Nursing home that ran out of food was part of financially troubled company

Sept. 24--FESTUS -- With its parent company in free fall, and its president facing a mountain of debt and domestic violence charges, Benchmark Healthcare nursing home on Highway TT became a dirty and dangerous place.

As bills went unpaid, the phones were shut off. Paychecks bounced. Trash piled up, and the building was infested with flies.

Then the food deliveries stopped. Employees had to dip into their own pockets for grocery runs. Residents complained to state health inspectors that they were hungry. During the inspectors' visit in July, a Benchmark employee was seen trying to make a smoothie from seven pieces of dry toast.

Missouri state health officials went to court in July to put the nursing home into emergency receivership. They backed down when food deliveries resumed. But at a follow-up visit in August, inspectors found that four residents were not getting medicines they needed for congestive heart failure, epilepsy and schizophrenia because the pharmacy bills hadn't been paid in months.

Finally, on Sept. 13, the state took the rare step of closing the nursing home after relocating 60 residents to other facilities.

"It was just a disaster," said Ann Bickel of the Missouri Coalition for Quality Care, which advocates for residents in nursing homes. "Some nursing homes aren't as clean, some don't have as much staff as we'd like them to have, and there is abuse sometimes. But to this extent, I have never heard of this."

It was an ignominious defeat for the home's owner Legacy Health Systems, a Chesterfield-based family business established in 1938 in southeast Missouri by Clara Sells that had expanded to a $100 million company with 2,000 patients and 1,600 employees in 27 facilities across Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee before its collapse.

In recent years, Legacy sold almost all of its assets or had them seized by creditors. The Festus location was one of three homes left in the company's portfolio; about 200 residents live at its two remaining facilities in Sikeston and Puryear, Tenn.

Last week, the grandson of Clara Sells, Legacy president John Sells, 52, and his small staff were packing up their office near Spirit of St. Louis Airport before the bank takes it at the end of the month. A reporter walked into a discussion about how to secure 800 boxes of patient files.

Sells lamented it wasn't so long ago that his was the turnaround company, swooping in to take over and repair struggling nursing homes.

He insisted Legacy had always taken good care of its residents, even during its financial troubles. One of those patients was his own father, Connie Mac Sells, who died in April at age 79 at the company's nursing home in Matthews, Mo.

Sells was at a loss to explain how things got so bad in Festus.

"I've spent days walking through that whole process and trying to figure out exactly where the breakdown was," said Sells. "And I don't have an answer. I wish I did. I've done this all my life; this is all I've ever done."

Family business

One picture was still hanging in Legacy's foyer last week. It was of Annie Sells, Clara's daughter-in-law, John's mother, who took over the family business in the 1960s.

In 1971, she built Sells Rest Home in Matthews, about 10 miles south of Sikeston. Annie and Connie Sells had two boys, Johnny Mac and Ronnie Lee.

Matthews was the family's home base -- they renamed it to Close To Home Nursing Center.

Annie Sells expanded the Sells brand to 15 nursing homes before she retired in 1999 and moved to Arizona. Ronnie moved with her and said he agreed to sell his share of the business to his brother.

John Sells took over as president that year and sold all but the Matthews home. Then he rebuilt the franchise by taking over other nursing home chains. He borrowed millions of dollars to expand, and entered long-term contracts with suppliers of food, drugs and therapy services.

"Nothing is greater than a person's right to live comfortably and contentedly in a friendly, caring environment, regardless of their special needs or affliction," Sells told the Missourian in 2012.

Sells said it all fell apart starting in the first quarter of 2014. That's when his company discovered that its payroll contractor had, for several years, stolen from them by failing to turn payroll taxes over to the IRS.

Brad Ferguson, the president of Paymaster Payroll Services, was ordered to make more than $3 million in restitution to dozens of victims.

More than $800,000 was to be returned to Sells, who said that was just the amount the government believed it could recover from Ferguson. Sells said his losses were $1.8 million and that he personally owes $1.1 million to the Internal Revenue Service.

Paying back the IRS made it difficult to pay the bills, he said. Court records indicate that the company's problems paying bills started earlier.

A lawsuit from an insurance company alleged that Sells had taken out a policy in January 2013 to cover the company for workers compensation claims, but never paid the $62,000 premium while he rang up $493,000 in claims. The sides agreed to settle for $73,000 in April 2016.

A pharmacy claimed in a September 2013 lawsuit that Sells' nursing homes owed nearly $2 million; the case was settled confidentially.

Another suit filed in February 2014 alleged that Sells' nursing homes were $900,000 in arrears for therapy goods and services. The nursing homes were ordered to pay that amount. A food service provider claimed in federal court that Sells' companies owed it $900,000 by May 2014; the case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

David Zigenhorn, owner of Garage Door Co. of Sikeston knew the Sells family by reputation and didn't require a deposit when he installed fire shutters at Heritage Gardens, a Legacy nursing home in Sikeston, in November 2014.

"Sometimes I'm too trusting a soul with people I know who I don't expect to have a problem with," he said. "I never had this problem with John before. We've been in business 32 years, living in the same town there."

But Sells did not pay his $6,500 bill, according to a lawsuit filed in New Madrid County in December 2015.

Even Ronnie Sells sued John Sells, claiming his brother still owed him $3.2 million for his shares of the family business. The brothers settled the dispute. In a brief interview, Ronnie said he and his brother were now "quite cohesive."

In August 2015, Sells hired a woman named Toni Travis to run the nursing home in Festus. Within days, she was complaining about paychecks bouncing and unpaid bills that threatened to disconnect gas service.

Most troubling, she said, was that Sells wrote a check to himself for $68,000 from patient accounts.

In a lawsuit filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court, Travis claimed Sells fired her in retaliation. The suit was settled for $50,000.

Sells said the check wasn't made out to him, and he was moving patient money from one bank account to another.

Problems began to avalanche by late 2015. Great Southern Bank took Sells to court in October, claiming he and his companies had failed to pay back $6.2 million in loans.

The bank seized four nursing homes, including Close to Home.

Sells said the stress was hard on his marriage. He and his wife, Maria, divorced last fall. She got the house in Chesterfield. He moved in with an adult daughter from a previous marriage.

Sells said on Aug. 1, Close to Home's transfer to a new owner became final. That night, according to prosecutors in St. Charles County, at a town house in St. Peters, he slammed his girlfriend through a glass coffee table and exposed his genitals to her 12-year-old son. He also left a firearm unsecured in the house; it was located under the boy's bed.

Sells was charged with domestic assault and sexual misconduct; the charges are pending. He is due to appear in court on Nov. 17.

"I've never been in trouble except for drinking and driving," he said. "I didn't beat anybody, OK? I locked somebody out of the house, and it was the same day as the foreclosure sale."

Neglect in Festus

Meanwhile, problems mounted in Festus.

Former staff members described a bleak arrangement where residents were given watered-down soup and stale bread for dinner and never allowed to have second helpings.

When state inspectors visited on a July morning, there was no food for breakfast. The dietary manager went to buy eggs, toast, cereal and milk with her own money. Staff members said they had been buying food for the residents with their own money or food stamps since June 20, when the food vendor stopped deliveries because of nonpayment, according to state reports.

People with diabetes and other nutritional requirements such as pureed foods were not getting their special diets. Staff members took residents' soiled clothes and sheets to their own houses and laundries after the home's washing machines broke down.

The residents were primarily people with mental health disorders. Most were younger than 50, staff members said. Despite the problems, eight former workers interviewed by the Post-Dispatch said they enjoyed working there and did the best they could. Some said their final paychecks came through last week.

"I don't know how many times I brought clothes and shoes and snacks in for these residents," said Christine Mueller, a nursing assistant on and off since 1998. "I honestly am glad it got shut down because these people deserve better."

Staff members said residents were taken to other nursing homes around Jefferson County.

"We had residents holding you and grabbing on to you saying, 'Where am I going, are you coming with me?'" said Mary Brakefield, a nursing assistant for more than three years. "They considered that home, even with the flaws."

On a recent day, it was evident how quickly the end came. Clothes were piled up in the laundry room. A half-empty coffee cup remained on a table in the courtyard.

A woman who worked as a nursing assistant pulled up in the parking lot. She hadn't gotten her last paycheck and was scavenging for scrap metal to sell.

Jeremy Kohler --314-340-8337

@jeremykohler on Twitter

[email protected]

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