Missing California Woman Was Allegedly Left to Die in a Shack in Maine
Police say an elderly California woman who went missing for four years was conned by a team of grifters who stole her money and abandoned her in a squalid shack in Maine.
According to the LA Times, 89-year-old Sarah Cheiker went missing from her California home in 2008, prompting a worried neighbor to file a missing persons report. Four years later, she was found living in a tiny Maine shack after another concerned neighbor alerted Lincoln County police.
"It was a place I wouldn't have let my dog live in," said Lincoln County Sheriff's Det. Robert McFetridge.
The cabin's lone light bulb had burned out, leaving the woman in darkness. What food there was had spoiled. And though the summer weather in coastal Maine is typically mild, the day she was discovered, the temperature had climbed into the 100s, McFetridge said.
Police eventually figured out that shortly before her disappearance, Cheiker was taken in by two 41-year-old twins, Barbara and Nicholas Davis, and their 21-year-old godson, Jonathan Stevens.
According to the Times, they began driving Cheiker to appointments and even let her live with them when her home was damaged by a fire. Then, police say, they sold her home without telling her and used the proceeds to drive her to Maine, where they allegedly abandoned her.
"I think they were hoping she'd expire and it would be called an unattended death," Det. McFetridge told the Times.
"They purchased numerous properties across the country with her money," a Lincoln County prosecutor said. "I've seen things that were egregious, but I'd never seen a person taken across the country, stripped of their assets and left to die."
According to the Times, the three pleaded guilty to felony charges of endangering the welfare of a dependent person—and received probation.
