AP via RawStory has the article, which has repeated uses of the words "tragic", "sad", "heartbreaking", and descriptions of abuse, neglect and torture.

Ms. Dixon, from my read of the article, was mentally retarded, 6 months pregnant, and being tortured and abused on a daily basis over a nebulous period of four to eight weeks until being found dead, apparently due to overwhelming infection from multiple untreated injuries.

Hayes watched the autopsy and found her injuries disturbing. X-rays revealed roughly 30 BBs lodged in her. Deep-tissue burns covered about one-third of her body — her face, her chest, her arms and feet — and left her severely dehydrated. Her face and body showed signs of prolonged abuse. Many of her wounds were infected.

None of the injuries, Hayes said, proved singly fatal to Dixon. Her system already was taxed by her unborn baby.

The lady was tortured to death. Plain and simple.

The words "hot glue gun" are mentioned in other articles. More of the story here
Abused and injured, the injuries neglected, poorly fed. It's evidence of a special kind of cruelty.

But... there is something worse here.

One might think that there would be people who work to oversee such things, to monitor them.

Ms. Dixon received social security benefit checks, and without further clarification it appears they were either sent directly to her, or she was otherwise not regularly visited by any sort of person who had any sort of function similar to the one I described in the introduction.

She lived with a person named Michelle Riley, who is now one of the people charged with Ms. Dixon's death.

Riley and Dixon, police said, had lived in Quincy, a Mississippi River town about 100 miles north of St. Louis, Mo. Quincy is where Riley worked as a coordinator for a regional center that helps the developmentally disabled with housing and other services. Dixon was a client.

This lady did a job similar to the one I have done, but it appears she used her sway over a person with the mind of a child, and let her get abused and tortured to death. She siphoned off her disability income and let her slowly die.

It's just heinous.

The gutting of government-provided social services and the nearly wild-west atmosphere in the privatization of these sorts of services sets a stage for this crap to recur anywhere.

This hasn't saved money, and it has not prevented heinous abuses.

Any one of her injuries described above should have/could have/and likely would have been caught if she had more responsible oversight... like regular monthly visits.

This is a seemingly needless intrusion, but when Medicaid is paying the bills they have papers to fill out, boxes to check and signatures to collect.

In the case of social security checks, this too is just ridiculous. She's getting a check for disability. It's HARD to get that check so she was most probably mentally retarded and documented to be so. People knew.

If she qualified for the check she most likely did not possess the ability to handle the check - it's almost mutually exclusive. Somebody would have had to have been established as a payee.

If that person was Ms. Riley...absolutely dastardly, man.

One often hears the cliché "falling through the cracks": the "cracks" are actually chasms. Chasms excavated by the gutting of government social services.

The treatment of Mental Retardation, Developmental Disabilities and Mental illness and, of course, subsets of the general healthcare debate, as well as a large part of the Medicaid-cutting focus Bush has.

In the scope of spending TRILLIONS on a "war" of specious origins and intents, funding proper social services properly would be a tiny drop in the bucket. Lives would be saved and enhanced. LOTS of jobs would be created.

But no... we have countries to bomb and people to kill. Can't be helping poor retarded Americans.

"She didn't deserve to die the way she did"

This could have been prevented.