A hospice worker in Iowa has learned her fate after she let her elderly patient rot in her own filth, only moving the woman “one time a day” while she was stuck in her care.
Audrey Engler was sentenced to serve not more than 10 years in the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women for the crime, according to Des Moines County court records viewed by Law & Crime. The sentence includes time that she has already served in jail.
Engler, 25, was also ordered to pay a fine of $1,500. However, the court ultimately agreed to suspend the fine “[b]ased upon a review of the Defendant’s financial circumstances.”
Engler pleaded guilty during a court hearing in February to intentional dependent adult abuse resulting in serious injury. She entered the plea after she was charged in December 2025 and placed in the Des Moines County Correctional Center in Burlington, Iowa.
The unnamed elderly woman’s mattress caught fire five months earlier and she was hospitalized before she was moved into hospice care in July 2025, per the criminal complaint. Engler was assigned to look after the victim by in-home care company, Vibrance Homecare, which was paid for her continuing care.
The elderly woman paid for the rent and bills in her apartment, and she also allegedly asked her case manager to buy her clothing items, noting “all her money was going to Engler.”
The woman died on August 14, 2025, and the Burlington Police Department launched an investigation into her death one day later. Investigators eventually learned that the woman had not been receiving her medicine, while Engler also encouraged a nurse to reduce her in-home visits with the woman because she insisted the patient was being “adequately” taken care of.
However, authorities said that the home was messy and had “stuff all over the ground” so that “a person couldn’t find a place to sit or stand.”
Officials also said in the complaint that the woman had “burns on her back, had ulcers on her buttocks, bed sores [and] a full catheter bag” at the time of her death, while it was also determined that she was even “sitting in feces” at one point.
A 33-year-old mother told a judge last week she “does everything for her children” just before he sentenced her to 15 years in prison for letting her disabled daughter slowly starve to death. Through a translator, and with tears streaming from her eyes, Doraelia Espinoza told Judge Bruce Fox she “never wanted” her 16-year-old daughter […]
Police said the women would text Engler when she needed something, though it was discovered the caretaker often “wouldn’t respond for hours.”
While speaking to authorities amid the investigation, Engler admitted that she only moved the woman “one time a day.” She also admitted that she “could have taken care of the dependent adult better and could have checked on her more and could have had more compassion for her,” according to the complaint.
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