A Navy veteran found dead inside his apartment had been deceased for three years, and the case has left his grief-stricken family searching for answers as to how exactly this could have gone unnoticed for such a long period of time after they repeatedly reported his absence to the authorities.
Ronald Wayne White's job as a defense contractor frequently took him overseas but he would always call his mother, Doris Stevens, who lived in NY, at least every two weeks. They said Stevens confirmed to them that White was a diabetic.
And if I wasn't around them I probably wouldn't...
She said she had reported her son missing to several different police departments, but had been told that because he was an adult and travelled extensively for work, a missing person investigation could not be opened.
Stevens, who lives in Long Island, New York, said she became suspicious about three years ago when her son's phone calls stopped. Three years? And that's what I can't get past in my brain.
White was found dead in his apartment in DeSoto, Texas last week. DeSoto police found no evidence of foul play, according to Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV.
The body of Ronald Wayne White was discovered on the kitchen floor of his Dallas home by apartment complex staffers checking last week on units not using water, news station WFAA reported.
White moved into the apartment in October 2016 on a month-t0-month lease, and possibly died a couple of weeks after that, DeSoto Police Detective Pete Schulte said.
Investigators searched White's last known address but his mother, who lives in NY, did not know he had moved to DeSoto, near Dallas. The apartment sits in a relatively obscure corner of the apartment complex, and is well-sealed so any odor coming from a decaying corpse was unlikely to escape. "Because nobody wanted to help find him".
"My biggest question is, how in the world could my son have been dead in that apartment and nobody knows anything?"
"What I can tell you is it is very clear when officers entered that he had been there for a while", Detective Pete Schulte said. "I can't hardly deal with it".
White's pickup truck was found in the DeSoto Town Center's parking garage in a public parking area, so he would have received no notifications that the vehicle needed to be moved, or have gotten any parking tickets.
A medical examiner is running toxicology tests to determine a cause of death.
