A 102-year-old Massachusetts woman is the oldest murder defendant in the state's history. She is charged with killing her 100-year-old roommate in September 2009.
Laura Lundquist faces a second-degree murder charge. She was 98 when she allegedly strangled Elizabeth Barrow, her roommate in nursing home Brandon Woods. In 2009, police had found Barrow in her bed with a plastic bag tied around her head.
Consequently she was charged with murder, which is still pending. Lundquist suffers from dementia and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. According to the prosecutors, they do not think that the case will ever go to trial.
Scott Barrow, son of the deceased Barrow, said that, given the age of Lundquist, he does not want her to be prosecuted. "It would be like prosecuting a 2-year old," he said Thursday, reports the Associated Press. "It's just an awful thing that happened. How could she be accountable for this when she's not in her right mind?"
Instead, Scott had then filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Brandon Woods. He had earlier requested the nursing home officials to keep his mother and Lundquist in separate rooms. But, they assured him the two were getting along.
According to Scott, his mother did not want to leave the room because she and her husband had lived in the room together before he died in 2007. In 2012, a judge ruled in favor of the nursing home finding no negligence in the death involved.
Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter said prosecutors wanted a second-degree murder charge against Lundquist after she was indicted in 2009 as they did not believe she had the cognitive ability to form premeditation.
Sutter's spokesman, Greg Miliote, said the case is still open. "Mrs. Lundquist was deemed incompetent to stand trial, and we are told that is unlikely to change," he said. "However, the court is updated on her competency every three months... and if her competency to stand trial should change, the matter would move forward in the courts."
He explains Lundquist thought Barrow tried to take over the room they shared. Lundquist told Barrow she would soon get her bed by the window because she would outlive her, he said.
Upon Lundquist's indiction, Scott Picone, the nursing home's chief of operations, said the two women had been offered to change rooms twice in the months before Barrow's death, and both declined. He said the women were friendly to one another, and often told each other "goodnight" and "I love you."
