A woman has been charged with reckless homicide after her sister died following three weeks spent decomposing in a chair. Continue reading after the jump.

Capri S.


Priscilla Frieberger, who was morbidly obese, could not move from her chair, and eventually her rotting skin started to stick to the chair’s fabric.

The house in Lawrenceburg, Indiana where the sisters lived was so full of trash that ambulance crew could not get in through the front door to rescue her.

And they could not move Ms Frieberger, 61, down the stairs, instead having to break the window to get her into the ambulance which transported her to hospital.

There she died of pneumonia and a blood infection – complicated by a dose of painkiller Tramadol which was ten times the appropriate amount.

Four months later, her sister Vickie Holdcraft, 58, is wanted on charges of reckless homicide, neglect and perjury.

A warrant has been issued for her arrest, and police were searching for her yesterday – though neighbours said Ms Holdcraft still lives in the house she used to share with her sister.

According to Dearborn County prosecutor Aaron Negangard, that house was in a disgusting condition when Ms Holdcraft called emergency services there at her sister’s request.

‘They had stuff stacked in,’ he told WLWT. ‘Animal faeces, there was urine – just items stacked everywhere. You could barely walk through the place.’

The room where Ms Frieberger had lived out her last days was even worse, Mr Negangard told WKRC: ‘She’d been in this chair at least three weeks, and she was starting to decompose.

‘She had several parts of the body in a state of decomposition, especially the posterior where she was sitting. There was an odour of decomposing flesh in the room.’

The sisters were said to have been extremely close – as well as living together in the house where they grew up, they both worked in the Dearborn County Administration Building.

Ms Holdcraft’s husband described the pair as ‘best friends’ – and said that he had not known them to be particularly untidy.

Neighbours said that if Ms Holdcraft had told them she was having trouble caring for her sister, they would have been happy to help.