Story originally printed in the Tomah Journal or online at www.tomahjournal.com
Published - Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Corpse found in Necedah home
NECEDAH — Two people have been charged after a Juneau County sheriff’s deputy found a family living in a home with the body of a 90-year-old woman decomposing on the bathroom toilet.
Tammy D. Lewis, 35, and Alan A. Bushey, 57, both of Necedah, each were charged with two felony counts of causing mental harm to a child, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday. Lewis also faces one count of obstructing police.
The two, who are also known as Sister Mary Bernadett and Bishop John Peter Bushey, along with the dead woman, Magdeline Alvina Middlesworth, were part of a small Bible-based church led by Bushey, Juneau County Sheriff Brent Oleson said.
Investigators are trying to determine if they were defrauding Middlesworth, Oleson said, and additional charges against the two are “a very real possibility.” He said there is evidence Middles-worth provided financial support to the church and to Lewis and her family.
Lewis and Middlesworth were not related, he said, but had been living together with Lewis’ 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son about 3 1/2 years.
Oleson declined to call the church a cult but said “I guess in my mind I don’t know of any faith that sanctioned his teachings.”
Bushey had been living in the area about 11 years, Oleson said, did not have outside employment and had built a chapel on the back of his home, which is about a half-mile from where Middlesworth and Lewis lived. He said Bushey’s church had few members; only eight were at a Mass about two months ago.
He said Bushey’s church was not affiliated with the Queen of the Holy Rosary Mediatrix of Peace Shrine, which is less than a mile from Middlesworth’s home. The shrine itself is not a recognized part of the Catholic Church.
Rowina Arbanas, who lives two houses from the Lewis home, said she never got to know the family even though they had lived there for four years.
“I would say hello to them because we’re neighbors and that’s what neighbors do,” she said. “But they would never respond.”
Arbanas said she would see Lewis, her children and the elderly woman walking up and down the street, doing what looked like a religious procession. “They always wore pilgrim-like clothes and the women wore white veils,” she said.
“I always thought something was strange over there, since nobody seems to know them around here,” Arbanas said. “That always seemed fishy.”
Kevin George, who moved directly across from the Lewis house in February, said his neighbors were very quiet and kept to themselves. He said he saw the elderly woman a few times in the yard and occasionally would see the children walking down the street.
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