Just damn.
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Posted on 01/05/2005 6:35:54 AM PST by Calpernia
The parents of a 13-year-old foster child who made her bring food to a dead man who lay rotting in their Clark home pleaded guilty Tuesday to elderly neglect and child cruelty.
Kenneth Keaveney and his wife, Donna, pleaded guilty in state Superior Court, admitting that Donna's father was left to rot upstairs for weeks before being found on the floor of a room littered with flies, maggots and dog feces.
Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said the plea ends any doubts as to what happened to Nicola Lombardi, whose decomposed corpse was discovered nearly mummified in the August heat inside the upstairs living room of the split level house he owned in a residential section of the township back in 2003.
"The case serves as a grim reminder of the need to provide proper care for our elderly," the prosecutor said. "There is also a price to pay for what they did to this young girl by making her care for him under such horrible conditions."
Clark police responding to calls about a foul odor that had permeated the neighborhood found the 82-year-old man's body in an advanced state of decomposition. An autopsy determined that Lombardi had been dead for several weeks in the room where the girl was sent every day with food, said police Chief Anton Danco.
Superior Court Judge Scott J. Moynihan, in accepting the pleas, said while the couple may not face state prison time, they still could be ordered to pay fines, attend counseling, perform community service, and serve time in the Union County jail as a condition of probation when they are sentenced March 23.
The 13-year-old girl and two other foster children, ages 11 and 4, were removed from the house by the state Division of Youth and Family Services after the body was found.
Disgusting people.
Right, but rotten meat ain't the same as "fresh" decomp. Maybe it's the gasses from the gut.
BINGO!!!
Having smelled both, humans have a distinct , unmistakable odor.
I want to know why they needed a five-month investigation before charges were filed.
DYFS was on record to have had made at least 2 visits to this home WHILE the grandfather was dead.
The investigation involved more than just the family.
And I use the term 'family' here speaking just as a collective.
This is NOT a family.
Just damn.
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Methinks this is about checks and ownership of the house.
Yeah.
Disgusting !
I think foster parents need to be required to bring children in to a state facility once a month or so, where the children can have a quick examination by a nurse, and an interview away from the foster parents. And the children need to be reassured that if they tell about a serious problem, they will not be going back to the home even for a minute. A lot of these caseworkers are deadbeats who are just going shopping or socializing because they prefer that to working, but the system pretty much assures that the pool of available social workers will be drawn from the dregs of society. People who don't want to work are attracted to jobs where they won't be supervised, and civilized people have better options than to take a job which involves frequent visits to dangerous neighborhoods and dangerous homes.
Why were they making the child take food to a dead person?....It's a Santeria thing. You wouldn't understand.
Unbelievable.
Right. If the neighbors could smell him, so could the people living under the same roof.
I'm not convinced about them being crazy, though. Some people just have no heart and will do anything for money. I think it is likely that once his death became official, they would have to move out of the house (it was his) and his SS checks would stop. They likely only had foster children for the sake of the $$ they got from the government, too.
I feel so ignorant. Here in the south we bury them warm and split their stuff.
Reminds me of the movie "The burbs" with Tom Hanks.
Were there stock piles of food up there or did the magets take care of that?
They would have to be crazy to live in the same house as that smell.
A friends father was dead in his condo for about one week before he was found. After a week of the bio-hazard folks doing what they do, the friend was allowed into the condo. A week after that we helped him remove his dad's belongings, even with the carpet, drapes and all furniture removed the place had a horrible, sweet-sickly, make you want to vomit odor.
No way a person can live with that smell and not be crazy - - I feel for those foster kids.
You're right. After thinking about it and realizing how horrible the smell would be, there wouldn't be any way that they couldn't know.
I have had the misfortune of discovering a decomposing body outdoors. No way you wouldn't find one inside in summer.
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