RENO –Two days before he absconded with his dementia-stricken, 80-year-old mother from an Alzheimer’s care facility in northwest Reno, Roger Hillygus eagerly showed a Review-Journal reporter a “jury verdict” that he said would make it all legit.
The document was a sham.
By the end of the following week, Hillygus
was in custody in California on kidnapping charges; his mother found
safe with him. A second man, a former county sheriff, had been charged
as an accomplice in the abduction, despite telling Reno police he knew
nothing of Hillygus’s intentions. His arrest and alleged involvement, as
a former top county cop, propelled the case into the national
headlines, garnering media attention as far away as New York.
Meanwhile, the “verdict” document, which
Hillygus had submitted multiple times in his mother’s ongoing
guardianship case, held no legal weight. He had obtained it online from a
citizen’s rights group in Arizona.
Hillygus took his mother, Susan Hillygus,
without a confrontation from the Stone Valley Alzheimer’s Special Care
Center where she lived on Aug. 8. Two days before, a reporter ran into
him by chance, along with the lawman, Stewart Handte, whose 30-year law
enforcement career included a stint as Mineral County sheriff. Handte,
at Hillygus’s request, was one of two men who went with Hillygus to the
care center. After about an hour there, Hillygus left with his mother,
later calling the center to say he was not returning.
As events unfolded over the next week,
Handte communicated daily with the reporter, repeatedly recounting that
day’s events along with day-to-day updates, including his discussions
with, and later interrogation by, Reno police, as authorities searched
for Hillygus and his mother. A “Silver Alert” — similar to the Amber
alerts posted on electronic highway signs in cases of missing or
abducted children — was posted in the Reno area on Friday, the day after
Hillygus fled the area.
“The FBI’s gonna be coming for me soon,”
Handte sardonically told the reporter that afternoon, before recounting
the previous day’s events at the care facility.
On that score, he would prove about half-right.
Long-running custody battle
The one-page document Hillygus thought would cover him, obtained by the Review-Journal from the court file, was his latest legal ploy to win back custody of his mother and control of the family trust that paid for her care. Whether he knew it was worthless is not yet clear, but Hillygus, in that Aug. 6 conversation with the reporter, said it would legitimately restore him as his mother’s guardian, a status he had been stripped of in a long-running guardianship dispute with his sister.
A review of the court docket in his mother’s
custody case shows he had submitted the document multiple times since
July, the last time on Aug. 8, the day he fled with her.
The reporter had met Hillygus in passing
earlier in June at a Reno law office. Handte had met Hillygus through a
mutual acquaintance at the law office a few months prior. Hillygus
alleged to the reporter that guardianship of his mother had been
effectively stolen from him in legal proceedings and he was fighting to
regain it. He said he was a victim of a conspiracy involving lawyers,
judges, a private guardian and his sister, who wanted to control the
family trust that paid for his mother’s care.
Such incidents, where people lose
guardianship to unscrupulous third-parties in the courts, do happen,
usually when a large estate or trust is involved. The Review-Journal is
among the media outlets that have written about the issue. The paper’s reporting
prompted the state Legislature, in 2015 and again this year, to tighten
licensing procedures for private guardians in the state. Hillygus in
fact contacted the Review-Journal reporter who wrote the stories in the
spring of 2018, hoping to get coverage for his plight.
A review of Susan Hillygus’ five-year-old
guardianship case shows her son filed motion after motion accusing the
judge, lawyers, court-appointed guardians and his sister of conspiring
against him. Multiple lawyers asked to be replaced as his attorney. He
filed so many frivolous and defamatory motions in the case that the
opposing lawyer sought to have him declared a “vexatious litigant.”
After repeatedly failing to heed court orders or follow through on
pledges he made, the judge in the case removed him as guardian in
December 2015.
More recently, Hillygus, representing
himself, filed an action in U.S. District Court alleging all manner of
wrongdoing in the guardianship proceedings. His case was thrown out in
December, and again on appeal in June.
Plan to take mother to California
Hillygus, on the Tuesday before he took his mother, told the reporter and Handte he would show the care center the document. The Review-Journal later obtained a copy from the guardianship court file. Hillygus said he planned to take her to California, later telling Handte that his mother had a brother living there and that he hoped to establish residency there himself.
Hillygus, 52, who is married and lives in
Dayton, said he would undertake the trip despite having fallen off a
second-story roof at his contracting job a few weeks earlier, suffering
several broken ribs, clavicle and a head injury that knocked him out
cold. He had asked Handte to go with him to the care center. A third man
would join them, videotaping with his phone if things got out of hand,
according to Handte’s account to the reporter and police.
Handte, 59, had his doubts about Hillygus’s
strategy, but he was also sympathetic. As he had told the reporter once
in an earlier casual conversation, he had been involved in a similar
custody fight with relatives several years earlier when his mother took
ill and died.
During a 30-year career in Nevada law
enforcement, Handte served in the state Highway Patrol, twice as a
deputy in Storey County, and most recently, as chief of two tribal
police forces, the Yomba Shoshone Tribe in Austin, and more recently,
the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. He was forced out of the Reno-Sparks job
in June after just seven months, prior to the Hillygus matter, and is
currently trying to win either reinstatement for wrongful dismissal or a
severance settlement.
A few days before the abduction, according
to Handte, he called Reno Police Chief Jason Soto asking that the
department get involved and speak to Hillygus. Soto was out of town in
Washington. Reno Police Cmdr. Oliver Miller called Handte back, telling
him that Hillygus had been in touch with the department before.
The morning of the abduction, Hillygus met
with Reno Police Sgt. Robin Hannafin. Hillygus was told police
considered his case a civil matter and would not get involved. Hillygus
took Hannafin’s card, which he gave to Handte a few hours later, shortly
after 2 p.m., when they met outside the care center. He told Handte
what Reno police told him about not getting involved. Handte said he
asked if police gave any other guidance. Hillygus said no.
The Review-Journal on Monday asked to speak
to Cmdr. Miller. The department declined to make him available.
Detective Lt. Zack Thew said Miller “is part of the investigative
process and has documented his contact in the police report.”
“I can confirm that there was some contact
with the police department beforehand, but not the specific details of
what that contact was,” Thew said.
A quiet departure
Handte met Hillygus and a third man – known to Handte only by his first name, Tracy – outside the care center about 2:15 p.m.. They spoke for about 15 minutes outside before Hillygus and Handte entered, according to Handte. Hillygus had mentioned an earlier confrontation at the center on a previous visit, and Handte said that if center staff objected to his presence or stopped him for any reason, they would leave immediately.
Handte said he entered the facility with
Hillygus, who initially asked to see another woman. After a few minutes,
he came back to the lobby where Handte had remained. The third man
remained outside. Handte said he later identified the third man to Reno
police when detectives showed him a picture from the body cam footage
recorded when Hillygus spoke to police.
Hillygus asked to see his mother and a male
attendant took him to her, Handte said. After about 10 minutes, Hillygus
returned to the lobby with her. They remained in the lobby for five or
10 minutes when Hillygus asked his mother if she wanted to go for a
ride. She said yes, and they exited the building with no objection or
intervention by staff, according to Handte. They walked across the
parking lot, Susan Hillygus shuffling her feet and holding her son’s
arm, according to Handte, who walked ahead of them.
Roger Hillygus put his mother in the front
seat and fastened her seat belt. He told Handte he was taking her home
to Dayton. The third man, Tracy, asked Handte for a ride back to his
car, which he had left at a McDonald’s in Sun Valley, about 10 miles
away.
Some of the details from Handte’s account
are mentioned in the statement Hillygus’s sister wrote in a court filing
seeking a protection order after the abduction. Unlike Handte’s
account, however, her statement says a witness saw Susan Hillygus being
“dragged” to her son’s car.
Staff at the facility on Friday referred the
Review-Journal to upper management regarding questions about the
incident. Erin Peacock, a spokeswoman for Stone Valley’s parent company,
Sunshine Retirement Living of Bend, Ore., said Monday the company
“can’t provide any kind of input or answer any questions because we
don’t want to jeopardize the investigation.”
After leaving, Handte said he called
Hillygus and told him he needed to give the center the paperwork he had
brought along. Later, according to the sister’s court filing, Hillygus
faxed the sham paperwork to the center, told them he held health care
power of attorney for his mother, and was not returning her.
Police get involved
Handte dropped Tracy off and went home. About 11 p.m., Miller, the Reno police commander, called Handte, asking where Roger Hillygus was.
Handte told Miller he didn’t know. He spoke
to Reno police several times in the coming days, relaying the same
details about the visit he had told the reporter. But Reno police began
to doubt his story and challenged his version of events, he said. He had
thought Hillygus was taking his mother to Dayton, his home, but
recalled Hillygus telling him about his mother’s brother in California,
and his interest in becoming a California resident.
That brother’s apartment in the Los Angeles
suburb of Bellflower ultimately is where police found Hillygus and his
mother one week after he walked her out of the care center unchallenged.
The 85-year-old brother’s 80-year-old girlfriend, Wilma Dester, who
managed the 16-unit, two-story apartment complex where they lived, told a Los Angeles TV station that the pair showed up last week and that Roger Hillygus had dutifully cared for his mother during their stay.
Dester told the TV station she did not
realize Hillygus was being sought until police knocked on her door
around 7 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 15. A seven-hour standoff ensued until
Hillygus, according to media reports from the scene, nodded off about 2
a.m. He was arrested and booked into a Los Angeles county jail, where he
is being held without bail. Susan Hillygus was unharmed. Her current
whereabouts could not be determined Monday.
Friend interrogated, arrested
Handte had fared only slightly better. On the Tuesday following the abduction, he was interrogated by Detective Allison Jenkins and other Reno police officers for more than two hours. He surrendered his cellphone to them. He had tried to reach Hillygus by phone and text, but Hillygus wasn’t responding.
On Wednesday, the day before Hillygus was
found, police arrested Handte outside the Reno law office where he’d
gone to discus his employment complaint. He was charged with
second-degree kidnapping and conspiracy, both serious felonies.
Handte, speaking to Reno police by phone
Wednesday, was told he was getting his phone back that day. According to
witnesses at the law office and to those who spoke to him after his
arrest, Handte went out to the law-office parking lot when he was met by
a half-dozen officers in tactical gear.
“What the hell, Stew? What the f–– are you
doing?” one yelled. As he was being handcuffed, another told him to
“stop struggling or I’ll take you to the f–ing ground.” An officer then
entered the law office to get Handte’s wallet. When a paralegal asked
for the officer’s business card, the officer refused.
Thew, the Reno police lieutenant, said
Monday the manner of Handte’s arrest “was a tactical decision based on
circumstances that were presented at the time.”
Following his arrest Wednesday, police let Handte use his previously confiscated phone.
“I’m actually in custody and being detained
right now,” he texted in a reply to the reporter shortly after 5 p.m.
The reporter texted back to confirm, doubting that someone under arrest
would be given use of his cellphone.
“No. … I actually have it if you can believe
that,” Handte wrote. Twenty minutes later, he texted that he was being
charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
“This is nuts,” he wrote. “Going to jail now.”
The reporter asked again why Handte still had his phone. This time, Handte did not respond.
Arrest becomes news
It took about 24 hours for news of Handte’s arrest as an alleged accomplice to get picked up by the media, the headlines focusing on his law enforcement background. Handte was being held without bail at the Washoe County jail – housed in the infirmary, apart from the general population. His police mugshot joined photos of Hillygus and his mother that accompanied the news stories.
On Thursday, a few hours before Hillygus was
found, Handte was released without having to post bail, despite facing
Class A and Class B felonies. He has a court appearance scheduled for
Aug. 29.
Following his release, Handte has declined
to speak further publicly because of the charges pending against him. He
did consent to having his photo taken, confirmed he was still seeking a
lawyer and said he feared his arrest would end his career in law
enforcement.
As of Monday, Reno police still had his phone.
Full Article & Source:
Bitter Reno family battle leads to manhunt, arrests
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