Mystery surrounded death of dementia patient before caretaker’s daughter called cops
The body of a 70-year-old woman had been stuffed in a trash bag and lying in the corner of a Bronx apartment for several days — with her caretaker and the caretaker’s husband living there all the while — until the caretaker’s own daughter called 911.
The discovery of Margie Ann Williams-Collins’ body appeared to cap a surreal series of events leading up to the dementia patient’s death, the caretaker’s daughter told the Daily News on Monday.
Williams-Collins had been living with her caretaker Inga Bearden for about a year when the caretaker’s daughter, Destiny Butler, became concerned about the elderly woman’s whereabouts.
After several days of getting vague answers about Williams-Collins, Butler, 24, decided to go to the Mott Haven apartment for herself, she told The News.
Upon showing up to the unit along the Grand Concourse near E. 140th St. on March 21, Butler made a stunning discovery.
“It was in the corner,” she said of the body. “It was on the floor in the corner surrounded by shopping carts, and so what wound up happening was I said, ‘Look, I’m not Mom. I’m going to call the cops.’
“So that’s exactly what I did. The neighbors did not call the cops. I walked downstairs. I was in shock and I called the cops.”
A day later, cops arrested Butler’s mother and charged her with concealment of a corpse, a felony, police said.
A criminal complaint filed in connection with the case stated the body was concealed sometime between March 18 and March 21.
Police said Bearden, 51, had help hiding the body from another individual, who has not been apprehended.
According to the criminal complaint, Bearden found Williams-Collins dead on a cot in the living room, moved the cot, tied her ankles, wrapped her body in a trash bag, put it on the floor in the living room and covered it with a blanket.
Butler — who’s engaged to Williams-Collins’ son — said her mom told her an entirely different tale. Butler’s fiance joined her on the revelatory visit to the apartment but left before police arrived, Butler said.
“What I was told after I got there was that she had attempted to kill herself and succeeded,” Butler said. “She had apparently eaten silica packets, the packets that you get in shoes. She ate a bunch of those and then was in the bathroom for five hours. They said that [Williams-Collins] died of natural causes, but I’m not really sure what’s going on.”
In the days leading up to the discovery, Butler said she had been getting the runaround about Williams-Collins’ whereabouts. She was told the woman was staying with a nurse friend, but she became suspicious when she couldn’t get any contact information.
Butler said Williams-Collins’ death marked the end of a troubled saga that saw her move to the Bronx from Georgia, where a bitter divorce left her without a place to live.
She moved in with relatives first in Queens and then in the Bronx before dealing with a series of health problems, Butler said.
She described Williams-Collins as an Air Force veteran who worked as a pharmacy technician.
“I want people to know that she was distraught over events in her life and that even though she led a very traumatic life, she led a very eventful one and that the Airforce was blessed to have her,” Butler said.
The woman deserved better than to have her body left in a bag, she added.
“The way that I see it is that she should have called [police] immediately,” Butler said of her criminally charged mother. “I have no sympathy for her.”
