{"id":51,"date":"2008-11-17T19:46:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-17T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/wis-woman-pleads-no-contest-in-corpse-case.html"},"modified":"2008-11-17T19:46:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T19:46:00","slug":"wis-woman-pleads-no-contest-in-corpse-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/wis-woman-pleads-no-contest-in-corpse-case.html","title":{"rendered":"Wis. woman pleads no contest in corpse case"},"content":{"rendered":"Date: 11\/18\/2008<br \/><br \/>MAUSTON, Wis. (AP) _ A member of a religious sect pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor Monday after being accused of leaving another member&#8217;s corpse in her bathroom so the group could collect her Social Security checks.<br \/><br \/>Tammy Lewis, 36, was fined $350 for obstructing an officer, while prosecution was deferred on the more serious charges against her. She&#8217;ll receive mental health treatment and testify against sect leader Alan Bushey at his trial in April, District Attorney Scott Southworth said.<br \/><br \/>Prosecutors accuse Lewis and Bushey of leaving 90-year-old Magdeline Middlesworth&#8217;s body on the toilet in Lewis&#8217; home after she died there in March.<br \/><br \/>A criminal complaint says Bushey led the Order of the Divine Will sect and told Lewis that God would revive Middlesworth. The decaying body was found in May after Middlesworth&#8217;s family expressed concern.<br \/><br \/>Prosecutors say they believe Bushey and Lewis wanted to go on collecting Middlesworth&#8217;s Social Security payments.<br \/><br \/>The other charges against Lewis, including felonies of hiding a corpse and causing mental harm to a child, will be dismissed in two years if she cooperates and follows other court orders involving her children, Southworth said.<br \/><br \/>&#8220;We view her as a victim as well of Alan Bushey,&#8221; Southworth said. &#8220;We also understand the power, the mental power, that Alan Bushey was exercising over her, the coercion he was exerting over her.&#8221;<br \/><br \/>Lewis&#8217; attorney, Dan Berkos, said his client turned to Bushey and the sect for support about three years ago, after she separated from her husband.<br \/><br \/>The attorney said Lewis is &#8220;very relieved&#8221; her case has been resolved. &#8220;She has made some really great progress emotionally and even physically. She is looking forward. She is no longer looking backward at how things should have been different.&#8221;<br \/><br \/>Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Date: 11\/18\/2008MAUSTON, Wis. (AP) _ A member of a religious sect pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor Monday after being accused of leaving another member&#8217;s corpse in her bathroom so the group could collect her Social Security checks.Tammy Lewis, 36, was fined $350 for obstructing an officer, while prosecution was deferred on the more serious [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,216,217,48,62],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-corpse-case","tag-order-of-the-divine-will","tag-social-security-fraud","tag-wisconsin-court-news","tag-wisconsin-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}