Friend of NASGA member Angela Lee

My late husband and I moved to Casey County, Kentucky in December 2009 from Maryland.  We had both retired from work and were looking for somewhere scenic and peaceful to spend our last years.  Casey County is a very rural county in south-central Kentucky with a county population of somewhere between 15,000 and 16,000 residents.  There are many farms here – crops and livestock.  One of the first of our new neighbors we met were Artis (‘Art’) and Noladeann (‘Nola’) Mills.  They owned a several-acre Angus Cattle Farm business about a 1/4 of a mile down the ridge from us.  On the farm was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home and, at that time, around 100 head of registered Angus cattle.  The Millses had married not long after graduating from high school and had two daughters, both now middle-aged, one of whom (Rhonda, the youngest) lived with her husband, Larry, in Casey County and Sondra (the oldest) who had lived for many years in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, Jim.  Mr. and Mars Mills shared with us that the daughters didn’t take the time to be in contact with them much, neither in person or over the phone, and it had been that way for some considerable time.  They also shared with us that they had a troublesome issue in that on average of a couple of times a year they would get into arguments with each other that often wound up as physical fights.  It was evident that this problem had become a bad habit and that it was highly unlikely after all the years that they would separate due to it or try to find a therapy resolution.  It was also evident, since most of the community was aware of it, that nobody had seriously tried earlier to step up and get them some help with it.  However, our relationship with the Millses was that we would visit back and forth between each others homes, fairly often go out to dinner together and that they were very thoughtful and kind souls when it came to helping friends and neighbors.

When the COVID pandemic hit, due to our advanced years (we were in our late 70s) the Millses and I (my husband was deceased already) decided it was wise to change our socializing patterns, especially since we all had age-related health issues pre-Covid.  Most of our in-person contact was conducted on one or the others’ front porch or, more frequently, over the telephone.

In early February 2024 Nola came to my house.  She was upset and told me she and Art had got into another argument and fight and he had beaten her.  From her arms I could see she had a lot of bruising which was especially obvious in an elderly person due to the ease of breaking blood vessels under the skin.  Nola visited for about an hour and then went home.

In early March 2024, without much, if any, contact through that time period, Nola phoned me and told me that Art had died.  She told me that shortly after the early February domestic violence episode, Art had fallen off his tractor and broken several ribs.  He had tried to ’tough it out’ while the ribs healed but had made some visits to a doctor in town (Dr Haddad, who was Nola’s doctor) for pain relief at the local hospital and they had taken some X-rays, too.  However, after about a week he was in so much pain that he asked Nola to drive him to the ER at Casey County Hospital as he couldn’t take the pain any longer.  (Casey County Hospital is a small, community hospital with limited services – for instance, they can not do any surgery and various other things at which they would not have expertise) as it was thought he needed surgery.  Upon arrival early in the morning and after an examination of Art Nola was told that Art needed to be transported by ambulance to Ephraim McDowell Hospital in Danville, Kentucky (about a 20-to-25-minute drive north of here).  The problem was there was no ambulance to take him in that an ambulance on duty was down in Somerset taking a patient to that hospital…. picking one up from there…. whatever it was they were doing at that time.  Nola then suggested she get Art back in her car and drive him to Danville, herself.  The ER at Casey County said that would not work as Art needed to travel by ambulance with medics with him and they must wait.  Nola told me that several hours were by before an ambulance was secured that took Art to Ephraim McDowell, where he was admitted.  Art remained in the hospital for several days and a decision was made to conduct a surgical procedure – something to do with there having been internal bleeding around the lungs and something about dried blood that needed to be removed.  When he was put under anesthesia for the surgical procedure, he ‘coded on them.’  They managed to bring him back.  (I should mention that for a few years Art had had a pacemaker.)  I don’t know if there was an issue with insufficient oxygen getting to his brain or what else was going on medically at that time but his Death Certificate and the Autopsy Report conducted by the Boyle County Medical Examiner’s Office says he died of pneumonia caused (and verified by lab tests) by E.Coli and Serratia.  At some point, I was told, concerns were raised with the family that a difficult decisions might need to be made regarding Art and the medical equipment keeping him alive (I believe, among other things, he was on a respirator).  On March 4, 2024, while Nola and  her oldest daughter had left the hospital briefly to get some lunch, Nola told me Rhonda, the younger daughter had given permission for the machines to be turned off.  I have not only Nola’s information as to various things that happened at the hospital but also that of a family friend who drove Nola back and forth to visit with Art at the hospital.

Nola went into shock at what had happened to Art and during that time she felt the daughters were not being supportive of her but were taking advantage of things.  (She told me she believed that they had brought some paperwork into the hospital which they had Art sign and her sign that had to do with the checking accounts at two local banks.  (I will assume its a Power of Attorney, although I can not say for sure as Nola was not given a copy of whatever was signed and it is only due to the actions taken by the two daughters that I know it must have been something of financial consequence.  Nola was never able to secure a copy of the document.  One bank (Farmers National Bank, Liberty) said it was done via a signature card/agreement they had on file that added the two daughters to the bank account under Art and Nola’s name.  However, the other checking account at First Southern Bank, Stanford seems to have been closed down and an unknown amount of money transferred to an undisclosed (to Nola) location elsewhere.  This was done a day or two after Art died.  The First Southern Bank account was the business account for the farm and the Farmers Bank one was their personal checking account.

Art was buried in a private (insisted upon by the daughters) ceremony at the cemetery at Coney Fork where there were plots for Nola’s family of origin.  Bartle’s Funeral Home handled the arrangements.  Bartle’s ordered copies of the Death Certificates but Rhonda picked them up and gave no copies to Nola.  (In fact, I ordered and paid for more copies so that Nola could handle some issues where she needed copies of the Death Certificate.)  The only persons present (nobody else was notified or invited, meaning neighbors and friends) were Rhonda Cochran, Larry Cochran (her husband), Sondra Hudgens, Jim Hudgens (her husband), and Brother Brent, the pastor from one of the local Southern Baptist churches.  (I have been given to understand that, as of a week ago, there still is no headstone on Art’s grave and, since the daughters as of July 23, 2024 were granted guardianship and conservatorship, they are singularly in charge of all the funds that were previously Nola’s.  Nola believes that she and Art some few years ago made Wills where they left everything each to the other.  However, Nola had no idea where there might be a copy of any such Wills as Art handled all the family financial affairs for them.

An additional factor also appears to come into play as a part of the sequence of events.  After the February 2024 domestic violence episode Art, for the first time, decided to notify the Casey County Sheriff that Nola had scratched his hand during that incident.  About 3 Deputies were dispatched to the farm and they arrested Nola and charged her with 3rd Degree Assault – Domestic Violence – Minor Injury.  She was taken to jail where she spent 3 days.  Despite Art’s efforts to withdraw his complaint against her as he believed he was wrong to have done this, he was not allowed to withdraw the complaint.  Nola was taken before a judge in the Casey County Courthouse and told she had to enter a plea.  Nola had never had any dealings with the court before so was totally unfamiliar with any of it, including her personal rights,  Since she was told that the Sheriff’s Complaint Report said she had scratched his hand Nola said she supposed she needed to enter a Guilty plea.  Nola said she had no legal representation at that hearing and she didn’t even know she was entitled to a lawyer.  The sentence was noted on a court form and said 5 days in jail, at least 2 or 3 to be served.  It also said she was to contact her personal doctor and do whatever he said she must do.  She was then released on her Own Recognizance.  I asked Nola if there was a future hearing and she said not as far as she knew.  However, the whole thing was starting to sound very odd to me and so I advised Nola that she should go to the Clerk of the Court and take a look at what was in the criminal file as she had no paperwork at that time other than this one court form noting the sentence she was given.  (I had already found out through internet research that there was, in fact, a hearing scheduled for April 4, 2024 in District Court.  I explained to Nola that she was entitled to a lawyer and urged her to secure one and that she must appear on April 4 or they could issue a Bench Warrant for her for failure to appear, otherwise.  Shortly after the April 4 court hearing, I went with Nola to the court clerk and, upon seeing the content of the criminal file, I told her to have the clerk make her a copy, which he did.  I offered to help Nola find a lawyer to represent her at the upcoming hearing but she decided to go to the courthouse to find a criminal lawyer’s name that she could contact.  Through some old friend she ran into in the courthouse, someone who had been a lawyer but had retired, she said, she was given the name of a Cameron Griffith who lives in Casey County but practices out of an office in Lebanon.  Nola called and left a message for Griffith but he happened to call her back the next day when my oldest daughter, Tracey, was visiting me from Pennsylvania and we had gone to visit Nola at her house.  Nola put the call on the speaker phone and told Griffith she wanted us to be able to hear the conversation as that way we could help explain legal things to her if she had any questions after the call concluded.  She not only told Griffith our names but also what Tracey and I had done for a living before our respective retirements (I had been a paralegal at a local law office where I had lived in Maryland and Tracey retired from Pasadena Police Department in California as a Lieutenant.)  Griffith then went on to tell Nola that she had been entitled to legal representation at the hearing where she was brought from jail and released and that he would straighten it all out when he represented her in April and she would not have a criminal record because it had not been handled properly.  (In retrospect I think our presence in the room prompted some of the things he told Nola as, when the hearing occurred, he did not follow his own legal advice.)

I did not go to the courtroom to sit in on the hearing.  Instead, I asked Nola how things had gone and she told me she thought fine,  But the description she gave me of what transpired didn’t sound right and so I went and looked in the file again and could not see where Griffith entered his appearance, even though he obviously had been there.  It also looked to me as if Nola definitely now had a criminal record.  When I raised questions about it Nola asked me to go with her to the court so that she could probably find Griffith there as she wanted to ask him that one question:  Had he done what he had initially said he would and handled it to remove the conviction of record from the hearing she was brought to from the jail?  We waited around for about an hour for Griffith to show up as he had clients to represent in court that date.  The lobby was fairly empty, other than Security personnel.  Nola walked up to Griffith as he was walking across the lobby, headed for the District Courtroom door.  She said she had just one question to ask and he said he didn’t have time and it would have to be some other day as he was very busy.  Nola quickly introduced me to him and, for whatever reason, he changed his mind and agreed to answer just one question.  He then suggested they step outside, which they did.  Within a couple of minutes they came back in and Nola said he had assured her she had no criminal record.  I did not believe that, which is what prompted me to go back to the Court Clerk’s office and check the file and get copies of documents in there filed from the April 4 hearing.  And, sure enough, there is a criminal conviction of record for Nola.

The other sentence noted on the court papers, besides the 5 days of jail time where at least 3 must be served was the odd sentence that she must go to see her personal doctor and do as he says.  That was done via somebody, whether Dr. Haddad or someone else – but probably Haddad – referring Nola to IOP which is a contractual counseling entity under contract to provide such services at certain hospitals, including now Casey County Hospital.  Among other things they apparently offer counseling help for those Over 65.  Nola made 3 or 4 visits to IOP to meet the criteria of the court sentence.  However, on what proved to be her last visit she was told by one of the therapists she was seeing that were was no need for her to come back as the Anger Management therapy she had been given didn’t seem to really be a problem.

Various odd things happened that led me to wonder if there might be a Guardianship Petition filed with the local court.  Eventually, ongoing with Nola Mills to the Casey County Courthouse and speaking with the clerk it turned out there was.  This Petition had been filed by both the Mills’ daughters – Sondra Hudgens and Rhonda Cochran.  The son-in-law Larry does have his name show up in one place on the petition paperwork and that is on a small financial section where they want the petitioners to write in the monetary value of Real Property (Larry wrote $210,000 for the approximate 82 acre farm and farmhouse when you couldn’t even buy the house without the farm for that small amount these days), $2,000+ for Nola’s Social Security monthly income and $150,00 for all personal belongings – I don’t know if that was to include the remaining 40 head of cattle, but I can only assume so, along with cash, bank accounts, vehicles, furniture, etc.  While at the courthouse on that occasion I told Nola to get herself a copy of everything in that file, which she did.

By then she had been told by the daughters that they had taken over her bank account(s) and Sondra would be paying bills from it.  Art had it set up where certain monthly repetitive billings, such as the electric bill, water bill, and others were paid from the account via a system where the billing company was able to access each month’s amount and pay itself from the account.  Other bills, personal family ones, were paid via checks.  Nola made attempts to remove her daughters from the account but appeared unable to do so, per the bank.  Farmers National Bank in Liberty said it had been done through Nola signing off on adding her daughters to the account and signing on behalf of Art.  At First Southern Bank in Stanford that account was used for farm income business and expenses but that account had apparently been closed out and some unknown amount of money in the account was transferred elsewhere – destination unknown.  That had been done with the daughters taking Nola to the bank so this could be accomplished.

Other than one doctor appointment visit that Rhonda and Larry took Nola to in Lexington they never took her to any others.  Sondra took Nola once to grocery shop on one of her infrequent visits up here.  Since the family were failing to step up to the very tasks (and then some) for which they had petitioned to be made responsible my daughter and I stepped up and helped Nola.  With regard to the Farmers checking account Nola, who had never been responsible before for handling the family finances as Art always did that (common among the families here) Nola took over writing checks to pay the bills as Sondra had failed entirely to notify Nola as to the running balance in the account, what bills had been received and paid, what had been paid on the automatic system each month by the bank, etc.  Nola never knew the totally accurate balances due to the complete lack of information from Sondra.  Nola did need some help starting to learn how to handle her own finances, but who wouldn’t if they had never done such a thing before?  Nola was perfectly capable (and did) of preparing her own meals, doing her laundry, keeping the grass mowed by operating the rider mower, doing some housework (at 83/84 she wasn’t physically capable of doing hard housework but had the money to pay someone to help out if needs be).  She would drive her car to Liberty for odds and ends she might need or to local doctor appointments and we would drive her to pharmacies to pick up her prescription renewals, to doctor appointments out of the area, to lawyer appointments, to the bank, to the courthouse, etc.

On one occasion Larry and Rhonda came to the house while myself and my younger daughter, also named Angela, were visiting.  Nola had called us in tears and said she had just received in the mail two anonymous items.  One was a 2 page hand-written letter, accusing her of all sorts of things and it was obviously from somebody that had known things about the family life for some years due to the content of the letter.  The other was a card that turned out to be a ‘sympathy card’ for her old dog having passed on in the middle of everything else.  The old dog had heart failure and was getting very arthritic and she had taken him to his vet’s office as he had stopped eating.  The vet, Dr. Courtney Brockton in Liberty, on examining the dog told Nola he was in the process of dying and would be gone by the end of the day but, to ease his suffering, Nola should decide to let the vet euthanize him now – and so Nola did.  The ‘sympathy card’ was from the same anonymous hate-filled person who wrote the anonymous letter as the writing was the same on both.  I suggested to Nolan she contact the Kentucky State Police and file a complaint with them but after my daughter and I left and Larry and Rhonda were still in Nola’s home they took Nola and the two anonymous mail items to Sheriff Chad Waddle’s Office and handed the items in to him to investigate.  (Nothing, to my knowledge, was ever done with them regards investigations and nothing, to my knowledge, ever came back by way of a report.)  I had particularly said to Larry that I didn’t think it was a matter for the Sheriff as it’s just a small, rural office with very few employees and nothing by way of much investigative abilities.  Also, the Sheriff’s Office seemed to be particularly friendly with Larry and seemed to do him lots of favors and so I felt somebody more impartial needed to handle things, hence me encouraging Nola to contact the KSP.  Beyond it looking as if the hand-writing was a female’s and that it was not written by an elderly person but had to be written by somebody with a lot of family inside knowledge over some several years I do not know who wrote them – or why.

Nola would tell me that she was concerned that somebody would come into her house on occasion when she was gone and would point to things like keys missing from time to time, a storm door left ajar that she was sure she had closed, etc.  I wrote some of it off to the stress she was under but, in retrospect, I think she was correct as I have been told by a local source that allege Larry was entering her house if he knew she was going to be gone for a while.  That Larry and Rhonda riffled through Art and Nola’s paperwork and were trying to find copies of Wills they believed existed.  That they had also gone to four different lawyers’ offices to see if Art might have left copies of Wills with any of the four.  On occasion Larry would arrive with Deputies or send Deputies to chastise Nola and tell her she was not ever to come to Larry and Rhonda’s home, not even be on their (public) street, etc.

I did make an effort to try to find a guardianship/eldercare lawyer for Nola in preparation for what would ultimately be the hearing on that situation (July 23 2024) but, after one or two other odd happenings somewhat related, I seemed unable to get someone to represent her.  However, suddenly Nola received her first, to my knowledge, court document sent to her in the mail by the court.  It was an Order from the court appointing a lawyer to represent her.  They had selected a young lawyer from Jamestown – Trevor Stonecypher.  He had only been practicing for two years.  Nola called him on the phone and, among other things, he asked if she had any friends or neighbors who would be prepared to testify on her behalf.  I told her (and then told the lawyer) that I would be prepared to do that.  We drove Nola to Jamesrtown to Stonecypher’s office a couple of days before the July 23 hearing so that he was properly prepared for it.  (Note:  there had been a June hearing date where he was going to call me to testify but at the beginning of that hearing before the judge he decided that Nola was better off asking for a jury trial.  That seemed like a very reasonable idea and so she concurred.  The July 23 haring was to be a six-person jury trial.  It went on for the best part of the day and, since I was to be a witness, I was not allowed into the courtroom until late in the afternoon when called to testify.  I spent the day mostly sitting on one of the benches in the lobby of the courthouse.  Also out there were the two daughters, the son-in-law-Larry, the three individuals who had done the assessments on Nola (her person doctor, who failed to tell her that he was doing so; some psychologist that turned out to connect to IOP – though it wasn’t one she had seen on any of the 3 or 4 visits for therapy; and a social worker from Adult Protective Services in Somerset.  There were a handful of others out there that somehow connected to the other side but I don’t believe the others were there to testify.  I assume they were there to give some sort of moral support.

When I testified, among other things and at the specific questioning of Nola’s lawyer, I gave details of a bizarre happening on May 13th when Nola and I had gone to the courthouse to see if anything like a Guardianship Petition had been filed and found there was and started to leave having obtained a copy of the content of same.  Suddenly, 4 police officers showed up in the lobby (two groups of two each officers with Liberty Police Department).  They had stopped Nola to chat with her – it turned out she didn’t know them but this was obviously meant as a delaying tactic to our exiting the building as the next person who appeared in there was Chad Weddle, the County Sheriff.  He inserted himself between me and Nola and told her there was a doctor that wanted to talk to her and he was going to take her to an empty room.  Since neither of us had a clue what he was talking about I asked him under what authority he was able to do this and he told me its by court order.  I saw no paperwork (Order) in his hands and so I asked him again under what authority but he told me it was none of my business and he tried to order me outside of the public building (courthouse).  I asked him if he had ever read the U.S. Constitution and I think, at that point, he realized he had gone a bit far so he said if I preferred, I could find an empty room to go sit in in the courthouse until they were done and with that he took Nola away somewhere and I opted to wait outside for her as I felt rather uneasy being in the courthouse after the peculiarities and attitude problem from the Sheriff.  I was outside around 45 minutes to an hour before Nola emerged from the building.  I asked her what doctor she had seen and she said she didn’t know him and that he had probably given her his name but she couldn’t recall it….that he had asked her a bunch of questions, such as what day of the week is it; who is the president, etc. – in other words dementia-related questions.

On July 23 2024 after I had testified and exited the courtroom I went outside to check in with my daughter who had driven us to the court that date and decided to wait in the car as we had no idea what time it would conclude.  She brought with her my blood pressure cuff and one of my blood pressure pills and several individual bottles of water.  Nola and I had both had to leave our purses and cell phones in the car, too, as the courthouse doesn’t allow cell phones taken in there nor women’s purses.  I drank a bottle of water (something else the courthouse doesn’t allow inside) and it was quite warm after all that time.  My daughter said she could use some cold water and to let our dog in from the backyard as it had got very hot and humid throughout the course of the day and to use the bathroom at home and that she would be right back.  I then returned to the courthouse so I could sit in the air-conditioning.  I knew she would not be long as we don’t live more than about 8 to 10 minutes from the courthouse.  But it wasn’t more than maybe 10 or 15 minutes or so later when the courtroom door opened and Larry and Rhonda came out and told me to go and get Nola’s purse from ‘my car’ and give it to them.  Since I had not been told that the decision had already been made in the courtroom I asked them under what authority I should hand over Nola’s purse to them – they got very irritated with me and made that clear.  I then explained that it wasn’t in ‘my car’ but rather in my daughter’s car who had just quickly run home for fresh water to drink and to let the dog into the house due to the heat/humidity and that she was coming right back but had not quite been gone long enough to have returned to the parking lot yet.  They told me they had won the guardianship approval and then the door opened again and more people exited the courtroom, including Nola and her lawyer.  Nola looked as if she had been struck by lightning.  Her eyes were very red and she was crying still. She came and sat next to me on the bench and her lawyer squatted down in front of us and apologized and said he never thought it would end that way.  I told him some of the peculiarities I had heard Larry say during the course of the day of sitting out there on the benches, not the least of which was Larry talking about some good friend of his…. called Cameron……  I asked the lawyer if he happened to know if that Cameron was one and the same as Cameron Griffith (from Nola’s April 4 criminal hearing) and he said yes, he thought so.  And then he left the courthouse.   Almost immediately Larry and Rhonda came over to me and Nola and told Nola she was going to have to go home (to her home) with them and they would be staying there with her – that they were in charge of everything now.  Nola begged me to for us to give e me a ride home but I explained in light of the decision just handed down in court I wouldn’t dare to or I would be in violation of the court’s decision and I doubted we would even make it as far as the car.  That I had done all I could do, at least for now, to try to help her.  At that point and while I was still sitting next to Nola on the bench in the courthouse lobby Rhonda, who is quite a large woman (I am 82 years old and short and thin) bent over towards me, pushed her face into mine and started screaming:  ‘You’ve done enough damage!  Do you want me to call 911 and have you arrested?’  Since I was not violating any law and was basically physically trapped there on the seat until Rhonda decided to move away from me I advised her that I believed she was breaking the law and had committed assault since she had me trapped and was threatening to have me arrested when I had not done anything illegal.  (There was also some social worker there with Adult Protective Services who said she was there to help make a smooth transition – obviously  she had to be around somewhere nearby still but she disappeared and certainly didn’t tell Rhonda to cease and desist her threatening behavior towards me.)  The next thing that happened was, with Rhonda still screaming the same words at me, one of the court Security guards working the front desk shouts over to Rhonda:  Do you need me to call 911?  Does somebody needs to be arrested?  With that, about a half-dozen police officers dressed in flak riot type gear come rushing around the corner into the lobby from a corridor.  With them is a ‘Constable’ which is this odd elected position in counties in Kentucky where they aren’t paid but are more like Reservists called in for extra police when needed.  This Constable was a huge, tall guy who looks like he spends a lot of time at a gym.  I then decide I am better off waiting for my daughter outside where there is traffic going by and people walking to their cars or on the street so that if something odd happens at least people will probably have been what it was.  I didn’t want my daughter to get back and find me missing and nobody having a clue why.  So I was followed outside, initially by all the police, and the Constable and Larry (who is also quite a large guy).  The Constable and Larry hover over me, occasionally demanding I get Nola’s purse and wanting to know what Nola has in her purse (I told them: I don’t know and I certainly don’t go through other women’s purses).  Next thing I hear one of the other police officers say:  There is trouble in the courthouse now and they all go rushing back in, followed by Larry, leaving me with the Constable to hover over me making sure I don’t run off (I can’t even walk far anymore, much less run…..sigh….)  About that time somebody I knew who works for the court came out to put some things in their car and he starts talking to the Constable, not realizing what is going on and I say to the Constable I cannot phone my daughter in the car as my cell phone is in the car along with my purse and Nola’s purse.  At that, the court employee who I know somewhat says oh, do you need to use a cell phone?  You can use mine and he hands it to me.  I call my daughter’s cell phone number and asking her how much longer before she pulls back into the courthouse parking lot and she tells me she is only about 2 minutes away from it so I don’t say anything further.  (She told me later that although she had no idea what had happened down there at the courthouse, she could tell from my voice that I was under a lot of stress over something.)  So she pulls into the parking lot, I get Nola’s purse and hand it to the Constable and I get in the car and we head for home.

The next morning I am sitting out on my back deck….its around 10 a.m. and the phone rings.  When I look at the caller ID it says it is a call from the Casey County Jail.  Not having a clue as to why the jail would be calling me I assume it’s a wrong number but I answer it.  A woman is on the other end of the line and she asks for me by name.  I tell her she has reached me and she tells me that Nola has been in the jail since the evening before and is still there; that the bail to get her out is $100.  It is obvious that Nola has given her my name and phone number to call and is wanting me to drive down there, pay her bail and bring her home, either to my house or hers.  After the Day from Hell at the Courthouse I realize that I cannot go down to get Nola or we will both wind up in jail – I certainly can’t take her to her house as the two daughters and son-in-law are undoubtedly staying there and I can’t take her to my house as I felt sure that as soon as word reached the daughters and son in law they would have us both arrested likely with the assistance of son-in-law’s friend, the Sheriff, and probably have my front door busted in in the process.  I explain this to the jail employee on the phone and she says she absolutely understands my concerns and goes on to ask me if I have any contact phone number so the jail can reach the ‘guardians.’  I tell her I have one phone number that Nola gave me for the son-in-law, husband of the younger daughter, but I had never tried using it but I give it to her.  The jail employee then tells me that they managed to get that number from somebody earlier on but that that number says it is no longer in service and they have no other number.  I had no idea at that time as to how on earth Nola could have wound up in jail but I call the young lawyer who had represented Nola in court the day before at the guardianship and conservatorship hearing.  He was not in his office so I tell his paralegal what has happened and that I am really disturbed by all these things happening – Nola being in jail without even having made it through one night in her own home with the guardians and my scare from the day before that the younger daughter and son-in-law were trying to have me hauled off to jail when I was not breaking any laws but was sitting quietly on a bench in the courthouse lobby.  The younger daughter was the only one breaking laws and in threatening to call 911 and have me hauled off.  I then called the jail that afternoon and find out that not only is Nola still there but to add to things the jail employee had somehow managed to reach the guardians through, I think, calling the older daughters cell phone number (the one who lives in Nashville but, of course, was here in Casey County for the court hearing) and been advised by the guardians that they had no intention of coming to bail Nola out – not then or ever – and that they also told the jail employees that they were not to allow anybody to visit Nola there, whether to post bail for her and take her out or even to visit her.  Nola then remained in jail for somewhere between ten days and two weeks before an ambulance arrived at the jail, sent there somebody told me by the guardians to take Nola off to some sort of nursing home facility, supposedly somewhere in Tennessee.  We have not heard about or from Nola since then to this very minute.  People in the community who are concerned about her have had no luck getting any information as to where she is or how she is doing.  The guardians will, apparently, only say that she ‘is somewhere safe!’  They say that is all they are obliged to tell anybody who asks about her.  The ‘guardians’ stay off and on on the premises that is Nola’s house and farm and, per the spring agreement that Nola signed with the young farmer directly across the street from her property as his compensation for caring for the remainder of Nola’s cattle (about 40 of them plus some new calves born this year) the young farmer gets half of Nola’s cattle which he currently is keeping in Nola’s  pastures as his part of the obligation was to care for the cattle by seeing to them twice a day, checking for additional calves born, putting feed out for them, cutting and baling hay, etc.  He told me that, initially, Larry (the son-in-law) talked to him about plans to sell Nola’s farm and about how he could not find Nola’s copy of the contract on the cattle and wanted one.  The young farmer took a photo of his copy of the contract on his cell phone and sent that to Larry who told the farmer that he didn’t think he wanted to honor the contract and could probably get it cancelled due to Nola being a Ward of the Court.  However, neither I, nor the young farmer thought that a contract signed by Nola back around the end of March when no guardianship hearing had taken place at that time (the guardianship hearing was not until May 2024) believed that Larry could cancel it as Nola had not been made a Ward of the Court at the time she signed the contract.  I believe Larry must have found out that it was a valid  contract when he consulted with a lawyer or some such.

I found out a couple of days after the Sheriff’s Department took Nola to jail what had happened that caused her to be there.  It was as follows:

Nola was forced to leave the courthouse lobby and go back to her home with the two daughters and Larry but that sometime late in the evening – around 9:30 or 10 p.m., I believe – Nola had managed to escape from her home but was spotted by Larry walking up the driveway and being observed by Larry due to the spotlight on the front of the garage.  Larry says he then rushed out to grab her before she reached the road as he was scared a vehicle would come along and hit her and injure.  Highly unlikely, since Nola’s road is not a through road but rather winds up going past a Skeet Shooting Club on a section of the road that is not even paved.  One is  more likely to be run over by an escaped cow than a human on that road.  Anyway, he said he grabbed Nola around the waist and was a basically wrestling with her and, in hopes of making him let go of her, she bit him on the arm.  He then yelled for the two daughters and they called the Sheriff.  Sheriff’s Department came out there, including the Sheriff, himself, and arrested Nola and charged her with 4th Degree Assault – Domestic Violence – Minor Injury.  They also called an ambulance for Larry to have medics look at his arm.  I was told much of this by the paralegal to the young lawyer who had represented her in court the day of the guardianship hearing as she had told the lawyer what happened in the courthouse after he, the lawyer, left and he had called the jail to find out why she was there.  Nobody did anything to provide any criminal legal defense for Nola, though the court approved Nola as being indigent and on the paperwork said she was entitled to be represented by the Public Defender.  (I personally don’t think that is legal, either, since the money in the bank and in the house (cash) means she is far from indigent; rather, the very people who complained about Nola are one and the same as Nola’s guardians.)

I made multiple phone calls and sent out emails over a period of several weeks in an attempt to find help while Nola was being kept at the jail but other than a couple of sympathetic souls I talked to along the way during my phone calls my calls got me precisely zero help for her.  Among others, I talked to Governor Beshear’s office – they have an ombudsman-type set up in their office; more than one call to Kentucky Adult Protective Services – even on their hotline 24/7 phone number to report abuse of an elderly person; various print media sources, Alzheimers Association, AARP, several private lawyers, various advocacy groups who are trying to improve the plight of far too many Wards of the Court nationwide, and so many others I don’t even remember who they all are.

Meanwhile I have been trying to keep tabs on the 4th Degree Assault charge going through the court system here – they had one hearing about three months ago as I looked it up on the Casey County Court Scheduling website but it just showed ‘Review’ as the reason shown for the hearing and then a further hearing scheduled for this next Thursday, November 7, for another review.  I am sure Nola did not get brought from whatever nursing facility and I doubt the ‘guardians’ went to the first one – that, I think, would be yet another questionable involvement – since Nota was charged by the Sheriff on a complaint signed by her son-in-law and the two ‘guardians’ were also the two witnesses for Larry.

To me, it looks as if Nola wound up with an ‘egg’ on her head in the booking mugshot of her taken at the Sheriff’s Office.  However, there is no mention of it in the police report – or any other legal documents I have seen – though the county newspaper, in their account of what happened per the Sheriff said in an article that Nola had bruising on her but that had happened earlier.  Earlier when?  I had been with Nola at the courthouse right up until the time that the guardians were demanding Nola leave with them and she was resistant as she was frightened of them.  She certainly did not have any bruising or bumps on her head right up until she was forced to get in Larry’s  vehicle.

There is another ‘review’ hearing in District Court next Thursday and, although I am sure Nola will not be brought there from wherever, as it stands now I thought I would go there this Thursday, 11/7, to see what – if anything – happens at that hearing and whether I might at least through the Public Defender find out if Nola is alright.

The foregoing is the to the best of my memory a fairly concise account of what transpired throughout this disgusting state of affairs.

Angela M. Lee