COLUMBIA, Tenn. (WKRN) – A Maury County man is behind bars after investigators said he lived in a home with his dead 93-year-old mother for several weeks.
The elderly woman’s body was found during a welfare check Monday.
William Blair Cathey, 60, is charged with criminally negligent homicide, willful neglect of an adult and abuse of a corpse.
According to neighbors, Mary Lou Cathey, a retired school teacher, had lived with her son in the home for 15 years.
Neighbor Herman “Butch” Fuller described William Cathey as “different, weird, not friendly and just an odd person.”
“When I’d meet him at the mailbox I’d say hello and he’d just turn around and walk off,” Fuller told News 2.
Fuller said he reported Cathey to the codes department in the past for not keeping up his property.
Neighbors also told News 2 that at one point Cathey had his elderly mother living in a camper with no running water in the backyard.
“I had to call the police and get them out there because it was not sanitary and they made him move her into the house,” said Fuller.
According to Fuller, Cathey then enclosed the garage, which became his mother’s living quarters.
Mary Lou Cathey was reportedly in poor health and rarely left the home. Fuller said sometimes she would go with her son to the grocery store when her check came each month.
“She was a real feeble lady,” he recalled. “She had to have a walker to get in and out and it would take her 10 minutes to get from the house to the car and get inside, and he never helped her.”
Fuller told News 2 he had not seen the woman in at least six months.
“I started to call police myself because I knew something was wrong. I thought she’d moved into a nursing home or maybe she passed away,” said Fuller.
Still, they were shocked and saddened to learn of her death.
“I was devastated. It would be bad enough if it was a regular person, but it’s your mother. You’ve been living with her your whole life and she’s taken care of you and you treat her like that. I just couldn’t understand it myself. There is no respect at all. She took care of him but he didn’t take care of her,” Fuller said.
Fuller told News 2 William Cathey’s wife also lived in the home, but he hasn’t seen her in a while.
Mary Cathey was a longtime school teacher with Maury County Public Schools and her late husband was a principal.
Cathey was hired by the district in the 1955-1956 school year and worked until the 1991-1992 school year when she retired.
She taught at J. R. Baker Elementary School for 30 years.
“She was a genteel lady and she was a teacher who was admired by all her students,” former Principal Eloise Cheatham told News 2.
Neighbors said William Cathey was Mary’s only child. He is being held in the Maury County jail on $45,000 bond.
An autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death.