Violent ‘Evelyn’ Alberts, a 96-year-old wealthy woman murdered in a plot to steal her luxury California home, was accused of a ‘mistrustful’ attitude and how people around her were afraid of her money and money. Fearing that he was after them, he isolated himself and became an easy target. her former stepson told Fox News Digital.
When she was found dead in her bed in her Montecito home in May 2022, ingredients for baking cookies for her upcoming birthday were found laid out on the table.
Porter Ranch resident and caregiver Pauline Macarreno, 48, has been charged with elder abuse, fraud and falsifying a legal document in connection with Alberts’ death, according to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department. Ta.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said at a press conference last Friday that he defrauded Alberts by offering him a reverse mortgage and that in 2022 he “forged documents and established a fraudulent organization to illegally gain control of Alberts’ assets.” “He orchestrated a series of transactions,” he said.
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Violet Alberts, 96, is fondly remembered as a beloved resident of the Montecito community. (Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office)
Maccareno was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud and is now charged with abetting murder and conspiracy to commit murder, according to court records. Brown said she was “referred” to Alberts for care, but did not say by whom or from which agency.
The alleged accomplices, Harry Basmajian, 58, Ricardo Martín Delcampo, 41, and Henry Rostomian, 33, are charged with crimes ranging from murder to conspiracy and abetting murder. There is.
Lawyers for Macarreno, Martin del Campo and Rostomian could not immediately be reached for comment. After his arrest, Basmajian “suffered a life-threatening medical emergency that left him completely incapacitated and his prognosis is grim,” the sheriff’s office said.
“In the eyes of Pauline Macarreno, Miss Alberts has lived too long,” Brown said at a press conference last Thursday. “And the acceleration of her death was probably what was behind the murder.”
“With no immediate family nearby, Violet relied on friendships and connections in her neighborhood, which gave her a sense of belonging to a close-knit community,” Brown said.
Bruce Anderson, Alberts’ stepson from a previous marriage, said neither Alberts nor his wife knew his former stepmother had been murdered until his brother, who is based in California, read it in a local newspaper. Ta.
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Ricardo Martin Delcampo, Pauline Macarreno, and Henry Rostomian are all suspects in the murder of Violet Alberts. (Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office)
Anderson said Alberts, whose middle name is Evelyn, met her father, John Anderson, who was president of the California Rare Fruit Growers Association, of which she was also a member.
The two married in 1991. Although they divorced in 1996, they remained close friends until Anderson’s death in 2005, often visiting each other’s homes in Santa Barbara County.
Ms. Alberts’ first husband died in the 1990s, Ms. Brown said last Thursday. When Alberts died in 2022, Brown said, she was in a dire financial situation as Alberts was getting older and her savings had been depleted.
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But Alberts’ hilltop property, within walking distance of Oprah Winfrey’s home and Michael Jackson’s estate, was her source of great pride, Anderson said.
He said the property is dotted with rare fruit and nut trees, and Alberts has a prized koi pond with fish imported from Japan, some worth thousands of dollars. It is said that there was She had a “genuine interest in Japanese culture” and had a 6-foot-deep Japanese bathtub and Japanese design features throughout her approximately 5,000-square-foot home.
Alberts has owned a large property on Park Lane in Montecito since 1989, just a stone’s throw from Oprah Winfrey’s home. The last appraised value was just under $5 million. (Google Earth)
The home’s final appraised value was just under $5 million, according to appraisal records.
Alberts also has a chicken coop on the property and has long been known in the Montecito community for selling eggs at the local farmers market.
“There’s a woman who has millions of dollars and sells eggs at farmers markets just to talk to people. That’s what she was. She was very outgoing and talkative,” Anderson said.
But while she was known for her impeccable housekeeping and hospitality, Anderson said he did not have “overly trust” in her.
“She questioned a lot of things,” Anderson said Tuesday. “Apparently she was [too trusting] lastly. …I don’t think she had an easy record, but it may have been that way in her later years. ”
Brown said at a news conference Thursday that Alberts has “memory and cognitive problems.”
This aerial photo shows the Montecito neighborhood in Santa Barbara, California on March 5, 2021. (David McNew/AFP via Getty Images)
Anderson said that since he became estranged from his stepmother around 2005, his ex-stepmother “may have had more memory problems and become more dependent on others.”
Anderson’s wife, Darlene Anderson, said Alberts, who was “in good spirits,” “always thought someone was trying to do something to her.”
Darlene Anderson said it was “painful” that Alberts “didn’t want to contact me”. “Mr. Alberts always thought the only reason we checked on her was to try to find out her will,” she said.
“If we hadn’t done anything, I don’t think we would have known she was in such trouble,” she said. “She had enough money that we thought she would be able to take care of herself…In her 90s, she didn’t necessarily think she had the mental capacity to do it. We forgot that there is no limit.”
‘People knew each other and ran into each other at the grocery store’ news of violent crime in star-studded town [and] It was the same doctor,” she said, shocked.
“In Pauline Macarreno’s eyes, Miss Alberts has lived too long.”
Darlene Anderson said Alberts had a difficult start in life financially, adding, “Every time her family would contact her, they’d say, “Hey, we were thinking about you today, and we love you.” “I wanted to say that I was there,” he said. ”
“When they called, they said, ‘You have all this money and I don’t have any money, so please send me $10,000 because I need this.’ “It gets to the point where I don’t want to answer the phone,” she said. “I think that’s very sad. I would absolutely love to see that and I would never want to be in that position in my life.”
The Andersons said the role of family in Alberts’ life was a “major point of contention” in her relationship with her second husband, which led to their divorce.
“She loved her stepfather dearly. [but] “She didn’t have any children of her own, so she was a little jealous of his family,” Darlene Anderson recalled. “She didn’t understand family dynamics.”
Another point of contention is that Alberts “wanted to transfer his property to a cat shelter” when he died.
”[My father-in-law was like, ‘A cat is a cat and it’s not supposed to have millions of dollars,'” Anderson said.
Alberts lived in the Montecito neighborhood of Santa Barbara, California. (David McNew/AFP via Getty Images)
Regardless, Darlene Anderson said, it “wasn’t up to [Macareno] It was to decide whether Evelyn intended to manage the money the way she wanted. ”
”[Macareno’s] The job was to take care of her…someone was abusing her, scaring her, maybe if you didn’t do this, if you didn’t do that, they would take away any contacts she had. I told her I was deaf,” she continued. Did that woman come through? It makes me very angry. ”
It’s “extremely rare” for this type of murder to occur in wealthy Montecito (home to residents like Meghan Markle and Prince Harry), Pasadena-based criminal defense attorney Brian Claypool told Fox News Digital. “This is a serious crime in an upscale, wealthy area of California,” he said. It is on the rise. ”
“Last year, a lovely young woman working at a high-end furniture store in West Los Angeles was murdered in broad daylight,” Claypool said. “There was a major push-pull incident in Beverly Hills just before the holidays. Prosecutors are soft on crime in certain counties, such as Los Angeles, that encourage criminals.”
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The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the case at press time.
