Woman sentenced to prison after dead grandmother found in Dayton basement

Staci Lauhon-Wheeler   MONTGOMERY COUNTY JAIL

Staci Lauhon-Wheeler MONTGOMERY COUNTY JAIL

A woman was sentenced to 21 months in prison after she stored her grandmother’s corpse in the basement of a Dayton home.

Staci Lauhon-Wheeler, 46, of Huntington, West Virginia, was sentenced after being convicted of gross abuse of a corpse and grand theft.

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Lauhon-Wheeler’s legal troubles began on Jan. 31, 2019, when Mary Alice Lauhon was found in a Virginia Avenue basement after Megan Lauhon, Mary’s granddaughter, called 911 from North Carolina.

“I’ve already called before, and they thought I was crazy when I called, and I wish that I was crazy,” she told 911 dispatchers.

Megan Lauhon said she was contacted by a friend of her sister, Lauhon-Wheeler, who told her that their grandmother was “deceased and in a freezer in the basement of a home in Dayton, Ohio,” according to a court affidavit.

The resident of the Virginia Avenue home reportedly told investigators that Lauhon-Wheeler lived with her briefly and that she stored some personal items in the garage and basement.

While in the “coal room” of the basement, police found a plastic tub that contained a body, later confirmed to be Mary, according to the affidavit. A preliminary autopsy did not reveal any signs of injury or trauma.

The autopsy report said Mary weighed only 66 pounds, was curled into the fetal position and was only wearing socks and a disposable diaper. Plastic bags and clothes were piled on top of her body. The plastic tub was not in a freezer, as initially reported.

The report did not have an estimate as to when Mary died, but it did state that her body was badly decomposed and partially mummified.

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