Four years ago, a 78-year-old mother of five died at her daughter's Sandy home, covered with bruises and severely underweight.
Wednesday, prosecutors dismissed charges alleging Dessie Ball's daughter and son-in-law abused Ball prior to her death.
Janet and Ronald Tuckfield were charged last July with one count of aggravated elder abuse, a second-degree felony, in connection with Ball's Oct. 27,1996, death.
Prosecutors claimed evidence suggested Ball had been beaten, malnourished and deprived of needed medication from Aug. 29, 1996, when Ball entered the Tuckfield's home, until she died.
Though neither of the defendants would comment following Wednesday's dismissal, Janet Tuckfield's attorney, Earl Xaiz, and Ronald Tuckfield's attorney, Susanne Gustin, said their clients have always maintained their innocence.
Prosecutor Paul Parker said despite certain "misrepresentations and inconsistencies" in the Tuckfields' accounts of the events preceding Ball's death, key evidence in the state's case wasn't strong enough to warrant a trial.
Specifically, state toxicologists said they could not determine whether Ball had been deprived of prescription medications under the Tuckfields' care. Nor would a forensic dentist confirm a wound on Ball's leg was a bite mark, which investigators originally believed was inflicted by Janet Tuckfield. And Parker said the fact that there were multiple bruises on Ball's body did not necessarily mean she had been the victim of a crime.
"These are, at best, difficult cases," Parker said. "There was no one but the defendants at the home at the time of death. So you have to make inferences from the physical evidence."
And in this case, Parker said the inferences did not add up to proof the Tuckfields had committed a crime.
But family members maintain the Tuckfields are responsible for Ball's death and said they will pursue the matter in civil court. There are currently several civil lawsuits pending in 3rd District Court, instigated by the Tuckfields and other family members against one another. In addition, four of Ball's children are suing the state division of Aging and Adult Services, the Department of Human Resources and a state employee they say did not respond to requests to intervene on Ball's behalf.
"We're so disappointed," Ball's eldest daughter, Pat O'Connor, said. "We're trying so hard to get some justice for our mother. I don't feel that my mother died under good circumstances."
O'Connor said she believed money was the motivating factor in Ball's death. Family members allege the Tuckfields removed Ball from a senior care facility as a part of a scheme to take some $72,500 Ball received following the sale of her home.
"What a tragedy for our family," O'Connor said, "that my sister would do this. The root of evil is not money. It is the love of money."
Following Wednesday's hearing, Xaiz said Janet Tuckfield felt "a huge sense of relief, certainly not a sense of joy or happiness because her mother died."
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