Evelyn Blue died last week after years of separation from her family.
She had dementia.
And family members say Blue, 80, was left for hours at a time in a bed with her own feces and bodily fluids.
Her daughter and caretaker, Melissa Blue, is now in jail without bond on charges of felony murder and cruelty to an elderly person.
Authorities say Blue succumbed to severe bed sores and her organs failed Sunday morning at WellStar Kennestone Hospital.
Now, family and friends, who all believe Melissa Blue has paranoid schizophrenia, are at odds over who is to blame.
“If social services had investigated the situation, something could’ve been done to prevent this,” said Robert Blue, Evelyn's son who lives in San Diego. “Even though [Melissa] has a mental illness, she knows right from wrong.”
Sue Verner, Evelyn Blue’s longtime neighbor, said the woman’s daughter was likely overwhelmed coping with her own sickness and her mother’s.
“She really seemed to me to be more unaware of the severity of the situation,” Verner said of Melissa Blue. “Certainly not malicious or even truly neglect.”
More than anything, they are hurt that Evelyn Blue wasn’t able to get the help she needed.
“She could’ve lived with me at any time,” her younger sister, Edna Huddleson, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution via phone from her home in Laurel, Miss. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard what happened.”
Over the past four years, Evelyn Blue’s son and four siblings say they began slowly losing contact with the retired Smyrna nurse.
Her husband, Robert Blue Sr., died in 2007.
“That’s when my mother started deteriorating,” Robert Blue said. “And Melissa … started going off the deep end.”
Officials get involved
Smyrna spokeswoman Jennifer Bennett said the Blues came upon officials' radar when a code enforcement worker came to the home in March 2008 to cite them for high grass and junked cars in the yard.
“By the following February, our city marshal had encountered some situations that would prompt her to ask police to do wellness checks,” Bennett said. “She had noticed that the mother might be experiencing dementia.”
All along, Robert Blue, Huddleson and other relatives were sending mail or making phone calls to the Smyrna home that were neither answered nor returned.
“I tried for years to send birthday cards, letters, but she never answered,” Huddleson said.
Trouble continued, Huddleson said, when she attempted a visit.
“I went up there with my niece and nephew, and they wouldn’t let us in the house after we drove all the way to Atlanta,” she said of her sister and her niece.
Huddleson was only allowed into the house long enough to use the bathroom, relatives said, and then only 15 minutes to talk with her sister on the porch.
Robert Blue said he called the house and couldn’t get through. And when he called to send police out, “my mother refused to talk to me.
“And they said that if I showed up, they would call the police on me,” Robert Blue said.
Weighing his legal options, Robert Blue said attorneys said he didn’t have much room to wrest stewardship of his mother from his sister.
“They told me that I’d spend a lot of money in legal fees and travel, and still likely not get to take my mother with me,” he said.
And other family members, none of whom lived near metro Atlanta, offered to take in Evelyn Blue.
“But not Melissa,” Robert Blue said, noting a growing suspicion that she was taking advantage of their mother. “This is why my sister isolated herself and my mother away from the family. She saw her meal ticket being taken away.”
Verner, who lived near the Blues in Smyrna, said Melissa Blue told her she quit her retail job to take care of her mother.
When a fire struck the house during the storms of September 2009, the two women moved in with Verner’s family.
Robert Blue already feared his sister was misusing their mother’s pension from her years as a Kennestone Hospital nurse and her Social Security.
“We think she went through that money,” he said, and worried there would be no insurance money to repair the home the Blue siblings grew up in.
Situation deteriorates
Verner saw evidence of Evelyn Blue’s dementia.
“She had plenty of lucid moments,” Verner said via email. “[However,] she mentioned once, when I invited her to join us for supper, that she preferred not to because she knew we were trying to poison her.
“She also talked about snakes that were eating her feet.”
But Verner also noticed oddities in Melissa Blue’s behavior during the five weeks she stayed there.
“I realized that she wasn’t actually doing anything about getting the house fixed or moving out,” Verner said. “It became evident that she thought a lot about it – made copious notes and wrote letters of 25-plus pages, and spent a lot of time on the computer researching what to do – but didn’t seem to be doing much else.”
Soon, Melissa and Evelyn Blue would move out, only to return in June 2010.
“Our marshal did try to keep up in the event that assistance was needed,” Bennett, of the City of Smyrna, said. “We did what we could within our set of resources.”
A month later, the two moved from Verner’s home to an extended stay hotel in Smyrna, leaving Verner concerned and trying to locate relatives. What she found in their remaining belongings worried her more.
“I located an opened envelope containing insurance company checks designated to pay for repairs to the home,” Verner said. “These checks had not been cashed, although they had been mailed seven months previously.”
Evelyn Blue’s family had lost contact with her until Verner reached out to them.
A social worker from the state Department of Human Services was dispatched to Melissa and Evelyn Blue’s hotel room to do a welfare check.
“The representative insisted that Mrs. Blue state that she was all right and not in need of help, and Mrs. Blue did so,” Verner said. “The representative left.”
Robert Blue believes that the state official didn’t do enough.
“It seems like they didn’t want to do a lot,” he said. “They never even called me.”
A Human Services spokeswoman wasn’t able to confirm on Friday what interaction workers had with Evelyn Blue.
Verner visited Melissa and Evelyn Blue at their hotel room one more time before she lost track of them.
“Melissa did come to the door, but also contacted the police and told them that I had been harassing her,” Verner said. “I promised not to come over anymore, but asked the [hotel] management to contact me if anything happened or if they moved.”
She never heard from or of the Blues again until last week.
The end comes
On Sept. 1, Melissa Blue called Marietta police to the new hotel she had moved to with her mother.
She needed help.
Police arrived to find what Robert Blue described as a grizzly scene.
“She was lying in her own excrement and bodily fluids,” he said, repeating the reports of his mother he received from the hotel room. “You could actually see her bones through the bed sores.”
Evelyn Blue was taken to the hospital, where she would die days later. Melissa awaits trial in the Cobb County Adult Detention Center.
“I’ll testify against her if I’m asked to,” Robert Blue said. “I don’t think she deserves any type of leniency. This was purely selfish reasons that the situation got to the level it did.”
Verner said she hates seeing her fears for this family realized.
“I was very worried that Melissa also needed help that it seemed to me she wasn't receiving,” she said. I was concerned that they'd wind up in a hotel room until Mrs. Blue eventually died, probably from old age but also possibly from lack of treatment for her condition(s), and that Melissa might not be aware of what all needed to be provided for her mother.”
Huddleson cried Friday morning as she spoke of her long-lost older sister.
“I’m sick because my sister died, and how she died,” she said. “I loved her … whether she called me or not.”
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