it can be extremely stressful for caregivers.

Could Lacey have avoided her tragic end if more support and help were given to the parents who cared for her? Support to the parents. Yeah, they may have been really helpless and did not know what to do. Yeah, what I think it's a pretty horrendous comment to make could Lacey have avoided her tragic end the comment said. Another netizen points out they didn't even have her in a private room ignoring her. Like they walked by her every single day and watched what happened. That's disgusting, that's not denial.

And another big thing to note, the parents weren't so in over at their heads that they didn't have time or energy to be a part of the community. They always showed themselves in a very positive light to their neighbors and colleagues. They were very much active in social life, So they seemed involved in other interpersonal relationships. So they had the energy for that. Yeah, and the fact that it's been so many years, it's like every day, it's a decision, every minute, every hour is a decision that they're making

to not to save her life. And more and more painful for her to be alive in that state too. Exactly. So now we head into the third theory. The Fletcher's were torturing their only daughter, Lacey. This is the theory that most people, including law enforcement, seem to believe. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Shula even outright lied to the police, stating

that Lacey's last meal was the sandwich in the Cheetos, and we know that's not true. And there are two versions of this theory. I would say that law enforcement probably believed the latter theory, but the former theory, I'm gonna run through it. The first version is that people believe that something traumatic happened to Lacey and then it spiraled into this. So this is very conspiracy vibes. This is based off of zero evidence just from what little facts we know about the case,

some netizens have kind of spun together a theory of what they think might have happened. The first theory is that she was somehow injured. She had some sort of brain injury and all she could do was sit there, or a traumatic event caused something in her brain to shift, like essay could be an example of a traumatic event. And I know that essay is a wild theory to just throw out there. Some netizens believe this theory a bit more because Clay and Sheila went to see Dr. Bicum in 2010.

They stated that Lacey was acting differently, and some people who have been sexually abused will try and make themselves seem repulsive to their attacker, like they refuse to wash. Or they will have kind of a drastic shift in their personality because of the trauma. Which still is very crazy theory theory just to toss around, but I don't think that anyone is trying to string together heinous things for the sake of it. I think people are genuinely trying to understand how this could happen to someone, and how evil someone has to be to just watch it happen. Anyway, the theory continues that after a traumatic event, whether it be essay or some sort of physical injury, Lacey was no longer

the same. And maybe the theory is, her parents caused that shift in some way, shape, or form. And they can't get her help because she might tell someone. They can't get her admitted because she might tell someone so they just sit her down on the couch. And from there her legs start atrophying and it escalates into the situation where they still do not want to get her help. There's also a theory that she was tied to the couch in that position until her legs naturally atrophyed and that is again purely a theory. There is zero evidence that she was

tied to the couch on or before the day she died, but she was on the couch for the past 12 years. And like we said, within the first year, her legs were probably paralyzed and stuck in that position. So we don't know if maybe the first year she was on that couch, she could have been tied up who's to say. So the conspiracy is, something bad happened, parents don't want it to get out, Lacey is forced on to couch till her legs atrophy, parents kept Lacey alive to torture her. Again, this is purely based on theory and not fact. Now, one aspect that people cannot get over is the fact that Lacey was found nude,

except the shirt pulled over her chest. The nude part, maybe the parents stopped dressing her because they knew that she would just soil herself again, but why not let her have her top on? Why was it pulled up above her chest? Did it hurt the wounds on her back? Because then they said that she was in pain and she never said that she was in pain. So why would it be pulled up? It just feels extra degrading. Like either take it all the way off or pull it down. I guess a lot of people have been reading into it.

It feels very humiliating. The other theory is, something was going on with Lacey where she was terrified to leave the couch but the parents believed that she was just being a difficult teenager, so they stubbornly told her, find, sit on the couch then, and they started torjering her basically out of spite. Even before Lacey passed, with just sofa foam and feces in her stomach, she was malnourished, it was chronic, so that means over time, Lacey was not getting enough nutrients or food.

So the parents, they're going out to eat, they're going on trips, they're going away for the weekends, hanging out with friends, Lacey was alone starving. That sounds like torture. Some people think that even the toilet seat and the cleaning supplies being so close to the couch was a form of psychological torture. Like, look out everything you could use

if you just get up, but you can't. Cause why was it there? I mean it's really clear, like half of her body has disintegrated and melted. What do you mean get up to use the restroom? I think anyone with a brain, in my opinion, would know that she can not get up to use that toilet even if it's pulled up right next to the couch. She can't even move her position. And a lot of people argue the tea thing, that's not the parents being entenial,

that feels like torture. That feels like you're keeping her alive to prolong some sort of torture. Like this is no way for a parent to see their child live. But if that's the case, why would Sheila call 911 when Lacey died? Most people didn't even know the fletcher's had a daughter. And the ones who did, they thought that she moved away

and started her own life. Nobody was as vicious of the fletcher's in a daughter, and the ones who did, they thought that she moved away and started her own life. Nobody was suspicious of the Fletcher's in any way. Why wouldn't they just dispose of her body, even bury her in the backyard? Who would know? One neighbor reported that someone might have forced Shilita to call the police, and just to preface there is no proof about what I'm about to say, but there's a running theory based off of an allegation given by a third party that is not involved, so to take it with a bottle of salt.

Allegedly, Shilita didn't call 911 because Lacey's heart stopped and she wanted her to be saved or wanted the authorities to know that her daughter was dead. Allegedly, there was a neighbor who peaked through their window that last day on January 3rd. Saul laced on the couch, and told the fletcher's, what the hell is going on inside your house? Like maybe they had come over to knock on the door and they didn't answer or something or they had looked through the window when the fletcher's had gone away for New Year's. We don't know, but they threatened the fletcher's.

If you don't call the cops, I'm gonna call the cops. So Sheila was forced to call 911 and report Lacey being dead. The timing of that though. Yeah, that's what one of the neighbors had stated that they were told we have no idea if this is true Either way one net is in commented on this case and said I think her parents are liars and considering the lotions and other toiletries that were Reportedly found near the sofa with clean clothes. I believe some sort of psychological torture was happening in conjunction

With the prolonged starvation and there's something else that bothers me if the media is correct about Lacey and she was found almost completely nude, her top pulled up above her chest. Why was this in an attempt to further humiliate her? And as unlikely as it may sound given the circumstances, was she a saint? This is all speculation, of course, we will have to wait for the trial for the truth to come out. That is what a comment says. Now other commentators say, I believe one Fletcher will turn on the other in hopes of not dying in prison.

But I guess none of the theories really answer every question neatly. And again, they're just theories, just lingering questions. And another one is, how did the parents live with the smell? How did nobody smell it on them? So to try and answer that question, maybe the parents developed all factory fatigue, nose blindness, is when your nose gets so used to a certain smell that you can no longer smell it. Actually, we do this all the time. answer that question, maybe the parents developed all factory fatigue, nose blindness, and it's

when your nose gets so used to a certain smell that you can no longer smell it. Actually, we do this all the time. So it's like how your eyes can technically see your nose, 24-7, but our brains block it out. Our nose can smell our own house scent, but our nose blocks it out so that if there's any other foreign scent like a dangerous, so the toast is burning, we can smell it better instead of becoming overstimulated. So maybe that can explain why the fletcher's were able to live with that smell, but what about the other people? How could they not smell it on

them? Are they no one ever reported a smell coming from the fletcher's or the house? The fletcher's were finally arrested and Dr. Bickum, the coroner, had fought to get a team of medics on standby outside the courtroom while pictures of Lacey were being viewed by the jury, just in case. He said, the jurors are storekeepers, farmers. Many of them have never been exposed to this kind of stuff, so I need a medical team to be outside the courtroom. The DA stated that the photos left the courtroom speechless.

He said, when I was presenting the case and showed the pictures and gave the timeline the expressions of the grand jury was utter shock. Like the clock on the wall never moved again. There was just complete silence. Some jurors were gasping and horror, some were just staring out in disbelief. So this was not the actual trial. The jury were there to decide whether or not the parents

would be charged with manslaughter, negligent homicide, or second-degree murder. Negligent homicide is when someone's criminally negligent behavior causes another person's death. But the requirement, I guess you could say, is that that person responsible failed to realize that their behavior was so dangerous that it could kill someone. Like the intent was not to kill.

One of the most notable cases would be an air Peru flight that crashed and killed 70 passengers and crew. To oversimplify it, pilots and crew realized that something was wrong while they were flying. They were way too low in altitude, but they didn't know that. So their reading instruments were off. And it's because a maintenance staff of this flight team had put adhesive tape on static ports of some of the instruments while they were cleaning and forgot to take it off and the static ports are so important on telling the pilot how high up they were.

So when they tried to do an emergency landing, they fell into the Pacific Ocean and they all passed. He was charged with negligent homicide. So it is ingrained in flight staff, make sure nothing is covering the static ports. But because of his negligent behavior, people died. But he never had the intent, like he didn't have a manifesto in his house of like, I'm gonna kill people.

This is the lightest of the three charges that were on the table for Lacey Fletcher's case. The sentencing for negligent homicide is typically zero to five years. Man slaughter is very similar to negligent homicide in the sense that someone's behavior caused another person's death, but it is also done so without premeditation or intent. Meaning nobody sat there thinking, if I do action A, I'm going to kill person B, so I need to do action A because my goal is to kill person B. The idea is more oops I did action A for whatever reason and it ended up killing person B. So for example voluntary

manslaughter a good example would be if you come home and you see your wife in bed with another man. You grab a lamp and in your fit of passion and anger because you were provoked into this response you slam the lamp down on the man's head and he dies. So there is a level of risk, recklessness associated with manslaughter, but you weren't coming home on the drive thinking, I can't wait to kill this person. I need to kill this person. A lot of it comes from the provocation,

like you were in a crime of passion almost. The sentencing for manslaughter is typically anywhere between 0 to 40 years. And then the third charge that was being considered for this case, the harshest of the three, was second degree murder, which is intentional homicide that is not premeditated. If it's premeditated, it would be first degree murder. An example of second degree murder would be, you're burglarizing someone's home, and the homeowner comes home and you accidentally kill them. You didn't go in there with the intent to kill anyone. You're not trying to be a murder. You're just

trying to make some money, right? But you went there to rob the homeowner and then you killed them. You knew the risks associated with robbing someone. So to compare, for manslaughter, you come home, your wife's cheating on you. It's the heat of the moment. There's a shock of emotion that might have led you to do something. When you're burglarizing someone's house and the homeowner comes home, you can't argue, I was in the heat of the moment,

I wasn't expecting them to come home. It's their home, you knew that there is a chance that they could come home. Yeah, I mean, this is exactly the definition of. Second degree murder, it's murder, yeah. So, you know, there is intent, but there's not necessarily premeditation of like, we're gonna go into their house, rob their valuables, and then's murder. Yeah. So, you know, there is intent, but there's not necessarily pre-meditation of like, we're going to go into their house, rob their valuables, and then kill them. Right. Now, the DA was fighting for second degree murder charges, which a lot of people wanted

to see first degree murder, but I guess legally second degree murder made the most sense, and it could lead to a life sentence. The DA argued with the jury, we don't treat animals or neglect even our pets in that way. If we have an animal in that condition, you take them to the vet. If you're not capable of providing the care for that pet, you get help. You can't say Lacey wasn't in pain. On murder, you have to have intent. Did they want to kill Lacey? I want to say yeah, they wanted to kill her. Lacey hadn't seen a doctor in 20 years. The jury said they would be indicted and charged with second degree murder. So the parents will be tried.

They have pled not guilty. And it doesn't seem like there's a trial date set yet, but it does seem to be like it'll be sometime in 2024. We will keep an eye out on that. It's just, it's a lot. Both of Fletcher's bail were set at $300,000 each. They used a bondsman, which means they had to put up around 12% of that bail, so they would have needed $72,000 in cash to cover for the both of them, which they paid.

And again, shows that if they really wanted to help Lacey, they could, to a degree, afford to help her. The couple's attorneys, Stephen Moore, released a statement on behalf of the parents, and he said, they don't want to relive the pain of losing a child through the media. Yeah. Wow. They have been through a lot of heartache over the years. Anyone who has lost a child knows what it's like.

Oh my god. Don't even start on that. Yeah. That's even more triggering for parents to hear that. All I could saw were parents on Reddit, like, ready for blood. The couple also went to post on Facebook and just one sentence mom and dad love you so much About lazy staff They never mentioned lazy's passion for Disney her favorite country song the way she loved to be active and move her body or

Engage in sports nothing One redditor wrote lazy's parents horrified me, how could they allow this to happen? They insist that she chose this life. If so, she wasn't in her right mind to choose. They had a duty to help her and not stubbornly say, fine, shit there then, until it became a living nightmare. That was absolutely evil, in my opinion.

If this was about pride, it's just as evil as if they tied her to the couch. If they restrained Lacy, it was sadism. It was still sadism, it's just as evil as if they tied her to the couch. If they restrained Lacey, it was sadism. It was still sadism, even if they didn't restrain her because empathy and love would soften their hearts to not allow Lacey to suffer and be degraded like that. Other netizens just simply commented on this case, there is no excuse. There is no explanation. What are your thoughts on this? And if you're a parent, do you have any extra thoughts on what it's like to be a parent? Like how can you see your child like that? Does

it make sense to be a denial about something like this? Is the only viable theory that they just wanted to torture their only daughter? Please leave it in the comments and please be safe. I will see you guys on Wednesday for the next episode. Bye. Please be safe. I will see you guys on Wednesday for the next episode. Bye.