TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer

The Providence Sunday Journal

Sunday, 4/9/2006

Mary Goulios' case is unusual. Each year, the state receives about 900 complaints of an elderly person being abused, but fewer than 20 result in criminal charges.

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NEWPORT -- Mary Goulios was fighting for her life.

Her niece and guardian, Evangeline "Lea" Henry, had come to her elderly aunt's apartment on the pretext of dropping off a box. Within minutes, Henry attacked Goulios, stuffed a rag soaked with Clorox into her mouth, and poured a bottle of bleach over her.

Someone in another apartment heard cries and called the police. Three officers arrived at the apartment door and listened to a woman inside calmly tell them that there was nothing wrong. But they also heard another muffled voice inside calling for help.

The police kicked down the door. They found Goulios on her back, and Henry kneeling on her aunt's shoulders. Henry's right fist was shoved inside Goulios' mouth. Both women were drenched with bleach.

A 210-pound police officer pulled Henry off her aunt and arrested her. Outside, as the police searched Henry's clothing, they said two yellow rags smelling of bleach fell out of Henry's jacket pockets, along with four rings and other jewelry belonging to her aunt.

An ambulance took Mary Goulios to the emergency room at Newport Hospital, then to the intensive-care unit at Rhode Island Hospital, in Providence.

Doctors and the police feared she would die. She was bleeding from the head. Her eyes were swollen shut, her mouth was swollen and bleeding. She had chemical burns to her head, eyes, mouth, throat, neck, arms, back, legs and feet.

She remained unconscious, in critical condition, for four days.

Today, Mary Goulios, 70, has recovered. She doesn't seem like someone who needs a guardian. She drives a 1988 baby blue Dodge -- a gift from a former employer -- takes a 90-year-old girlfriend shopping at Wal-Mart, likes to watch Law & Order on her 13-inch television set. She lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment near Newport Grand jai alai, and has an opinion on just about everything -- including the attack by her niece.

"She panicked when she realized that we could prove that she embezzled money, and that's why she tried to kill me. I'll be honest. That's the reason," Goulios told one of Henry's lawyers during an interview under oath.

MARY S. GOULIOS lived alone in Newport's historic Point section for about 30 years. She was divorced, with no children, and wasn't close to her two sisters, although one -- Lea Henry's mother -- lived just a few blocks away.

Goulios had spent most of her life, beginning at age 12, working in Newport restaurants, including one her father had owned on Long Wharf. At age 55, she had to quit work because of medical problems. She rented out the top floor of her house to bring in extra money.

On Dec. 15, 2002, her tenant became worried because she hadn't seen Goulios for days and mail was piling up outside her door. She called the police.

When the police forced their way inside, they found Goulios lying on the floor, in a diabetic coma. She had a serious leg infection, and her toenails were black. She'd been living in a front room that was stacked waist high with old furniture, rotten food, cigarette butts and dirty clothes. The stench was so overpowering that the police had to don protective masks to breathe.

Goulios was taken to Newport Hospital. She remained in a coma for 23 days.

"I had diabetes and didn't know it," Goulios said. "I couldn't walk straight. . . . I swelled up to 225 pounds." She also had severe arthritis in both knees.

"When they found me, they thought I was the Little Old Lady from Pasadena, that I was nuts," she said.

On the evening the police discovered Goulios unconscious, they tried twice to get in touch with the Department of Elderly Affairs, the state agency that investigates cases of self-neglect and helps to find guardians for people who have no close relatives.

But when they called the emergency hot line, "the phone rang and there was no answer or answering machine to leave a message," a police report said.

When Goulios woke up in the hospital, her niece Lea Henry came to visit. Goulios said that Henry, a mother of three who worked part-time as a bookkeeper, offered to become her guardian until she regained strength "so the state wouldn't interfere with my business."

There were bills to be paid, rent to be collected. And someone needed to oversee the cleanup of Goulios' house, which the city had condemned as unfit for human habitation.

Henry and her husband own a rental house in Newport about a block away from Goulios' house, and they live in a house they own in Middletown.

Lawyer Patricia Joyce, the court-appointed guardian ad litem, told the Newport Probate Court that Goulios needed a guardian to make her medical, financial and personal decisions and that Henry was "a suitable person."

A doctor at Newport Hospital had determined that Goulios was "merely confused" from being unconscious. Joyce disagreed. She told the court that Goulios had told her that she wanted to sue the City of Newport and President Bush "for allowing Russian Communists to enter her apartment."

Joyce said that Goulios had no objection to her niece becoming her guardian. "In fact," she wrote, "she appeared relieved to have Ms. Henry available to assist her."

"She and her aunt appeared to genuinely like each other," Joyce wrote. She said Henry appeared "to be sincere in her willingness to use her best efforts to do whatever is best to help her aunt."

On Jan. 17, 2003, Newport Probate Judge Mortimer Sullivan appointed Henry to be her aunt's temporary guardian. A month later, she became permanent guardian.

FROM THE hospital, Goulios went to a nursing home and then an assisted living center. In early 2004, she moved into a government-subsidized apartment for the elderly near the Newport jai alai fronton.

As Goulios' guardian, Henry had her name on Goulios' checking account. From that account, she wrote checks to herself and to others for things that Goulios neither approved nor received. Henry spent tens of thousands of dollars of her aunt's money on herself and her family.

All of this was uncovered long after the fact by lawyer Richard P. D'Addario, who on Dec. 10, 2004 -- five days before the bleach attack -- became Goulios' attorney and later her temporary guardian.

D'Addario immediately got the probate court to enter an order compelling Henry to appear for a hearing so he could cross-examine her about her expenditures.

That same day, he also asked that the court remove Henry as Goulios' guardian. D'Addario had a report from Goulios' doctor saying she no longer needed a guardian.

The judge set a January hearing date on Henry's accounting of her expenditures, but the hearing was postponed after Henry was charged in the bleach attack.

Goulios calls D'Addario "my white knight. I'd suspected that she'd been up to no good for several years," she says of her niece. "He's the one who proved it."

D'Addario had had a lot of experience reviewing accountings. For the past 121³2 years, he's been the probate judge in Tiverton. He knew what to look for, what seemed ordinary, what jumped out as unusual.

Like a bloodhound, D'Addario took the accountings that Henry had filed and picked them apart, item by item. He placed telephone calls to places she had shopped. He subpoenaed venders to testify. He discovered that for most of Lea Henry's expenditures, there were no original receipts. Some receipts she submitted had been forged.

He thought it odd that Henry didn't use Goulios' checkbook to pay most of the bills, even though Henry's name was on the checking account.

Henry testified it was her usual practice to charge things to her own credit card and then reimburse herself by writing checks from Goulios' account to herself or to cash.

Asked why she did this, Henry testified: "Because I don't carry a purse or I didn't have the checkbook on me at times."

In questioning Henry, D'Addario established that she had used her aunt's money to have renovations done on her own home and to buy clothing for herself and her family, fancy bed linens and new curtains. She spent hundreds of dollars on hair products. And every time she did anything for her aunt -- whether it was "dropping off cash to Aunt Mary," delivering cigarettes to her or calling social workers assigned to her aunt's case -- she charged Goulios $25 per hour.

Henry claimed in her accounting that she'd spent thousands of dollars on her aunt at stores such as Eddie Bauer and Express.

But a social worker testified that some of the clothes Henry gave Goulios looked like hand-me-downs and were inappropriate for an elderly person. The clothes -- which included Mickey Mouse sweatshirts -- didn't have price tags. Goulios returned almost all of it to Henry in plastic garbage bags.

While serving as Goulios' guardian, Henry sold her aunt's house for $325,000 after it was fixed up. D'Addario walked Henry through the expenses she submitted for rehabbing Goulios' house.

Henry, her husband and her father had charged Goulios $36,405 for cleaning out her house and for everything else Lea Henry did for her aunt. Goulios had also been billed for 81 gallons of paint.

Henry submitted an invoice for $980.80 that she said came from a locksmith who'd changed the locks at her aunt's house. But under questioning by D'Addario, the locksmith testified that the receipt had been forged.

When D'Addario questioned Henry about the $7,000 cash she took from Goulios' account -- money she claimed she'd spent at a yard sale to buy furniture and household items for her aunt's current apartment -- Henry said she didn't know who the seller was. She had no itemized receipt for the goods.

Henry used $2,299 of her aunt's money to buy a 22-inch flat-screen TV. She also bought a Walkman, a DVD player, CD player and telephones. But Goulios testified that she never received any of those items.

When an employee of Flint Audio Video was summoned to court by D'Addario, he testified that the store had no record of where the items were delivered but that some had been bought by Lea Henry's husband, Brian Henry.

In one month in early 2004, Henry claimed she'd given her aunt 102 pairs of hosiery. It was "a buy one, get one free" deal, she testified.

In her accounting, she also listed that one month, she gave Goulios hundreds of dollars' worth of gift cards for Stop & Shop. But Goulios and a social worker testified that the only gift cards Henry ever gave her aunt were for Shaw's.

D'Addario took food receipts and queried Henry about what she bought, item by item.

There were dozens and dozens of Atkins bars, even though Henry conceded that her aunt was "not on the Atkins Diet" and was receiving lunch every day from Meals on Wheels.

"It was her money, so whatever she requested I gave to her," Henry testified.

As her guardian, "you weren't paying attention to how much she was spending or how much you were spending on her?" D'Addario asked.

"No I wasn't," Henry said.

"You spent over $4,000 in gift cards for food for Mary Goulios," he said.

Henry said that some of the food items were expensive because as a diabetic, Goulios had to be on a special diet.

"Is maple syrup a low-sugar item?" D'Addario asked her.

"I don't know," Henry replied.

"Maple syrup is sweet, isn't it?"

"They have low-sugar maple syrup as well," Henry replied.

But she conceded that she'd made a mistake in charging her aunt for a Snickers bar and cinnamon bread.

"I was purchasing my own, too, so they might have gotten mixed up," she testified. "I did a lot of shopping back then. . . . You know, people make mistakes."

AS THE damaging evidence mounted, Henry amended her accountings. Her lawyer withdrew from representing her. Thirteen days before Christmas last year, acting under court order, Henry wrote a check to repay her aunt $19,580. D'Addario has asserted that even Henry's amended accountings are bogus, but since last September, Henry has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination every time he has tried to question her.

On March 28, Lea Henry went on trial in Superior Court on the two felony assault charges in connection with the bleach attack -- crimes which together are punishable by up to 40 years in prison.

Mary Goulios was the star witness for the prosecution.

After four days, the state rested its case.

At the beginning of the trial, defense lawyer J. Terence Houlihan Jr. told the jury that Henry had acted in self-defense, that Goulios had been the aggressor in the assault.

Last weekend, as the prosecutors prepared to cross-examine Henry, they listened to the testimony that D'Addario had elicited in Probate Court. D'Addario had been trying since last summer to get prosecutors to play the tapes because he felt strongly that Henry should be charged with embezzlement in addition to assault. After hearing the tapes, the prosecutors agreed.

Monday morning, as the parties gathered in Judge Edwin J. Gale's courtroom to resume Henry's trial, Houlihan handed the clerk a form signaling that Henry was waiving her right to present a defense.

Henry stepped forward. Weeping, she told the judge that she wanted to plead no contest to assaulting and seriously injuring her 70-year-old aunt. She said she accepted full responsibility for her actions.

As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors promised her she would serve no more than six years in return for her admission of guilt. They dismissed the second felony assault charge. They also announced that sometime before Henry's May 30 sentencing, they will charge her with embezzlement. If Henry admits her guilt to that charge -- as her lawyer indicated she would -- she would serve no additional prison time as long as she makes additional restitution. The amount will be determined later.

Henry's elder-assault trial was a rare phenomenon. The state Department of Elderly Affairs receives about 900 complaints of an elderly person being abused each year. Case workers substantiate about 85 percent of them. But only about 70 become full police investigations, and of those, maybe 18 result in criminal charges. "Very few, if any, ever result in conviction," says George Mason, former director of policy and legislation for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch.

Prosecutors are loath to take such cases to trial. The victims are most often dead, incompetent or have memory problems. Prosecutions become even more problematic when the victim and alleged perpetrator are related. Elder-abuse victims almost always refuse to testify against a family member. If a relative goes to prison, the elderly victim will often have no alternative but to move to a nursing home.

But Mary Goulios doesn't have those fears. She wants her 45-year-old niece to go to prison and to pay back everything she took. She's filed suit against Henry seeking $2 million in damages for breach of fiduciary duty and negligence as her guardian, and for the pain and suffering and medical expenses she incurred as a result of the bleach attack. She's also sued the company that bonded Henry as guardian.

Asked if she has any regrets about testifying against her niece, Goulios said: "If she'd apologized and had paid me back, she could have walked away and gone back to her family. But when she told me, 'I didn't try to kill you; you tried to kill me,' she was a very foolish girl to do that."

tbreton@projo.com/(401)277-7362