New twist in death of 96lb recluse whose rotting remains were found ‘melted into couch crater after years of neglect’

A JUDGE has dropped murder charges for the parents of a woman whose emaciated and decomposed body was found fused to a couch in their home.

Lacey Fletcher, 36, died in her parents' Louisiana home in January 2022, and an initial grand jury indicted them on second-degree murder that May.

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The couple, Clay and Sheila Fletcher, was released on a $300,000 bond each and pleaded not guilty in July 2022. They were due to stand trial later this month.

Instead, District Judge Kathryn Jones dropped the charges after a hearing on May 30, citing a technicality with the wording in the indictment, Baton Rouge station WAFB reported.

District Attorney Sam D'Aquilla said the parents will face a second grand jury on June 19.

He hopes they will be arrested on new charges after the grand jury and, if so, plans to bring the case to trial by the end of the year, according to Houston's KRIV.

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The details of the case are horrific, as The U.S. Sun reported at the time.

What was left of Lacey's body was found on an old sofa, partially naked and covered in urine, feces, and maggots, according to cops, and weighed just 96 pounds, The U.S. Sun reported.

The whole room reeked and the floor underneath the couch was buckling, sources told WBRZ.

The local coroner told the outlet that Lacey had "melted" to the couch and that sofa material and feces were found in her stomach.

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"This is something I can't even get out of my head," he told WBRZ's chief investigative reporter Chris Nakamoto, per KRIV.

Speaking with KRIV, Nakamoto said that the coroner, who deals with death every day, told him that the minute he walked into the house, he left and had to vomit in the front yard due to the smell.

Th Fletchers' daughter died from starvation among other factors, according to East Feliciana Parish coroner Dr. Ewell Dewitt Bickham III.

"Her cause of death stems from at least a decade of medical neglect," he told WAFB.

Birkham told D’Aquilla, the district attorney, that Lacey died from "severe medical neglect, which led to chronic malnutrition, acute starvation, immobility, acute ulcer formation, osteomyelitis which is a bone infection which led finally to sepsis," according to the Daily Mail.

Lacey was diagnosed with autism and crippling social anxiety, leaving her parents to take charge as her caretaker.

A neighbor revealed that Lacey had not been seen outside for around 15 years, The U.S. Sun previously reported.

According to D'Aquilla, the Fletchers claimed that beginning around 2011 or 2012, Lacey didn’t want to leave the house and apparently never complained about being home.

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D'Aquilla pushed for the second-degree murder charges, arguing that Lacey's parents intended to kill her. They were reportedly out of town at the time of her death.

"Negligent homicide is zero to five years, manslaughter is zero to 40 years and second-degree is life in prison. I will ask for second-degree because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do," he told WAFB at the time.

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