FAMILY MYSTERY: Was It Murder?

You know, it's kind of nice to be able to get things off of your chest this way. . . blogging, I mean. I stumbled upon something today that has deepened my suspicions about the death of a member of my husband's family. Being unable to reconcile it, I decided to lay the entire story out in this forum, hoping for some objective feedback.

All families have mysteries and ours is no exception. While the death of my husband's half-aunt, I'll call her Mary, isn't on my mind daily, it has caused me quite a bit of pause at times.

Then, this morning, when perusing my Family Tree Maker files, I found I was lacking a death date for Mary. Because she worked all of her adult life until retiring at age sixty-two, I knew a simple search of the SSDI (Social Security Death Index) would yield the date I was looking for. And for the first time ever, I was unable to find someone who I was certain should be listed there. I tried every which way to find her in the SSDI, even after finding her death date through an obituary search which allowed me to do an advanced search of the SSDI. Her real name is simple and should have yielded the information without difficulty. Why isn't her name there? I wondered, causing my mind to once again reflect upon the entire matter of Mary's death.

First, a bit about Mary.

Mary was born in the late 1930's. As a child she contracted polio and was left with a withered foot that caused her trouble all her life. She was thereafter waited on hand and foot; nevertheless, according to family members, she was not spoiled. She married at age 27, and lived the rest of her life in a nearby state, in the largest suburb of one of the nation's largest cities. She had 2 children. I will call her husband John; her son, Joe; and her daughter, Jane.

Mary worked hard all her married life and continued to work hard, hobbling on her bad foot to wait on or bus tables in a huge cafeteria complex, until age 62 when she retired. To my knowledge, this is the only job she ever had, and she had it for years and years.

Her husband, John, was not very popular in my husband's family. I was around him several times in the 70's and 80's, back when there was a concerted effort for everyone to get together for Easter at the old homeplace. John did not strike me as someone I particularly wanted to get to know, but I can't say I was much drawn to Mary either. She did not have the kind of personality that encouraged one to engage in social intercourse. I tried, but she simply was not easy to get to know. Conversely, Mary's younger sister, (I'll call her Belle, my husband's other half-aunt) and I have always been extremely close. Living in close proximity is only part of the reason. Belle and I just clicked.

John died in the late 1990's. I recall thinking at the time, "Now Mary can have some peace." The reason I thought this was because of the comments that made their way to my ears through my good friend, Belle, and my mother-in-law. (My father-in-law was a half-brother to Mary.)

A bit about Joe and Jane, Mary's son and daughter.

Joe is the one of the creepiest people I have ever known. Even as a child (he was 5 or so when I first met him) I found him off-putting, which is saying a lot considering I absolutely adore children and make it a point to engage them even when meeting them for the first time. Not so with Joe, however. I could not put my finger on it, but as the years passed, the vibes I had only grew stronger.

Then, around 1998, 1999 or so, I learned from Belle that Joe had a pen-pal relationship going on with Belle's granddaughter. Joe was pushing 30 at the time, and Belle's granddaughter was 11 or 12.

As strange as I'd always found Joe, you can imagine my reaction. Yes, they're first cousins. Exchanging an occasional card or letter is one thing, but these two were writing and emailing each other or talking on the phone daily. I found it very odd, but am happy to report that eventually the penpal relationship ended of it's own accord.

Joe was married briefly, and had a little girl. He ended up back home with Mary around the time his father died. Mary babysat her granddaughter even though it caused her a great deal of pain. She badly needed a hip replacement due to hobbling around on her bad foot the way she had for decades.

Jane, Mary's daughter, was just a wisp of a girl when I first met her. She was very cute, was very shy and somewhat withdrawn, but played well with my eldest daughter who was three years younger. She turned out to be a beauty and married well and had two darling little boys.

It was in 2002 that I got the frantic call from Belle. Mary, she said, had been admitted to the hospital, to intensive care, due to complications associated with her recent, much-needed hip replacement. "She's had a heart-attack," Belle told me.

A heart attack? Strange. It had been just six weeks since her surgery. As Belle went on, I was thinking perhaps Mary had thrown a clot . . . but the story that was pouring into my ear kept getting stranger. It went like this:

Joe, now 32, and still living with his mother, had taken Mary to her 6 week post-operative appointment. When her name was called, and as she was making her way back for her examination, Mary collapsed, and indeed suffered a heart attack.

Hospitalized and in intensive care, the doctors said she was unlikely to recover. The next day, however, she did show some improvement and the doctors modified their prediction. We were shocked when sadly, twelve or so hours later, Mary died.

Then, with Belle and my mother-in-law innocently providing puzzle pieces, I began to put together a picture of what had happened to poor Mary. . .

One must assume that Mary would never have been discharged from the hospital following her hip replacement had she been experiencing any kind of obvious difficulty such as extreme pain, weakness, or an inability to get up and down, or to walk with the assistance of a walker. One must also assume her lab values were all within normal range or very close to normal range upon her discharge. In other words, she was healthy.

On the day of her post-operative appointment, heart attack, and ultimate hospitalization, Mary was found to be malnourished.

Malnourished!

Six weeks earlier Mary had been in good enough shape to undergo a major surgical procedure. Having worked in the medical field for so many years, I know well how anesthesia WILL NOT go ahead with a surgery, particularly an elective one, if pre-operative lab values do not fall within their stringent guidelines. This means that within the course of just six weeks, Mary went from being well enough to undergo surgery, to profoundly malnourished.

That was bad enough, but that wasn't all. Mary was septic.

sep'sis; n. A SERIOUS MEDICAL
CONDITION CHARACTERIZED BY A WHOLE-
BODY INFLAMMATORY STATE CAUSED BY
INFECTION. SEPSIS IS BROADLY DEFINED AS
THE PRESENCE OF VARIOUS PUS-FORMING
AND OTHER PATHOGENIC ORGANISMS OR
THEIR TOXINS IN THE BLOOD OR TISSUES.

Then I learned Mary had decubiti.

de-cu'-bi-ti; n. MULTIPLE ULCERATIONS OF TISSUE DEPRIVED OF ADEQUATE BLOOD SUPPLY BY PROLONGED PRESSURE. ALSO
CALLED DECUBITUS, DECUBITUS ULCERS, PRESSURE SORES, BED SORES.

Mary had her surgery and went home. I can only assume she was in good shape being that she had been well enough to have surgery, and well enough to be discharged in the opinion of multiple medical professionals who would have been involved in her care.

So, what happened in the interim? I think it's pretty clear. Joe let his mother starve. Let her become so weak she could do nothing for herself but lie in bed. He ignored the awful stench that would have permeated their tiny, approx. 900 square foot home from the open, pus-draining bedsores.

Joe lived in the house with Mary! Jane lived nearby! Joe was 32, and Mary was 30 at the time of their mother's death. Mary's children were not children, they were adults! How could they not have known something was terribly wrong?

Belle told me about a phone call she'd placed to Mary a week or so before her death. Mary related that Jane had come by that day and she'd asked her daughter if she would mind picking her up a hamburger. Jane obliged. Mary told Belle that it had tasted sooooo good, causing Belle to wonder aloud if "the kids are making sure she gets enough to eat. . ."

While I'm no expert in the field of malnutrition, I have read stories of stranded persons who were deprived of adequate nutrition, even persons who had nothing to eat whatsoever for extended periods of time. . . and survived to tell about it.

Thus, one has to wonder just how much Mary had eaten in the last six weeks of her life. . .

Mary wasn't killed with a knife or a gun. She didn't die as a result of an injury or assault. She didn't die of cancer or any other chronic illness. She died of multiple factors, every one of them secondary to what appears to have been profound and total neglect which ultimately proved just as lethal as all of the above.

Does Joe bear responsibility? I think he does. Was it intentional? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that he benefitted greatly from Mary's death and that he had been struggling financially for some time. Did he fail to report her death to social security so that her SS checks would stop being deposited into her bank account? That would explain why it is the Social Security Death Index did not turn Mary up in my extensive search (though there are, of course, numerous other reasons).

Was it murder? Would it qualify as manslaughter? Mary had no friends to turn to and made no mention of her situation to her siblings (all of whom lived out of state, and all but one faced with their own serious health issues). Joe, Jane or both of them must have been present at the time of Mary's discharge from the hospital. Discharge instructions would have been given orally AND in writing, but Mary's most important need, the need for sustenance, would have been obvious even to a young child.

When Joe and Jane attended the funeral of Belle's husband two years ago, I wanted to yank both of them by the arms and ask them if they were two stupidest individuals on the planet. Of course, we don't do those things; we just imagine doing them. I like to imagine what might have been if Joe would have only given his mother thirty minutes of his time each day. . . if Jane had given her thirty minutes just two or three times a week.

Now, you do the math, and let me know what you think . . . . .