Two Texas sex offenders accused of beating a severely disabled Vietnam War veteran from Iowa have been released from jail after prosecutors decided they couldn’t prove the allegations.

The veteran, Alan Meisel, died in March 2016, three weeks after the alleged attack at a rundown rental house west of Dallas. Police said two of his roommates pushed him out of his wheelchair and beat him with sticks and a wooden spoon. Meisel had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, which his friends said left him unable to feed himself or use a phone. The veteran, who received little professional care at the rental home, weighed just 102 pounds and had numerous bruises, an autopsy showed.

His Iowa friends were outraged to learn last week that no one will be held responsible for Meisel’s neglect and death. “I’m just really angry. So many people had a hand in this or could have done something — and everybody is just walking away,” said Vickie Welch, who knew Meisel when he lived in Des Moines.

Meisel, 68, was severely disabled by Parkinson’s disease, which the Department of Veterans Affairs determined was caused by his exposure to the chemical Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. He lived in Des Moines until 2013, when he moved to Texas to be near relatives.

His Iowa friends remain baffled about why he was taken out of a Texas nursing home, where his care was covered by the VA, and moved into the rental home, where he lived with four paroled criminals. Iowa's U.S. senators say VA officials claimed they were too short-staffed to investigate.

Shortly after the alleged beating, Texas authorities charged two of Meisel’s roommates, Jack Ryder and James Duke, with felony charges of causing injury to an elderly person. Ryder and Duke could have faced up to 10 years in prison if they'd been convicted of the charges. They remained in the Parker County jail for more than a year, as their trials were repeatedly postponed. Then, last month, prosecutors dropped the charges.

“At the end of the day, we had to dismiss our cases because we simply couldn’t prove them beyond a reasonable doubt,” Assistant Parker County District Attorney Abby Placke said in a statement released by her office. “Since our victim was deceased and could not testify that he suffered pain, under Texas law, we had to prove that he suffered a physical injury like bruising. We had potential testimony from convicted sex offenders that they saw Mr. Meisel being struck by these defendants, but, while he had some bruising generally, there was no bruising that we could specifically attribute to the specific striking in question. Absent that proof, we could not successfully make our case.”

Ryder and Duke were on parole for sex offenses when they were charged with beating Meisel. Prosecutors told the Register last year that they charged the parolees with assaulting the older man but not with killing him because a medical examiner did not list injuries from the beating as contributing factors in his death.

In a jailhouse interview in 2016, Duke said Meisel obviously needed professional care, but didn't receive it. He denied harming the older man. “Nobody beat the man up,” he said. “… I didn’t do nothing to him. I didn’t have reason to. He never did nothing to me.”

Texas' sex-offender registry showed Duke was convicted in 1992 of molesting an 11-year-old girl. According to the registry, Ryder was convicted in 2008 of an Indiana charge involving child pornography.

Duke said Meisel was in fragile condition in the months before his death. He couldn’t speak well, had trouble walking and struggled to get food down. “When he would eat, he would stuff it in his mouth, but he wouldn’t swallow.” Instead, Duke said, Meisel would cough out the food.

Prosecutors didn't say why it took a year and a half to determine the charges couldn't be proven. Defense attorneys for Ryder and Duke did not respond to requests for comment.

Vickie Welch’s husband, Gary Welch, was dismayed to learn last week that no one would be brought to trial for beating Meisel or for leaving him in the rental home in the first place. “It was almost like he was tortured there,” Gary Welch said. “…He just didn’t deserve that ending.”

Meisel lived many years in the Des Moines area after serving two tours of duty in Vietnam, where he was an Army helicopter mechanic. Defense Department records show he was awarded a Bronze Star and an Air Medal from the U.S. Army and a Gallantry Cross from the government of South Vietnam.

His friends recall him as a fun-loving, hardworking man who ran a small sheet-metal shop in Des Moines. As he became increasingly disabled by Parkinson’s disease, he authorized Gary Welch to have power of attorney over his financial and medical affairs. The Welches said Meisel had substantial income and savings, mainly from VA disability payments he earned due to his Agent Orange exposure. The VA also agreed to pay for all of his care, including nursing-home care, the Welches said. Gary Welch said he signed over the power of attorney authority to Meisel’s brother-in-law, Larry Gould, when Meisel moved to Texas in 2013.

The last the Welches knew, Meisel was living in a nursing home in Tyler, Texas, and receiving regular care from the VA. But the nursing home's staff later told the Welches their friend no longer lived there, and the staff couldn’t say what had happened to him. The Welches said Gould wouldn’t talk to them. The next word they received about Meisel came about two years later, when Vickie Welch searched the Internet and found a Texas newspaper article about the two men being arrested for allegedly beating him up.

The Welches want to know who was responsible for moving their friend into a rental home with no professional care, where his roommates were convicted criminals. They want to know why someone from the VA didn’t check into how the agency’s longtime patient was faring. They want to know why no one, including the landlord, stepped in and sought medical help as Meisel dwindled. And they want to know what happened to their friend’s money, which they believe could have financed a much better living situation.

The Parker County, Texas, Sheriff’s Department looked into the money issue last year, and told the Register its detectives found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Gould, who has only spoken to the Register briefly, has denied any wrongdoing. He said last year that Meisel had to move out of the nursing home because he’d been accused of inappropriately touching staff members. Gould said someone from the VA found the rental-home placement.

Gould said last year that the rental house arrangement seemed insufficient, especially because his brother-in-law had Parkinson’s disease and dementia and had trouble swallowing. But he said no other nursing homes would take Meisel once they learned about the groping allegations against him.

Gould said the VA had cut off Meisel’s disability pension several months before he died, alleging that he shouldn’t have received such a large benefit while also having his nursing-home care financed by the VA. Gould said the VA was demanding to be repaid $23,000. “They cut him off and kicked him out in the cold."

Gould declined comment last week about the dismissal of criminal charges against Duke and Ryder.

VA officials, who cited patient-confidentiality laws, have declined comment on Meisel’s case, including Gould’s contentions. They also declined to say if they would ever refer a severely disabled veteran to a rental home with no professional care. But in response to a Freedom of Information request from the Register, they released fliers showing their Dallas-area staff does give lists of apartments and boarding houses to families of veterans. The fliers released to the Register did not include the rental house where Meisel wound up, but they did include numerous other informal listings. The bottom of one flier includes this warning: “VA has not researched the organization that is sponsoring this program, or the people associated with this organization. Veterans and families are encouraged to do their own research and use their own judgment to evaluate this information.”

Iowa’s U.S. senators, Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, demanded answers about the case from the VA after the Register published an investigation in October 2016. The senators said in November 2016 that VA officials told them they found no reason to look into how Meisel wound up in the rental home. In a statement last November, the senators called the VA’s response “not only wholly inadequate, but also dismissive of the nature of the circumstances under which Mr. Meisel spent the last months of his life.”

The Register asked the senators last week if they’d received any update on the matter. In a joint statement, they expressed continued frustration over the agency’s response: “Following the VA’s decision not to re-open the case, our staffs held a conference call with the VA to address concerns. During that call, the VA told us that a follow up field examination was not conducted due to staffing shortages and backlogs within the department. This is unacceptable. That’s why we continue to work with the VA to find ways to reduce backlogs and streamline processes to ensure our veterans are being cared for properly.”

Back in Des Moines, the Welches remain mystified and furious about their friend’s demise. “Nobody did him justice,” Vickie Welch said. “Everybody let him down.”