Man is beaten to death in assisted living facility...
Posted by
Lauren EllermanDecember 20, 2007 3:52 PMI wish this were a fictional account.
Today's LA Times reports story of an elderly man who "
just stopped breathing," in the assisted living facility, or so his wife of 49 years was told.
"Then came the anonymous phone call the day after the funeral.
A woman claiming to be an employee of the nursing home told Rita that her 80-year-old husband's death had been anything but peaceful. She said Elmore Kittower had been beaten to death by someone on the staff.
Days later, detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department would pose a question that was almost inconceivable to the elderly widow. Would it be OK, they asked, if they exhumed her husband's body?"
Week before, " on Sunday, Oct. 28, the Kittower family gathered at Silverado to celebrate Elmore's 80th birthday. The following Sunday, Rita and Elise came back for their weekly visit. It was the last time they would see Elmore alive.
Two days later, Rita had just finished walking Bruin when a sheriff's deputy knocked on her door. He told her that her husband had died at 8:30 that morning. When Rita called the nursing home she was told that Elmore had "just stopped breathing."
On Nov. 10, the day after her husband was buried, Rita received the mysterious call from a woman who identified herself only as Maria. The woman said she hadn't slept in three days.
"She just couldn't stand what she saw," Rita said. "She had to tell me what happened."
The woman said a staff member had punched Elmore in the eye and wrapped a towel around his head in an apparent attempt to suffocate him.
"I felt like I was going to throw up" Rita recalled. "I said I can't listen to this."
She hung up the phone, but not before getting the woman's number. Rita asked her son to call the woman back. He elicited more details from the caller. When Rita asked about it, he said, "You don't want to know."
"As it turned out, sheriff's officials already had their suspicions about Elmore Kittower's death. The woman who called Rita Kittower also made an anonymous call to the Lost Hills sheriff's station and mailed an anonymous letter to a nearby fire station.
Lt. Al Grotefend, a supervisor in the sheriff's homicide unit, declined to discuss the case in detail. But he said detectives gathered sufficient evidence to warrant an exhumation. Authorities can dig up a body with a court order even if family members are opposed, but detectives sought Rita Kittower's approval as a matter of courtesy and to make the process quicker.
Rita said she shuddered at the thought of her husband being cut up on an autopsy table and had a nightmare in which he was wheeled to the front door of their home in a casket.
But after consulting with family members, she agreed to the exhumation in order to "find out the truth" and protect any other potential victims.
Elmore Kittower's body was removed from its grave in Eden Memorial Park cemetery Nov. 14. His remains were removed from his coffin and autopsied at the Los Angeles County coroner's office.
The results were inconclusive, pending further tests, according to two law enforcement sources who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
Both sources said there did appear to be some trauma to Kittower's remains that was consistent with an assault.
Grotefend said detectives have questioned dozens of employees and residents of Silverado and developed a prime suspect in the case -- a caregiver who no longer works at the facility, he said.
The suspect was arrested shortly after Kittower's death on suspicion of elder abuse, but the case was rejected by the district attorney's office. The suspect has denied any wrongdoing, Grotefend said.
Grotefend said that the arrest was made before the exhumation and that detectives have since gathered additional information and plan to resubmit the case to prosecutors. The Times is withholding the suspect's name at the request of authorities.
Mark Mostow, a spokesman for Silverado Senior Living, said the company had completed its own investigation and "found nothing to substantiate any wrongdoing."
"These are strictly allegations," he said.
Mostow acknowledged that the employee accused of assaulting Kittower had been terminated. But he said the firing was not the result of the alleged assault, but because the worker had violated an undisclosed policy.
Several other employees were also terminated following the death, he said, but they, too, were fired for policy violations, not for physically mistreating Kittower.
Zwerdling, Kittower's nephew, said his uncle's alleged treatment at Silverado seemed particularly unjust given the way he had lived his life.
"Elmore Kittower is a very decent man who died a very indecent death," he said.
scott.glover@latimes.com