Michigan Woman Kept Her Starving Sister Locked in a Closet: 'She Was Skin and Bones'

A Michigan woman who authorities say kept her deaf and mute adult sister locked in a closet with no water or light — and a bucket to relieve herself — was convicted this week of false imprisonment and other charges, PEOPLE confirms.

A jury in Shiawassee County, Michigan, also found 46-year-old Candy Lawson guilty of embezzlement and vulnerable adult abuse. Prosecutors say Lawson misappropriated her sister’s Social Security disability insurance funds and kept her in a closet in her home in Corunna, Michigan, until a police officer found her in July 2015.

Lawson remains in the county jail. Her sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 27.

“The jury obviously saw through her lies and did the right thing,” Shiawassee County’s chief assistant prosecutor, Daniel Nees, tells PEOPLE of Monday’s verdict.

Lawson’s attorney maintains she is innocent and will appeal her conviction, but prosecutors tell a different story.

Nees says the victim “was found in a 4-foot-by-8-foot closet, with a bucket used as a restroom and a mattress that wouldn’t lie flat on the floor. There were remnants of a bologna sandwich desiccated and dried out in a corner. It was not a pretty picture.”

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Lawson’s sister had been locked in the room for at least five to seven days, according to Nees.

The victim, who is cognitively impaired as well as deaf and mute, weighed less than 70 lbs. when she was discovered, according to authorities. “She was skin and bones and she looked like a Holocaust survivor,” says Nees, describing a degrading scene.

“This woman was covered in filth from head to toe,” he says. “It took a better part of a week to soak her repeatedly and get the dead skin and fecal matter off her feet. That was her bathroom. She was clearly starving when police got there.”

Defense: ‘She Really Loved Her Sister’

Lawson’s attorney, Amy Husted, says her client “really loved her sister and she was the only one when their mother died in 2007 to step up. She really did try her hardest.”

The case came to light on July 9, 2015, when a handyman friend of Lawson’s contacted the Corunna Police Department after he discovered her sister while he was doing wiring work in an upstairs bedroom of their Oliver Street home.

Corunna Officer David Stone tells PEOPLE he was called to the scene around 11 p.m. and, when he asked Lawson who lived in the house, “she told us everybody but her sister.”

Stone says he could “smell a strong odor of urine” as he walked upstairs, where he came across a mattress propped up against a closet door in a bedroom.

Inside, he says, he “found this lady in a fetal position on the floor.”

“I have been a police officer for 37 years and I have seen cases like this — but not when they were still alive,” Stone says. “This is by far the worst case I have seen.”

Inside the closet, in addition to the victim, officers found a twin mattress propped up against the wall, a five-gallon pail that was about half full of urine and small bits of a bologna sandwich on a piece of cardboard.

“There was a glass in the room, but it was empty and there was no source for water or light,” says Stone. “There was no electricity at all upstairs.”

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During her trial, Lawson testified that her sister was not abused and had only been in that room for one night because of remodeling work being done on their home.

Husted, too, claims the sister was not living in a closet and was “treated like every other member of the family.”

“They had been living there for a year and most of the time she was sleeping upstairs in an 8-foot-by-10-foot bedroom and had a twin bed and a coffee table,” she says.

“They started tearing down the walls and ran into electrical problems and so they put up a temporary partition. There was exposed wiring. They put the temporary partition so she wouldn’t have access to the exposed wiring.”

A Pattern of Confinement?

Husted claims Lawson needed to lock her sister in at night because she would otherwise wander off. The woman had access to the house and the outdoors the rest of the time, Husted says.

She says Lawson also denied giving her sister a bucket to urinate in and did not restrict her access to food.

“She ate meals with the family — but when not supervised she would over-eat and throw up and that led to a weight loss,” Husted says.

However, Nees says he believes Lawson’s sister had lived in confinement before Corunna, in Laingsburg, Michigan, and in Kentucky.

“We are led to believe this was a former behavior that was started with Candy’s mother,” he says. “I think the family thought it was normal behavior.”

Nees says Lawson’s sister is now living with a family and doing really well: “She has a pet rabbit and a boyfriend and has gained more than 50 lbs.”