It Happened To Me: My Step Brother Murdered Our Dad And Stole A Half Million Dollar Inheritance
PLUS: Does Jane retain her title of Worst Mom In The World? You be the judge!
Hello kooks,
So I started this Jane Pratt: Worst Mom In The World series on Jane Radio on Sirius XM and then continued it on XoJane back when my offenses were things like: pretending I did my daughter’s hair for a dance recital (one of my beauty editors at the time, the now uber Julie Schott, came over to my apartment and did it for me); not knowing that the timer on the oven doesn't turn the oven off and baking banana bread overnight that was hard as rock but still making my daughter and her friend eat it (because I had made it!); taking my then 7-year-old daughter to Michael Stipe's 50th birthday party - in a bar. And so so many more.
Some things never change. Now, all these years later, I just realized that I still continue in that grand tradition and offer this example: The other night, my daughter asked me to turn on the fan for her, and here was my reaction, dead serious, no laughing behind my eyes or anything: "I am not equipped to have a special needs child in this home." It just came out.
If you would care to share your own worst mom or dad or uncle or aunt or cousin, etc. moves, in honor of this weekend when so many of us are stuck at family gatherings with lots of options for making new horrible-relative memories, it would make me feel better and not alone. (Because that's your JOB - just kidding and I don't know why I think that reasoning should appeal to you - unless maybe you were a teenage Sassy subscriber and it saved your life or something. In that case, you definitely do owe me a worst relative story of your own or at least a reaction to mine.)
And talking about families, herewith I present the following It Happened To Me on the topic that was sent in recently (send me yours - and your submissions for our Unpopular Opinion column also! - to jane@anotherJanePrattthing.com). This IHTM does qualify as one of the more dramatic I have run and may be an interesting murder mystery for some poolside reading or to accompany whatever you're doing this weekend. Including being under your covers pretending it's not a holiday weekend. However you do it. I love you!!
Jane
PS Don’t forget to boost my sense of self by sharing your own worst family-member infractions below or telling me what you think of mine. That’ll be just great. Thank you!
By Sherry Shahan
My stepbrother Kevin is a drifter. He has racked up multiple arrests in multiple states. He’s sixty-four-years-old, stubby-limbed with bad skin, and a fondness for underage boys.
My stepfather Lou adopted Kevin from an early marriage and in the late 1970s, when Lou married my mom, Kevin became my stepbrother.
In early 2017, Kevin drove his clunky RV from the Pacific Northwest, where he’d lived off the grid for decades, and parked his rig in the driveway of Lou’s home, a three-bedroom house in Los Angeles built in the late 1950s.
Kevin said he wanted to visit our dad (Lou is technically my stepdad, but I’ve always referred to him as my father) before “going on the road” with his “music.”
I was immediately worried. My mother died in this house a dozen years ago, on the couch with the plaid fabric she’d chosen from her favorite go-to department store. I have a hushed memory of her lounging on the loveseat beneath the window, hooked to an oxygen tank, a balled-up Kleenex in a sleeve, her dark brown eyes deep in a trashy paperback. These memories make my skin itch.
Lou carried on, managing the house and his investments. He walked six to eight miles a day and enjoyed a robust social life with family and church friends.
But no sooner had Kevin put his RV in park did he got to work on our dad. The “visit” turned into a two-year-long nightmare of elder abuse, theft, and manipulation that would eventually end in prison time for felony charges unrelated to his mistreatment of Lou.
The first thing Kevin did was to convince Lou to switch banks and add himself as a co-signer on the accounts. Thus, he became the sole beneficiary of the bank and retirement assets. Because I lived 200 miles away, it wasn’t easy to follow what was happening. I struggled to weed facts from the bed of lies.
I tracked down the bank by phone and eventually spoke to a sympathetic manager. “If Mr. B. agreed to put Kevin on the accounts, then the money is legally and equally his.”
Other ominous signs floated around my periphery. Even the air seemed to change. I sensed something was going on, but couldn’t figure out exactly what or how to intervene. Kevin monitored Lou 24/7 and was a master manipulator.
Kevin continued to take over: Successor Trustee of the Estate with Power of Attorney (POA). A judge didn’t authorize the POA; it was merely a form printed off the computer and notarized to verify signatures. Kevin waved it around like it was a legal document. An attorney assured me it wasn’t binding.
The greatest challenge continued to be proving that Lou was being coerced, intimidated, and controlled. Around that time, he stopped answering his phone. The family suspected the ringer had been turned off. My father wasn’t permitted to go on lunch dates with his church friends. He once sneaked next door to visit neighbors. When Kevin found out, he left threatening notes on their car. The neighbors contacted the police, who dismissed the incident, calling it a petty squabble.
“Kevin had become increasingly manic and threatening, so I asked neighbors to accompany me for my safety.”
Another time, when Lou slipped away to visit the same neighbors, Kevin tried to break down their door. The attack led to the neighbors obtaining a Restraining Order against Kevin. But that didn’t do anything to protect Lou from his crazy son.
Family and friends reported other incidents to Adult Protective Services (APS). They cited undue influence, intimidation, isolation, and more. Only one social worker reached out to me—a brief message left on my answering machine.
I discovered a social worker had gone to the house to check on Lou. On that particular day, he appeared to be in good cheer, and the matter was dropped.
The circular conversation continued, Who’s going to help us? I was sleepwalking through hell.
Less than a month after Kevin arrived, a neighbor called to tell me a deep-blue metallic Model X Tesla with dealer plates appeared beside Kevin’s rust-corroded RV. The Tesla’s value was about $90,000 and registered in Kevin’s name. Lou supposedly “gifted” it to him.
I drove down to talk to the manager of the Tesla dealership. He told me Lou was thrilled with the purchase. Yet, when asked, Lou said he didn’t know anything about it.
After being held hostage for months, we feared Lou’s life was being totally controlled by his perpetrator, my stepbrother, and that he was powerless over even the smallest choices for his life. When the occasional phone call did get through to Lou, Kevin would eavesdrop on an extension and coach the conversation.
“I have to make sure no one tells lies about me,” Kevin said.
Lou’s bouts of vomiting and diarrhea due to a long-term esophageal hernia became more frequent. Kevin admitted to withholding medication, claiming, “I know better than the doctors.”
One severe round of vomiting lasted several days. Kevin didn’t seek medical help until Lou collapsed in the bathroom. Concerned neighbors followed the ambulance to the hospital. While in the emergency room, they saw Kevin leaning over his father’s bed, shouting in his face, “You know you’re going to die, don’t you!”
The hospital brought in hospice. Hospice brought in morphine. Lou was sent home to die. Under the care of nurses and hospice, Lou took his stomach meds. and ate small, regularly scheduled meals. He fully recovered. Then Kevin dismissed the outside aide and Lou’s health quickly deteriorated again. It became a vicious cycle, repeating several times over the next five or six months.
A concerned friend mentioned Elder Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a mental health condition in which a caregiver makes up or causes an illness or injury to a person under his care. While it’s most commonly identified in the treatment of children, it has also been reported in vulnerable, dependent older adults.
Deciding what to do next continued to be an inner struggle. I filed additional reports with APS and encouraged others to do the same—referencing isolation, neglect, and financial abuse.
I told a desk officer at a local police station what I’d found on a public online site about Kevin’s arrest history: DUI (2009) and Forceful Eviction (2012). In 2014, he’d been arrested in Utah for First Degree Felony, “Sexual Assault on a Child” (11-year-old boy), and Third Degree Felony, “Tampering with a Witness”.
The officer turned off his vest camera. “Someone should go beat the crap out of this guy.”
A detective at the same station opened an investigation into Financial Elder Abuse, Re: Tesla “gift.” Criminal coercion couldn’t be confirmed because the manager at the dealership stuck to his story, saying “Lou was enthusiastic about the purchase.”
The “Sexual Assault on a Child” and “Tampering with a Witness” cases were scheduled for jury trial in St. George Utah Superior Court in 2016, postponed to 2017, then to 2018. Kevin knew how to play the system, filing motion after motion to cause delays. Family now viewed Kevin as a career con man—reckless and bold. Most of us also believe he’s a psychopath.
I visited Lou another time, about ten months after Kevin moved into my parents’ home. Kevin had become increasingly manic and threatening, so I asked neighbors to accompany me, to act as witnesses, and for my safety. A hospital bed had been set up in the dining room, an odd arrangement since it trapped Lou between a hefty hutch on one side and a large oak cabinet on the other.
“I was sucked into an alternate universe where psychosis ruled any sense of reason. I became consumed with justice.”
I kissed Lou on the forehead and settled beside him on the bed. “You seem trapped. How do you get to the bathroom?”Kevin’s short, thick neck flushed. “I take him!”
“Really?” I’d once arrived unannounced at noon. Kevin was passed out in his RV. Lou hadn’t eaten breakfast or taken his meds.
“Would you like to go out to breakfast tomorrow?” I asked.
Lou reached for my hand, smiling with his eyes. “What time should I be ready?”
Kevin just about lost his mind, his facial tic kicking in, saying I didn’t understand the hernia or dietary restrictions. I’d been monitoring expiration dates on his food for years. “I’m sure oatmeal will be fine,” I replied.
The next morning, Kevin lunged at my car in a sweat-soaked t-shirt, iPhone aimed, presumably on video. He shouted in his shrill, nasal pitch, “If you step on my property I’m calling 911!”
Not his property. My parents’ home. The home I grew up in. Then my nature—the one that drives me to respect my parents, their life experiences, and sense of fairness—pushed me to step onto the curb.
Kevin punched in 9-1-1.
When a pair of city police officers rolled up, Kevin waved a fist of papers. “I have power of attorney, and it upsets my father to see her!”
The officers talked to Kevin and me separately, hearing us out, and deciding it was a civil (family dispute) matter, not criminal (trespassing). They told Kevin that it was in his best interest to allow me in the house to see Lou. Privately, I was advised to get an attorney.
A few weeks later, I arrived unannounced yet again. No Tesla in the driveway. Lou answered the door; his eyes were less blue-gray, nearly colorless. He looked weak, wounded.
“We’re going to the hospital,” I told him.
He was admitted to the ER for severe dehydration and began to feel better after receiving two bags of normal saline and various other medications. The doctor ordered liver, kidney, and stomach scans. Maybe someone would finally help us.
The room was adjacent to the nurse’s station. I caught part of a phone conversation. A nurse asked me to step into the lobby.
Predictably, Kevin barged in brandishing the Power of Attorney.
The doctor-ordered tests were never completed.
Kevin pushed Lou past me in a wheelchair, snickering as he went. I was powerless to stop him.
Shortly thereafter, Kevin filed a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO): Louis B. vs. Sherry S. Kevin signed Lou’s name employing the POA. In his manic handwriting, he claimed, “Sherry waited outside until caretaker went briefly to the store and entered the home of Louis B . . .. She convinced him to go to the hospital without leaving a note or calling Kevin . . .”
I was sucked into an alternate universe where psychosis ruled any sense of reason. I became consumed with justice while others begged me to let it go. The life-chronicler in me, the stubborn self, seeking fairness and justice, kept fighting back.
Lou died alone in the house on an amber fall afternoon. He wasn’t sick, just worn out. In the two years since Kevin took over Lou’s care, Lou had lost forty pounds.
That same day, around that same time, Kevin and his son were seen walking down the curved street with purpose, perhaps heading to their favorite restaurant for half-priced sushi.
I learned of my father’s passing from a neighbor who saw a body bag being loaded into an SUV. She said Kevin seemed excited, almost giddy, before collapsing into crocodile tears. Homicide Detective K. White called to tell me Lou’s passing was being investigated as a “suspicious death.” A ‘friend’ had told the investigator Kevin admitted to giving ‘Lou a really good amount of morphine this time.’
Kevin had our father cremated.
Without an autopsy or toxicology screening it was the friend’s word against Kevin’s. The detective was sympathetic, closing the case. “My hands are tied.”
Kevin remained in the house rent-free for another year, claiming to be preparing it for sale, as per his duties as Trustee. Unbeknownst to me, he’d arranged for a reverse mortgage and drained every cent of equity. By my calculations, he stole around $500,000 from the family estate—an inheritance meant for my three grandsons.
While he does remain incarcerated in Utah, having pled guilty to Second Degree Sexual Abuse of a Child and Tampering with a witness, for me, so much is still wrapped up in loss and sadness. It’s as if everything I believed in—justice, fairness, duty, and compassion—had been clawed away. I understand so little of all that happened.
I continue to grieve the loss of Lou, a gentle man who treated me like a daughter for more than 40 years. We, his family and friends, are convinced that if Kevin hadn’t moved in, Lou would still be leading a healthy, happy life.
AND because this post has no paywall to the comments, you have no excuse not to write something below, even if it's just the word hi.
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Based on a bunch of the comments here and notes that I'm getting, I want to say that now would be an impeccable opportunity for anyone who wants me to publish their lighthearted story here. An Unpopular Opinion piece would be especially great because I haven't received as many of those lately, but an It Happened To Me or anything else I would love love to read and love to publish. Send me your light silly funny unimportant stories to jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com. As a reader, Holly, discovered last night when she took advantage of the fact that I had said I didn't have plans this weekend and wrote me at 3:30 AM and I returned her email at 3:40 AM, I check that email all the damn time!
This comment from Dana was in notes and we started having the most interesting conversation about it, but I want you all in on it too so here it is:
I guffawed at what you said to your daughter…and as I am the current holder of the title World’s Okayest Mom, my opinion holds great value.
Worst Mom In The World is quite the sought-after category, isn’t it? We jump on any chance we get to examine our parental choices and judge the fuck out of ourselves for the maybe not-so-ideal ones.
The pressure we put our ourselves to live up to vague rules created by a society that allows shit like what happened to poor Lou…woof.