Police in Texas examining 20+ deaths after boarding home operator charged with murder
A Texas woman who ran boarding homes for disabled adults has been charged with a resident's murder and detectives are looking at more than 20 other deaths for possible irregularities, Arlington police confirmed Thursday.
Regla “Su” Becquer, 49, was charged with the murder of Kelly Pankratz, following an autopsy report that found the 60-year-old boarding home resident was taking medication he was never prescribed when he died earlier this year, said Tim Ciesco, a spokesperson for the North Texas police department. Authorities said an autopsy is being conducted on a second resident, Karen Walker, who died in 2022.
"Through the course of the investigation, we have identified more than 20 clients of Ms. Becquer who have died since September 2022," Ciesco said Thursday. "Over the past several months, our Behavioral Health Unit has been working alongside our Homicide Unit to look into each of those deaths and to see whether any of them appeared suspicious or even criminal in nature."
The murder charge and investigation of Walker's death are the latest in the saga of Becquer's Love and Caring for People LLC, a boarding home company for disabled adults police have discovered was riddled with problems.
Officer Chris Powell, a member of the Behavioral Health Unit, called the findings "incredibly disturbing" at a news conference this week.
Families thought they were putting ailing relatives "in a good place," Powell said, but were shocked to discover deplorable conditions: "They thought it had been vetted, and it turned out that in some of these cases they weren't."
Becquer was arrested in February for endangering a resident, police said. She has been held since then at the Lon Evans Corrections Center in Forth Worth. Her bail is set at $1.5 million.
Many of the deceased residents have been already cremated, buried or had their bodies donated to science, making investigating challenging, Ciesco said.
Arlington police alerted the public to the investigation of Becquer and the Love and Caring crew in March in a release saying they were investigating multiple allegations of abuse, neglect, and fraud connected to Becquer's boarding homes for adults that needed daily care.
“They would isolate the individual from their family members,” said Lieutenant Kimberly Harris at a press conference in March, describing how Love and Caring People got away with the treatment. “They were giving them something at night to keep them in control and so they wouldn't leave.”
Police suspected Becquer and her staff were not caring for clients, preventing them from getting medical attention and cutting them off from friends and family. They also suspected the Love and Caring crew was making purchases with clients' money without consent or knowledge, and taking dead clients' property.
ABC, citing court records, reported that two residents, including Walker, left their estates to Becquer. The Tarrant County District Attorney's Office did not immediately respond to requests for confirmation.