by Ann Rule
“How was Pat paid?” Don Stoop asked.
“I paid her by check every Saturday,” Betty Crist said. “When she first started, the fee was only ten dollars an hour. Then by the end of it all, I was paying her much more. I was sedated . . . and I just wrote the check. I paid for her and Debbie.”
Betty Crist said that both Debbie and Pat had worn nurses’ uniforms, and they certainly appeared to know what they were doing. Pat drove a red pickup truck to work, and Debbie whipped in and out of the Crists’ long circular driveway in a white Camaro. Pat had driven Mrs. Crist to all of her doctor’s appointments in the Crists’ vehicle.
Betty Crist still wasn’t sure how their prescriptions were obtained; she had never heard Pat calling them in, but she knew the drugstore made frequent deliveries of medicines and sickroom supplies. Betty Crist’s eyes clouded as she recalled that her life had changed drastically almost from the first week she hired Pat Taylor. While before she had dealt with her husband’s illness with tragic acceptance, spending long quiet hours sitting beside him, she had suddenly found herself almost totally blocked off from him. There were always “good” reasons why they should stay apart, and as Betty Crist grew weaker, she had less strength to argue with her charge nurse.
Pat worked days, and her daughter Debbie soon had the evening shift, so one or the other of them was in the Crists’ home from seven in the morning until eleven at night. Mrs. Crist had noticed that she grew terribly sleepy after she had eaten. “Pat would always tell me to just stay in bed and sleep. . . . For some reason, I grew very afraid of Pat and what she might do. Jimmy and I were always separated and we could never have visitors. Pat complained about being hired to care for one person and having to care for two.”
Alone with her two elderly charges, Pat had ruled the Crist household and made her displeasure at small things apparent. She had conveyed her anger with a look, a sharp intake of breath, or a shuddering sigh. When she was truly annoyed—which had been often—she slammed the kitchen cupboard doors and banged pots and pans together.
Jim Crist said that he and his brother and sister had become concerned about Pat Taylor’s care of their parents because it seemed extremely “regulated.” Visitors were discouraged. When the Crists’ grandchildren telephoned, they were always told their grandparents were “too tired to talk.” At first, when Betsy or Bill or Jim, Jr., called to visit, and Pat explained their parents were napping and she hated to disturb them, they found her conscientious and caring and said they would come back another time. Later, they tried to pop in at unexpected times and were distressed to find that their parents were always indisposed.
Pat had not gotten along at all with the rest of the nursing staff, hired to fill in on her weekends off and on the graveyard shift. One way or another, they had all failed to meet her standards. At her insistence, most of them were fired. The Crist children had assumed that the negative remarks the fired nurses made about Pat were sour grapes. Pat always seemed so efficient, so knowledgeable, and so concerned about their parents’ welfare.
They had expected that their father’s health would grow progressively worse, and that he might be confused from time to time, but there were incidents that were unsettling. One day, Jim Crist received a phone call from his father. That was highly unusual; his father couldn’t have reached a phone without help. He could no longer walk unaided.
“I’ve been thinking about giving away our Civil War relics,” his father began. “They’re just taking up space.”
“Give them away?’’ Jim Crist asked, amazed. “Give them away to who?”
His father said that the nurses would like to have them. Jim explained that the priceless artifacts were already listed in his father’s will, earmarked for his grandchildren. He thought privately that someone must have deliberately urged the old man to call, the same someone who had helped him to the phone. His father had mentioned giving the artifacts to Debbie a few times after that bizarre call. Betty Crist nodded. Her husband had called her once when she was in the hospital for tests and horrified her by saying he thought Debbie should have the Civil War pieces.
In January or February of 1988, Jim Crist, Sr.’s Rolex watch was taken to be cleaned. When the shop called to say it was ready, Debbie had gone in to pick it up, but she had come back without it, explaining that it wasn’t there. “When I called,” Jim Crist said, “the jewelers said that Deborah Cole had picked it up—and signed for it. I have the receipt.”
Bill Crist told the D.A.’s investigators that he had begun to notice a dramatic change in his mother’s behavior early in 1988. Where she had always been vibrant, she had become sluggish and befuddled. Her words slurred as she talked to him, and she forgot things she had always remembered. He was baffled by the changes. Betsy Chandler saw it too, and wondered sadly whether her mother’s age was catching up with her. That, and her mother’s depression over her husband’s condition, could account for her diminished state.
Jimmy Crist wasn’t doing well either. The elderly man had developed an irritating rash that covered his whole body. He had never had anything like that until Pat and Debbie came to work. He was totally bedridden by this time, and he complained of terrible, intractable pain in his feet. His physician told them that wasn’t an expected side effect of Parkinson’s disease, although the rash was.
Pat had never produced a Georgia nursing registration number, and she continued to mark her vouchers for the insurance company with her army number, signing them, “Pat Taylor, RN.” After she brought Debbie aboard as the night nurse, she simply doubled the hours and explained that she would pay Debbie from her own check.
Later, when Don Stoop and Michelle Berry obtained copies of Pat’s pay vouchers, they noted a markedly steady progression in her income. For her first week, she put down 40 hours at $10.00 for a total of $400. By December 1987, she was charging for 79 hours for one week at $12.50 an hour, and for 6 hours of “holiday pay’’ at $18.75 an hour—for a week’s total of $1,100! But she was just gathering steam. Since the insurance company paid Pat immediately, the Crists assumed that her credentials were adequate. In January, Pat’s voucher listed 108 hours at $12.50: $1,350. By May, she was charging $15.00 an hour for 132 hours: $1,980 for a week. Pat’s final voucher showed that her week’s salary due was $2,040! Although Debbie’s name was never listed, she was reportedly getting some portion of this insurance money. Between the two of them, they were receiving close to $10,000 a month.
Pat and Debbie had not been released from the Crists’ employ because their insurance had run out. Not at all. The medical policies provided to James Crist by the Southern Company were ultimately comprehensive, although underwriters had questioned the soaring nursing costs. Pat and Debbie had been raking in a small fortune. Even so, Don Stoop and Michelle Berry learned that it wasn’t the exorbitant pay that resulted in their dismissal. It was what was happening to their patients.
Jim Crist explained that he had visited his mother unexpectedly as she was having lunch one day. She was eating a salad when he noticed there were tiny white tablets sprinkled on the lettuce. “Mother!” he said sharply. “Don’t eat that.” He took the plate away from her and did the first thing that came into his head; he threw the food away.
Shortly after—in February 1988—Jim took his mother to the hospital for gastrointestinal bleeding. She stabilized within a few days. While she was in the hospital, she was given no medication except for a mild pain reliever for her headaches. She was soon her old self again, alert and competent. She left the hospital in very good condition, and they were all relieved.
But then, two weeks later, Betty Crist was back the way she had been—sleepy all the time, confused, depressed.
When Jim Crist discussed his concerns about his mother’s health with her nurse, Pat surprised him by agreeing that something should be done—and soon. She said that his mother was becoming very hard to take care of. “She doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing at times.” Pat also confided that she feared Be
tty Crist was drinking heavily, taking far too many drugs, and was be coming careless about leaving large sums of cash around the house. Incredible. This was not the mother Jim Crist had known all his life.
The Crists told Don Stoop and Michelle Berry that Pat’s war with every other nursing aide save Debbie had continued. When she wanted to fire the family maid, who had been with the Crists for many years, Jim Crist had put his foot down, and he decided to keep a closer eye on Pat.
Pat had agreed readily to take Betty Crist to her doctor for a checkup. Just as the family became suspicious, she became perfectly cooperative and seemed truly concerned. She assured Jim Crist that she would make an appointment with Dr. Watson immediately. When Jim spoke to his mother, Betty Crist agreed with her son that she wasn’t feeling like herself. She was sleeping far too much, and she often felt muddled in the head. By this time the family was so suspicious that they wanted to give Pat no prior warning of what they intended to do.
Jim Crist called Dr. David Watson, the Crists’ family doctor, and said he was terribly concerned about his mother. Watson said he had begun to grow worried too.
“How much should my parents’ monthly drugstore bills be—just for their prescriptions?” Crist asked.
“Oh, I’d say roughly two hundred to two hundred fifty dollars a month,” the doctor estimated.
Jim Crist called the drugstores he knew his parents patronized and asked if he might have a printout of the prescriptions on file for Betty and Jim Crist, Sr. The printout showed that prescriptions for the elder Crists were averaging between seven hundred and eight hundred a month.
Something wasn’t right.
Jim Crist dropped by his parents’ home the first week of June 1988—apparently casually—and said he was going to take his mother for a ride. Instead, he took her to the hospital for a complete blood workup. When the results came in days later, they revealed that her system was loaded with triazolam, the generic name for the sleeping pill Halcion, in doses far surpassing recommended treatment.
Without telling Pat about the blood tests he had arranged, Crist asked her if she had ever taken his mother to see the doctor. Pat said that indeed she had—earlier that very day—and that Betty Crist had passed with flying colors.
“Was a blood test done?” Crist asked.
“Of course. Everything was fine.” Pat indicated that the results had come back while they were still in the doctor’s office. Jim Crist knew it took longer than a day for blood test results, and he felt a chill. He was armed with the devastating results from the real blood test.
Later, alone with his mother, Crist casually asked how Dr. Watson was. Dr. Watson was her internist.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I haven’t seen him in quite a while.”
“Did you go to the doctor today?”
“We stopped by Dr. Hardin’s.”
Dr. Hardin was a dermatologist who was treating his father for his stubborn rash.
“Did they take some blood from you, Mother—for a test?”
“No, of course not.” His mother looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses.
That was enough. Crist fired both Pat and Debbie.
But that wasn’t the end of the matter. Betty Crist told the investigators that weeks later she began to discover that many items of jewelry were missing. Over the years, her husband had bought her some beautiful pieces, and she had had some heirlooms too, handed down through their families.
Her jewelry losses were summed up succinctly in Complaint No. 815G2682 in the city of Atlanta’s Bureau of Police Services, filed July 15, 1988:
One fifteen-inch strand of pearls with a pearl clasp— valued at $1,100.
One matching bracelet of pearls—valued at $430.
One pearl ring with a small diamond on either side—$325.
One fourteen-carat gold mesh bracelet—$1,500.
One large oval lapis stone man’s gold ring—$420.
One “tulip” ring with a double shank and double diamond flowers—$990.
One “eternity” ring with a full circle of small rubies, channel set in fourteen-carat gold—$290.
Betty Crist said she kept her jewelry in a case, hidden high up on a back closet shelf. After she was confined to her bed under Pat Taylor’s care in January of 1988, she had brought it all down and kept it in her dressing table “under a lot of petticoats, because I wanted it there. I mean, I couldn’t wear it, but I wanted it there.”
Asked about a possible burglary of her home, Betty Crist was positive that had not happened. With her husband so ill and then with her own sickness, she had had round-the-clock nursing help. Not one of them had ever reported a break-in. Hesitantly, Betty Crist admitted that she had had her suspicions about two of her nurses. Her son had fired Pat and Debbie, but she said she hadn’t filed formal charges because she was worried that a court case would be terribly hard on her husband. His Parkinson’s disease had progressed fast enough as it was; she hadn’t wanted to subject him to the stress of questioning by the police and a possible trial.
Her insurance claims agent had written a detailed report of the circumstances of the loss/theft, and closed by saying that the Atlanta police had assigned the case a “D” classification. This meant, in police lingo, that leads had run out. None of the jewelry had turned up in area pawnshops, and there was no way to link Pat Taylor and Debbie Cole to the thefts conclusively.
The Crists had decided not to press further. They were compensated for their losses and the matter was dropped. The Atlanta Police Department was awash in larceny and burglary complaints, and the thefts were buried under piles of new cases. But Betty Crist continued to discover possessions that were missing. Many of them were things that Pat Taylor had particularly admired: antique laces and hand-stitched linens; James Crist’s priceless Civil War artifacts; his Rolex watch, of course; her antique cookbooks; and a tiny cut-glass chandelier designed to fit a dollhouse.
But they were only things. The real loss was time. She had missed so much time with her Jimmy while she was feeling dizzy and confused. They had scarcely seen each other for months and then she lost him at Christmastime, 1988. It had always been such a special time, with Jimmy’s birthday the day after Christmas. James Crist died of acute renal failure in Piedmont Hospital two days after his eighty-eighth birthday. His memorial service was held on December 30 at the Cathedral of Saint Philip, and his body was cremated.
CHAPTER 49
***
On a Tuesday morning in March 1991, soon after their conversation with the Crists, Don Stoop and Michelle Berry drove south of Atlanta to the little village of McDonough to talk with Susan and Bill Alford. Although Susan had not left her name the first time she called the D.A.’s office, Bill had convinced her that they had to come forward and they had called back. The investigators hoped to learn more about Pat Taylor and her daughter, Debbie. They didn’t know what to expect. Ex spouses often called the authorities about each other; daughters rarely reported their mothers.
Susan Alford was a pretty woman, Stoop noted, with thick dark hair and intense brown eyes. She was shy, but she seemed resolute, although it was obviously painful for her to review her mother’s and sister’s histories. Bill Alford was more voluble, a natural salesman, a man who laughed easily.
“As we got into the case, and as the facts emerged,” Michelle Berry recalled, “I had to remind Don that, no matter how outrageous Pat Taylor’s behavior had been, this was Susan's mother, and there had to be feelings there that still hurt.”
“Susan Alford laid it out—this incredible story,” Stoop said. “At first, I couldn’t believe it. But Susan obviously needed to tell what she knew. And she knew a lot. At that time, however, even Susan wasn’t aware of all we had found out. There had been so much secrecy in that family.”
The Alfords said that they had never doubted Pat and Debbie’s explanation for being let go by the Crists—not until Debbie’s vituperative phone call just before Christmas, 1990. “She was
accusing Susan of making them lose their jobs, and it didn’t make sense,” Bill said. “That’s why I called the Crists. And Mrs. Crist told me that Debbie and Pat were fired because she had been drugged— and because they stole her blind!” Bill said that Mrs. Crist had been “very vivid” about what should be done to Pat and Debbie.
“What did she say?” Stoop asked.
“She said that they should be put in jail.”
The Alfords were frank with Don and Michelle about the terrible summer of 1990, the reasons behind their moving in with “Boppo and Papa,” and the Thanksgiving Day blowup. The investigators exchanged looks as Bill described the episode of the dolls’ hair. Pat Taylor was not going to be your everyday suspect.
Asked to go back to the time Pat and Debbie were working for the Crists, Susan described her grandmother’s concern about their sudden affluence. Debbie had bought a new yellow truck for cash, and her mother had bought Persian rugs, jewelry, and things for her dolls. “My grandmother worried; she didn’t think my mom and Debbie could make that much money as sitters.”
“Your mother and sister are registered nurses?” Michelle asked.
Susan shook her head. “My mother and sister haven’t even graduated from high school. My mother was trained to be kind of a nursing assistant—more like a sitter— when she was in the halfway house. . . . They came to visit us in Florence in 1985, and Debbie was flashing money around. I said, ‘How much money do you and Mom make? Boppo has been asking me about it. Is everything up-front?’ And Debbie said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I’m kind of worried about it myself.’
“A doctor had asked her about her credentials,” Susan went on. “Mom told Debbie to say she went to the University of Munich. I asked Debbie, ‘Don’t you think that’s a little strange?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know.’ ”
