In Memoriam

Six days before his death, Tristan was suffering from a severe depressive episode.  His therapist thought that his medications might need to be adjusted, and after discussion with Tristan and his parents, everyone agreed that the best course of action would be for him to stay in a psychiatric facility briefly while the medication assessment was completed. 

During his short time in the institution, Tristan was twice restrained and left in seclusion.  In the first incident, he was ‘taken down’ outside the door to his room because he left a group therapy session without permission, and he was left in restraints for at least three and a half hours.  The next evening, less than a day before he was to be discharged, another teen told a staff member that they thought they had seen him with a small metal item that he might use to hurt himself, and Tristan was restrained again.  Seven staffers held him face down, arms across his chest, ignoring his pleas that he couldn’t breathe and that they were choking him.  They gagged him with a towel and wrapped his head in a bedsheet.  After he went limp, they carried Tristan to a seclusion room and strapped him to a bed, still face down.  It wasn’t until someone called his name and he didn’t respond that anyone thought to flip him over, remove the gag, and look to see if he was breathing.

Trevor’s mother and father divorced when he was two years old.  Although they were awarded joint custody, his father wanted little to do with him and reportedly told one of Trevor’s sisters that he could never see the boy as a real son.  He took his share of the money from Trevor’s malpractice suit but spent years with little to no contact with his children. 

By 1992, however, he was thousands of dollars behind on child support and struggling to make ends meet.  Trevor’s father became ‘obsessed’ with his son and the settlement money that had been put in a trust fund for his medical care.  He would have no access to the funds unless both his ex-wife and Trevor died, and the longer the young boy lived, the less would potentially remain for him. Over the next year, Trevor’s father met with a ‘case buster’ who he eventually hired as a hitman.  He videotaped the entire route from his ex-wife’s home to his own and persuaded one of his daughters to film Trevor in his room.  On the day they had selected, he arranged to videotape himself watching TV with his girlfriend.  While this was going on, his assassin broke into his family’s house and killed everyone inside, shooting Trevor’s mother and nurse in the head before disconnecting the boy’s oxygen and then covering his mouth and nose until he suffocated.

Makayla originally attended a public school in Dayton, but her mother later withdrew her, saying that she would homeschool her daughter.  As time went on, her mother kept the teen more and more isolated from the community, until by the time of her death neighbors could not recall having seen her in months. 

Out of the public eye, Makayla was neglected and left in squalor.  The nurse primarily responsible for helping her mother with her medical needs hardly ever even set foot in the house.  Instead of providing care six days a week, she visited only once or twice a month to pick up Makayla’s mother so that the two of them could go shopping together.  A pair of supervisory nurses, one of whom was to check in every 30 to 60 days and one every six months, similarly ignored her, reporting nothing wrong even as she was starving to death.

On the day of her death, less than 10 minutes after the nurse logged that her charge was fed, comfortable, and in good health, Makayla’s mother called 911 to report that her daughter had stopped breathing.  Paramedics rushed her to the hospital but she died shortly after arriving.  By this point, Makayla weighed only 28 pounds and looked almost skeletal.  Her skin was covered in dirt and bedsores and she was infested with lice.  Her coroner later described her as the worst case of malnourishment he had seen.

In late 2007, Chuck took in a childhood friend who had recently been kicked out of his family's home.  The man had a history of assault charges and was considered a habitual offender by police.  The arrangement continued uneventfully for three months, until an argument over the roommate's dog convinced the other man that Chuck was going to evict him. On February 26, he beat Mr. Easter severely, causing multiple fractures.  He died of his injuries less than a day later.

Calista's parents separated when she was an infant; her father and stepmother kept custody and prohibited her mother from seeing her.  She was abused by her family for years.

Teachers and schoolfriends noticed that Calista wore the same dirty and unkempt clothes day after day, while her siblings were always clean and neat. She was small for her age and looked malnourished. At times, she was fed little more than bread and water, sitting on the floor while the others ate a full meal at the table.  Neighbors sometimes saw her put pet treats in her mouth, or eating discarded gum or other garbage.  One local parent remembers offering to send a banana home with her, only to be told that she wouldn't be able to hide the peel- but she would take an apple because she could eat the core.  She spent her nights bound with chains and zip ties, and was also restrained there during the day at times when her stepmother cleaned. 

Calista often stole small things like pens, tape, and lip gloss, but would return them when confronted. Inspired by how teachers would keep toothpaste, deodorant, and soaps on hand for her, Calista's classmates came up with the idea of throwing her a surprise party and giving her the kinds of items she was denied at home.  A counselor asked her for a wish list without telling her what it was for. Calista asked for markers, tape, folders, head bands, hair pins, games, and a purse- but also for a new life and a new family, and 'more wishes that come true'.

She repeatedly reached out to others for help, telling teachers, friends, and social workers about how her parents neglected and abused her.  On one occasion, she followed a friend home and flew into a panic when the school principal was dispatched to pick her up. In a school journal entry, Calista once wrote “I am tired of my family and I feel like doing these things: run away, kill myself … I want to get out of this prison at home … I want to be free as possible as any other teenager.” 

Reports to CPS were made repeatedly, but the allegations were brushed off because her parents were able to convince authorities that her disability made her prone to lying and that her accusations were just attention seeking.  Ultimately, in 2005 they removed Calista from public schooling entirely and told others that they were homeschooling her.

On the day of her death, Calista was chained in her room while her stepmother vacuumed.  The device malfunctioned and started an electrical fire; she escaped and called for help while her adopted daughter remained bound.  She told emergency responders that 'her baby' was still in the house and that she needed pliers.  The firefighters discovered Calista and attempted to rescue her, but found her impossible to lift or move. The smoke in her room was too thick to see and they were unaware of the chains that bound her.  In the end, the fire never reached her, but she died of smoke inhalation.

Mrs. Fitzgibbon's youngest son, a former cab driver, moved in with her in 2005 after losing his job qualifications over a drunk-driving conviction.  He assisted his mother in her daily life, but after a falling injury in 2008 increased the amount of aid she needed and required her to start using a walker, he became more and more dissatisfied. His own failing health and a recent diagnosis of Parkinson's only heightened the tension and he became increasingly concerned that his mother might outlive him. Hannah offered to relieve him by moving into a home, but he refused. 

Mrs. Fitzgibbon's care team visited the household a week before her death.  They reported that her son seemed 'down and very stressed', and he said he felt 'burdened', 'in a prison', and was irritated with minor things like the sound of his mother's walker and the amount of time she spent in the bathroom. They helped him to make an appointment to see a therapist, but he never arrived.  A day before his first scheduled therapy session, Hannah's son pushed her down and stabbed her in the neck with a kitchen knife as she cried out in alarm.  He testified afterwards that he held her as she died and then kissed her on the forehead and apologized.

Roberta and her boyfriend had been dating for 12 years when his eyes turned towards another woman.  The two exchanged emails, discussing the possibility of a relationship between them and the obstacle that Ms. Laws presented.  Ultimately, he strangled Roberta to death and then buried her body in his yard, donating her wheelchair, portable accessible toilet, and many other possessions to Salvation Army.  His would-be girlfriend, however, was horrified by his actions and he held her virtually hostage, threatening to kill her if she revealed his crime.  It was five weeks before she was able to slip away and tip off police.

Vanessa's mother beat her to death, bashing her head repeatedly into the wooden part of a piece of furniture.  She then put the girl face down on a bed so she wouldn't have to hear her screaming and then exercised in another room and took a two-hour bath before finally seeking medical attention for Vanessa. By the time she arrived at the emergency room, she had been dead for three to five hours. 

Eric was neglected and starved by his sister, who confined him, their father, and their brother, William, (both also cognitively disabled) to a bare room repurposed from a garage. One of the doors leading in was chained and padlocked, while the other was blocked from the outside with a two-by-four.  The only furnishing was a bare mattress, which the three men shared.  Meanwhile, she used their Social Security payments to fund her drug habit.

All of the men were severely emaciated by the time the police became involved, and Eric's brother nearly followed him in death. A district attorney described him as looking 'like a Holocaust victim'. 

After being diagnosed in 2000, Amber was resolved to live in her own community rather than be put in a nursing home.  The boyfriend who acted as her live-in caretaker for the last four years of her life, however, proved worse than the alternative.  He isolated her from friends and relatives, keeping her in the house and refusing to allow them in.  Family members believe that he may have been financially exploiting her and selling her medications.  A visiting nurse alerted authorities to the abuse in late 2009, and Amber was hospitalized for malnutrition and septicemia from untreated bedsores.  She succumbed to the infection shortly after.

Her father, who eventually committed suicide, was abusive. His attacks on his family culminated in an incident in 1995 where he held Courtney and her brother hostage with a rifle before eventually surrendering himself to police 11 hours later. Courtney's mother had escaped with her youngest daughter.

Afterwards, she fled with the children to Ontario in order to escape him, and kept the family fairly isolated. Neighbors recall that Courtney was never seen outside except to be picked up for classes; her younger siblings were homeschooled. Her doctors had recommended that she be given four or five cans of liquid meals per day, but between 2001 and 2008 she averaged merely one to three cans. Her epilepsy medication was also administered at far below theraputic dosage levels.  At the time of her death, Courtney was down to 35 pounds and had not seen a doctor in three years. She was suffering from an untreated respiratory infection and had an open sore deep enough to expose one of her hip pins.

On the morning of September 11, 2005, Wayne was burned severely during his morning bath. Despite the fact that the scalding had left pieces of skin clinging to the tub, the care worker who was assisting him made no report of the event until hours later, when he casually told his supervisor that Wayne had 'some blisters' on his buttocks.  By the time Mr. Walters finally received medical attention, he was grinding his teeth in agony and his legs were 'the color of blood'.  He was rushed to the hospital, where he ultimately died from pneumonia five months later.