Northpinellas: Woman is guilty of elder neglect

Gatting was malnourished and dehydrated. The bandages on the infected sores were unchanged. Her diaper and bedsheets were soaked with urine and feces.

Gatting's housemate, Susan Eileen Foster, 45, already had drained up to $20,000 from Gatting's estate, prosecutors said. They accused Foster of doing far worse: failing to care for a woman who died as a result.

Early Saturday, a Pinellas jury found Foster guilty of neglecting an elderly person, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. After nearly seven hours of deliberations, jurors rejected the more serious charge prosecutors had filed against Foster, aggravated manslaughter of a disabled adult.

If convicted of manslaughter, Foster faced up to 30 years.

Foster, who had been free on bail, was ordered to be held at the Pinellas County Jail pending sentencing by Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge John Schaefer on June 25.

"The jury said that Ms. Foster did not cause the death of this woman, and she didn't," said Foster's Tampa defense attorney, Roger Rigau.

Foster testified during a three-day trial that she cared for Gatting as best she could. But she said that Gatting, in good mental health until the end of her life, had a living will outlining that she should receive no treatment to prolong her life.

Foster said Gatting refused to eat and fought with her even as she tried to change her bandages.

Foster, despite Gatting's efforts to thwart even remedial treatment, said she nonetheless did what she could to help Gatting, though she insisted she was not legally obligated to do so.

"I thought I was doing a good job," Foster testified on Friday. "I did the best that I could. I loved Muriel. And I tried to take care of her like she was my grandmother."

Foster met Gatting while waitressing at a Clearwater restaurant. She said she felt sorry for Gatting because she had no family and lived alone without anyone to look after her.

So in 1996, she moved in at Gatting's invitation, Foster said.

But prosecutors Cathy McKyton and Garry Potts told jurors that Gatting's living will applied to a scenario such as keeping her off life support, not providing basic care in the home.

"It does not say Muriel Gatting wanted to rot in her bed, in her own feces and urine. It does not say that," McKyton said in her closing argument.

Foster had previously been sentenced to probation after her conviction on more than 50 charges that she wrote bad checks off a joint banking account she had with Gatting.

Foster said she never took advantage of Gatting and that the woman's money was drained by expenses, including the mortgage on her condo.

Prosecutors never charged Foster with exploitation of the elderly, determining that when Foster moved in, Gatting was of sound mind and could decide for herself how to spend her money.

"I think Ms. Gatting would have done anything and given Susan Foster anything not to be alone and to have company," McKyton said.

"But when the money ran out and Ms. Gatting needed full-time care, no one was there to give it to her. That's the problem."

Defense attorney Rigau said Gatting was ill and would have died soon even without the bedsores. He also questioned whether poor medical care contributed to her death.

He said his client was unaware of the seriousness of the bedsores. In the days before Gatting was taken to the hospital, Rigau said, Foster was ill and had asked her boyfriend to take over the changing of bandages and diapers on Gatting.

He said the boyfriend failed to do so.

Gatting was taken from her condo to Morton Plant Hospital on Feb. 23, 1999. She died of complications relating to the bedsore infections, malnourishment and dehydration on April 8.

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