‘Caretaker’ couple facing murder charges in death of elderly man

Jonathan Lee Barber and Tiffany Dawn Fountain - Rollis Noble Bowman

Two people who reportedly agreed to look after an elderly man are now facing murder charges.

According to investigators, Jonathan Lee Barber and Tiffany Dawn Fountain are responsible for the death of 76-year-old Rollis Noble Bowman, along with over $7,000 in unexplained ATM withdrawals from his bank account.

The couple initially lived next door to Bowman on Brandy Lane, where they rented a home from him, according to Chief Deputy James Yarbrough with the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office.

While Bowman was not suffering from any pre-existing medical conditions, he needed help with day-to-day activities because of his advanced age, according to Yarbrough.

With Bowman’s closest relatives living in Augusta, an agreement was reportedly made with his Barber and Fountain, who agreed to help out and moved in with Bowman in September of 2016.

In exchange for their help, Bowman let them live rent-free in his home and paid for all the groceries and utilities, Yarbrough said.

Bowman also provided his ATM card to the couple to help pay the bills, but investigators now say there is more than $7,000 in unaccounted withdrawals.

Investigators say they believe while Barber and Fountain lived with Bowman, the older man suffered from extreme neglect and, as a result, his health spiraled.

By March of 2017, Bowman had contracted pneumonia, but the couple never took him to the doctor or filled any prescriptions, Yarbrough said.

Two months later, Bowman passed away in his bedroom. At the time of his death, Bowman weighed just 110 pounds – a loss of more than 55 pounds, according to his Georgia driver’s license.

Because of the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, Bowman’s body was sent to the GBI crime lab for further analysis. On Jan. 2, the final results came back.

According to GBI Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Jacqueline Martine, the causes of Bowman’s death were acute pneumonia, dehydration and cachexia –  a metabolic disorder that typically involves extreme weight loss and increases the risk of deadly complications such as infections.

Martin listed the manner of death as homicide and said she believed Bowman’s basic needs and medical care were met with “carelessness...in other words, (he was) neglected.”

Lead Investigator Sgt. Chad McDonald said instances like these are horrific but are becoming more common.

“That’s why the attorney general is starting to address this,” he said. “There are more situations where people are taking in elderly people or offering to care for them, but they exploit the situation. There’s a financial element that drives it."

On Tuesday, authorities arrested Barber, 29, and Fountain, 28, and charged both with murder and two counts of elder abuse. They are being held at the Coweta County Jail.

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‘Caretaker’ couple facing murder charges in death of elderly man

ResCare employee killed in grisly group home murder

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (WHAS11) -- Harry Braxton had just settled in for the night Tuesday evening when he noticed the blue flicker of police lights pouring through the front window of his home.

It was a sight the retired Hardin County deputy once knew all too well. Deputies unrolling crime scene tape, interviewing witnesses and collecting evidence.

But standing in front of his Bryan Street home Wednesday morning, Braxton appeared saddened and deeply troubled as he recalled the previous night’s disturbing events.

“Nothing like that has ever happened on this street before,” Braxton said, as he looked at the used crime scene tape piled in a driveway across the street.

The home, which is owned by ResCare, houses men with special needs. Hardin Co. Sheriff John Ward said a ResCare employee called 911 just before 11 p.m. Tuesday to report the co-worker that she was relieving had been attacked.

Deputies found Sally Berry’s lifeless body lying in a pool of blood. She had been brutally stabbed multiple times, Ward said. The 66-year-old Radcliff woman was a ResCare employee who worked as a caretaker at the home.

"In this situation, you know, we have a 66-year-old woman who was out doing her job and I’m sure she didn’t go to work yesterday thinking about even the slight possibility of being harmed much less murdered,” said Ward. “It’s a sad situation.”

According to an arrest citation, Lindale Cunningham, a 32-year-old resident of the group home, confessed to crime. He was one of three men being cared for at the home.

Cunningham was taken into custody at the scene and later charged with murder. He was booked into the Hardin County Jail early Wednesday morning.

“It’s a shame something like that happened to her,” said Braxton, who knew Berry and some of the challenges she faced.

He said Berry once expressed concerns about being “roughed up” by one of the residents, but continued her work despite her fears. He said he hopes there will be changes to ensure others don't suffer the same grisly fate.

“I just hope somehow they straighten it out and somebody looks at how these operations are run and have somebody devise some better safety protections for the workers here because they don’t get paid enough for this,” said Cunningham. “It’s something somebody’s gonna have to think about for a long time.”

ResCare issued a statement Wednesday in response to the incident.

“ResCare is deeply saddened by this very tragic loss of one of our own employees with years of dedicated service as a caregiver and we extend our sympathy to the family for the loss of their loved one. Our number one priority is to ensure the safety and well-being of each and every one of our clients and staff members at all times,” the company said in the statement, adding that ResCare was fully cooperating with authorities as they continue the investigation.

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ResCare employee killed in grisly group home murder

Arizona Police Release 911 Call

Police on Monday released the 911 call that led to the arrest of an Arizona woman suspected of trying to kill her hospitalized husband by injecting fecal matter into his IV line.

The call came Friday afternoon from the Chandler Regional Medical Center's head of security.

Hospital staff said they found Rose Mary Vogel tampering with the IV line and saw a brown substance blocking the tube.

When it was searched in the hospital, Vogel's purse contained a total of three syringes, including two with a clear liquid, police said.

Police documents said Vogel, 55, is a retired registered nurse who formerly worked at the Chandler hospital.

On the 911 call, the security supervisor said hospital staff didn't see Vogel inject the fecal matter into the IV line, but she was the only person in the room when the tampering occurred.

"She was in the room, and she's a former nurse and she was playing with the IV pump and everything else," the unidentified male supervisor said.

Police said a hospital laboratory test identified the substance as fecal matter. and a trace amount of a brown substance also was found in the needle of an otherwise empty syringe found in Vogel's purse.

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Rose Mary Vogel Update:  Police Release 911 Tape in Arizona Fecal Matter Case

Arrest made in 2007 nursing home death

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A cold case from 2007 came to a surprising end Monday.

The death of 84-year-old Marcelline Vale went unsolved for almost seven years until Monday, when her alleged killer confessed to the story.

David Satterfield, 34, is now charged with Vale's murder.

Police say Satterfield turned himself in Monday after asking police for a ride to the homicide office. He told police he was a certified medical technician working rounds at Parkway Medical Center the night of July 4, 2007, when he said he injected Vale with a large amount of insulin, knowing she wasn't a diabetic. Vale died four days later of an insulin overdose. WHAS11 asked detectives why Satterfield decided to come clean after almost seven years.

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Arrest made in 2007 nursing home death

Nursing assistant to go on trial for murder

BRATTLEBORO — A judge has rejected an 11th-hour move by a former Brattleboro nursing assistant, charged with murdering one of her nursing home patients, to dismiss most of the charges.

Judge David Suntag rejected the motion from Jodi LaClaire’s attorney, Daniel Sedon, who was seeking to have related financial exploitation charges dismissed.

Suntag’s decision sets the stage for LaClaire’s murder trial to begin Monday in Brattleboro criminal court.

LaClaire, 39, formerly of Bennington, N.H., faces charges of second-degree murder, elder abuse and seven counts of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. She is accused of injecting 85-year-old Nita Lowery of Brattleboro with a fatal dose of insulin on March 23, 2009 — medicine Lowery had never taken in her life.

According to pre-trial information from medical experts, the insulin injection left Lowery brain dead.

Lowery’s cause of death on April 1, 2009, was hypoglycemia, or extremely low blood sugar.

Court records say that in the early morning hours of March 23, LaClaire tried to use Lowery’s credit card as Lowery lay dying in her nursing home room.

LaClaire is also charged with accessing Lowery’s financial accounts in the weeks following Lowery’s death, pocketing about $4,000.

Sedon, in a motion filed last week, had asked that all of the financial charges against his client be dismissed. He argued that two necessary legal elements were missing from many of the charges against LaClaire.

But Assistant Attorney General Ultan Doyle criticized Sedon’s reasoning in his response to the motion. He said that by Sedon’s reading of the elderly exploitation statute, there was no crime involved by LaClaire using a dead woman’s credit card.

“He argues that if a person willfully uses funds of a vulnerable adult, without legal authority, for wrongful profit, no crime has been committed, and that, similarly, if a person willfully acquires possession of an interest in funds of a vulnerable adult through the use of undue influence, no crime has been committed,” Doyle wrote.

Sedon had argued that the language of the state law was flawed, and that the state’s charges “do not contain a plain, concise and definite written statement” of an alleged crime.

Sedon argued that in order for a crime to have been committed, the state had to allege that not only had funds been used by an unauthorized person, but that the acquisition of the funds was by ‘‘wrongful means.”

LaClaire was the only nursing assistant on Lowery’s floor that night, court records stated.

According to court records, LaClaire had financial problems, mostly medical bills from Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, N.H. There were also records of LaClaire selling pieces of jewelry at a pawn shop in Massachusetts.

In late August, the state dropped nine of the financial exploitation and attempted financial exploitation counts against LaClaire, leaving seven in place.

Doyle noted that he would not present evidence about another patient at Thompson House, the Brattleboro nursing home where LaClaire worked. That patient also ended up in the emergency room with extremely low blood sugar, a sign of an insulin overdose.

Like Lowery, “T.I.” did not take insulin and was not a diabetic. “T.I.” was hospitalized and recovered from her severely low blood sugar, but died 10 months later from natural causes, court records stated.

According to court records, LaClaire herself is a diabetic and used injectable insulin.

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Nursing assistant to go on trial for murder