Retirement home worker faces trial
A second high-level employee of a Coeur d’Alene retirement home must answer criminal charges that she stole from an elderly resident, a judge ruled on Tuesday.
First District Court Magistrate Judge Eugene Marano said, after a three-hour preliminary hearing, there was enough probable cause for Mary Ward to face trial on charges of grand theft and conspiracy to commit grand theft.
Kootenai County prosecutors accuse Ward, the marketing director at Fairwinds Retirement Community, of participating in a scheme in which 84-year-old Lucille Huber was taken to a bank to write checks for cash, only to see a fraction of the amount.
On May 9, 2003, prosecutors allege, Ward drove Huber to a bank near Fairwinds to cash a check for $2,000. Huber, who has since moved out of Fairwinds and is now suing the retirement home and its parent company, received $200, witnesses say, while Ward and former Fairwinds general manager Mary Jane Vann each pocketed $900.
Vann, who has said under oath that she stole from “at least 10” Fairwinds residents, was sentenced July 26 to four years in prison, but could be out on probation by January if she receives good marks in a six-month boot camp program.
Vann has named Ward and Fairwinds’ assisted living supervisor Charlotte Stinebaugh as participants in the scheme to steal from residents.
Vann was fired as the Fairwinds manager in June 2003 for not having proper Idaho licenses. She confessed in April to stealing $30,000 worth of jewelry from former resident Mary Honeyman and again in late June to bilking thousands of dollars from Huber’s checking account after convincing the elderly woman to award Vann power of attorney.
In her June 22 confession to Coeur d’Alene Police Detective Tracy Martin at the Kootenai County Jail, Vann named Ward and Stinebaugh as accomplices. She repeated those claims while being deposed under oath in early August as lawyers prepared for a civil lawsuit.
Vann has also reached an immunity agreement with the prosecutor’s office in which she promised, as she said Tuesday, “to testify to the truth about the stealing.” It was after signing the immunity deal that she confessed to stealing from at least 10 other Fairwinds residents.
Brad Chapman, who is representing Ward along with fellow public defender Ann Taylor, pointed out the immunity deal and Vann’s sometimes vague testimony Tuesday – she was unable to recall specific dates – when he argued Ward should be let go immediately.
Vann, Chapman argued, “testified that all of a sudden, out of the blue, on a date she can’t remember, that she entered into an agreement with my client to steal money from Mrs. Huber.”
Chapman said Vann probably knew, from events in the lawsuit brought by the Hubers, that more criminal charges would be pending. That’s when she signed the plea deal and began telling stories, Chapman said.
“Her testimony should not be taken for anything more than the oxygen it moved around the room. Her testimony is not credible,” he said.
Marano, while saying deputy prosecutor Marty Raap presented “a mixed bag,” did find enough cause to bind Ward over for trial. The case was assigned to Judge John Luster. No date was set for further hearings.