SOUTH KINGSTOWN -- Beatrice S. Demers, 99, is a wealthy woman with a raft of lawyers. She owns land in Narragansett near Sand Hill Cove and lives in a Victorian house in Wakefield with round-the-clock nursing care.
During more than 50 years in the work force, she accumulated more than $4 million from stock investments, according to her accountant of 30 years, John A. Parmelee, of Warwick.
Demers spent her life teaching foreign languages, first to students in the Pawtucket public schools, then for more than 30 years at the University of Rhode Island. She developed fluency in French, German and Spanish, and took up Chinese and Russian in her 70s.
She wants to leave most of her fortune to the Rhode Island Foundation to support college students who want to study foreign languages. Her will also provides $100,000 to a religious order for the benefit of nuns in France; $100,000 for Brown University, where she went to school; $50,000 each to a half-dozen Native American organizations in South Dakota, New Mexico and Montana; and $100,000 to be divided among distant cousins, according to Parmelee.
There's no direct bequest to URI, her accountant says, because she is still miffed that she was forced to retire from the university when she turned 70.
Beatrice Demers planned for her future. She made out a will, set up a trust and delegated a power of attorney. But her twilight years have been anything but blissful.
As she rebuffed offers of help over several years, her case bouncing between
units within the state Department of Elderly Affairs, she slid into a life
of squalor.
Now, having received complaints from a former caregiver and the state's watchdog for the elderly, the state attorney general's office is investigating whether anyone should be prosecuted for exploitation, neglect or abuse of Beatrice Demers.
BEATRICE S. DEMERS never married. She has no brothers or sisters, no close
relatives, no best friend to watch out for her.
Few people knew that she had much money. She drove an old Ford. Her clothes looked like hand-me-downs. Her animals were mangy. She could easily have afforded a membership at the nearby Dunes Club, but she liked to jog in the sand at the town beach in Narragansett. Even in cold weather, she would swim in the ocean, sometimes for an hour without resting.
She was closest to her mother, Rosaline, who had worked as a housekeeper. For many years, they lived together at 461 Woodruff Ave.
After Rosaline Demers died, in May 1977, Beatrice continued to live in the house. She walked her dogs every day. Occasionally, a neighborhood child would call for help with French homework, and Demers would cook up a batch of penuche fudge. Sometimes, she'd drive over to URI to attend a lecture.
Her house became her island, one she shared with two dogs and dozens and dozens of cats.
IT TOOK a stranger to alert the state that all was not well inside 461 Woodruff Ave.
On Feb. 26, 1998, according to records kept by the state Department of Elderly
Affairs, an oil-delivery man found Demers alone and confused. He contacted
a local legislator, who called the Self-Neglect Unit of the DEA.
Six days later, a DEA social worker checked on Demers.
The house was filthy. The stench of cat urine and feces was overpowering. Mountains of old papers, magazines and newspapers filled every bit of space. A narrow path had been cleared through the mess, the DEA records indicate, but Demers, who was having trouble seeing, didn't have a cane.
Demers told the caseworker that she had very little social support, but was still driving her 1985 sedan. The social worker noted the squalor, and assessed Demers' risk as "intermediate."
Five days later, on March 9, 1998, a caseworker checked on Demers again, DEA records show. Demers was talkative. She complained about not being able to exercise the way she used to, but maintained she was still well enough to attend lectures at URI.
The social worker assessed Demers at "low risk" for cognitive, emotional
and mental health problems. But because she was living alone, she was found
to be at "intermediate risk" for lack of social support and at "high
risk" based on her living environment.
Things were so piled up, the caseworker wrote, that there was no place to sit to conduct the interview.
Five months later, on Aug. 12, 1998, a DEA social worker went to 461 Woodruff Ave. and reported that she couldn't see into the house because there were so many boxes blocking the windows.
Five weeks after that, neighbors called the South Kingstown police to complain about Demers' cats. When a police officer and a social worker went to visit Demers, she wouldn't let them in.
The police report said there was a foul odor emanating from the house and that there were at least 20 cats and a dog inside.
A notation was made in the DEA file to alert Rotary Club volunteers to go to the house in the winter to shovel her snow.
On Aug. 23, 1999, DEA records show, an appliance repairman called the DEA's Elder Abuse Hotline about Demers. Four days later, a DEA caseworker went there, but Demers wouldn't let her in.
The caseworker reported that Demers was at "low risk."
The South Kingstown building inspector, Russell Brown, came to believe otherwise. By April 2000, he had become so concerned about Demers' health and safety that he contemplated condemning her house to force a cleanup.
On April 5, 2000, he called the DEA and South Kingstown police about getting a search warrant so he could gather the evidence for condemnation.
The following week, DEA records show, Brown met with DEA staff and told them that he'd tried to inspect Demers' house but she wouldn't let him in. Demers, he reported, had hired a lawyer.
A neighbor, Alice Jane Barker, was running errands for her and helping her out at home. Demers was a longtime friend of Barker's mother and had known Barker for many years. They had volunteered at the South Kingstown Animal Rescue League, and had gone blueberry-picking together.
A few weeks later, in June, Barker told a social worker assigned by the DEA to stop trying to contact Demers because she could take care of herself.
On Aug. 30, 2000, the DEA closed its file on Beatrice Demers. A note in the file gives the reason: Demers did not want any help.
ON JAN. 3, 2001, a neighbor called an ambulance for Beatrice Demers. She was having trouble breathing. The house was so cluttered and piled high with debris that no one could get in the front door. It took 19 firefighters with a cherry picker to extricate the tiny woman through a second-floor window.
After Demers was taken away in the ambulance, Brown and a firefighter went into the house. When the two went outside to confer, Barker locked them out, Brown says.
At South County Hospital, where Demers was taken, a social worker called the DEA because Demers was insisting on going home. A DEA report says the hospital workers were concerned about Demers' ability to live independently, based on newspaper reports about the squalor she was living in.
Demers went from the hospital to the Scallop Shell nursing home, in Wakefield. The DEA sent a caseworker. In a report filed after the visit, the caseworker says that she told the retired professor that her house had to be cleaned up before she could go back, and that the DEA didn't want Barker helping with that.
John A. Parmelee, Demers' accountant, said the condition of Demers' house had been about the same ever since he'd met her, in 1975.
"There wasn't a thing that would go into her house that would ever come out. She hoarded everything. She hoarded her stocks. She hoarded her cats. She hoarded her books. She hoarded papers of all kinds, newspapers, magazines, any papers that documented her stocks. She just never threw anything out. The house was never cleaned and it was smelly and filthy, even when she was younger."
Parmelee would try to persuade her to hire a cleaning service, but Demers would always steer the conversation to something more interesting -- the situation in the Middle East, classical music or the stock market.
This was her home, he said, and "when you were talking to her, she was so fascinating and brilliant that you'd forget all about what you were looking at -- the filth, all those cats, the fact that it was floor-to-ceiling boxes and there was no place to sit."
Lt. Geoffrey Peckham, a South Kingstown police detective who got to know Demers in 1971, soon after he became a patrolman, said he noticed a steady decline in the condition of Demers' house as she aged. In her 70s, he says, the house was always "very cluttered" but not squalid. "There were just two or three cats." But as she got into her late 80s and 90s, "it was really unimaginable. . . . You could barely walk through it. Years and years of financial papers" were piled sky high. "The stench was unbelievable."
The day Demers was hospitalized, Brown received a call from a man in Point Judith who told him he'd found checks and deposit slips belonging to Demers in a Dumpster. Brown told the caller to notify the Narragansett police. He says he phoned Demers' lawyer, Mark Spangler, of Wakefield, and told him of the stranger's discovery.
According to the police report, the Point Judith man found five endorsed checks belonging to Beatrice Demers in the Dumpster -- a $2,203.73 state pension check, a $310.20 Kodak dividend check and three Fleet dividend checks totaling $260.85.
A Narragansett police detective tracked down Demers at South County Hospital and found her there with Alice Jane Barker. Barker was "somewhat embarrassed," the police report said, and told the detective that she had not yet advised Demers that the deposit she was supposed to have made for her was missing. Barker "claimed responsibility for misplacing the checks," the report said. She "was difficult to follow as she explained when and where she may have lost the deposit," the detective wrote in her report. Demers "was very grateful" that she'd gotten the checks back, the police report says.
Brown says while Demers was recovering in the hospital, he contacted Spangler, who arranged a partial cleanup of her house; two Dumpsters were brought into the yard and filled, Brown says.
In January 2001, when Demers was in the nursing home, Parmelee went to visit her. It was time, he told her, to get her affairs in order. She needed a will and a trust and someone who could help her do things she couldn't do herself.
Demers told Parmelee to contact Frederick C. Kilguss Jr., who had a law office in Warwick. Kilguss, she told Parmelee, had been a "brilliant" student of hers at URI. He was someone she trusted.
Nineteen days after Demers was taken out of her home in a cherry picker, she returned there, according to DEA records. A week after she came home, a DEA caseworker went to check on her. Alice Jane Barker answered the door. She said Demers was sleeping.
The caseworker gave Barker a book that listed services available to Demers. Barker said Demers had a working phone and that if she needed anything, she would call, according to DEA records.
On March 7, 2001, the Visiting Nurse Association, which had been checking in on Demers, made a decision: none of its nurses would go inside her house anymore. Cat urine and feces covered much of the premises. The stench was overpowering. There were 30 to 40 cats inside, the DEA case file notes, but "the client is competent."
About a week later, a social worker assigned by the DEA met with Kilguss and a distant cousin of Demers to discuss the old woman's living situation. Afterward, the DEA deactivated its self-abuse file on Demers.
Demers was paying someone to help her at home, the caseworker noted: Alice Jane Barker.
IN THEIR 2003 divorce proceedings in Family Court in Washington County, Alice Jane Barker and Roger Barker both listed Beatrice Demers as a potential witness.
In papers filed by his lawyer, Roger Barker cited his wife's longtime "history of gambling and deception" as his reason for ending the marriage.
He said he "found hidden around the house" high credit card bills, dividend checks payable to Beatrice Demers and a $3,000 IOU to Beatrice Demers from Alice Barker.
He said in the court papers that when he confronted his wife, "she denied having any debt, then refused to answer any of his questions telling him simply that it was none of his business."
In the divorce documents, Roger Barker said that in December 2002 he found a shopping bag in his wife's car with bank records showing that she "had received approximately $41,000 from the bank account of Beatrice Demers over a 4-5 month period."
Checks from Demers' account, ranging from $50 to $5,000, were made out to Alice Jane Barker and her brother, but the "signatures on the checks did not appear to be the same from check to check," he said in the divorce papers.
Roger Barker said he was so distraught by his discovery that he showed the canceled checks to his son, Lewis. He says that the two of them confronted Alice, who "admitted that she was gambling but swore that she did nothing 'wrong.' "
Roger Barker said he and his son concluded that "the best course of action was to turn the evidence over to the South Kingstown police."
According to a South Kingstown police report, Lewis M. Barker, 28, walked into the police station at about 6 p.m. on Dec. 6, 2002, and told the police that he believed his mother had been stealing money from Beatrice Demers' account at Fleet Bank.
Lewis Barker told the police that for about five years his mother had worked as Demers' "unofficial" caregiver. The old woman had been paying her $200 to $500 per week to run errands, do laundry and take her to doctors, he said.
He told the police that he believed his mother had written a slew of checks to herself and to others on Beatrice Demers' checkbook.
The South Kingstown police report of Lewis Barker's statement detailed a variety of payments made with Demers' checks: $1,500 to make a payment on a second mortgage on the Barkers' house; $282.39 on Alice Barker's Filene's account; $3,500 to Alice's brother in Connecticut; $3,000 to Alice's credit card. And, the police report said, there were many more checks made out to Alice Jane Barker, each for $5,000.
Lewis Barker told the police that his father had discovered withdrawals from her bank account going to Foxwoods and Newport Grand Jai-Alai.
South Kingstown Detective Lt. Geoffrey Peckham contacted Fleet. According to police reports, the bank told him that Barker had been depositing Demers' checks into her account at Fleet -- as much as $96,500, all told.
Parmelee, Demers' accountant, conducted an audit. He said he determined that from March 1999 through January 2003, Alice Jane Barker received $128,778.45 of Beatrice Demers' money.
Barker had gotten most of the money by writing checks, the police and Parmelee concluded. But there was also about $16,000, according to Parmelee, that Barker had received in "loans" from Demers that had not been repaid.
Peckham said he tried to persuade Demers and Kilguss to press charges against Barker but was unsuccessful.
Eight days before Christmas 2002, according to a police report, Detective Peckham went to Demers' house. He said Demers was adamant: "She doesn't feel like bringing charges as she does not want to cause any problems for the lady who has been running errands for her," he wrote in his report.
In his reports, Peckham said Demers told him she could no longer see well enough to drive and had become dependent on Barker. She was reluctant to discuss the missing money with the detective.
Before leaving her home, Peckham wrote in his report, he told Demers that he was going to contact the Department of Elderly Affairs because Kilguss "has taken no action to keep Alice Barker from accessing her accounts."
Back at the police station, Peckham called the DEA's Abuse Unit. Caseworker Barbara Winchenbach told him that while a file already existed for Beatrice Demers in the Self-Neglect Unit, the Abuse Unit would look into the missing money.
According to Winchenbach's report, when she visited Demers, Alice Jane Barker was there. Demers told her: "My lawyer told me that I don't have to talk with you." She also told Winchenbach she had no desire to press charges against Barker, who she said was remorseful and would pay her back.
On Jan. 3, 2003, about a month after Lewis Barker went to the police, according to divorce records, Roger Barker says his wife cashed a jointly held certificate of deposit worth about $42,000.
According to Probate Court documents prepared by Parmelee, Alice Jane Barker made a $25,000 "restitution for forgeries" to Beatrice Demers that same day.
A state prosecutor said that he is now trying to determine exactly how much money Barker got from Demers.
In the divorce records, Alice Jane Barker, a mother of four grown children, acknowledged that she had a gambling addiction, suffered from "severe depression" and used "certain marital funds to pay for her gambling debts." But she denied that she engaged in any criminal wrongdoing relating to Demers and called the allegations "unsubstantiated, as no criminal charges have ever been forthcoming."
ALICE JANE BARKER continued as Beatrice Demers' caregiver for seven months after Lewis Barker went to the South Kingstown police.
In July 2003, according to police and court records, Demers called the South Kingstown police and told them she was worried about Barker, whom she hadn't heard from in four days. Demers also called Kilguss and told him that Barker wouldn't return her phone calls.
Kilguss alerted South Kingstown Senior Services, which sent a staffer to Demers' home.
Like five others before her, the social worker contacted the DEA Abuse Unit, reporting that Demers was in desperate need of caregiver services.
A few days later, Peckham, who was still investigating Demers' missing money, went to see her. "I found the conditions deplorable in the house," he wrote in his report. "I asked if there was someone taking care of her and she stated that Alice comes over and takes her to the bank and the doctor."
Peckham had learned from Barker that she was in the process of selling her own house and moving to Florida.
Barker told him that Kilguss had not found a replacement caregiver. A few weeks earlier, she said, he'd brought someone by to meet Demers, but the woman wouldn't go inside because of the stench and the condition of the home. The house was filled with papers "stacked high as the ceiling in some places," a South Kingstown police report said. The cats were running wild inside and there was cat feces and urine all over the place.
Peckham was also worried because a neighbor of Demers had found unfrozen fish that was eight months old in Demers' refrigerator. The house was infested with fleas, Peckham wrote in a report, and is "now a health hazard and also a fire hazard."
AT THE END of July 2003, Winchenbach of the DEA called Paula Goldman, a registered nurse from Charlestown who runs a company called Geriatric Resources. She asked Goldman to visit Demers.
When Goldman arrived at 461 Woodruff Ave., she found Demers covered with flea bites, according to records filed with the Probate Court. Demers was suffering from an eye infection, which wasn't clearing up because she was not applying her medicine correctly, Goldman told a court-appointed lawyer for Demers, Margaret L. Hogan.
Goldman is a cat lover, and she and Demers hit it off.
Goldman decided that Demers needed to be examined by a psychiatrist. She also believed that Demers needed a guardian, at least temporarily, because it appeared that that would be the only way her house would ever get cleaned, Hogan wrote.
Goldman also told Hogan that she talked with Kilguss and he agreed that a guardianship would be a good idea.
During the second week of September 2003, a test known as a DMAT was done to assess Demers' ability to make decisions, court records indicate. Her doctor determined that she suffered from impaired judgment and was also belligerent, delusional and suspicious, according to Hogan's report to the court. In short, she needed a substitute decision maker in all areas.
A few days later, Goldman called the DEA. Demers, she said, had taken a turn for the worse. She was hallucinating and had placed a hysterical call to Kilguss claiming there was no food in the house -- even though Goldman had gone grocery shopping for her two days earlier.
The day after receiving that call from Goldman, the DEA asked lawyer R.J. Connelly III to file an emergency petition for guardianship for Beatrice Demers. Kilguss wasn't notified. The DEA's Winchenbach would later tell Hogan that she had no confidence he'd return her call.
South Kingstown Probate Judge Stephen R. White held an emergency hearing. After hearing from Winchenbach, Goldman and Peckham about the squalid condition of Demers' home and her failing health, he appointed Connelly temporary guardian for Demers' financial affairs, and Goldman temporary guardian for health.
Connelly left with a directive from the court to arrange a speedy cleanup of Demers' residence -- within 10 days, the judge said. Demers, meanwhile, was taken to Roger Williams Hospital.
Eight days after the guardianship hearing, Kilguss notified the Probate Court that a motion was being prepared to vacate the appointments. In the court papers, Kilguss asserted that the petition for guardianship had been "inappropriately filed."
Connelly, he said, had failed to conduct an investigation to see whether, as the law requires, other "less restrictive means existed, such as a durable power of attorney for health care or a trust" to accomplish what was needed for Demers.
In the court filing, Kilguss stated that he'd known Demers since 1956, had been her lawyer for 20 years, that he held a valid durable general power of attorney for her and that he had been selected by her as co-trustee of her trust. He complained that "no effort" had been made to contact him before the guardianship petition had been filed.
Kilguss said Demers did not need a guardian, but if the court were to find otherwise, he said, he should be Demers' guardian. That's the way Demers wanted it, he said, and he asked for an expedited hearing. Demers, he said, would testify.
But Connelly, with the DEA's blessing, launched a counterattack on Kilguss and Parmelee, her two trustees.
In papers he filed with Judge White, Connelly asserted that Demers needed a guardian, that less restrictive alternatives were "inappropriate" and that Goldman, the DEA and the South Kingstown police agreed.
He argued that Kilguss and Parmelee had breached their fiduciary and ethical duties to Demers. They had repeatedly failed to return phone calls placed to them by state and local authorities, Connelly said in the court papers. And both, he wrote, "were well aware of the exploitation, larceny and self-neglect" experienced by Demers and had failed to protect her.
According to Parmelee, Kilguss had managed to get Alice Jane Barker to repay Demers $86,000 of the money she'd gotten from the old woman. But he said she owed tens of thousands of dollars more to Demers.
Connelly also had issues with Parmelee. From 1984 to 2000, Parmelee had borrowed money from Demers, Connelly discovered, something the lawyer considered unethical since Parmelee was not just a friend of Demers, but the woman's accountant.
Demers, he said, had documented the loans -- which Connelly said totaled $40,600 -- on "little scraps of paper."
As Demers' temporary guardian, Connelly filed a complaint against Parmelee with the state Board of Accountancy. The board dismissed the complaint, finding that Parmelee had done nothing wrong.
Parmelee said he was ill when he got the loans from Demers, and that he'd paid back everything he'd borrowed, with interest. He said he had the canceled checks to prove it.
But as a result of the brouhaha over the loans, he later resigned as co-trustee of Demers' trust, and was replaced by a lawyer chosen by Kilguss, Anthony R. Mignanelli, of Providence.
While acting as Demers' temporary guardian, Connelly had problems of his own. Goldman, Kilguss and Mignanelli complained to the Probate Court about the way he'd handled the cleanup of Demers' house.
According to police reports, garbage pickers were coming by 461 Woodruff Ave., diving in the Dumpsters and rooting through the house for potential treasure. Demers, a cousin, Kilguss and Goldman all complained that antiques and family heirlooms were missing.
Beatrice was beside herself when she was brought back home to live -- with 24-hour-a-day caregivers -- after her brief hospitalization and four weeks in a nursing home.
It was bad enough that she didn't have access to her own checkbook anymore, which she found embarrassing. But all of the stuff she had saved over a lifetime had been ditched.
In an interview with Hogan -- the Wakefield lawyer who was appointed on Oct, 25, 2003, by the Probate Court to represent Demers' interests in the guardianship proceedings -- Demers complained that "a stranger" had taken over her home, thrown away most of her belongings, broken into her safe-deposit box and taken her stock certificates.
Her mother's china, glassware and silver were missing. Two Lincoln rockers she'd caned herself had been pitched, along with all of her papers that represented her life's work as a professor of languages.
Peckham, the South Kingstown detective, said he thinks Connelly did a masterful job in completing a task that no one else seemed able or willing to tackle. Even if Demers had owned some valuable items that had been tossed in the garbage, he said, by the time Demers' cats had their way with them they would have been worthless.
"I was made out to be the bad guy for throwing away junk," Connelly said in a recent interview. "I had her antiques appraised by Gustave White" but they didn't even finish the job, he said. "Most of the stuff that was thrown out was old books spread with cat urine and cat feces. There were several dead cats among the things.
"The whole case gave me a lot of heartburn," Connelly said. "I was given just over a week" to accomplish the cleanup and Demers' lawyers "objected to virtually everything I did."
AS THE STAGE was set for a showdown over the issue of a guardianship, White, the probate judge, asked Hogan to assess Demers' situation.
Hogan interviewed everyone who'd been involved with Beatrice Demers in recent years. She combed through records at the DEA.
In an extensive report she filed with the court -- which includes a footnoted "historic timeline of events" -- Hogan zeroed in on the "serious lack of trust" that had enveloped the case from the start.
"The genesis," Hogan wrote, "can be traced to early August 2003 when the Department of Elderly Affairs was conducting two simultaneous investigations through its two divisions, without either knowing of the other."
From interviews with DEA staff, she said, she'd learned that both units -- the Abuse Unit and the Self-Neglect Unit -- were "woefully understaffed" and that "for whatever reason, [they] appear to operate without significant contact between each other and without coordination of the units by the use of a client database or any other tracking mechanism."
"Unfortunately," Hogan wrote, "the inevitable result with such a system is that someone is going to slip through the cracks as apparently has been the case with Miss Demers. According to the records of the self-abuse unit, Miss Demers was called to the attention of the DEA as early as February 26, 1998."
But "the administrative management of the DEA" wasn't the only problem, Hogan wrote. So were Rhode Island's statutes for the protection of its elderly citizens.
"When it comes to self-neglect cases, the DEA's hands are somewhat tied. Unless a social worker can convince an individual who is engaging in self neglect (i.e. living in a filthy home) to either accept such services as the department is able to offer or submit to a competency examination, there really is not much more that the social worker can do.
"If however, the social worker believes or finds evidence that a third party is abusing the elder, then steps can be taken by the abuse unit to remove either the elder or the abuser from the home. [But] if the self-neglect unit does not refer the case to abuse, then no legal action can be taken."
Hogan recommended that the DEA change its administrative processes so that "there was more interaction between the self-neglect and abuse divisions of the department."
If that had occurred in the Demers case, she said, "perhaps much of what has occurred over the last several years could have been avoided."
In her report, Hogan excoriated Alice Jane Barker. Hogan said that even though Demers "made a conscious decision to forgive Ms. Barker and move on . . . what is also clear . . . is that it is unlikely that true measure of Ms. Barker's defalcation has been realized.
"Clearly, at some point, Ms. Barker had a vested interest in keeping others from accessing and/or befriending Miss Demers. Indeed, if Ms. Barker's relative had not reported the embezzlement, the entire situation could have remained status quo," Hogan wrote.
Hogan recommended that Goldman be appointed Demers' permanent health-care guardian. She said the two women had a good relationship and that Demers' physical condition and hygiene had dramatically improved since Goldman had been hired to supervise her care.
If the court found that a permanent financial guardian was necessary, Hogan recommended that Kilguss assume that task, since Demers had previously given him durable power of attorney.
But Peckham, the police detective, disagreed. In a letter to Judge White, written on Oct. 25, 2003, he said it was imperative now that the house had been cleaned, that it remain that way. "What the court has to do now is to make sure the present status doesn't change," the detective wrote. "By this I mean that the people entrusted with her well-being in the past and who have, in my opinion, not done their job, should be removed and continue with the people who have done so much work."
In his letter to the court, Peckham complained that Kilguss, who held power of attorney for Demers, had "had an opportunity to make some beneficial changes" at Demers' house when she'd been hospitalized "but nothing was done then! Finally, because of emergency circumstances, we have had the woman removed, on an emergency basis, and treated at the hospital for infections which were the result of a home which was 1. unhealthy, 2. unsafe due to wild animals, 3. unsanitary due to cat urine/feces and dead cats and animals among the furniture and boxes, 4. infested with fleas, 5. above all, a fire hazard."
On Dec. 18, 2003, Judge White -- at the request of Demers' lawyers -- sealed most of the record in her guardianship case. Demers was paying six lawyers -- the two trustees, the two litigators they'd hired, Connelly and a lawyer representing Connelly in his battle with Kilguss and Mignanelli.
At a hearing on March 4, 2004, the judge rejected Connelly's request that a permanent financial guardian be appointed for Demers, and ordered him to submit an accounting of Demers' assets and how he'd spent her money while he was in control of her finances.
The judge also appointed an independent accountant to conduct a forensic audit because of questions that had arisen over Connelly's handling of Demers' assets.
That day, court records show, Kilguss, after conferring with Demers, asked Parmelee to resume "full accounting responsibilities" and to scrutinize how Connelly had handled Demers' finances.
The following month, Demers suffered a stroke. Connelly missed the deadline set by White for his accounting. A few days after the deadline, Connelly was charged with drunken driving and assaulting Cranston police officers after his car struck a utility pole.
Cranston police said criminal charges were dismissed but Connelly was adjudged guilty of a civil violation -- refusing to take a Breathalyzer -- in the Traffic Tribunal. He was fined, lost his license for three months, ordered to attend drunken-driving school and perform 10 hours of community service, according to Maj. Ronald T. Blackmar.
Demers, meanwhile, continued to live at home, with round-the-clock caregivers who were being supervised by Goldman. The caregivers kept diaries of everything that went on inside the house: the pizza that she ate or wouldn't eat, what medicines were administered, when she had a sponge bath, the fact that she enjoyed watching The Stepford Wives.
But as 2004 wore on, Demers' dementia worsened, Goldman reported. She needed better-trained caregivers. In a letter to Judge White on Aug. 10, 2004, Goldman wrote: "Her bad days have increased and she has had many more nights when she is up all night hallucinating, thinking she has been kidnapped and has attempted to get out of the house."
Goldman told the judge she was getting calls at home at 3 in the morning because the people caring for Demers didn't know what to do. She complained that her ward's companions had become "overly attached and possessive of Miss Demers" and weren't keeping the house clean. They were also challenging the nurse assistants she'd hired and were being insubordinate, she alleged.
Goldman told the judge she wanted to hire a retired registered nurse to live full time with Demers, which would save about $5,000 a month.
The nurse, Chava Cohen, "is well seasoned in dementia care and can speak French with an appropriate Parisian accent that will please Miss Demers," Goldman told White.
"This may also ease some of her frustration and eliminate some of her confusion because she has been reverting to French more and more since the stroke and is upset when the companions can't understand her."
Cohen, she said, had already agreed to come to Rhode Island from Palm Springs, Calif. She would live on the second floor of Demers' house, supervise the care of her cats, administer oxygen to Demers as needed and make sure Demers got the proper dosages of medications.
"I am dedicated to providing her with the best care possible and keeping her life as stress free as possible in order to ensure the best possible quality of life until the day she dies," Goldman said.
Goldman got swift approval for the plan from the court and from Kilguss. Four days after Goldman wrote the letter to White, Cohen arrived at T.F. Green Airport.
CHAVA COHEN says that when Paula Goldman called her in California to offer her the job with Demers, she was told that she was being hired as the "French-speaking companion/household manager" to a "world-traveled" retired professor of languages who was "a lover of classical music."
Cohen says Goldman told her that Demers "had suffered a mild stroke a few months earlier" but that her "self-help skills were excellent as to toilet, bathing, dressing and eating" and that while she had glaucoma in her left eye, she could walk well with the aid of a walker and loved gourmet cooking.
"In short, the position Ms. Goldman offered me was that of general factotum to a brilliant grande dame who, despite physical issues, enjoyed a reasonably good state of health for her age and thus a happy, contented life."
During the telephone interview, she says, Goldman advised her that Demers' house was more than 100 years old but had been renovated. She says she was told that Demers had one cat.
When Cohen arrived at Demers' home, she was aghast. Demers was sitting in an armchair, looking "lost, disheveled and confused," Cohen said. When Cohen greeted her, Demers smiled faintly but didn't utter a word. There was oxygen equipment next to her chair. Goldman told her Demers "has lung disease."
All the furniture and plants in the living room, and in Demers' bedroom, were covered by a thick layer of dust. There was enough dust underneath the carpets to grow a crop of potatoes, Cohen says. The kitchen, oven and cabinets were filthy. So were the wood floors. The old bathtub upstairs was covered with dirt and rust stains. It didn't appear that anyone had used it for years. There was no working shower or tub anywhere in the house, and only enough hot water to fill a small bowl.
Cohen could not imagine living there. She arranged to take showers at a neighbor's and the nearby Neighborhood Guild, and then got a room, which was billed to Demers' trust account, in a nearby bed and breakfast.
While in Demers' employ, Cohen says, she was able to persuade the trustees to pay someone to repaint some of the walls in the house. A shower was installed. When workers cleaned out the cellar, they found a dead cat, along with jars of spoiled preserves dating to the 1950s, Cohen says.
Cohen stayed in Wakefield for a few months but didn't have much interaction with Demers because, within 48 hours of her arrival, Demers had a psychotic episode and was hospitalized, court and police records show.
Shortly after returning home after that, she became psychotic again and was rehospitalized, then transferred to a nursing home.
The day of the second episode, Parmelee arrived at the house to do the weekly payroll and found Cohen upset. Demers needed immediate medical attention. Cohen told him she'd been trying to make contact with Goldman but that Goldman wasn't returning her calls.
In a letter to Judge White, Parmelee said he left several messages for Goldman on her answering machine "stating that there was an emergency with respect to Ms. Demers" but that she didn't call back for two hours, so he called the state Health Department to see if someone there could get her to return his call.
According to Parmelee, a few minutes later, Goldman telephoned the house. She told him she "was out with friends" and was very angry. "What was the emergency now?" she demanded.
Parmelee said Goldman told him to call 911. He wrote that he asked her to meet them at South County Hospital. Goldman arrived at the hospital -- more than five hours after he placed his first call to her. The doctor at the hospital was "very angry" and told them "he felt Ms. Demers was not being properly cared for."
Goldman, through her lawyer, declined a request for an interview.
TWO DAYS AFTER that hospitalization, Goldman arrived at Demers' house and handed Cohen a termination letter. Cohen says she had to get a neighbor to climb in through a window to retrieve her belongings.
She called Kilguss, who told her not to leave. But within a matter of weeks, Cohen was dismissed by the trustees and she returned to Palm Springs.
But before she left, she decided to embark on an investigation. She says she felt she owed it to Beatrice Demers to expose what had happened to her.
Cohen went to the South Kingstown Probate Court, where a clerk let her look at documents and photographs from the Demers guardianship file -- which have since been placed under seal.
Cohen photocopied the documents she was given, and took pictures of the pictures that were in the court file. She got a copy of a play written by Matthew Goldman -- entitled The Cat Lady.
When she first met the Goldmans, she says, Matthew Goldman, Paula's husband, handed her the play, which was read on stage by an actors' group in Hudson Valley, N.Y.
The theater group describes the play on its Web site as a "somewhat dark comedy about a very wealthy, elderly woman who is overly fond of her cats and all the characters that come into her life, most of whom, one way or the other, are after her money."
The cast includes lawyers, a probate judge, "a crooked housekeeper" named Susan Swipe, and some caregivers, including a nurse named Ima Warrior.
The play makes fun of the protagonist, Isabelle de Mille Chats, whom the playwright describes as "feisty and demented . . . not a sweet old lady."
Matthew Goldman's disclaimer on the title page says the play is "a work of fiction, but it was inspired by actual events."
But the DEA and Roberta Hawkins, the state's ombudsman for the elderly, would later angrily assert during court proceedings that the play was based on confidential information that Paula Goldman had gotten as caregiver of Beatrice Demers.
On Dec. 30, 2004, when Cohen was back in Palm Springs, she made out an affidavit, which she sent to Demers' lawyers, the Probate Court and the Alliance for Better Long Term Care.
The affidavit excoriated Goldman and the way Demers had been treated.
Hawkins, of the Alliance, forwarded Cohen's affidavit to the Rhode Island attorney general's office. The affidavit spurred a criminal investigation into the Demers case that is now under way.
Under fire from the Alliance and the DEA because of The Cat Lady, Goldman gave up her bid to become Demers' permanent guardian for health care and resigned from the case. Demers now has a new nurse who serves as her limited guardian for health care.
As a result of an agreement negotiated by Demers' lawyers, Edward L. Gerstein and Richard C. Bicki, and lawyers for the Goldmans, Paula and Matthew Goldman gave up all interest in the play. The Cat Lady is now the property of Beatrice S. Demers.
IN ITS LAST session, the General Assembly issued a mandate to the attorney general's office to beef up its investigations of abuse, neglect and exploitation of elderly people.
It allocated new money that would allow the office to establish an elder justice prosecution unit.
The legislature said it was allocating the money because Rhode Island's over-60 population is rapidly growing and because "elder abuse, neglect and exploitation have no boundaries, and cross all racial, socioeconomic, gender and geographic lines."
Special Assistant Attorney General Roger Demers -- who is no relation to Beatrice Demers -- says he and an investigator are questioning people who have had dealings with Beatrice Demers in recent years, and are combing through her health-care and financial records.
Several months ago, the prosecutor filed papers in the South Kingstown Probate Court to open the guardianship file, asserting that it had been sealed illegally.
"I think the people of the state and law enforcement . . . have a right to see what's in the file," Roger Demers told Judge White at a hearing on July 21.
As he stood before the court, the prosecutor said that based on complaints his office had received from Cohen, Parmelee and Hawkins, his office had opened a criminal investigation.
Cohen, Demers' former caregiver, alleges "numerous instances of misconduct on the part of the past guardian, Ms. Goldman. She alleged not only physical neglect but also perhaps some financial improprieties, including overbilling of the estate and also attempts to access Ms. Demers' bank accounts."
Roger Demers told Judge White: "There are allegations that Ms. Goldman neglected Ms. Demers when she went to the hospital."
The prosecutor told the judge he was also looking into allegations of misconduct by R.J. Connelly III, and by Alice Jane Barker.
"The courts of this country recognize a general right to inspect and copy public records and documents, including judicial records and documents," the prosecutor said. "I can find no authority in any statute or in the Constitution of the State of Rhode Island which permits this court . . . to seal this file."
Demers' lawyers objected to opening the court records.
Said Bicki: "Many years ago, Louis Brandeis said, 'The ultimate right of the people is to be left alone.' Ms. Demers only wants to be left alone."
The Probate Court file for Beatrice Demers remains closed for now. Through negotiation, Demers' lawyers agreed to show the prosecutor copies of documents that are in the file. The "interim good faith agreement" is allowing the criminal investigation to go forward without public scrutiny.
In a recent interview, Roger Demers said, "I am looking into any potential criminal conduct [regarding] allegations of financial wrongdoing and physical abuse or neglect of Miss Demers."
In addition to looking at the conduct of Alice Jane Barker, Connelly and Goldman, he said, he wants to find out whether Demers was in her right mind when she set up her trust on July 5, 2002. He says he's requesting the forensic audit of Beatrice Demers' finances.
Parmelee, who has been questioned by Roger Demers in recent weeks, says he has turned over everything he has relating to Beatrice Demers to the prosecutor but that the information isn't current because he's been fired as her accountant by Mignanelli. He has since filed suit in Superior Court against Demers, Connelly and Demers' two trustees to try to collect $42,000 in fees he says he is owed by Beatrice Demers.
In a recent interview, Barker acknowledged taking money from Beatrice Demers and said, "I'm just sitting here waiting to be indicted."
"What I did was a terrible thing. I did a terrible, terrible thing. I will live with it for the rest of my life" and "I am truly very, very sorry. . . . I just mentally was not myself," Alice Jane Barker said.
"I did not coerce Bea not to press charges," she insisted. "I told her I deserve to be prosecuted for what I did; I'm willing to go to jail for it. I was guilty. But she did not want me prosecuted."
Barker said she doesn't know how much money she's repaid to Demers. She said that she made arrangements with Kilguss before she moved to Florida to pay back whatever else she owes after she and her ex-husband sell a piece of land they own in South Kingstown. She says that Kilguss's son, Karl, who is his law partner, represents her and Roger Barker in the land deal, along with another attorney.
"I didn't do anything out of meanness," she said. "I'm a very kind person. I still love my husband and I will love him and Bea until the day I die."
Connelly says he did nothing wrong. "I made the hard decisions. I did what had to be done . . . in a timely and professional manner. I was approached by the DEA because this lady was living in utter squalor and I brought this lady in this dire situation before the Probate Court for protection. I did all I could to put her back in a safe environment, in her house where she wanted to live. My accounting was approved by the court with the consent of her trustees."
The attorney general's office has a special interest in the case under law: since Beatrice Demers has left most of her money to charity, the office has the duty to ensure that her money is not misused -- during her lifetime or after her death.