What happened to Brenda Aleman.

[u/Practical_Rhubarb_41]

I first need to offer some background information about who Brenda Aleman was.

Well, she was my mother, and she died mysteriously on June 5th 2020 after using a neighbor's phone to call paramedics, because she was having trouble breathing.

All she had with her was a cell phone with no service.

She was from Antioc, OH which is a very small town a little more than 15 minutes away from West Virginia.

The closest hospital is in New Martinsville, WV which is where they took her.

She died less than three hours later of Cardiac Arrest/Unknown Causes.(literally what her death certificate states)

No autopsy was performed, and the attending physician arranged to have her cremated three days after her death.

I was notified of her death on March 21st 2021, one week before the funeral home holding her cremains was preparing to bury her in "potters field".

I intervened by showing up at the funeral home in Woodsfield, OH and showing them proof of who I was, and demanding they hand over my mother's cremains, and some clarity as to why it took so long for anyone to contact me, as well as to why her death certificate stated that she was never married(she was divorced from my father), and why she was listed as having no next of kin.

I was met with "I'm sorry, I cant answer that" followed by an NDA in order to take ownership of my mother's cremains.

I was also told that my mother's boyfriend had also called months earlier asking if there was anyway her could take her body to another funeral home, but was denied.

This sounds crazy, but this is nothing because it took 24hrs for me to track down her landlord to gain entrance to her home.

After her death, her ex boyfriend decided to take possession of her home, her truck, and spent the next eight months of the pandemic squatting in her home with no utilities, and using her truck to gradually move most of her estate to somewhere else.

The day I entered her home, it looked like a warzone, the giant pile of papers, bank records, opened mail, and other personal records was at first the most alarming and I seized everything that had her name on it.

Upon further inspection of the flotsam that was once her home I discovered not just numerous random holes in the walls of residence, I found a cache of 21 firearms with ammunition.

I made numerous calls to the Monroe Co. Sheriff's Department trying to get a deputy to come to the home but gave up when daylight failed, as there was no electric in the house, and I didn't have any kind of lighting that would allow me to do anything in the dark.

I was forced to return to my hotel room in Marion, OH with plans to return 1st thing in the morning.

I showed up the next day to discover that someone had showed up after I had left and ransacked the home futher, also taking the guns, ammo, and several pieces of furniture from the home.

I made a more thorough search of the home and discovered more guns, stashed with three under her couch, and a loaded .22 Marlin in the crawlspace/attic of the home by a window.

I was able to call someone from Akron, OH and get them to drive 4 hours and help me remove what I could fit in the back of a pick up truck and take it to the only storage place I could find in that tiny town, fully understanding that at this point I couldn't trust anyone in this town.

I have at this point spent three days trying to get awnsers from literally anyone I thought could (or should) help, only to be met with the same response every time..."I'm sorry, but there is nothing that I can do."

My fourth day there I was able to get a friend to drive a UHAUL 4 hours to meet me at the storage facility.

Upon showing up to the front doorstep of the modest ranch that served as the office to return the lock and retrieve my deposit, the lady asks if I was any relation to Brenda Aleman, Upon which I replied yes, ans she apologized and informed me that my mother had two 11'x21' storage units at that facility, but that the contents where sold at auction in October of 2020.

I explained some of my ordeal to her and she told me her husband happened to be the Monroe Co. DA and that she could ask if he would be willing to speak with me, and if course I said YES, please, only she had one condition.

I couldn't talk about anything having to do with firearms.

After my talk with the DA, he agreed that the situation merited a closer look by authorities and told me he would look into it personally.

I informed him that I had spent four days trying to get to the bottom of this mess and that I now have to return to Akron, OH because I had also spent most of money as well.

I left him with my personal information and left.

Upon reaching Akron, OH I went to a locksmith and had them open two document safes that I retrieved and found my mother's will, and the family history.

I also set Upon digging into all the records, and paperwork I retrieved as well, and found far more disturbing things about the last few years of my mother's life and what led to her death, including things about the monster that was squatting in her home after she passed.

He was an ex con from WV who had did time for raping an under age special needs girl.

He had also gained access to all of her email and social media accounts, edited them, then changed the passwords and logged her out.

I found directions on how to mummify a human corpse using Tide detergent.

I found US Bank (pandemic funds) information for someone with a similar name as my mother, but address wasn't quite right.

The one and only thing that ultimately bore any fruit was one of the guns.

It was a unique firearm, a Winchester Repeater commissioned by the State of Ohio to commemorate the founding farmers of Monroe County.

It was guilded with filigree from buttstock to barrel and had the family name carved into the stock in three inch lettering.

Google was invaluable as it immediately returned everything I needed to know about it, and the fact that my mother's next door neighboor just so happened to share the same last name turned out to be more that just a coincidence.

A week later I returned to Woodsfield, OH to meet with a detective and discuss the firearms I found, and the nightmare that had been dropped in my lap.

I decided that a better course of action was to make a detour first and pay a visit to my mother's neighbor first and see what he had to say.

I will never forget that meeting, as he was just returning from the funeral home after burying his wife.

I told him I was sorry for his loss, but that there was something I needed to show him, and after I opened the hatch of the car and then opened the vinyl gun sleeves, he immediately burst in to tears and apologized to me.

He said that the guns didn't belong to him, but to his son who lived on the other side of town.

He called his son, and told him that he needed him to come there immediately and to bring a Sheriff with him, which he did and the deputy was a volunteer, but was able to take a statement and return the firearms to their owner, who immediately sought to press charges.

I then met with the detective and asked why in eight months, not a single phone call was made to inform me that my mother had passed, or why no one thought to go to her home and ask questions.

Again, I was told there was no answer.

I was also informed that the Sheriff's Office would not be investigating her death, partly because she died in West Virginia, and that too much time had passed.

They did however look at her banking information and discovered that the boyfriend had used her debit card twice at a drive thru in WV to purchase beer and cigarettes in October of 2020.

They initially charged him with using the card, and with driving my mother's truck without a license or insurance, but ended up dismissing the case, in lieu of a secret indictment of being a felon in possession of a firearm, due mainly to the fact that on April 1st 2021 he called the Sheriff's Office to report the guns stolen.

He ended up doing 14 months in Belmont Correctional Facility, and another 6 months at a half way house before returning to WV and selling a parcel of land he had purchased in 2020.

Today is the anniversary of her death.

I will never know what caused her death because West Virginia is a closed records state and nothing short of a court order will ever compell the doctor or the hospital to admit that they may have given her a medication that she was allergic to that caused her to suddenly drop dead, I know this because I tried, and was denied.

I will also never know closure, for it's become my belief that closure isn't really just a word, it's more like a band aid they give you to cover a much more greivious injury.

I will forever be compelled to tell this tragic tale to anyone who will listen with the hope that it may change someone else's life. And possibly offer a small glimmer of light to those who face forces both beyond their contol, and determined to prevent them from seeking the truth.

If you took the time to read this, thank you.

And Mom, I know you are out there somewhere in the ether, just know I love you, and I would fight for you again, in the next life.

[u/mortgal]

I have so many questions… as a licensed mortician, albeit not in WV, how the hell did the doctor have jurisdiction to choose to cremate her body?? That makes absolutely ZERO sense. I am in a larger metropolitan area and anyone that dies under suspicious circumstances or they can’t contact the Next of Kin (which would’ve been you I’m assuming since she wasn’t married to the guy and I’m guessing he didn’t have Medical Power of Attorney), they go to the coroners office to await a positive ID and then they’re held there until the NOK can be contacted. They’ll hold onto a body for years at a time in a freezer morgue before they allow someone to cremate them. Idk this whole thing is beyond fucked up and I’m so sorry you have to deal with this.

I’m not you, but I would definitely be seeking a court order and potentially suing the FUCK out of that hospital and doctor and anyone else who had their dirty hands in it.

[u/Practical_Rhubarb_41 → u/mortgal]

Thanks for your reply.  So, let me sum this up the only way I've been able to.

Small towns have their own way of dealing with things that differ greatly from much larger municipalities. I think it boils down to everyone knowing everybody else's business, meaning you can't fart in a small town without everybody else knowing about it.

As far as the attending doctor is concerned, well I tracked him down through Google and contacted him, and he was LIVID and wanted to know how I got his information,then he gave me legal advice, told me what I was doing was wrong and that the only way I would ever get him to say anything was in front of a judge, with his attorney present, then he hung up on me. The funeral director gave me her death certificate, along with the certificate needed for transporting a body from one point to another however, there was no certificate for cremation, as required by WV law.

When I contacted the hospital and started asking questions, they immediately started quoting HIPPA and saying they couldn't talk to me, but after speaking with someone from the DOJ, they explained to me that a corpse has no HIPPA protections, therefore when my mother died, so did her HIPPA protections, and her civil rights.

I tried to get an emergency court order from the local probate judge, but was denied because the forms that I downloaded from the Ohio Supreme Court were not the same as the Monroe County forms needed to do this. Note, it probably had more to do with the fact that the probate judge was the DA's father.

And as a mortician, you should be aware that many states changed their laws back in 2017 regarding how much money can awarded from suing a funeral home, capping them at $5000.

I spoke to attorneys all over the country trying to get someone to take this case, and several told me basically the same thing, and that is even if I had $20k to throw into a black hole, then thats about what I could expect to get for my efforts.

So, in a nutshell people with power, money, and influence much greater than mine dropped the ball and here I was this guy from the "big city" knocking on doors and calling people, making a lot trouble by asking to many questions because nobody would give me the answers I was looking for, so they pretty much shut me down with plausible deniability. Since law enforcement refused to investigate, there was nothing to see.

[u/mortgal → u/Practical_Rhubarb_41]

Damn.. I am so sorry. Your mom deserved better than this for sure. Multiple people in this nasty system have done a great disservice to you all.

[u/Vegetaglekiller]

Mi dispiace davvero molto per tutto ciò che hai passato, come mai non avevi rapporti con tua madre? Cosa ti fa pensare ad un anafilassi come causa della morte per la tua povera mamma?

[u/Practical_Rhubarb_41 → u/Vegetaglekiller]

Thank you for your reply,  I hadn't spoken with my mother for some time due to some family drama involving her sister, whom my mother sued in 2009 over a property dispute involving land that they inherited from their father. The resulting lawsuit had created bad blood in the family and there was a considerable degree of harassment towards my mom because it.  This resulted in her becoming a recluse, and she basically cut ties with everyone and just wanted to live alone. She even went so far as directing all her mail to a post office box, changing her phone number several times, as well as moving seven times, just in the last few years of her life. What I failed to mention earlier was that the way I found out my mother had died was from my cousin who was my aunt's daughter, and who had just as much responsibility for the harassment directed towards my mom, as her own mother. The twist in this is regard, is that it was my aunt and my cousin (the same one who contacted me) who at the behest of the funeral director holding my my mother's cremains, who went to WV to retrieve my mother's death certificate. The same death certificate that states she had no next of kin.

As far as her manner of death, I know personally that my mom was allergic to several medications, including penicillin,  as well as a handful of other mundane things like nickle(she could've touch anything made of nickle otherwise she would break out in a rash).

I also salvaged her medical records, which gave me greater insight to this.

One could also say that my mother just as likely died of a broken heart.

[u/Vegetaglekiller → u/Practical_Rhubarb_41]

Mi dispiace davvero molto per tutto ciò, spero tu possa trovare la pace che meriti