LA - Lacey Fletcher 36, GRAPHIC, disabled, found dead, on couch for years, Jan'22 *Parents arrested*

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Lyanna said:
Am torn between a trial or not tbh. I hope Lacey gets justice and that those disgusting people get maximum sentences, but, Lacey's memory is always, always going to be this horrendous ordeal that the world is now aware of. Whilst it is good (?) it has come to light all I can think of is what Lacey would think about this - her life and death open for everyone to learn about, there is no humanity, dignity or respect for her in the way she was treated. She wasn't given that in her life from her parents but she deserves it from them in in her death. They should admit their guilt and accept a maximum sentence, for Lacey's memory , this shouldn't go to trial - for actual and appropriate justice for her, it should.
It breaks my heart to think there is no one to remember who she was in between school years and the time of her death except these 2 evil people. If we hear a trial, I feel that all we will hear from these or on behalf of these is how Lacey wouldn't accept help etc, and I just don't buy it and I don't want to hear their version of events, because it will be bulls*#t and there is absolutely nothing they can say that will make me think anything different. The only word I want to hear from them or on behalf of them is the word GUILTY.
Lacey's sad story gets me everytime, shatters my heart into a million pieces thinking of her and how she lived and died.

moo
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You make an excellent point- I am not sure I want to hear the defense defend the indefensible disgusting parents and drag her memory down in the gutter. We have seen it so man times: blame the victim: i.e. she wouldn't get off the couch, what could we do?
 
Lyanna said:
Am torn between a trial or not tbh. I hope Lacey gets justice and that those disgusting people get maximum sentences, but, Lacey's memory is always, always going to be this horrendous ordeal that the world is now aware of. Whilst it is good (?) it has come to light all I can think of is what Lacey would think about this - her life and death open for everyone to learn about, there is no humanity, dignity or respect for her in the way she was treated. She wasn't given that in her life from her parents but she deserves it from them in in her death. They should admit their guilt and accept a maximum sentence, for Lacey's memory , this shouldn't go to trial - for actual and appropriate justice for her, it should.
It breaks my heart to think there is no one to remember who she was in between school years and the time of her death except these 2 evil people. If we hear a trial, I feel that all we will hear from these or on behalf of these is how Lacey wouldn't accept help etc, and I just don't buy it and I don't want to hear their version of events, because it will be bulls*#t and there is absolutely nothing they can say that will make me think anything different. The only word I want to hear from them or on behalf of them is the word GUILTY.
Lacey's sad story gets me everytime, shatters my heart into a million pieces thinking of her and how she lived and died.

moo
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You make an excellent point- I am not sure I want to hear the defense attempt to defend the indefensible disgusting parents and drag her memory down in the gutter. We have seen it so many times: blame the victim: i.e. she wouldn't get off the couch, what could we do?
 
It's not going to be a popular perspective but I think her parents believed they were respecting her by allowing her to live the way she chose. Yes, this us irrational in the end but in the beginning, when they tried the hardest to get her to come out I'm sure she was still physically strong and her mental illness caused her to lash out at them in any and every way she could to destroy their motivation to try to motivate her.

There is no way in the world what they did constitutes murder, under no stretch of the definition of the word. That charge is literally spurious. I'm not sure exactly what it is they're guilty of in the state of Louisiana - I'm sure it's something but it isn't murder.
 
willyengland said:
Perhaps something like "failure to assist a person in danger".
The parents should have gotten help.
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Frankly, I they assisted her death- she didn't just lay there quietly- she may have been gasping for air and had other activity that demonstrated she was suffering and dying and they did nothing.
 
evilwise said:
Great post @LeahBee - I wanted to bring up a point and your post makes it a lot easier.

What happened here is a case of contagious mental illness. Lacey went through a slow decline and something about the circumstances of that descent caused some sort of very specific psychological disruption in her parents. In the beginning, when she was just beginning to be truly self-isolating, I'm sure they tried to get her "out of her shell" and were met with intense crying resistance. At that time, it probably wasn't all that horrible - one of those cases like dudes who never leave the basement and pee in 2 liter bottles. They might have thought it was better to give her a chance to turn it around on her own since it upset her greatly for them to try to get her out and she seemed to be happy in her sanctum.

Then as it gradually, gradually became worse and worse something about the way she handled her interactions with them eroded a very specific part of their objectivity. Most likely they both have some lesser version of the brain chemistry that combined to make her vulnerable to this sort of psychosis and she could hit them with the other half of it in a way that effectively got them to leave her alone.

I find it fascinating and would love to read a study on them, which I think should be the least of what they are compelled to do to pay their debt to society.
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"and she could hit them with the other half of it in a way that effectively got them to leave her alone'-- Seriously? That is in part, blaming the victim and I am not ready to go there- ever. This is all on the parents-- they had a duty and obligation to get her the care she needed: they could have called in social services- they could have gotten friends and family involved to get her the help she needed. Instead they let her rot on the couch until she was covered in feces and bacterial pathogens to the point she passed away; She merged with the couch for God's sake. My guess is they were ashamed of her and didn't want anyone to know the problems they were having so they told no one and just let her rot to death. You have to wonder - the smell must have been horrible- but they lived with that--- SMH
 
evilwise said:
It's not going to be a popular perspective but I think her parents believed they were respecting her by allowing her to live the way she chose. Yes, this us irrational in the end but in the beginning, when they tried the hardest to get her to come out I'm sure she was still physically strong and her mental illness caused her to lash out at them in any and every way she could to destroy their motivation to try to motivate her.

There is no way in the world what they did constitutes murder, under no stretch of the definition of the word. That charge is literally spurious. I'm not sure exactly what it is they're guilty of in the state of Louisiana - I'm sure it's something but it isn't murder.
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You're right- it's not a popular perspective- from my point of view-- "they were respecting her by allowing her to live the way she chose"- serioiusly?
 
ilovewings said:
Frankly, I they assisted her death- she didn't just lay there quietly- she may have been gasping for air and had other activity that demonstrated she was suffering and dying and they did nothing.
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I would almost guarantee that she did in fact lay there quietly. Yes, they might have been able to tell she was in serious distress if they checked on her directly but after a decade of being screamed at for getting anywhere near her they stopped. This is not victim blaming, this is blaming mental illness. Yes, the parents should have gotten her help for her mental illness before it progressed so far and yes, I do believe they committed some sort of crime in failing to get her help for it but without a doubt it was the mental illness that killed her not her parents.

We see cases where parents of little children fail to get them treatment for huge tumors that kill them and those parents don't even get charged with murder. Lacey was 36 years old and she was a physically healthy adult even when she initially withdrew. It seems like it started after she graduated high school. Probably her parents had been battling with her even to get her to go to school but it was legally required. Then when she became an adult, the parents legal obligation to her was reduced and she no longer was legally required to do anything so she didn't. They probably thought it was just teenage angst and expected her to outgrow it but the opposite happened.
 
IMO it wouldn't have taken long before she wasn't physically healthy anymore, and they should have then, at the latest, pursued help.

Back to page one of this thread, the coroner said he cried for a week after seeing Laci. There is no defending the parents.

This wouldn't have happened if she'd been hospitalized. It wasn't a fast decline where they didn't seek help fast enough. They had years worth of time to get it together and do something to try to save her life. They had a long period of time of seeing her suffer and doing nothing.

I see it as murder. Much like just watching someone starve to death; you don't get to say well, they refused to eat so I did nothing. Because you knew how it would end.
 
If there was a list of doctors or specialists that she had seen over the years, I would (possibly) give the parents some slack. But other than classmates in school knowing that Lacey was of diminished capacity, I am not sure the parents EVER sought professional help.I am not sure they even had a professional diagnosis of her mental and developmental health. And these are not uneducated people with no resources! Yes, mental illness is to blame, but not LACEY'S - it is the parents' mental illness that plays a part. Even families of drug addicts don't give up on them regardless of how many times their interventions fail. We have heard at some point, Lacey loved country music and Disney movies. They even had stacks of videos by her death couch. It is for THAT poor soul I want justice. Most of us that have children know it is hard sometimes. Sometimes you literally have to drag them to do what is best for them even at great cost to you. But you don't give up. Isolation covers secrets and ill deeds and we as a society must do better to intervene when things don't seem right. I could not fathom someone ELSE being so vile to my child - but to be a witness and a participant myself? I would literally kill myself first.
 
evilwise said:
I would almost guarantee that she did in fact lay there quietly. Yes, they might have been able to tell she was in serious distress if they checked on her directly but after a decade of being screamed at for getting anywhere near her they stopped. This is not victim blaming, this is blaming mental illness. Yes, the parents should have gotten her help for her mental illness before it progressed so far and yes, I do believe they committed some sort of crime in failing to get her help for it but without a doubt it was the mental illness that killed her not her parents.

We see cases where parents of little children fail to get them treatment for huge tumors that kill them and those parents don't even get charged with murder. Lacey was 36 years old and she was a physically healthy adult even when she initially withdrew. It seems like it started after she graduated high school. Probably her parents had been battling with her even to get her to go to school but it was legally required. Then when she became an adult, the parents legal obligation to her was reduced and she no longer was legally required to do anything so she didn't. They probably thought it was just teenage angst and expected her to outgrow it but the opposite happened.
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I could not disagree more with everything you said.
 
ChatteringBirds said:
I see it as murder. Much like just watching someone starve to death; you don't get to say well, they refused to eat so I did nothing. Because you knew how it would end.
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We do watch people starve to death though. There are people on the street starving to death right now while we sit here posting online. It doesn't make us murderers.

TheLoadedGoat said:
Even families of drug addicts don't give up on them regardless of how many times their interventions fail. .
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Except parents of drug addicts do give up on them. All the time. Most of those people who overdose on the street have parents who have kicked them out. It doesn't make them murderers

But that's where the difference in this case lies. By providing a home for Lacey and, crucially, by actively hiding her condition from apparently everyone they were taking some tacit responsibility for her wellbeing. That's the bottom line that I think we can all agree on. Some posters are quite emotional about it and passionately believe that responsibility was like as if she was a baby while I am perhaps being a bit too analytic just for the sake of argument. However - I think that is where to begin considering what crime her parents actually, legally committed.
 
evilwise said:
We do watch people starve to death though. There are people on the street starving to death right now while we sit here posting online. It doesn't make us murderers.
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But as you said, they aren't trapped in a house with no access to resources. And I would hope if we noticed someone on the street in dire shape, we'd call for help. In some places the law even requires it.
 
ChatteringBirds said:
But as you said, they aren't trapped in a house with no access to resources. And I would hope if we noticed someone on the street in dire shape, we'd call for help. In some places the law even requires it.
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Most states have "Good Samaritan" laws to protect people trying to render aid and some few states have "Duty to Act" laws, mainly meant to compel citizens to aid victims of violence. Only three small states (Vermont, Rhode Island and Minnesota) have "Rescue is the Rule" laws and even if this case occurred in one of those states the parents might argue that since they hadn't gone into the room in years they didn't know she was in imminent peril.

I feel confident in again stressing that the focus of this should be about exactly what duty to check on their daughter's wellbeing they took on when they provided her with the room and covered for her absence. Again, I'm very confident that they weren't the ones preventing her from leaving the room. I imagine they were always hoping she would "come out of it" both literally and figuratively. It was her illness that prevented her from leaving the room.
 
evilwise said:
Most states have "Good Samaritan" laws to protect people trying to render aid and some few states have "Duty to Act" laws, mainly meant to compel citizens to aid victims of violence. Only three small states (Vermont, Rhode Island and Minnesota) have "Rescue is the Rule" laws and even if this case occurred in one of those states the parents might argue that since they hadn't gone into the room in years they didn't know she was in imminent peril.

I feel confident in again stressing that the focus of this should be about exactly what duty to check on their daughter's wellbeing they took on when they provided her with the room and covered for her absence. Again, I'm very confident that they weren't the ones preventing her from leaving the room. I imagine they were always hoping she would "come out of it" both literally and figuratively. It was her illness that prevented her from leaving
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with all due respect your response to this horror boggles my mind-- you are actually
blaming this now deceased victim- blaming her mental illness. If tnis case goes
to trial the defense would love you on the juryl
 
ilovewings said:
with all due respect your response to this horror boggles my mind-- you are actually
blaming this now deceased victim- blaming her mental illness. If tnis cases goes
to trial the defense would love you on the juryl
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I am not blaming her, I am blaming her illness and I emphatically believe that she deserved for it to be treated long, long before she died. Her parents' crime is denying her that treatment.
 
ChatteringBirds said:
They would have gone into the room occasionally, at least to give her minimal food and water, and once her condition was severe enough, she would not have been able to leave the room by herself.
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If I recall correctly they left food for her to retrieve. They probably had known that she didn't get the food for a while. Do we know how long she'd been dead? Is part of the "melting" in fact decomposition? I'm sure the parents had a diagnosable mental block about admitting to themselves she might have actually been dead.

Of course as I've said before it's possible that the extremely aggressive charges against them are related to some extremely callous things they might have said on police bodycam. They may have literally expressed malicious intent, or at least words the prosecutor believes can be legally considered malicious intent.
 
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