A 98-year-old woman has been indicted on a second-degree murder charge that alleges she strangled her 100-year-old nursing home roommate after making the victim’s life “a living hell” because she thought the woman was “taking over the room.”
Laura Lundquist was sent to a state mental hospital for a competency evaluation before her arraignment. Her defense attorney, Carl Levin, said on Friday she has a “long-standing diagnosis of dementia, as well as issues of cognitive impairment.”
She is believed to be the oldest murder defendant in state history, but might never go to trial because of her mental health issues.
Her roommate at the Brandon Woods nursing home in Dartmouth, Elizabeth Barrow, was found dead in her bed on Sept. 24 with a plastic bag tied around her head. Police initially speculated it was a suicide, but a medical examiner ruled it a homicide after an autopsy indicated strangulation.
Barrow’s son, Scott Barrow, has said Lundquist complained to nursing home officials about the number of visitors his mother received. He also has said Lundquist had made “threatening” and “harassing” remarks to her. He declined to comment on the indictment, which was handed up on Friday by a Bristol grand jury.
Bristol District Attorney Sam Sutter said Lundquist suffered from paranoia and “harbored hostility towards the victim” and thought Barrow “was taking over the room they shared.”
Sutter said Barrow complained in the weeks before her death that Lundquist was making her life “a living hell.” The night before Barrow was killed, she complained that Lundquist had placed a table at the foot of her bed to block her way to the bathroom.
Sutter said Lundquist then punched a nurse’s aide who removed the table, which was again found next to the bed at the time Barrow’s body was discovered.
Lundquist also told Barrow she would soon get her bed by the window because she would outlive her, Sutter said.
The two women had been roommates for about a year. Scott Barrow has said he asked nursing home officials to separate the women, but they assured him the two were getting along. He said his mother told him she did not want to leave her room because that’s where she and her husband had lived for several years before he died in 2007.
A Superior Court judge, acting on a motion filed jointly by prosecutors and Levin, ordered Lundquist sent to Taunton State Hospital for an evaluation.
In a statement, the nursing home said the roommates acted like sisters, walked and ate lunch together daily and said, “Goodnight, I love you,” to each other every night. The home said Barrow declined a room change in July and August.
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