Upstate man charged after mother found dead in shed, neglected for months

Nancy Polizzi was found dead in a shed on Polizzi Road in Carlisle after, investigators say, she had been living there since August 2024 without running water or heat. Her son, Joseph Polizzi, 64, now faces felony charges in a case that has exposed how easily an elderly person can disappear into plain sight on a rural Schoharie County property.

New York State Police said troopers responded on Feb. 23, 2025, to the property for a report of an unattended death. Nancy Polizzi, 89, was discovered in the shed, and investigators said that in the weeks before her death she could not walk, feed herself or speak. An autopsy conducted the next day at Ellis Hospital by Dr. Bernard Ng ruled the death a homicide. The cause was sepsis from untreated gangrenous decubitus ulceration, or bedsores.

Joseph Polizzi was arrested on April 16, 2026, and charged with first-degree endangering the welfare of a vulnerable elderly person and criminally negligent homicide. Police said he was his mother’s primary caretaker and failed to provide proper medical care or seek treatment on her behalf. He was booked into the Schoharie County Correctional Facility on $5,000 cash bail, $10,000 bond or a $50,000 partially secured bond before later no longer being held there.

The property itself, according to local reporting, includes a home, multiple sheds and a barn, and neighbors described it as a compound. People who lived nearby said they had only spoken to Joseph Polizzi a handful of times and that he was quiet and mostly stayed on his land. One nearby property owner said he had never seen Nancy Polizzi around the compound at all.

The case raises a hard question for Carlisle, Schoharie County and communities across Central New York: how could an 89-year-old woman be living in a shed for months, without heat or water, while unable to move, eat or speak, and still not reach a doctor, a neighbor or a public agency sooner? The details point to more than one failure, from the people closest to her to the broader network meant to notice when a vulnerable adult is in danger.

Nancy Polizzi’s obituary remembered a woman who worked as a bookkeeper for many years and found joy in gardening, feeding birds, crossword puzzles, garage sales and time with her grandchildren. Those details now sit in painful contrast to the conditions investigators say surrounded her final months, and they underscore what can happen when isolation, illness and neglect go unchecked.