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Prosecutorinvestigateselderly deathsDAYTONA BEACH (AP) - A prosecutor says he may order twomore bodies ot elderly nursing home patients exhumed as a resultof .an autopsy which indicates an employee who confessed to murder may have been telling the truth. State Attorney John Tanner saidhe would charge Jeffrey Feitner,26, with murder in the death last February of 75-year-old Sara Abrams last February.Ms. Abrams’ body was exhumed Tuesday, and Medical Examiner Michael Sherman said she died ofasphyxiation. She was one of three women and two men Feitner told ofkilling at New Life Acres, a nursing home in Melrose, Putnam County.Feitner, an employee at the facility for two periods beginning in 1986, also has said he suffocated two other nursing home patients, one in Daytona Beach and the other in Ormond Beach.“Unfortunately, it appears that he was telling the truth,’’ Tanner said Tuesday .He said he would present the autopsy result and confession to a Putnam County grand jury to a murder indictment for Ms. Abrams’ death.Tanner also said he was considering the exhumation of the bodies of Lathan Thornton, 82, of Gainesville, and William James, 73, of Jacksonville, who also died at New Life Acres.Abrams, Thornton and James were buried; the other four bodies were crematedFeitner is being held Volusia County Jail without bail on a charge that he murdered DorisMoriarty, 83, on July 11 at a Daytona Beach nursing home. He also told local police he killed an Ormond Beach patient on July 27 in addition to the five patients at New Life Acres,Ms. Abrams’ death had been attributed to a heart attack, according to a Putnam County sheriff’s report. Because of her age and poor health, no autopsy was conducted when she died Feb. 10,1988, Tanner said.“1 felt it was worth the strain it might put on the families to resolve this one way or the other,” the prosecutor said about his order to exhume the body from a Jacksonvillegrave.Tanner would not elaborate on what the autopsy showed beyondthe finding of asphyxiation.He said Putnam County officials were not to blame for the failure to detect foul play because “this type of homicide is very difficult to detect, and even wjiien suspected,very difficult to prove Last summer, Feitner told Gainesville mental health workers and a crime tip agency about the Putnam County murders, but investigators decided Feitner couldn’t possibly have committed the crimes and dismissed him as acrackpot.Daytona Beach police arrested Feitner Aug. 16 after he told Detective Bill Adamy about the seven deaths.“We took him seriously,” said Sgt John Power. “Basically, we got the ball rolling again.”
Newspaper Details
Playground Daily News
Fort Walton Beach, Florida, US
Thu, Sep 21, 1989
Page 15
Full Page
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