Caregiver disappears, leaving a death mystery behind
HER STORY DOESN’T ADD UP.
In a police interview room, hours after Guy Mitchell was found dead in a cistern, the woman in charge of his care spins a version of events that just doesn’t make sense. It’s also incomplete. Some 58 minutes into the interview, KeriLynne Santor tells the detective she wants to stop.
“I’d like to have a moment to, some time to, to grieve,” she says.
She is not under arrest so Det. Const. John Tselepakis cannot keep her there.
“I’d rather come back another time, if that’s OK?” says Santor. Then she leaves.
She has never really spoken to police since. And they don’t know where she is.
On Tuesday, the coroner’s inquest into Guy’s death heard there is an arrest warrant out for Santor. She is wanted on charges of assault bodily harm, mischief and obstructing police in connection with an April 2013 incident in Mattawa, Ontario.
Santor was 26 when her mother died in August 2011, leaving her responsible for the special care home they operated at their house on Jerseyville Road West in Ancaster.
Guy lived with the Santors for 26 years — since he was 12. He could not read or write, was limited in his ability to speak, had difficulty seeing and hearing and was unsteady on his feet. Yet he was an accomplished snowshoer and bowler, having medalled in the Special Olympics.
Also in the home was David, who was lower functioning than Guy, and Jennifer, an 11-year-old with autism adopted by the Santors.
On the night of Guy’s death, April 29, 2012, police called to the scene discovered a house so filthy their stomachs turned. The inquest has heard there was no running water or heat. Floors, walls and furniture were covered with urine, feces and vomit. Toilets and tubs were filled with human waste. There were dead fish in a tank, beer bottles and cigarette butts everywhere, piles of soiled laundry, a dirty fridge containing only old condiments, bare beds and a dog lapping vomit off the floor.
It is nearing midnight when Santor is brought into the interview room at the Mountain station with a video camera recording. She wears jeans, what looks like a pink hoodie, and a ball cap.
Tselepakis coaxes her. Santor is slow to speak and her answers are short. She is crying.
She says Guy moved in with her family on her first birthday.
“Growing up he was a, a playmate for me.”
David was there since she was six. Jennifer is her “adopted little sister.”
The detective says it must be difficult for her to care for three people with special needs by herself. “Not really,” she says. “No?” “They’re my family.” The day began with Guy not feeling well. He “started throwing up last night,” Santor says. “And had diarrhea, so I stripped his stuff and cleaned him up.”
She says she bathed him. And lat- er says it was only since the previous night “the toilet wasn’t flushing properly.”
Tselepakis told the inquest he didn’t believe she bathed him. The cistern connected to the house was dry and the tubs and toilets were filled with urine and feces that had collected there for some time.
Santor says on video that Guy “reminded me that he had to get the flyers.”
He routinely went to the end of the long driveway to collect flyers, she explains.
However the detective testified the flyers were found by police — in a mailbox on the other side of the road.
“When he didn’t come back right away I wanted to go and see,” Santor continues on the video. “And that’s when I saw that the, the lid of the well was off.”
There was water in this old cistern. Guy was floating inside.
On the witness stand Tselepakis said: “I believe Keri told him to go get the water ... He went to get water and that’s how she knew where to look.”
Dr. Jack Stanborough, the coroner presiding over the inquest, raised the possibility that if residents of the house were drinking unfiltered water from the old cistern, it could explain the diarrhea and vomit.
When Santor leaves the interview, it is the last time Hamilton police see her for more than two years. Meanwhile, they investigate Guy’s death as a possible homicide.
Stanborough told the jury three possible causes of death were considered: drowning, hypothermia and injuries to Guy’s neck. But no criminal charges were laid.
“We had three meetings with the head Crown attorney,” Tselepakis testified. “We brought different evidence as we progressed through and they determined a reasonable prospect of conviction wasn’t there and thought an inquest might be a better platform.”
Santor was located and interviewed a second time on Aug. 8, 2014. She refused to answer any questions.
Now her whereabouts are unknown.