Lacey Fletcher's Parents Claim to Find Her Dead
On January 22, 2022, Lacey’s parents, Clay and Sheila Fletcher, both 66, had just returned from a weekend getaway when they called 911 and told police they discovered their daughter’s corpse on their couch.
Authorities found a sickening scene inside the home, according to D’Aquila.
“Obviously, she'd been there for a while. You could see some little fruit flies on her, and it was just awful,” the prosecutor says. “It’s the worst case of neglect that anyone's ever seen over here. She had feces in her hair, open sores on her ears and bed sores.”
Officials unintentionally inflicted postmortem lacerations on Lacey’s remains as a result of investigators “peeling Lacey from the couch in order to be placed in a body bag,” according to the report about her death by the East Feliciana Parish Coroner, Dr. Dewitt Bickham, III.
Lacey’s emaciated body weighed 96 pounds when she died. She had suffered from chronic neglect and her entire backside was “submerged in a depression in the couch filled with liquid stool and urine,” the coroner’s report said.
Lacey also had multiple ulcers infested with maggots, tested positive COVID-19 and was covered in her own fecal matter. Sepsis and malnourishment were listed as the causes of her death, per the report.
Few People Knew the Fletchers Had a Daughter
Many people in Slaughter were surprised to learn that the Fletchers had a daughter, authorities say.
Sheila was a town alderman and Clay worked at the nearby nuclear power plant. They were also well-respected, devoted members of their church, so it stunned the community and investigators to learn that the neighborly couple kept such a sinister secret for so long.
Lacey’s deterioration didn’t happen overnight. She was 14 when she last saw Dr. Donald G Hoppe, a clinical psychologist in Baton Rouge, La., in 2002, according to the coroner’s report.
Hoppe reported the girl had autism, a below average I.Q. and suffered from severe social anxiety. He also noted Lacey's parents were having a hard time accepting their child with “special needs.” They pulled her out of school when she was 16.
Lacey Fletcher Allegedly Wouldn't Leave the Couch
Eight years later, in 2019, the Fletchers returned to Hoppe’s office to seek advice—this time, without Lacey.
They told him she refused to leave their living room, “and at that point was urinating and defecating on a towel on the floor,” the coroner’s report says. Her parents also said she seldom showered and that they brought her meals to her on the couch.
Hoppe urged them to consider hospitalization for Lacey “because her behavior at this time in 2010 was evidenced as being acutely psychotic,” the report states.
But there are no records indicating Clay and Sheila ever sought medical help for their daughter after meeting with Hoppe for the last time.
“In all actuality, the daughter had a mental disability, and it was progressively getting worse, and they were just allowing it,” D’Aquiilla says. “And they may not have known how to cope with that, but they certainly didn't reach out and seek help from anybody else.”
Lacey Fletcher Could Have Received Special Care
Dr. Patrice Berry, a psychologist who has treated adults with autism, says families may face barriers caring for adults with the neurodevelopmental condition, but resources exist to help, including in-patient treatment facilities and family support groups.
She tells A&E Crime + Investigation that Lacey did not appear to have the mental capacity to refuse care, so her parents should have filed for medical guardianship and had her removed from the home so she could receive appropriate treatment.
“Sometimes [it takes] connecting with those groups, and then breaking some of the stigma that can come with mental health diagnoses, because some families can feel embarrassed,” Berry says “She wasn't safe at home and she needed more care than was being provided.”
Lacey Fletcher's Parents Plead No Contest to Manslaughter
The Fletchers were arrested on charges of second-degree murder shortly after Lacey died in January 2022. They pleaded no contest to manslaughter and were each sentenced to 40 years in prison, with 20 years suspended.
Their defense lawyer, Steven Moore, said Lacey had been capable of making her own decisions and that she had refused to get medical attention due to her reclusiveness was no one’s fault but her own. Her parents cared for Lacey, never intended to hurt her and “loved her to death,” Moore said at the couple’s 2024 sentencing hearing, WBRZ-TV reported.
Lacey’s “world closed in on her gradually because of her phobias, fears and social anxieties,” Clay said at the hearing. “The couch was her sanctuary. It was her comfort zone.”
D’Aquilla wasn’t convinced, stating the couple “was just kind of cold and kind of calculated from what I saw.”
“They were more focusing the blame on her: ‘We didn't want her to be mad at us. We wanted her to be who she wanted to be,’” he continues. “It sounds kind of strange, but that's how they justified her death.”
