Navy Vet May Have Been Dead in Apartment for 3 Years

Maintenance workers for a Texas apartment building were looking into why one apartment's water usage had been zero for an extended period—and discovered a long-dead body. Now, the mother of Navy veteran Ronald Wayne White wants answers. An officer with the DeSoto Police Department tells People the maintenance workers thought there might be a water main issue at the Dallas-area building. Upon finding White's door deadbolted, they forced their way in and on Nov. 12 "found the deceased in his kitchen on the floor" in an "advanced" state of decomposition. How advanced brought White's mother, Doris Stevens, to her knees: "for an extended period of time, up to when he was last known alive three years ago," the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office said in a statement picked up by NBC News.

It had been three years since Stevens had last spoken with her then 51-year-old son, which had alarmed her. She says her son traveled the globe as a defense contractor, but the two never went more than two or three weeks without speaking. Her concerns reached a breaking point in April 2017 when he didn't answer her birthday call. She says she tried to file a missing-person report with the Glenn Heights and Dallas police departments but was told that because he was an adult and abroad so much she couldn't file one, reports WFAA. She says she then traveled to the departments in person from Louisiana several times but wasn't given any "consideration." She was unaware that her son, who'd recently sold a home in Glenn Heights, was living in the DeSoto apartment; the complex says his bills were paid on time via automatic withdrawal. "My biggest question is, how in the world could my son have been dead in that apartment and nobody knows anything?" Stevens says. (More veterans stories.)