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UPDATE, February 5, 2009: Wis. religious leader: No contest in corpse case
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UPDATE, November 17, 2008: Woman convicted in toilet corpse case
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UPDATE, November 16, 2008: Woman to be sentenced for hiding corpse
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UPDATE, June 17, 2008: Alleged Wis. cult nun found competent
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Tammy D. Lewis, left, and Alan A. Bushey: What crazy looks like.
This is really a creepy story.
From the Wisconsin State Journal:
Two people have been arrested after a Juneau County sheriff's deputy found one of them and her two children living in a home with the body of a 90-year-old woman decomposing on the bathroom toilet.
Tammy D. Lewis, 35, and Alan A. Bushey, 57, both of Necedah, are each charged with two felony counts of causing mental harm to a child, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday. Lewis also faces one count of obstructing police.
The two, who are also known as Sister Mary Bernadett and Bishop John Peter Bushey, along with the dead woman, Magdeline Alvina Middlesworth, were part of a small church led by Bushey, Juneau County Sheriff's Brent Oleson said.
He said investigators are trying to determine if the other two were defrauding Middlesworth and that future charges against the two are "a very real possibility." He said there is evidence that the woman was providing financial support to the church and to Lewis and her family.
Lewis and Middlesworth were not related, he said, but had been living together with Lewis' 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son about 3 and a half years.
Oleson declined to call the church a cult but said "I guess in my mind I don't know of any faith that sanctioned his teachings."
Bushey had been living in the area about 11 years, Oleson said, did not have outside employment, and had built a chapel on the back of his home, which is about half-mile from where Middlesworth and Lewis were found. He said Bushey's church had few members; only eight were at a Mass about two months ago.
He said Bushey's church was not affiliated with the Queen of the Holy Rosary Mediatrix of Peace Shrine, which is less than a mile from Middlesworth's home. The shrine is not a recognized part of the Catholic Church.
Rowina Arbanas, who lives two houses down from the Lewis home, said she never got to know the family who had been living there for four years.
"I would say hello to them because we're neighbors and that's what neighbors do," she said. "But they would never respond."
Arbanas said she would see Lewis, her children and the elderly woman walking up and down the street doing what looked like, a religious procession. "They always wore pilgrim-like clothes, and the women wore white veils," she said.
And from the Associated Press:
According to the criminal complaint, Middlesworth's sister called sheriff's officials Wednesday and asked them to go to the home about 80 miles north of Madison to check on the woman, who had not been heard from for some time.
When Deputy Leigh Neville-Neil arrived at the house, she encountered Lewis, also known as Sister Mary Bernadett, the complaint said. Lewis, 35, initially refused to allow the deputy to check on Middlesworth, telling her that Middlesworth was on vacation and saying she had to check with her "superior" first.
But she eventually let the deputy in. The house smelled of incense and burned wood, and had religious materials everywhere and hymns playing on the stereo, according to the complaint.
When the deputy opened the last closed door, she smelled "decaying matter" and noticed something piled on what appeared to be a toilet. Lewis told her it was Middlesworth's body, the complaint said.
Lewis told the deputy that Middlesworth had died about two months earlier, but that God told her Middlesworth would come to life if she prayed hard enough.
She said she couldn't say anything more until she spoke with her "superior" — Bushey, 57, also known as Bishop John Peter Bushey.
When Bushey arrived, Lewis told the deputy that Middlesworth had appeared to pass out as Lewis helped her into her underwear.
She said she propped Middlesworth on the toilet and left the room to call Bushey, who told her to leave the woman alone and pray for her, the complaint said. He said he had received signs that God would raise her from the dead with a miracle.
Lewis went on to say she thought Middlesworth was still breathing when she put her on the toilet and called Bushey, instead of an ambulance. She later told a detective she put the woman on the toilet on March 4.
...The boy at the house told a detective he had considered running away because he was uncomfortable with the situation. He said Bushey told him that demons were trying to make it look as if Middlesworth wouldn't come back to life, and that if she were to be discovered he and the girl would have to go to public school and get jobs because Middlesworth paid the bills.
Those poor kids!
There are a lot of unanswered questions here, but there's no doubt that the two kids have lived a nightmare.
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