FARGO -- The sister-in-law of a Kindred, N.D., man who pleaded guilty to letting his mentally ill brother freeze to death in a farmhouse is "disgusted" by the light sentence Ronald Simmons received.
Simmons, 62, was sentenced Tuesday in Cass County District Court to a year of supervised probation after pleading guilty to one count of endangering his vulnerable younger brother, Bruce Simmons.
Authorities discovered Bruce Simmons' frozen body in the family's farmhouse in January 2014. His emaciated body, dressed only in a makeshift diaper, was covered in rodent bites and frostbite marks, and surrounded by garbage piled nearly ceiling-high.
Ronald Simmons told authorities he couldn't get his brother out into the world for the past five years, and had cared for him by passing him one meal a day through the farmhouse's front door.
The front door was frozen shut when authorities arrived. When they broke a window to get in, the stench and filth was bad enough to require hazmat suits.
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Ronald Simmons' attorney, Robert Hoy, told the court that Simmons believed he'd done all he could for his brother, who suffered from hoarding and other mental health problems.
Marilyn Simmons, who is the widow of Ronald and Bruce Simmons' older brother Ken, said she and her husband had no idea how ill her late brother-in-law had become until they were told by a Cass County sheriff's detective investigating the criminal case.
Marilyn Simmons believes stress and worry over the case hastened her husband's death last summer due to complications from pneumonia.
"Humiliating and shameful," she said on the phone from Arizona. "Now he gets to walk and his two brothers are dead."
Marilyn Simmons said Ronald had barred her husband from seeing his youngest brother since at least 2012, and although the couple called authorities at least once because of Bruce's mental health problems, nothing was ever resolved.
She said Ronald Simmons resisted when they suggested that the family seek residential treatment for Bruce.
"The deal was always pride," she said. "It was, 'No, we're going to take care of our own.'"
But taking care of his own turned out to be the one thing Ronald Simmons could not, or would not do, according to prosecutors.
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With Bruce's mess taking over first the kitchen, then the bathroom, the garbage, human waste and rodents filling the farmhouse eventually forced Ronald out to the shed, where there was no running water but there was heat.
The elder Simmons tried to fix the furnace in the house, Hoy said, but it soon broke again.
"I don't think you could have found a furnace man who would have gone in there," Hoy said. "It's just a tragic, tragic deal-for everybody involved."
