A 45-year-old Barkhamsted, Connecticut woman was sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading guilty to a charge of cruelty to persons in the death of her husband.
Nancy Roy was charged for leaving her husband at home on January 11, 2003, when he was either dying or dead, and travelling to Las Vegas for an overnight gambling trip with her boyfriend (the couple were estranged and seeing other people, although they continued to live together and had not divorced). Roy apparently did not notice that her husband had died until the morning after returning from her gambling trip.
Roy told police that her husband wasn’t feeling well when she went to work the morning of January 11, and that she wasn’t suspicious that when she returned from work that he was “sleeping” in the exactly the same position as when she left. She claimed that she thought the foul odor she notice upon returning from Las Vegas was simply her husband’s body odor rather than a decomposing body.
After pleading guilty to cruelty to prisons, Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto told Roy,
You showed a total disregard for the welfare and dignity of another human being and that should not be tolerated in this society.
Roy’s boyfriend, Thomas Caves, told the Hartford Courant that Roy plead guilty in order to get the whole mess behind her.
Sources:
Wife sentenced for ignoring ill husband. Associated Press, January 21, 2004.
Widow’s friend speaks out. David Owens, Hartford Courant, January 23, 2004.