Bed-Ridden Granny Gets Eaten By Dogs...Family Charged With Neglect

[bloodrayne]

''She Died, Just Like Anyone Else''

Virginia - Last July, police found 65-year-old Esther Crigger dead and partially consumed by dogs in her Wythe County home. Crigger's husband and two sons were arrested and charged with criminal neglect in her death, but found incompetent to stand trial. A year later, little else has changed in their lives. Still, questions linger.

A mile outside this Wythe County crossroads, Deputy Bryan Bard responded to a call that 65-year-old Esther Crigger was dead.

He headed toward the Criggers' crumbling mobile home where he had broken up fights and served warrants several times in the past. Each time, the dirt and the smell of dogs and chickens that lived in the trailer had left him stunned.

Bard pulled up to the trailer. Inside, he found Esther Crigger lying on a dirty mattress on the floor, surrounded by a pack of dogs eating her body.

Then Bard looked to his left and saw Crigger's 37-year-old son, Don, standing at the stove about 10 feet from his mother. He was eating eggs from a pan.

After Bard told Don to help shoo away the dogs, he looked at Esther.

The dogs had chewed away the flesh from Crigger's left arm from the wrist to the shoulder. Her thumb was gone. The oxygen machine that helped her breathe was silent. Its electrical cord was lying on the floor, unplugged.

A day later, police arrested Don, his brother Dan, 39, and their 79-year-old father, Elmer, and charged them with criminal neglect in Esther's death.

Six months later, the prosecution suspended its case against the Criggers. All three were found incompetent to stand trial. Don moved in with a friend. Dan and Elmer went home to their trailer.

But a year later, with the circumstances of Esther Crigger's death known in more detail, many questions remain.

Chief among them: Who, if anyone, could have saved her?

On a late April afternoon, three dogs pawed at the screen door of the Criggers' home, which consists of two mobile homes rigged together in the form of a T. The setting is on an acre of land at the end of a gravel road that juts off the main route passing through Speedwell.

A growing pile of 40-ounce King Cobra beer bottles rested a short toss from their front steps. Chickens roamed nearby.

Two other trailers sit empty and gutted on the property. Junk cars are rusting into the ground. The yard is overgrown with thickets of weeds.

Inside, Dan sat at the kitchen table draining a beer and protecting his immediate surroundings from mice that scurried in the sink and darted over the table attacking scraps.

Elmer slumped in a chair, a dog named Sister sprawled out on the back of the chair behind his shoulders.

He spit tobacco into a cutoff windshield-wiper fluid bottle next to his chair and talked about the day his wife died.

Elmer said he was sleeping in a chair next to his wife that morning. When he woke up, he noticed her eyes were open, but she did not speak. "I shook and shook her," he said.

He called for Dan. The Criggers do not have a phone. So Dan and his brother drove to a friend's house to call the rescue squad.

Elmer's story is much different from the police version. He said the 20-plus dogs he owned were outside and nowhere near his wife that day.

"She died, just like anyone else," he said.

Elmer is not angry that he was sent to jail for almost two months. He said he did not mind being there. He is only angry about one thing.

"Son of a bitch wouldn't turn me out to go to my wife's funeral."

The Crigger trailer smelled of sweat and dogs. The floor was spotted with dog droppings. The ceiling was stained black from a leaky chimney and covered by a mass of spider webs.

There is no running water. The Criggers said they go to the bathroom in the yard. If there's an outhouse amid the thickets, it clearly is not used.

None of this seems to bother Elmer, who has lived here for most of his life. When Dan yelled at a mouse that ran close to his arm, Elmer didn't even look at it.

"Rats got to eat same as anything else," he said. "Can't kill it. You kill one, and a dozen come back."

Elmer and Esther Crigger had seven children including Don and Dan. One child died at birth, and his grave was paved over for a road, Elmer said. Another son is in jail for drunken driving.

The other children do not associate with the family, Elmer said.

Dan and Elmer don't seem to understand much about what happened to them in the months after Esther's death.

When asked how long ago his mother died, Dan wasn't sure. A couple months, he said. When asked why he went to jail, Dan thought about it for a moment.

"They think we murdered Momma."

Asbury Place at Wytheville is a brick building with white columns and a grassy yard with blooming flowers. Esther Crigger lived on the nursing home's second floor in unit C for about eight months before she returned home just four days before she died.

She had severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a debilitating lung disease that left her coughing, wheezing and unable to catch her breath. When she arrived at the home, she could not stand or feed herself.

Asbury Place staff said she received treatments to help her breathe and soon began to thrive at the home. She ate well and after time was able to feed herself.

But she was not happy at Asbury Place, Elmer and Dan said.

Elmer said his wife wanted to live with her family. He has a deep distrust of doctors and said she was the same way.

"Ain't nothing they can do," he said. "Just give you a teaspoon of medicine about twice a day."

Dan said it smelled bad at the home.

Each time they visited Esther, the family told staff that soon they were going to bring her home.

And each time, staff and Wythe County Social Services workers persuaded them to leave her there. She needed daily breathing treatments and a hospital bed to keep her head propped up or she would die, they told the Criggers.

They also told Esther the danger she faced at home.

Kim Hester, a nurse who worked at Asbury Place and had been Crigger's home health nurse years before, talked with her often about her family.

"She told me she wanted to go home, even though she knew she might not make it," Hester said. "She was adamant about it, and her mind was clear, as much as I could tell."

On July 2, 2004, Don and Dan drove to Asbury Place with a bottle of oxygen in the back of Don's pickup. This time, the staff could not persuade them to leave her.

Social services scheduled a home visit for July 6, the first working day after the Fourth of July holiday. That same day, deputy Bard found her dead. She was last seen on July 5.

Michael Hall, director of Wythe County Social Services, said the agency had no power to stop Esther Crigger from going home and could not have prevented her death.

Hall said the agency had worked with the Criggers for years. But by law, the agency could only try to persuade the Criggers to leave their mother at Asbury Place. It could not force her to stay, he said.

In Virginia, social services can remove adults from their homes only if they are mentally or physically impaired and cannot make, communicate or carry out responsible decisions concerning their well-being.

Hall said Esther Crigger's doctor determined she was well enough to make her own decisions.

In hindsight, it is easy to question the decision not to check on Esther Crigger immediately after the Asbury call came in, Hall said. But, ultimately, he believes the agency is not to blame for her death.

"The choice was up to her," he said. "Mentally competent adults have the right to make choices that you or I might not consider good choices."

Still, Hall said he plans to take her case to the General Assembly to start a discussion about the line between personal rights and his agency's power to help adults who may be in danger.

Hester, the woman who several years ago was Esther's home health nurse, said Dan once walked her out to her car to keep the dogs away.

Tammy Bralley has lived down the street from the Criggers for 15 years. When the Criggers went to jail, she thought they would be gone for good. How can they be incompetent to stand trial if they were competent enough to take care of their mother, she asks.

Bralley now does her best to avoid the Criggers.

Another neighbor said he had to threaten the Criggers to make them stop urinating in plain sight of where his daughter plays.

A judge has prohibited the Criggers from keeping dogs. Yet, they now have three.

Inside the clerk's office at the Wythe County Courthouse, sealed psychological examinations sit in folders marked with each Crigger's name.

Whatever is written inside explains why the prosecution of the Criggers was halted. It probably also explains how much they understood about the care Esther Crigger needed.

But none of this eases the concerns of the Criggers' neighbors.

Several times most days, Dan walks the mile back and forth from his trailer to the gasoline station to buy bottles of King Cobra, one 40 at a time. In Speedwell, people know him as "Dirty Dan."

"Something needs to be done about them," Bralley said. "Something needed to be done before that happened."

Court records show Elmer and Dan get by on $722 a month from Social Security. Don receives $376. Their refrigerator is often empty except for a few eggs from their hens.

As far as what people in Speedwell think about them, Elmer said they don't care. They just want to be left alone.

"All me and Dan is doing is trying to live the best we can," Elmer said.

[urgeok]

i've said all my life that we take normalicy for granted.

just think of all the stuff going on out there that no-one knows about.

[AUSTIN316426808]

That's a sad story in every sense of the word.

[scaryminda15]

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK MYSELF LIKE DIDN'T THEY FEED THE DOGS? BECAUSE THEY SHOUDN'T BE EATING HER UNLESS THEY WERE EITHER HUNGRY OR TRAINED TO DO IT. HOW COULD ANYONE BE STANDING THERE EATING EGGS WHEN THEIR MOTHER IS RIGHT THERE BEING EATING ALIVE. BUT MAYBE THEY DIDN'T HAVE A WAY TO CONTACT THE POLICE BUT I THINK THAT IS VERY UNLIKELY BECAUSE THEY DID FOR THE POLICE TO COME AND REMOVE THE BODY EW THIS IS A SICK AND WRONG STORY!

[ItsAlive75]

hahaha that is hilarious

[The STE]

Originally posted by scaryminda15
I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK MYSELF LIKE DIDN'T THEY FEED THE DOGS? BECAUSE THEY SHOUDN'T BE EATING HER UNLESS THEY WERE EITHER HUNGRY OR TRAINED TO DO IT. HOW COULD ANYONE BE STANDING THERE EATING EGGS WHEN THEIR MOTHER IS RIGHT THERE BEING EATING ALIVE. BUT MAYBE THEY DIDN'T HAVE A WAY TO CONTACT THE POLICE BUT I THINK THAT IS VERY UNLIKELY BECAUSE THEY DID FOR THE POLICE TO COME AND REMOVE THE BODY EW THIS IS A SICK AND WRONG STORY!

I'm gonna punch you in the ovary

[bloodrayne]

Originally posted by The STE
I'm gonna punch you in the ovary

Yup...Right in the baby maker ;)