Kansas City, Mo. ? A suburban Kansas City woman has been charged with neglecting three elderly women who lived in an unlicensed residential care facility she ran in her home.

Christine L. Smith, 33, of Lee’s Summit, was charged Friday by Jackson County prosecutors with three felony counts of abuse or neglect of a resident of a facility and one misdemeanor count of maintaining an unlicensed residential care facility.

One of the women died last October, but authorities do not know if the death was caused by the alleged neglect, said Kathy Finnell, chief trial assistant in the prosecutor’s office.

None of the women was identified.

According to the complaint, Joyce Mourning of the state Division of Health and Senior Services said she received a hot-line complaint about the facility.

Police were called on Oct. 16, 2001 one day after the death of a 93-year-old woman at the home. Mourning said she found another 93-year-old woman in an unfinished basement of the house, covered in dried feces, according to the complaint. The woman told Mourning that she was cold and hungry. The third woman, 80, told Mourning that she was not being fed well or being given her medicine.

The two surviving women were removed from the home that day.

Finnell said the investigation resulted from a new collaboration between prosecutors, police and the state.