Carer ‘starved recluse to death after forging wills in £3.4m scam ’
A WEALTHY landowner was starved to death by a greedy carer who forged wills and drained bank accounts to steal up to £3.4million, a court heard yesterday.
Lynda Rickard, 61, is accused of preying on Anthony Sootheran, 59, after moving on to his £1.9million 60-acre estate to care for his mother Joy, who had dementia.
The mother of three plundered the bank accounts of the reclusive millionaire and his mother, whose estates in the Cotswolds and Yorkshire were worth a total of £5million.
She has admitted forging both their wills to get her hands on around £1.2million from both estates, plus the family’s £1.9million farmhouse near Banbury, Oxfordshire. She has also admitted to taking up to £300,000 in cash from their accounts while she paid herself more than £100,000 to act as Joy’s carer. She denies murder.
The ‘manipulative’ former social worker isolated Mr Sootheran following his mother’s death, the court heard.
She deprived him of food, drink and medical care and he wasted away and died 18 months after his mother. His bedroom became a ‘foul, unhygienic cell’ where he was found dead by a GP on March 18, 2014, it was alleged. The divorced loner, who had mental health issues, was systematically exploited by Rickard, who treated his bank account as ‘her own’, Reading Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Oliver Saxby said ‘This is a case about greed. Casual, opportunistic greed. Which, over time, developed into something more persistent and regular – and then into something utterly routine and brazen.
‘Lynda Rickard’s greed did not stop simply at helping herself to other people’s money and forging documents. She was eyeing a windfall. That windfall came to be dependent on Anthony Sootheran’s death.
‘Mr Sootheran was someone with complex mental health issues. A recluse prone to gross self-neglect... which gave Lynda Rickard the perfect cover for precipitating his death – something she achieved by isolating him, utterly neglecting him, failing to obtain appropriate medical care for him and, ultimately, depriving him of food and drink.
‘In the simplest of terms, assisted by her husband, Wayne, she starved Anthony Sootheran to death – thereby securing for herself and her family the windfall she was after.’
Rickard and her husband, 64, moved into High Havens farmhouse in Oxfordshire as paying tenants in 2006.
But Rickard later became a paid carer for Joy, 92, receiving more than £100,000 to look after her.
She took up to £167,000 from Mrs Sootheran’s bank account and forged her will to get a further £750,000 before her death in August 2012 from natural causes. Over the next 18 months, Rickard is then said to have isolated her grieving son from his family while helping herself to up to £133,000 from his savings.
A few months before his death, a visitor who forced Rickard to allow him upstairs to see Mr Sootheran was so shocked that he took photographs.
Mr Saxby described the scene: ‘Both Anthony and his room were in a terrible state. He was thin and frail. The bed linen looked like it had not been changed in months. In short, it was a cell – a foul, unhygienic, cell.’ Other friends said Mr Sootheran was ‘completely in thrall’ to Rickard.
Rickard drew up a fake will bequeathing herself the £1.9million farmhouse and a third of the remaining £3.5million estate.
She admits fraud, forgery, and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
She denies murder and gross negligence manslaughter.
Her husband also denies murder, causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable adult and perverting the course of justice.
The case continues.
‘Prone to gross self-neglect’