DA: Mother Forced Mentally Disabled Daughter Laura Cummings to Eat Feces and Die

BUFFALO, N.Y. (CBS/AP) Laura Cummings lived a short, tortured life filled with unspeakable abuse at the hands of her mother and half-brother, Eva Cummings and Luke Wright, according to a grand jury indictment returned Feb. 26.

Eva Cummings, 51, and her son face a total of 15 charges in the January 2010 suffocation death of 23-year-old Laura Cummings. The indictment reads like a macabre list of torture and abuse.

Police allege that over the last few months of Laura's life, Eva Cummings and her son Wright, 31, shackled Laura to a metal chair with a sack over her head, brutally sodomized her with a broomstick and at times shoved her face in her own feces.

"Starting in November, there’s a significant escalation of her debasement as a human being," Senior Trial Counsel Thomas M. Finnerty of the DA’s Office said. "It was happening on a daily or nightly basis."

Finnerty, who has prosecuted a number of heinous crimes in his 17 years in the DA’s office, called it "the worst case I’ve ever seen."

"It’s sadistic, and it’s allegedly sustained over a long period of time," he said.

The Cummings household, in North Collins, N.Y., and prior to that in Olean, both just outside of Buffalo, was well-known to Child Protective Services, Patricia Wright, 27, Laura's half sister, told the Buffalo News.

She said she reported abuse to Erie County Child Protective Services and Erie County Family Court more than a decade ago. Patricia Wright said she, herself, was physically abused for years, resulting in a broken ankle and cracked vertebrae in her back.

"Chaos. Almost like a living hell. No child should ever have to go through what we went through," Patricia Wright, told CBS affiliate WIBV when asked what the apartment was like.

Mother and son also are accused of unlawfully imprisoning Laura Cummings because of her mental disability — an elevated hate crime charge.

Eva Cummings could face a possible sentence of 83 years to life on five charges, while her son could face 142 years to life on 10 charges, prosecutors said.