INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Gina Albrecht was pronounced guilty of manslaughter, forgery and ID theft Wednesday afternoon by six jurors who deliberated for only an hour and 10 minutes before reaching a unanimous verdict.
Albrecht was found guilty of purposely neglecting 81-year-old Marbrisa resident George May to such an extent that he died of extreme malnutrition and dehydration, complicated by pneumonia.
She was also found guilty of identity theft and forgery for writing checks on May’s dead wife’s account and depositing more than $16,000 from those checks in her account.
Standing for the reading of the verdict, Albrecht stared straight ahead and showed no emotion when pronounced guilty.
In his closing argument, her attorney Bobby Guttridge tried to raise questions of guilt in jurors’ minds by saying that far from neglecting May, Albrecht stood by him to the end. The proof, he said, was a small amount of water found in May’s stomach upon death, food in the pantry and freezer, the absence of bedsores on May, and a notecard telling May to call 911 if he needed help.
Also, said Guttridge, Albrecht was packing May’s house to move him in with her and she left her dog with May and came for it a few days before he died, showing that she was there.
But the state’s evidence was too overwhelming to give Guttridge much wiggle room for creating doubt, despite a yeoman’s effort.
In the rebuttal, prosecutor Lev Evans — who with prosecutor David Dodd, built a strong case with a mountain of quality evidence — told jurors that it was almost worse and deserving of a higher charge (like murder) to think that Albrecht might have been with the confused and disoriented May, watching him turn into a 101-pound skeleton in front of her eyes, and not calling for help.
Albrecht became May’s paid caregiver in June 2011 and within six weeks was engaged to him even though she was married. Numerous witnesses testified about Albrecht moving her husband and children into May’s home in September, 2011 and helping themselves to May’s money, as he plunged deeper into dementia, which had been diagnosed before Albrecht came on the scene.
In response to defense evidence concerning Albrecht packing the house to move George May to her home in the Vero Highlands and coming to get the dog, prosecutor Evans told jurors: “She packed the house. Yes, she did pretty good. She took all of George May’s valuables and left him behind. And, yes, she went back and got the dog. What does that show? Not that she cared about George May but that she loved that dog.”
After the ruling of guilty, Evans called the verdict “just and fair.”
At sentencing, Gina Albrecht will face between 12 and 50 years in prison.
