Posted on 04/21/2005 12:32:09 PM PDT by Woodstock
A grand jury has indicted an Elkton man on a murder charge, six weeks after police found his emaciated wife dead in a bedroom amidst squalid conditions.
John Joseph Dougherty, 53, faces a second-degree murder charge in the indictment, handed up last week after the grand jury heard new evidence against him.
Dougherty already faced manslaughter and abuse charges in an indictment handed up March 17. The new indictment, unsealed yesterday, included those charges and added the murder charge.
Dougherty is accused of causing his wife's death by keeping her locked in a bedroom for six years without access to basic food, water and hygiene. Police found his wife, Mary Elizabeth Kilrain, dead on a mattress Feb. 25, surrounded by moldy food and her own excrement. She weighed just 81 pounds.
Dougherty is free on $350,000 bail.
Cecil County State's Attorney Christopher J. Eastridge presented new evidence to the grand jury after the medical examiner's office completed an autopsy on Kilrain earlier this month.
The exact nature of the evidence Eastridge presented is not known, but the medical examiner ruled Kilrain's death a homicide, according to sources familiar with the autopsy results, and Eastridge said recently he planned to review the autopsy to determine if new charges were warranted.
The autopsy, normally available to the public, is not being released because it is part of an ongoing investigation, the medical examiner's office said. The state's attorney declined to comment further on the case last week.
Dougherty kept his wife locked in the bedroom after she suffered a brain aneurysm in 1999 and began berating their three daughters, according to court papers. Kilrain, 46, was only fed and bathed sporadically, according to police, and sometimes banged on the walls of her bedroom with a cane.
Dougherty called police to the home when his youngest daughter found her mother dead after trying to give her a drink of water, according to court papers, and later admitted to investigators that he neglected her basic needs.
Dougherty also had a live-in girlfriend when his wife died. Kathleen Marie Zeman, 32, who lived at the home with her two sons for at least a month before Kilrain's death, faces an abuse charge in the case. She doesn't face any new charges.
The pair dated for years before Kilrain's death, according to court papers.
Zeman is free on $125,000 bond. Zeman's attorney filed papers asking a judge to lower Zeman's bail, which was set while she still faced a more serious manslaughter charge. That charge was dropped when Zeman was indicted.
A hearing on the bail request hasn't been scheduled yet.
Dougherty is scheduled to be arraigned May 23 in circuit court. Zeman is set to appear May 5.
Dougherty's children, ages 10, 13 and 16, and Zeman's children, ages 9 and 14, are in foster care under the supervision of the county social services department.
Oh no. Poor, poor children. Poor wife.
The kids were old enough to know their mother was slowly dying in her bedroom...they didn't help her.
That's exactly why I can't believe they're letting the kids go back to him... This man has obviously corrupted their morals, and the state is basically sanctioning his actions by giving the kids back (IMHO).
Giving them back to him is what stuns me as well. They could have helped...and didn't. Something is wrong in their heads.
Early reports say the children were the ones trying to feed her and keep her quiet....
I guess he could not find a Judge Greer.
Maybe he has. He has his kiddos back. What's next?
I just feel really sorry for these kids. They are going to need help dealing with this for sure... Not only were they trying to be responsible for her (trying to be the adult caretaker), but they had to deal with their father basically ignoring their mother, and on top of this disrespecting her by bringing in another woman. It's shocking, but I'm sure it happens more than we know of...
And they had to tell Dad that she was no longer alive. So very sad. This was a bit of a shocker to our town.
The children were 10, 13 and 16, how were they supposed to help her? Get real
Please...even a 10 year old knows you have to have food to live. Stop making excuses for them. Their mother starved to death and they watched.
In fact that is a good pojnt/question. The fact that were aiding the Dad and the girlfriend justifies why they should not be placed back with them. I have worked some social services as a volunteer around the Elkton area and there is no reason why he could not have found the necessary resources. We are a small town and the resources far exceed the cities like Baltimore and Philly.
see my post above
So, are we going to next hear that she really wanted to die, and that starvation and dehydration were her absolute favorites as ways to go? Will that be her "loving husband's" claim? Will it be certain turkey-ish Freepers claims?
Did you read this part in the article?
Dougherty kept his wife locked in the bedroom after she suffered a brain aneurysm in 1999 and began berating their three daughters,
Do you know that being berated means to be abused mentally, which can and is worse then being abused physically. I am speaking from personal experience as I was being mentally abused as a child by my mother and I still feel the effects and I am almost 64 years old.
Also according to the article his younges daughter had been trying to give her a glass of water to drink
Oh, for crying out loud--whatever the effects, you didn't help murder your mother, slowly and painfully. If the woman was deranged, it can be explained to the children. The woman could have been cared for in a nursing home. There are any number of options that would have been better than the one he chose.
I agree the woman should have been cared for in a nursing home, but the only one to blame is the creep of a husband. Why didn't he put her in a nursing home?
Good grief. They lived in the house. They knew she was there. Take your weak excuses for their behavior somewhere else.
They had access to a phone, the police, the schools, the hospitals...
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