NAMPA - "It's hard to hear something like that going on," said Amanda Coffelt - a neighbor of Nicks.

Neighbors say they had no idea about the alleged abuse happening just doors away.

"Wishing that I had known that the woman had even lived there across the street," said neighbor Suzanne Bevry.

According to the probable cause affidavit obtained by 2News police responded to a welfare check at 92-year-old Verda Nicks home in November.

Inside police say the smell of urine, feces, and decomposing body took over but they found Nicks lying on her bed still alive.

"She was in bedding that hadn't been changed with urine and feces present it was just completely unsanitary and looked like she hadn't been cared for for sometime," said John Bujak, Canyon County prosecutor.

Police say the elderly woman's twin sons lived in a trailer behind her home since 2003. The brothers, David and Danny Nicks, told police they took care of their mom after being bed ridden from a broken hip two years ago.

Once a day they claim they made her a "hot meal" and they said she could call them over an intercom system set up between the home and their trailer. But the brothers also told police their mother hadn't showered in a year.

Danny and Dave Nicks, 55, were arrested and charged with felony abuse and neglect of a vulnerable adult. She died Dec. 26.

Then last Thursday at a preliminary hearing prosecutors say a judge dropped the charges.

"He could not determine from the evidence presented whether or not the injuries were caused by simply old age or whether they were caused by neglect," Bujak said.

Canyon County Prosecutors have refiled the charges against the brothers and are considering taking the case to a grand jury. They believe the evidence supports abuse that could have prompted her death.

The brothers will be back in court next week on the re-filed charges.