DaytonDailyNews.com

MIDDLETOWN — An elderly Middletown woman known for her intelligence and eccentric behavior was barred from returning to her home on Grand Avenue after it was found piled with garbage and crawling with rats.

"I could hear them gnawing," said Middletown police patrolman Kathy Jones, who entered the home after Lila McClure was taken to Atrium Medical Center Monday, Aug. 4. "The ammonia smell was so strong it was actually burning my nose and around my mouth."

Jones saw numerous rats, including one that was half decomposed, and said McClure had surrounded her bed with packages of Decon rat poison. "It was like a fortress of Decon," she said.

The Middletown Health Department declared the home uninhabitable and Adult Protective Services is working to find McClure new shelter, according to the police report.

McClure, 73, battled the Warren County Combined Health District for years before she sold her home in Lebanon and moved to Middletown in 1996.

The daughter of a past Warren County Commissioner, McClure — whose closest living relative is a brother in California — kept chickens at her home in Lebanon and was often seen driving around the city with the birds packed into her red compact car, said Warren County Commissioner Pat South.

Her problems in Middletown go back to at least 2005 when a neighbor went to police with concerns about her well being. McClure, who had sores and bite marks on her arms and legs, refused to let officers into her home, according to the report. The officers notified the city health department and Adult Protective Services after speaking with McClure on her porch, which they said "reeked of urine" and was swarming with roaches.

Living conditions horrified neighbors

After years of trying to gain entrance to Lila McClure's home on Grand Avenue police, health officials and neighbors finally got their open door.

An EMS medic taking McClure to the hospital for back pain Monday, Aug. 4, failed to secure the door, said neighbor Alisa Hauser. Seeing her opportunity, Hauser called police.

What they found inside the elderly woman's rented home was horrifying and heartbreaking for the neighbors who've been calling the Middletown Health Department and Adult Protective Services for years with their concerns.

"If I had only known," said Hauser, who tried to help McClure, buying the 73-year-old woman shoes and taking her meals. "I feel so damn guilty."

"It took three years, but gee whiz it finally happened," said Virginia Kessler who lives nearby.

A barred door

Officials from both agencies spoke with McClure over the years about her living conditions but she refused to let investigators inside.

"We never got past the porch," said Jerome Kearns, assistant director of Butler County Jobs and Family Services, which includes Adult Protective Services. "We have no legal authority to enter that house."

McClure's case reveals the tension inherent to Adult Protective Services. The agency investigates allegations of abuse, exploitation and neglect of the elderly, including self-neglect, Kearns said. But investigators and case workers also have to respect the choices made by competent individuals, no matter how bizarre they seem. "What we wrestle with every day is if we have a competent person just making poor choices," Kearns said. "We're trying to respect a person's dignity — the fact that they are an adult."

The health department's nursing director talked to McClure within the last two months, but ran into the same issues, said city Health Commissioner David Winfough.

"She'd stand on the front porch and wouldn't let anybody in," he said. "We have to have pretty good proof before we can go in."

But police observed rats inside the home March 21, leaving neighbors to wonder what more proof was needed. They worried rats coming from the home would harm their children and watched McClure mix cat food with mayonnaise and eat it on her porch.

"We've called the health department again and again and again," Hauser said. "The cats were being chased by the rats. One charged my daughter right here."

An eccentric genius

Those who know her say McClure is intelligent but eccentric. Warren County Commissioner Pat South recalled a garage sale years ago where McClure spent the better part of a day reading a book South was selling — written in Chinese.

South's fellow commissioner Mike Kilburn recalled a meeting McClure interrupted 26 years ago.

"She had on bib overalls, gum boots and a shotgun," he said.

More recently, police found her "coherent and highly educated" and Kearns said officials at Atrium Medical Center declared her competent.

But why would a competent person live amid rats and filth, Hauser and her neighbors want to know.

They said the rats fleeing the home during this week's attempts at extermination walked up and begged for food.

"The rats were pets," said Shelly Ellenburg, another neighbor. "You could film a horror movie in there."

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2511 or dwells@coxohio.com.