PROVIDENCE — Former Pawtucket School Committee member Everett “Ed” Dunn pleaded no contest to embezzlement yesterday, two and a half years after he was arrested and charged with looting the bank account of an elderly woman suffering from dementia who employed him as a nurse.

Dunn, 58, was accused of embezzling $219,000 from 89-year-old Jennie M. Rucci and using the money to buy a condominium in Florida, pay his credit card debts and utility bills and make a contribution to his own political campaign.

He didn’t deny doing any of those things, but, in a statement he read in court in the presence of Mrs. Rucci’s family members, Dunn asserted that Jennie Rucci put her trust in him because she didn’t want her family to have control of her money or her whereabouts.

He said he “provided a level of care beyond anything anyone could imagine.”

“I went to her apartment in the morning, washed her, dressed her and took her out every day.” Mrs. Rucci responded by becoming extremely fond of him, Dunn said. “If Jennie and I were standing here together with not one penny in my pocket I know she would rather be here with me than with anyone else on this earth.”

The statement — which a spokesman for the attorney general’s office termed “offensive” — was so emphatic that Judge Mark A. Pfeiffer asked Dunn whether he was in fact pleading no contest to embezzlement.

Dunn said he was, and Pfeiffer set Jan. 7 as the date for execution of the sentence: One and a half years of home confinement, plus $140,000 in restitution, with $40,000 payable up-front.

Gilbert J. Blais, Dunn’s longtime companion and co-defendant, pleaded no contest to the reduced charge of receiving stolen property under $500, a misdemeanor.

Blais, 59, who had been charged with aiding and abetting the embezzlement and receiving stolen property over $500, both felonies, will not be placed in custody as a result of the plea. After a year, the case against him will be filed, in effect enabling him to avoid a conviction, his lawyer, Christopher S. Gontarz said.

“I have told the powers that be over and over again that Mr. Blais had nothing to do with this matter,” Dunn said in court yesterday.

“Mr. Blais is the finest person that God ever put on this earth.”

Dunn’s lawyer, Jeffrey B. Pine, said outside court that Dunn wasn’t denying that he had embezzled money from Mrs. Rucci.

“He’s always been willing to accept the charge,” Pine said, but he also wanted to show that he had a “strong personal relationship” with Mrs. Rucci and took excellent care of her.

Dunn’s statement nevertheless appeared to stun people in the courtroom — among them, David Strachman, the lawyer hired by the Rucci family to file a civil suit against Dunn and Blais seeking recovery of the embezzled money.

“That’s shocking,” Strachman said. “It’s the first time that anyone has ever said anything like that, and it’s shocking that someone would invent a story like that after pleading guilty to embezzlement.”

The embezzlement took place between July 9, 2002, when Dunn obtained power of attorney from Mrs. Rucci, and May 29, 2003, when family members, suspecting he was stealing from her, had the power of attorney revoked.

Mrs. Rucci’s niece, Susan Niewiera, of Woonsocket, said her father, John J. Niewiera, suspected something was amiss when, without a word to family members, Dunn moved Mrs. Rucci from her apartment in Pawtucket to Epoch Assisted Living on Butler Avenue.

“He said, ‘I think he’s spending her money,’” Susan Niewiera said outside court yesterday. “And I was like, ‘No, it can’t be.’ You don’t believe that somebody would do anything like that.”

The magnitude of the embezzlement became clear, however, when Niewiera and her cousins obtained Mrs. Rucci’s bank records and discovered that Dunn had written 483 checks on her accounts.

Among the expenditures, according to the lawsuit Strachman filed on behalf of the family, were $62,208 to pay off Dunn’s and Blais’ loans and credit card debts; $15,429 for goods and services; $7,034 to pay utility bills; $11,831 in miscellaneous payments; $48,375 in checks made payable to cash and to Dunn personally; and $62,195 for the condominium in Florida.

Dunn was running for reelection to the Pawtucket School Committee when the lawsuit was filed. On Aug. 28, 2004, he dropped out of the race, moving with Blais to Florida.

A criminal investigation was conducted by Sgt. John Lemont and investigator Clifford J. Coutcher of the state police’s financial crimes unit.

In June 2005, Dunn and Blais were arrested in Florida and brought back to Rhode Island for arraignment. They were released on $50,000 bail and allowed to return to Florida while they awaited trial.

The charge of embezzlement carries a term of up to 20 years in prison. Despite the disparity, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, Michael J. Healey, defended the plea agreement, saying that, even if Dunn had been convicted at trial, as a first offender, he probably would have received a much shorter sentence, and there would have been no guarantee of restitution.

The $140,000 restitution figure was negotiated after prosecutors deducted the amount that Dunn and Blais spent on the Florida condominium.

Roger Demers, the special assistant attorney general who prosecuted Dunn, said Mrs. Rucci’s family sold the condo for approximately $67,000 after discovering the purchase, which Dunn attempted to justify as an “investment” on her behalf.

Mrs. Rucci is currently a resident of North Bay Manor in Smithfield. If Dunn had gone to trial, Demers said, she wouldn’t have been called as a witness because she isn’t competent to testify.

“We would have had to prove the theft case without the victim saying it was a theft,” he said.

jcastell@projo.com