by Ann Rule
It would have been strange. When Debbie lived in Munich she was four years old. Susan handed Stoop and Berry a handwritten resume Debbie had given her. Her “accomplishments” certainly looked impressive.
Teacher-Elem. Sc.—Riding Instructor—Equitation
Nurse, Surgical Assist. Private Duty—(Geriatrics)
Manager of Medical Office with Following Duties:
Personal & office corresp.
payroll
depositories
billing
records
bookkeeping
hired, trained, supervised a staff of 5
collection
Debbie described herself as:
dependable, efficient, amiable, adabtable [sic], competant [sic].
Traveled abroad extensively as a child with parents and exposed to many cultures and ethnic groups.
Education: Universite of Munich, Germany (Bad Toltz), Degree in Nursing
Continuing Education—Refresher courses in French and Spanish
Susan said that Debbie was currently working in a doctor’s office and seemed to be doing well. She and Pat had given diabetes shots in their “sitters’ jobs,” and Debbie still gave vitamin shots to their grandfather, Colonel Radcliffe.
Susan felt that her sister would not have planned any complicated subterfuge, but that Debbie always went along with their mother. She explained that her sister had had a sad, hard life, and that Debbie had always yearned for something beyond the teenage marriage she felt trapped in.
“Was your mother ever in the armed forces?” Stoop asked.
Susan shook her head. “Only as a dependent. My grandfather is a lieutenant colonel—retired—and my father was a sergeant.”
“Do you know,” Stoop asked suddenly, “if they targeted these people? How did they come across these people who were dying or elderly?"
“They had a good reputation—like Mrs. Mansfield’s son, Lawrence, heard about them from Sue and Hudden Jones. . . . Everyone just loved them."
Susan said that Debbie had been concerned early on that their mother was simply taking what she wanted from her patients’ rooms or homes. “Debbie would deliberately set something in a certain position, and lots of times it would disappear." Later, Susan feared Debbie got into the spirit of things with her mother. “My grandmother said I was a fool to think Debbie wasn't involved. She said, ‘Honey, you can bet that Debbie knows exactly what she’s doing.’"
“What about jewelry?" Stoop asked. “Mrs. Crist said there was a large quantity of jewelry missing."
“I know that Debbie and Mom felt justified taking some things. Sometimes, they would say that they were given to them."
“What type of things are we talking about?"
“Small items. Jewelry. Sterling. Knickknacks. My mother liked antique-looking things. . . . Hatpins. She gave me a pearl necklace—more of a choker, and I believe it has two strands. Then there is a bracelet. It has a big gold clasp on the pearls, and they’re gorgeous.”
Stoop’s ears perked up at that, but he didn’t change his expression. The pearl set sounded like the one Betty Crist had reported missing. Susan said she had the set in her room and she could show them. In fact, her mother had given the family a number of beautiful pieces of jewelry. A gaudy jade ring for Boppo. A solid eighteen-karat gold man’s ring with a lapis stone to Papa for his seventy-fifth birthday. Her mother kept a cedar chest full of miniature sterling pieces and antique pillboxes for herself.
Stoop knew a lapis stone ring had disappeared from the Crists’. “You know anything about a Rolex watch?" he asked.
“No. My sister would have gotten that if there was one."
“Why do you say that Debbie would have gotten that?" Stoop was fascinated. He knew that a Rolex was missing from the Crists’, but Susan didn’t. He also knew that Debbie was the one who had signed for it at the jewelers.
“My mother would have had no interest in a Rolex. . . . Debbie would have gotten a Rolex in a minute. . . . Debbie had a shoplifting problem in the past. She justified what she did by the stores’ high prices. She’s a store detective’s nightmare.”
Susan had not seen a Rolex watch, however.
“The lapis ring?” Michelle Berry asked carefully. “Does your grandfather still wear that?”
Susan nodded. “And I think I have some video from his birthday party where he’s wearing it. Why?”
It was apparent that Susan was vacillating between a certain sense of relief that her suspicions could be validated and a wrenching awareness of what her mother had done. Her eyes often filled with tears, and she cleared her throat frequently.
“Let’s get back to the idea that Debbie and Pat—your mother—were registered nurses,” Stoop said. “Did they ever tell you that they prescribed medicine or called in medications and picked them up?”
Susan shook her head. “What they did tell me was that Mrs. Crist had her medicine delivered to her home . . . Debbie took one of Mrs. Crist’s pills one time, and it zonked Debbie out . . . she slept for the whole night when she was supposed to be up. When she woke up, both of them were hollering for her.”
“Who is both of them?”
“Mr. Crist and Mrs. Crist.”
Susan said that although she had worried enough about the small items her mother and sister had brought home from their nursing jobs, and by the money they flashed, it had never occurred to her that they had been dispensing medicine on their own. Don Stoop and Michelle Berry could see the revival of an old nightmare reflected in her dark eyes.
CHAPTER 50
***
Don and Michelle had thoroughly familiarized themselves with Pat’s earlier encounters with the Georgia justice system. They recognized the eerie similarity between what had happened to the Crists and to Paw and Nona Allanson. When Pat told Jim Crist about his mother’s “drinking,” she had repeated almost verbatim what she had said about Paw Allanson a dozen years earlier.
Susan and Bill Alford had led Don and Michelle back through the eighties and into the seventies, reprising the horrible double murder of Walter and Carolyn Allanson, the near-fatal poisonings of Paw and Nona Allanson, and the glory that was once Zebulon. The investigators were eager to take a closer look at those cases. Pat had been convicted in the latter case—but she had walked away free as a butterfly in the double murder.
But first they had to deal with the current case. It didn’t matter how many people said that Pat and Debbie were no more registered nurses than they were brain surgeons; Stoop and Berry had to prove it. They had to trace and identify the medications used to render Betty Crist almost immobile and find out how they were obtained. And, perhaps the most difficult task of all, they had to try to find the myriad treasures that had disappeared from the Crist mansion on Nancy Creek Road.
It was now almost two years after the fact in the most recent case involving Pat. The D.A.’s detectives didn’t even want to think about what it would be like to go back two decades on the homicides.
***
Don Stoop began by checking with the Naval Investigative Service, the Department of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, the Georgia Board of Nursing, the Georgia Board of Licensed Practical Nurses, the Florida Board of Nursing, and the North Carolina Board of Nursing. He was not particularly surprised to find that neither Pat Taylor nor Debbie Cole Alexander was licensed in any of those venues as a registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, or even licensed nurse’s aide. One doctor in Florida that Debbie had given as a reference, claiming she had assisted him as an RN in the operating room, apparently didn’t exist at all; at least, no one by that name had ever been licensed to practice medicine in Florida.
Pat Taylor had been trained at Horizon House to empty bedpans, give sponge baths, and keep her elderly charges company. Debbie Cole had worked in a number of physicians’ offices and had often called in prescriptions to drugstores on her employers’ instructions.
Don Stoop obtained permission to speak to the Crists
’ attending physicians. Dr. Fred Hardin, their dermatologist, said that he had indeed prescribed a lotion for Jim Crist’s rash. He had not, however, seen Elizabeth Crist as a patient since March 1988.
“Would you have drawn blood from either of them in the treatment you provided?” Stoop asked. “Did you ever prescribe medication that would be considered a controlled substance?”
“No, not at any time. Dr. Watson is their internist. He would have done all blood tests—and prescribed that kind of medication, if it was needed.”
Dr. David Watson knew the Crists well. Like everyone connected to the case, the internist had found Pat Taylor competent enough on first assessment. She seemed conversant with the proper medical phraseology and, in an insurance assessment conference, she had spoken out confidently about her worries for her patient. She explained that she kept a monitor with her at all times so she could hear Mr. Crist if he needed her. She seemed very protective of her patient and refused to allow anyone else to prepare his meals. She felt that the weekend nurses “agitated” him, and that she was far more capable of assessing his needs. She watched him constantly because she feared he was suffering “small strokes” and might fall and hurt himself.
Dr. Watson's early favorable impression of Pat Taylor had wavered, however, when he saw Elizabeth Crist in 1988. She had been his patient since April 1985. She was a vibrant woman who had always seemed years younger than her age. It was Mr. Crist who was ill; his wife was, naturally, stressed by her husband’s condition, but she usually managed to keep cheerful.
Checking his notes, Watson told Don Stoop that Betty Crist’s sons had brought her to his office on June 6, 1988. “There is a real question,” he said, looking up from his notes, “of whether she and her husband were being oversedated by the nurse that was working with them most of the time.” Watson told Don Stoop he had scarcely recognized his longtime patient. Betty Crist was dizzy, pale, nauseated, she spoke with a slur and lost her train of thought often.
He had ordered a blood screen immediately. The medication that he had prescribed for hypertension would not have done this to her. The test results were essentially normal—all except for the excessive percentage of Halcion in her bloodstream.
“Had you prescribed Halcion for Mrs. Crist?” Stoop asked.
Watson nodded. “A single prescription—in April. As I recall, I made a house call to Mr. Crist, and either Mrs. Crist—or the nurse, Pat—requested it because Mrs. Crist was having trouble sleeping.”
Halcion was a very potent sedative. And Betty Crist had been loaded with it. Her physician said he would never have prescribed so much. At most he would have had her start with a dosage of a half pill a day—from a thirty-day supply.
When Dr. Watson worked with the Crists’ sons in checking on the number of prescriptions called in to the two drugstores the family patronized, he said he had found that someone had ordered 120 Halcion tablets in a thirty-six-day period from just one of the drugstores. He would never have authorized that many sleeping pills in so short a time. Never.
Don Stoop found that the procedure used by physicians to call in prescriptions was fairly standard. Each doctor had a DEA number that identified his office. His nurses used that number when they called a pharmacy. Written prescriptions bore the same number. It became clear to Stoop that anyone who had once been in possession of a written prescription and who was familiar with office protocol and terminology could call in a prescription and would probably get away with it—unless an alert pharmacist picked up on a pattern of excessive use.
Stoop was convinced that either Pat or Debbie had done just that. On May 11, 1988, someone using Dr. Watson’s DEA number had called in a Halcion prescription (thirty pills) to the Reed Drug Store—with five refills—for Betty Crist. On April 29, Wender and Roberts Drugs had a phoned-in thirty-pill prescription, another thirty on May 17, and still another on June 3.
Someone had had enough Halcion delivered to the Crist home to sprinkle it in salads, throw it around like confetti, and have more than enough left to sedate Betty Crist to the point where she would ask no questions and cause no trouble.
Stoop also knew that Betty Crist, long back to being herself again, had reached for something in her closet and her hand had touched a bottle of pills, hidden far back. Curious, she had stretched to get it and looked at the label; it was Placidyl, a sleeping pill that had been prescribed for her three or four years before. The pills were two-thirds gone. She had always felt that Pat had given her more than the Halcion; she had been sleepy from the first few weeks Pat came to work in her home. She had probably been slipped the Placidyl too. Lord only knew what else.
When the D.A.’s investigators talked to the Crists’ other nursing employees—or, rather, former employees—they verified their suspicion that Pat had been more than the charge nurse of the Crist mansion. She had been the ruling monarch; none of the other women had lasted long after Pat was hired, and all of them said that she had been well nigh impossible to get along with. She had made it clear that she was the only nurse allowed to interact with the Crists—except for scut work—and that she would see to all meals and medications. She had explained that Betty Crist was “senile and crazy,” and not in any state to give orders. Pat would do that.
It appeared quite probable that Mrs. Crist had been heavily drugged five days a week. From Monday morning to Friday evening she stayed in bed all the time, and no one but Pat or Debbie saw her when she was, at least technically, awake. The night nurse saw only a heavily sleeping patient.
One nurse’s aide, Lynn Battle, told Don Stoop that she had been puzzled when she walked into the kitchen one morning and found Pat dissolving a blue tablet (Halcion is blue) in Mrs. Crist’s juice. Startled, Pat had recovered quickly. “You couldn’t do this. You don’t have an order for it,” she said with her usual touch of superiority.
Lynn wondered why Pat hadn't just let Mrs. Crist swallow the tiny pill, and she wondered more why she was giving her Halcion, a sleeping pill, in the morning. “Then too—well, it was strange . . . ” Lynn began.
“What?” Stoop prodded.
“Pat told me Mrs. Crist got in her way, that she was always hiding medication around the house. I mean, I never saw any medicine anywhere but in the kitchen where it was kept. Pat said she had to search Mrs. Crist’s room for drugs, and she was always hinting that Mrs. Crist was crazy.”
Lynn Battle hadn’t lasted long after Jim Crist Jr. asked her if she would like to work full-time. “Pat didn’t want that. She set me up,” Lynn said succinctly. Pat had claimed she had lost an envelope with the money from her paycheck in it. “She called me at the Crists’ and asked me to look for it. I did, but it wasn’t on the downstairs dresser where she said it would be. She called early the next morning, Saturday, and came out to look for it. She checked everyplace—even the refrigerator.”
A day or so later, Lynn’s agency called her, brought up the missing money, and told her she was not wanted back at the Crists’ home. And yet, after Debbie and Pat were fired, she was rehired and worked with them for the six months until Mr. Crist died.
“It was funny,” Lynn said. “All that time after I lost my job, Debbie and Pat were calling me and telling me that they were trying to talk Mrs. Crist into hiring me back. But I knew Pat had set me up. She didn't want any of us there more than two or three days a week.”
There appeared to be a good reason for that.
The weekend nurses noticed that when they arrived on Friday, Mrs. Crist was usually shaky and confused, but she grew steadily more alert while they were there. By Monday morning, when Pat came to work, she seemed completely unlike the woman she had left. But within a few hours after Pat came on duty, Mrs. Crist was napping all during the day.
Ruth Garrett had worked the evening shift from time to time. She told Don Stoop that Pat had fired her when she called in sick one evening. “She told me that Mrs. Crist said I ‘bothered her.’ ” Ruth Garrett hadn’t particularly liked the head nurse at the Crists
, finding Pat bossy and unfriendly. “Pat was in charge of all medication and food. . . . One time, I saw that poor Mrs. Crist looked like death warmed over. Her eyes were sunken, her skin color was awful, and she couldn’t even hold her own head up. I told Pat how bad Mrs. Crist looked, and she just said, ‘I’ll take care of it,’ and she called the doctor’s office for some new medicine. Pat ordered all the medicine.”
***
As Don Stoop and Michelle Berry continued their questioning of the Crists, their physicians, and their other employees, it became tragically, unbelievably, clear what had happened. Betty Crist had been systematically drugged with medications obtained from forged prescriptions, and she had been robbed—of her dignity, of her health, and of her treasured belongings.
But most of all, she had been robbed of the few months of precious time that remained for her to be with her husband. As she slept away the days in her stuffy room through the spring of 1988, her Jimmy was far away from her, and his illness was progressing with those days, taking him still farther from her. She would regain her dignity, her health, some of her treasures—but she would never in this world find again those lost days with her dying husband.
Nor would Don Stoop and Michelle Berry ever be able to prove what they suspected was true. James Crist had complained of agonizing pain in his feet, the most classic symptom of arsenic poisoning. But there was no body to exhume and test for arsenic. James Crist had been cremated just before the New Year, 1989, two years before.
In checking with criminalists, Stoop learned that arsenic is one of the very, very few poisons that can still be detected in the cremains of a human being. Because it is so insidious, leaching into the hair, nails, and eventually the bones of its victims, arsenic remains long after the person is reduced to ashes. The Crist family had been through so much pain. When Don Stoop approached them about the possibility of having James Crist’s ashes tested for arsenic, they could not do it. It seemed a sacrilege.
No one would ever know if the old man had been sedated, tranquilized, or poisoned.