Sibling Sickos Preside Over Mother's Demise, Then Tip-Toe Over Her Corpse For Seven More Years

For more than seven years, Diane and John Simmeck Jr. made regular trips to their elderly mother's modest, wood-frame home overlooking Lake Beseck in Connecticut. But they never told a soul about their visits or their secret: Their mother, Ann Simmeck, had died over eight years ago and they had left her corpse rotting on the living room floor.

Most neighbors thought that the elderly woman had moved away and that the house was abandoned. They were shocked to learn in June that what had been the Simmeck family's house had become Ann Simmeck's tomb.

A state medical examiner has concluded that she died of natural causes, but there was little to go on other than her mummified remains, which were so decomposed it took a DNA sample from Michael to confirm her identity.

Diane Simmeck, now 42, and John J. Simmeck Jr., 51, spoke freely about their regular pilgrimages to the house where they grew up, even about stepping over their mother's insect-infested remains. Their confessions offered fascinating glimpses into the bizarre lives of a brother and sister who have been investigated by police for alleged scams in at least three states and charged criminally in two.

Extensive interviews exposed the lurid details of the macabre duo's relationship and the events leading up to the elderly woman's death. The early lives of John Jr. and Diane were dominated by an alcoholic father and various bouts of physical and mental abuse. After their parents were divorced in the mid-90's, the brother-sister duo moved with their mother to New Hampshire. Once there, John and Diane would sometimes pass themselves off as husband and wife. John Jr. told investigators he was "attracted" to Diane because she reminded him of his mother. "Diane had other 'boyfriends' in the past but ended up with him since she relied on him so much," he later told investigators.

In 1999, however, Diane and John Jr. attracted the attention of New Hampshire police when they checked their mother into a hospital with a broken hip. They identified themselves as a married couple, "R.J. and Diane Sinik," even though Ann Simmeck said the two were her children. Suspicious hospital staff members notified police, who took an immediate interest in the scratched out vehicle identification number on their 1968 Chevy Blazer. What made police even more suspicious was the refusal of John Jr. and Diane to look at the camera while being booked by Keene police; the "small scribble which revealed no letters or discernible meaning" in their signatures; and that they forgot not only their Social Security numbers, but where they were born.

Events took a sudden turn when 71-year-old Ann Simmeck, by this point suffering from dementia and Parkinson's, simply left the hospital-- apparently without being officially discharged. She was reported missing, but efforts to find her failed.

Diane Simmeck told police she last saw her mother alive back at the Middlefield house in the winter of 1999. Diane said she noticed that her mother was "definitely deteriorating" and didn't think she had much time to live." What did she do next? She cut off the old lady's phone. Meanwhile, John Jr. was in jail in New Hampshire, facing charges of tampering with a vehicle identification number and making false statements on documents.

On her next visit to the house, Diane was greeted by a foul smell. Her mother lay dead on the living room floor covered in bugs-- it would later take two plastic vials to contain the insects collected from her body. Upon learning the news about their mother from Diane, John Jr. told her "there was nothing he could do until he got out of jail. To protect their secret, John Jr. continued over the years to pay the property taxes on the house, and also the electric bill because the freezer was stuffed with food. They cut off the water, however; Ann Simmeck wouldn't be showering. To ward off the curious, the duo posted signs in the door windows, front and back: "NO TRESSPASSING FOR ANY REASON IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY, 24-HOUR VIDEO SECURITY."

It wasn't until 2001 that John Jr. was out of prison and legally permitted to leave New Hampshire so he could go see his mother's remains. He and his sister entered through the main door and upon entering he saw his mother lying on the living room floor, 'dead and badly decomposed.'" Over the next six years, whenever they visited the house, they entered and exited through the same door — a ground-level entrance that was next to the garage. Diane later told police that she assumed at some point that she and her brother would be able to get their mother cremated.

Though they went to great lengths to hide their mother's death and evade authorities, John Jr. and Diane Simmeck again came to the attention of police in September 2005, when Diane was caught trying to use her mother's Social Security number and a fraudulent birth certificate in an application for a Vermont driver's license. At that point, Vermont authorities asked John Jr. the whereabouts of his mother — who had been dead for roughly six years at that point. He responded that Ann Simmeck had left New Hampshire on her own accord years earlier, and that he hadn't heard from her since.

During all this time, John and Diane's estranged brother Michael had made inquiries to several states as to the possible death of his mother. Though he no longer owned the house, the long-divorced father of the family, John Sr., periodically visited to mow the overgrown lawn. But he never went inside. He had no idea all those years that his ex-wife lay inside, dead. By the summer of 2007, her remains were reduced to a mummy.

Michael finally hired a lawyer in his efforts to collect some of his and his father's belongings from her home. Armed with court paperwork listing items he and his father were entitled to retrieve, Michael persuaded Officer Scott Halligan of the Middlefield Resident State Trooper's office to allow him to enter the house. With Halligan present, Michael broke in through the lower-level garage. Halligan was first up the stairs and came upon Ann Simmeck's remains.

Investigators noted that her skull rested on a gray pillow with red trim alongside a sofa. She was wearing her daughter's blue nylon jacket with the word "Foxettes" embroidered on the back. A July 24, 1995, Money section of USA Today lay open across her right lower leg. She wore tan pants and one slipper. She had just three teeth left when she died.

As reported by the Courant.com, the story also has a thoroughly sickening ending. Though John and Diane admitted they knowingly let their mother's body decompose and did nothing about it, the state law that makes failing to report a death a crime does not require a private citizen to contact officials when a relative is discovered dead, and the disposal statute applies only when a body has been officially reported dead.