Court documents said $17,406 was spent from James O’Neill’s account after his reported death in December 2023.
LAKEWOOD, Colo. — Monthly Social Security deposits, a debit card and a brother’s questions helped uncover the body of James O’Neill inside a Lakewood home where investigators say he had been dead for about 18 months.
The financial trail became the backbone of the case against James David Agnew, 56, who was sentenced in April to five years in prison after pleading guilty to tampering with a deceased body and identity theft. Investigators said O’Neill, 62, died in December 2023, but his death was not reported. Instead, his Social Security money continued to land in his account and was spent through the months that followed. Court documents put the total at $17,406 after O’Neill’s death. Agnew’s plea resolved his criminal case, but it did not answer every question about the death itself, and a separate prosecution against Suzanne Ruth Agnew remains pending.
The spending came under review after O’Neill’s brother asked police to check on him in June 2025. The family had been distant from O’Neill for years, but the brother was trying to reach him about an inheritance. When Lakewood officers first went to the condominium in the 3400 block of South Ammons Street, a man came out and gave his name as James. Police said he told them he knew relatives were trying to reach him but did not want contact. The brother later watched body-camera video from the visit and said the man was not O’Neill. Investigators then took a closer look at who had access to O’Neill’s identity, bank information and benefit payments.
The bank account gave detectives a timeline that words alone could not. Social Security deposits kept arriving each month. Purchases and withdrawals continued after the date that the Agnews later gave for O’Neill’s death. Surveillance video from a 7-Eleven showed James Agnew using O’Neill’s debit card, according to court documents. Investigators said Agnew admitted he had used the card and had always known the personal identification number. He also said the income was a consideration in not reporting the death. That statement, combined with the account records, became central to the identity theft conviction and to the dismissed counts that had accused him of theft and unauthorized use of a financial transaction device.
The inheritance issue added another record to the money trail. O’Neill’s brother contacted Suzanne Agnew after the first police visit and told her about money O’Neill needed to receive. Court documents said she told him O’Neill was sitting beside her but did not want to talk. She provided a checking account number and O’Neill’s Social Security number, according to investigators. When the brother said O’Neill would have to appear in person at a bank, the communication stopped. Detectives later said Suzanne Agnew had earlier claimed O’Neill had moved away after meeting a foreign woman online. Those statements became part of the probable-cause narrative that led police back to the home with a search warrant.
The July 3, 2025, search turned the financial case into a death investigation inside the home. Detectives said Suzanne Agnew told them they would find O’Neill’s body in the residence. Officers found the remains in a bedroom, on the floor and beneath or near a deflated air mattress. Suzanne Agnew told police that she, James Agnew and O’Neill had lived together for years in a three-way intimate relationship. She said she woke up one morning in December 2023 and found O’Neill dead. James Agnew gave a similar account and told investigators there had “probably” been drug use the night before. The Agnews were not charged with killing O’Neill, and no final public cause or manner of death has been released.
The alleged handling of the body produced a separate set of charges from the spending. Suzanne Agnew told investigators she had not been ready to “give up” O’Neill, whom she called Jim, and repeatedly said it was wrong not to report the death. The affidavit said she described covering him with a deflated air mattress after about a week because the couple’s Chihuahuas began chewing on him. The detail became a key fact in charges tied to tampering with a deceased body and abuse of a corpse. Police said the body stayed inside the residence from the reported December 2023 death until the search in July 2025. That placed the concealment across about 18 months of continued account activity.
Agnew’s sentencing closed the loop on his financial and body-tampering exposure. He received five years on the tampering count and five years on the identity theft count, with both sentences running at the same time. The judge credited him with 276 days already served in pretrial detention. Under the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped five other felony counts: abuse of a corpse, theft, attempted theft, a second identity theft count and unauthorized use of a financial device. The result means Agnew’s prison term rests on the two admitted offenses rather than the broader charging document. It also means the amount of time he serves will depend on state prison rules, credit and later supervision decisions.
Suzanne Agnew’s pending case keeps the financial and body-handling allegations in court. She has pleaded not guilty to charges that include tampering with a deceased body, abuse of a corpse and theft. Her next pretrial conference is set for May 26, 2026. Prosecutors will have to decide whether to take the case to trial, negotiate a plea or make another move before then. Her statements to investigators are likely to remain important because they address the relationship among the three people, the reported timing of O’Neill’s death, the reason the body was not reported and the condition in which police found the remains. She is presumed innocent unless convicted.
The case highlights how a benefits account can keep moving on paper after a person is dead and hidden from public view. In O’Neill’s case, investigators said the deposits did not stop because the death was not reported. The person who raised the alarm was not a bank employee or a benefits agency, but a brother trying to deliver inheritance news. Once police connected the family’s concerns to the account activity, the debit-card video and the statements from the home, the case moved quickly. James Agnew was arrested in July 2025, charged with multiple felonies and sentenced after a guilty plea in April 2026.
The completed plea resolves the charges against James Agnew, but the case continues through Suzanne Agnew’s pending prosecution and unanswered questions about O’Neill’s death.
Author note: Last updated Sunday, May 17, 2026.