They died painful, preventable deaths and left behind families tormented by their loss.

They are victims of poor care in nursing homes, a cross section cut from the fabric of America - mothers and fathers, war heroes and homemakers, black and white.

The survivors now not only grieve for their loss but also struggle with misdirected guilt over whether they could have prevented the deaths.

Four of these families sought justice in courts of law and received cash settlements from nursing homes. The settlements required that the names of the homes and the amounts of money paid be kept secret. So, those homes are not identified on this page. In the fifth case, criminal charges are pending.

Despite the settlements, family members say, the tragedies took an emotional toll that can't be soothed by dollars.

The five stories:

Alisa Riley is haunted by childhood memories of her mother telling friends, "Don't worry, I know Alisa would never put me in a nursing home."

But when her mother's Alzheimer's disease progressed to where she needed constant care, Riley had no choice.

"She always did so much for me," said Riley, an only child who was doted on by her mother, Martha Alice Anderson.

Riley said: "Not only do I have all this guilt about putting her in a nursing home, but look what happened to her. The last months of her life were horrible."

When Riley, a registered nurse, complained to the staff at a St. Clair County nursing home that her bedridden mother was dehydrated and malnourished, the response stunned her.

"All the Alzheimer's patients starve to death, what do you expect," Riley said they replied.

Her response was indignant. "My mother is not going to die of starvation," Riley said she told the staff. But with no one to assist Anderson, her food tray frequently went untouched.

"The only time she ate is when I fed her," Riley said.

Eventually a student nurse, who made training rounds at the nursing home, pulled Riley aside to warn her of her mother's dire condition.

"She told me that my mother's bed was always drenched in urine and that she was always caked in feces when they made rounds in the morning," Riley said.

A bedsore on her hip had tunneled to the bone. The nursing student told Riley the conditions should be reported to state officials. Riley called state inspectors the next day and removed her mother from the home. But the damage was done. Anderson, 91, died March 13, 1998, from sepsis, an infection caused by the bedsore.

For Angie Mynatt, the anguish began with a telephone call on a Sunday afternoon in January. She needed only a few minutes to drive to the nearby Westpark Rehabilitation Center in Evansville, Ind., where her grandmother was struggling for her life.

"I knew something wasn't right just by looking at her," Mynatt said of her 80-year-old grandmother, whom she found gasping for air.

Alarmed at her grandmother's condition, Mynatt began to quiz the staff. She asked a nurse's aide when her grandmother last ate or drank and was told three days before.

"She didn't tell me why," Mynatt said.

At Angie's demand, an ambulance soon arrived and whisked Mary Mynatt to the hospital, where doctors tried to push fluids into her severely dehydrated body.

Early the next morning, she went into cardiac arrest and doctors placed her on a ventilator. Later that day, her kidneys began to fail and the tips of her fingers and toes began to turn black and blue from a lack of oxygen. She died that evening.

Angie brought a flower arrangement for the funeral a few days later. A ribbon that ran down the center carried a written vow from Angie regarding her grandmother's death. "I will solve the puzzle," the ribbon read.

An autopsy report stated the cause of death as "fluid and electrolyte imbalance due to clinical dehydration." Mynatt had been deprived of fluids for at least two days before being admitted to the hospital.

The coroner ruled the death a homicide. State regulators later cited the facility for several serious deficiencies. According to a state report, the staff failed to assess changes in Mynatt's eating habits or notify a physician.

One employee was quoted as telling a state health surveyor: "A lot of people here don't eat, and we don't report it to anyone."

The words still sting Angie Mynatt, who grew up just down the road from her grandparents' horse farm.

"No one deserves to die the way that she did," Mynatt said. "She was tortured. She couldn't defend herself. They just let her lie there."

Conan Smith walked into a nursing home in Illinois' Franklin County in November 1998 for what his family thought would be a temporary stay while his wife, Jo Ann, recovered from hip surgery.

A nursing home assessment done that day described Smith, 74, as alert, friendly, cooperative and able to communicate clearly. As a belly gunner on a B-17 during World War II, Smith survived being shot down and trapped behind enemy lines in German-occupied Austria and a tour in the Pacific. At age 65, he ran a half-marathon and averaged six-minute miles.

"We tried to go down once every two weeks to see Daddy," said his daughter, Lana Stringer, who lived hundreds of miles away in southern Indiana. "I just put it in their hands and trusted them that everything was going to be fine and he was going to be cared for properly. As I look back, we should have stripped him down and looked at every part of his body."

At one point, Smith lost 30 pounds in 30 days and soon could no longer walk. He also began developing bedsores, one of which would tunnel from his buttocks almost completely through to his groin.

The nursing home finally notified family members of his rapidly declining condition the night before he was admitted to a hospital comatose and suffering from gross septic shock.

His poor care and filthy condition stunned hospital staff members. Smith had not just one bedsore as the nursing home had told the family; he had three, and gangrene was ravaging his body. He died from septic shock four days later, five months after he entered the home.

"People should be aware when they do put their loved one in a nursing home, don't think your hands are freed from anything," Stringer said. "You've got to be there and check them out and know what's going on."

Charlotte Gregory, 78, recovered well enough from gallbladder surgery to be moved to a nursing home nearer her home and relatives in Clear Lake, Calif., last year.

Sixteen days later she died, her death due to a bowel impaction aggravated by dehydration. Nursing notes during her stay made frequent references to Gregory's dehydration, but staff members failed to follow their own procedures and doctors' orders regarding her treatment. The notes from Gregory's final hours failed to identify anything greatly out of the ordinary, even though she was in severe pain and family members eventually insisted that a doctor be called. A nurse's aide later testified that the facility was short staffed.

"When I read a copy of the autopsy I almost threw up," said her son-in-law, Dr. Marvin Sando, a retired physician. "I can't tell you the emotions that went screaming through my head. I was angry, shocked, disappointed, sick to my stomach. I was just morally shocked that a woman in this day and age could have this kind of death. It was horrific. It still bothers me that someone could die like that."

Fermon Burton, the first black Golden Gloves champion in the Kansas City area, moved into a nursing home on July 13, 1998. Burton was rail thin, 6 feet 8 inches tall and 155 pounds. A nurse at the Kansas City home that day assessed him as being a high risk for skin breakdown. The warning did little good.

On her almost daily visits, his wife, Mary Burton, often found her husband lying in urine-soaked sheets while staff members sat in another room laughing and enjoying soft drinks, she said. Seven months after entering the home, he began developing bedsores. By the time he left the home to enter a wound care center, he had five infected bedsores.

"You could put a fist in those sores," Mary Burton said. "He was gone too far."

He died Jan. 13, 2000, as a result of sepsis. He was 86.

Today, Mary Burton often sits alone in her apartment surrounded by photographs of the God-fearing man she loved.

"It's just sad that people have to die like that - from a lack of attention," Burton said. "I don't think I will ever put it behind me."