Background: The Des Moines County Correctional Center in Burlington, Iowa (Google Maps). Inset: Audrey Engler (Des Moines County Jail).
An Iowa hospice worker has admitted guilt in the case of an elderly woman who was found living in her own filth with "large bed sores" before she died.
Audrey Engler, 25, has pleaded guilty to intentional dependent adult abuse resulting in serious injury, according to court records. She was charged and placed in the Des Moines County Correctional Center in Burlington, Iowa, in December.
It was the morning of Aug. 15, and the Burlington Police Department learned that a woman had died the night before, per a criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime. The deceased was an older woman who had been paying the in-home care company Vibrance Homecare to look after her, and Engler had been assigned the job.
The defendant had been living with the victim — who was not identified in the criminal complaint — until July 21, when the older woman was hospitalized after her mattress caught fire. The woman could not move from her bed on her own.
As Law&Crime previously reported, police investigated the victim's status, and they apparently discovered disconcerting facts. The woman had "burns on her back," bed sores, "ulcers on her buttocks," soiled linens, a catheter full of urine, and she was sitting in feces, according to the complaint.
Engler was also reportedly not giving the woman the medicine she needed. The home was in a general state of disarray, with "stuff all over the ground" so that "a person couldn't find a place to sit or stand."
When investigators spoke with the victim's case manager, the manager said the victim asked the company to buy her clothing items because "all her money was going to Engler," the complaint added. The victim also had a nurse, who told investigators she was visiting frequently to deal with the woman's pain, but that Engler encouraged her to reduce the number of times she visited because the woman was "adequately" taken care of.
Also troubling was that the woman appeared to be getting "skinnier and skinnier," according to the complaint. She would communicate with Engler via text when she needed something, but detectives reviewed their message history and found multiple occurrences where Engler "wouldn't respond for hours."
When detectives spoke with Engler, they learned that the patient had been paying for the rent and electric bills in the apartment. According to the complaint, the defendant also admitted that she only moved the woman "one time a day" and that she "could have taken care of the dependent adult better and could have checked on her more and could have had more compassion for her."
Engler is set to be sentenced on March 23. By Iowa law, she could be sent to prison for up to 10 years.