FORT MYERS — When Lee County Sheriff’s Deputy James Didio went to Gail Andrews’ Fort Myers home to check her wellbeing early this month, deputies smelled the strong odor of urine and rotting food.
“We could smell this all the way to the road,” Didio wrote in his report about the June 4 check on St. Andrews Circle. “I approached the house and looked in the open front window to see a house full of trash. Crawling over the trash were rats and mice that jumped when I shined my light.”
Trash was strewn all over the bedroom and Didio spotted Andrews, who explained she’d been cleaning. Asked if she lived alone, she said her father had died 10 years ago — and her mother had moved back to Connecticut.
It took more than a week — and a search warrant — for investigators to dig through the trash and find her mother’s skeleton Friday.
And so began an investigation into a bizarre case of a daughter keeping her mother’s death a secret for more than a year. Neighbors weren’t surprised.
“We didn’t know for sure, but we all suspected she died in there,” said Peggy Ward, who last saw Gladys Andrews 10 years ago, while another neighbor saw her five years ago. “She always talked like her mother was alive.”
Tina DeVecchis said she’d complained for two decades, reporting garbage, rats, junk cars, screaming raccoons, caged cats, and foul odors.
“When people call Code Enforcement and they do nothing for 20 years, they could have prevented this problem,” DeVeccchis said. “The rats were huge. She left her mother on the floor. They ate her mother.”
Now, the county medical examiner and a forensic anthropologist are working to confirm the skeleton is Gladys Andrews, who would have been 88 if alive, and how long she's been dead.
“We are still investigating, but we don’t believe foul play was involved,” said Sheriff’s Office spokesman John Sheehan.
Andrews told the News-Press her mother died 14 months ago and the home was in bad shape, she didn’t want to lose it, so she didn’t report it.
On Tuesday, the Lee County Community Development Department slapped a sign on the home, “Unsafe building,” and deputies escorted Gail Andrews inside to get a few belongings.
The sign begins a 60-day process for Andrews to dispute condemnation proceedings. With yellow crime-scene tape still up, code enforcement officers still haven’t been allowed inside.
“The vermin and garbage were enough to deem it unsafe,” said Community Development Spokeswoman Joan LaGuardia, adding that tarps covered the roof. “Legally, we can’t keep her out of it.”
Property records show the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home purchased in 1974 was placed in both Gail and Gladys Andrewses’ names after her father, Andrew John Andrews, died Jan. 25, 1999, at 83.
The sheriff’s report says trash reached 2-feet high, the floor wasn’t visible, and healthy cats were caged.
“I counted at least 10 to 15 full-grown rats in the living room and could hear them in the bedrooms,” Didio wrote. “The walls and trash were covered with roaches and bugs. Some of the roaches were more than an inch long. They were even coming out of the A/C vents.”
At least since 2001, Andrews has been cited for code violations.
“Two times we had to go out there and clean up accumulated trash,” LaGuardia said. “But she would not permit access to the inside.”
Without probable cause, belief that a crime occurred, LaGuardia said a property owner can prohibit anyone from coming inside.
“It’s not uncommon with an eccentric owner for an outside to appear manageable and an inside to be a mystery,” LaGuardia said, adding, however, “There’s never been a case with a dead body. That’s what makes this case remarkable.”
“She will have to improve the safety conditions,” LaGuardia said, adding, however, that Andrews conceded she doesn’t have the money to save her home.
Ward said deputies said the ceilings had caved in and wires hung down. “She told me she nearly froze in the winter because it was so cold and once it got hot, she said she couldn’t do anything,” Ward said.
Ward agreed Andrews wasn’t “mainstream,” but called the former Lee County teacher intelligent, articulate, an animal lover who had little money from her pension check but gave Ward’s grandchildren small gifts for Christmas and Easter.
However, her love for animals extended to the stray cats and rats she fed. She admitted 10 dead cats found inside were accumulated over many years. “She said she didn’t have the money to cremate them or dispose of them properly and didn’t want to throw them out with the trash,” Ward said.
After Andrews allowed DCF investigators inside Friday, she was committed to the Ruth Cooper Center. Before her release Monday, she called Ward, who paid for a $16 taxi ride home. But due to neighbors’ contentious relationship over the odors, rats and garbage, her family didn’t want Andrews staying there.
She begged for a pillow, a flashlight and a hose to wash. “She slept in my grandson’s fort,” Ward said, adding that she gave the vegetarian food and let her inside for breakfast.
She’s since moved to a neighbor’s home; that neighbor couldn’t be reached for comment.
“She’s had it rough,” Ward said of Andrews leaving her job to care for her father and her mother becoming bedridden after falling a week later. “You’d have to be a hard-hearted person not to have sympathy for her.”
DCF officials referred her to other agencies for help.
“When we have cases of hoarding, we will work with the adult to see if we can get services in place to help that person,” said DCF Spokeswoman Erin Gillespie. “However, adults must give permission and allow us to help — unless they are found incompetent to make decisions on their own.”
Andrews would not tell reporters if she was cashing her mother's Social Security checks, and Sheehan, of the Sheriff's Office, declined to say if they're investigating that.
Jon Lasher, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, also couldn't comment.
"We often conduct investigations involving living persons who conceal the death of a relative in order to continue receiving the deceased’s Social Security benefits," Lasher said. "When our investigations prove such an allegation to be true, we pursue all available criminal, civil and administrative remedies in order to recover the stolen funds and bring the individual to justice."
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