One of those deaths involved a disabled inmate who used a wheelchair. He was jailed on a probation violation and died in Broward Sheriff Nick Navarro's custody of complications relating to bedsores. One of the sores was infected, foul-smelling and had engulfed his right hip.

"As it turns out, this was doubly disconcerting, or even triple disconcerting," Wright told Navarro. "It could be alleged that (the victim) died as the direct result of negligence on the part of your personnel and/or contractors, allowing his decubitis ulcers to form abscesses. This makes failure to notify begin to suggest a cover-up."

Authorities in the Broward Sheriff's Office did not return phone calls.

In many cases uncovered by The Herald, family members were never contacted by authorities and never made aware of allegations or investigations of abuse or neglect. Instead, family members did in death what they did in life: They trusted, relying on caregivers, police and welfare workers to protect a loved one's health.

That trust is betrayed every day.

Galilee Lawrence, 84, lived in the same unlicensed boarding home for eight years. She arrived at Victoria Hospital nearly starved, with infected, crater-sized bedsores that, along with malnourishment, contributed to her death. Autopsy records show hospital workers called HRS to report her condition.

But HRS has no records of the report. Authorities don't know if an investigation was done.

Her nephew, Dade County corrections chief Lonnie Lawrence, said he knew nothing of her condition. He thought she had died of old age.

"I didn't know about any of it," he said. "I thought everything was OK."

Without swift response by welfare workers, without autopsies, without sound police investigations and without solid medical testimony to rely on, prosecutors say they are hard- pressed to make a criminal case out of adult abuse or neglect in death.

In part, they blame the high number of workers in the health care system for their lack of prosecutorial power: In other words, so many caregivers are involved with one patient that it's difficult and time-consuming to implicate just one.

"Where do you point the blame?" said John Morris, chief of the state's Medicaid Fraud Unit in Tallahassee. "You have to take these cases to a jury and try to convince them beyond a reasonable doubt that one or two or three people neglected someone and that led to their death."

Also, prosecutors rarely get expert medical witnesses to testify or give statements for their investigations. Medical judgments often vary, are inconsistent, and Florida's doctors typically are reluctant to testify against each other or the facilities and hospitals they work for.

"You'll get one expert medical witness to say someone was neglected or abused, or should have been treated one way, and the next witness will say something different," said Havens, who supervises criminal investigations in the Dade state attorney's office. "Who do you believe?"

In Monroe County last year, prosecutors had to drop felony manslaughter and neglect charges against a Marathon doctor after their key medical expert, a Miami doctor, recanted his testimony. Prosecutors said they believed a pressure campaign from the Florida Medical Association intimidated the doctor into backing out.

But the Miami doctor, Fuad Ashkar, claimed the state withheld key medical evidence that would have dramatically changed his expert opinion had he known about it. It was the state's first attempt to prosecute a doctor under felony abuse laws.

Prosecutor Kirk Zuelch had hoped to prove that Dr. Kenneth Swords, former medical director of the Key West Convalescent Center, neglected the medical needs of an 89-year-old diabetic who died -- presumably from lack of insulin.

Like many cases, though, no autopsy was performed. Doctors and prosecutors could only speculate about his death. And Swords repeatedly denied the allegations, saying overzealous investigators didn't know the first thing about medicine or diabetes.

"There was never anything there that anyone could find fault with me on," he says.

Zuelch ended up dropping the case. He had no autopsy findings. No witnesses. No case.

"This is not the type of crime that takes place in public," said John Pietrofesa, a state prosecutor in Fort Myers. "You have to rely on medical evidence, which is difficult to get, and on victims who can testify, which, in these death cases, you just don't have."

In fact, a caregiver is more likely to be prosecuted if their victims are still alive, prosecutors say.

A major problem with prosecution is the way the law is written. The Florida statute on adult abuse and neglect demands that prosecutors prove the perpetrator willfully and knowingly neglected and abused the victim. It is not enough to prove the victim's death was caused -- or hastened -- by abuse. And it's not enough to identify a suspect. Prosecutors must show the death was caused on purpose.

"That law, in my humble opinion, is a paper tiger," said Robert A. Lee, another Lee County prosecutor. "That's like proving premeditated murder. Why have we created a higher standard of proof for those least able to protect themselves?"

Not one Florida prosecutor interviewed for this series knew of any successful death prosecutions using the state's abuse and neglect laws. Worse, some said, is the fact that caregivers know they'll never get caught, and even if they do, they won't go to jail.

"There's an attitude out there that older people, especially, aren't productive and it's easy to discard them," said Dr. Raul Vila, a Broward associate medical examiner, who has performed numerous autopsies on suspected abuse and neglect victims. "We're supposed to be a compassionate and developed society. Why should these people rot like this?

The social welfare network that protects the elderly and disabled is a disjointed one. At least seven local, state and federal agencies have investigative jurisdiction in an adult death-by-abuse case. But some of them -- like the Florida Department of Professional Regulation and the state attorney's office -- move slowly, taking months to conclude investigations that rarely result in punitive action.

The state Office of Licensure and Certification, which monitors adult homes, has the power to close a facility. But in the few cases where a home has been shut down for abuse, it has taken as long as three to five years to do it.

A close examination of these death cases shows that, all too often, the way one agency deals with a neglect or abuse complaint is to pass the problem on to another.

The end result: Each assumes the other has taken action. But no one has.

Nearly two years ago, a Dade County grand jury chastised the state's investigative agencies for their lack of coordination and prompt action; it criticized caregivers and state regulators for not enforcing proper standards of care. Grand jurors were "pessimistic" and left with "feelings of consternation and helplessness," they reported.

But there has been no real pressure for change. Neither has the problem been pushed to the political forefront nationally.

"These people literally die regularly and no one knows," said Toshio Tatara, director of the National Aging Resource Center for Elder Abuse in Washington, D.C. 'It's indifference and a matter of other priorities. And it's very sad."