Portland, Ore., couple charged with abuse of elderly Mo. couple

PORTLAND — A Portland couple who offered to care for a developmentally delayed pair stand accused of defrauding them of more than $50,000 in pension and Social Security payments and physically abusing them for years.

Police say Charles and Tammy Whitworth of St. Louis were virtual indentured servants and endured nearly three years of financial, psychological and physical abuse including strangulation, assaults, and dog bites.

The Whitworths are back home in Missouri thanks in part to an alert Plaid Pantry clerk and collaboration of city and county investigators.

Plaid Pantry clerk John Parmer, 21, noticed a distraught woman with long gray hair using a pay phone in July.

"She had been crying," Parmer recalled. "I was keeping my eye on her."

The next morning she was back, crying again on the phone.

She walked into the store and through her tears asked him to call 911.

He did.

Responding officers called the bureau's elder abuse investigators.

A two-month investigation led to the arrests this week of Daniel Lee Anderson, 50, and Taryn Marie Anderson, 51, on an 84-count criminal indictment.

Even the experienced investigators had trouble grasping what went on in the southeast Portland ranch-style house where the Whitworths lived with the Andersons.

They said Tammy Whitworth, 50, was hysterical but that they were able to talk to the distraught couple alone.

Investigators describe them as vulnerable, low-functioning adults.

Charles Whitworth worked for 33 years for Chrysler in St. Louis but doesn't read or write. Police said his wife, Tammy, was socially isolated.

Police say the couples met in Missouri in 2006. The Whitworths were living in a house on their own when the Andersons offered to care for them. The couples left town about six months later.

"They just up and moved in the middle of the night," recalled Tammy's mother, Barbara Ross, in a phone interview from Missouri.

"They went from owning their own house, a car and a truck, down to nothing."

Relatives knew they were in Oregon but didn't know where and hired an investigator to find them, but without success.

"At some point (the Whitworths) were told their families didn't want anything to do with them, said Detective Celeste Fender. "They basically said, 'We're all you've got.' "

Charles Whitworth, 62, was to walk the dogs, pull weeds and clean the house. Tammy was supposed to clean the kitchen. Basically, they were their maids, Fender said.

Fender and Officer Katie Potter worked with county adult protective services investigator Sheila Robinson.

Not only are the Andersons accused of funneling Charles Whitworth's assets into their own bank accounts, but police and prosecutors say the Andersons would slap the Whitworths in the head, knock them into walls or sic their three Dacshunds on the couple. Daniel Anderson is accused of trying to strangle the couple.

The Andersons would force Charles to bite his wife, Fender said.

Ross said she received a collect call on July 30 from her daughter, Tammy. She was crying into the phone.

Ross said she encouraged her to contact police.

"Thank goodness she called her mom. She was brave enough to take that step," Fender said.

Police say the Andersons had Charles Whitworth believing his mother died but investigators found his mother alive and phoned her so he could speak to her.

He cried at the sound of his mom's voice.

The Andersons told police they didn't know where the Whitworths' money went.

When Fender asked why he had taken in a couple with no resources, she said he replied, "Well, Christians are known to do that."

Similar cases often go unreported because victims are kept in isolation, Robinson said. Though Dr. Bennett Blum, an Arizona-based forensic and geriatric psychiatrist who specializes in what he calls undue influence cases, said they are tragically frequent.

He said this case has all the hallmarks: vulnerable adult abuse, isolation, dependency, emotional manipulation and deception.

Daniel Anderson faces 31 counts of criminal mistreatment, 22 counts of theft, three counts of strangulation, seven counts of assault, seven counts of harassment and four counts of coercion.

His wife faces 26 counts of criminal mistreatment, 22 counts of theft, three counts of assault, two counts of criminal mischief, and two counts of harassment and coercion.

Both pleaded not guilty on Monday.

The Andersons lawyer, Bill Brennan, said the Whitworths money appeared to be pooled with the Andersons' accounts to help pay expenses.

The county helped place the Whitworths in foster care and worked with Missouri officials to reroute their checks directly to them.

This month the Whitworths flew back to Missouri. They're living with Tammy's mom but plan to get their own place.

"The Andersons need to be in prison," Ross said. "They're evil, evil."

Daniel Anderson is a local trucker who declared bankruptcy in 1998 and was convicted of passing bad checks in Missouri in 2006.

Their trial date is Nov. 12.