Yeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam, it’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I hope you’re all well. I’m going to level with you. Today’s case is a tough one. It’s about elder abuse and there are some graphic details about sexual assault that our guest Detective Robert describes since they establish a distinct pattern of abuse by the perpetrator.

If you’ve been listening for a while, then you know Detective Robert is right down the line. He never needlessly embellishes the details of a crime and he is tireless when it comes to getting justice for his victims. These qualities gave me a bit of comfort as I listened to Robert tell this story, since the victims, plural are all vulnerable older women in need of some kind of professional care.

Legally, this case is about multiple sexual assaults. But morally, it’s about a rupture in what is often called “The trust economy.” This is where reputation, credibility and trust become as important in your decision making as the price of goods and services. So, for instance, you choose to stay at a hotel because of its great reviews. You get into Uber because the driver has a five-star rating. You choose a hospital because its reputation is stellar.

The emotional cost that comes from that kind of trust being broken, particularly when a person is already vulnerable and relying on a system like a hospital or nursing home to care for them, feels especially rotten to me. But the nail in the moral and ethical coffin in this story was when a hospital administrator whom Robert spoke to during the investigation said that the abuse these women suffered was, “Bad for business.” Not because he was concerned for their well-being, but because sexual crimes are bad for a hospital’s bottom line. So here it is, Bad for Business.

Hi there, I’m Yeardley.

Dan: I’m Dan.

Dave: I’m Dave.

Paul: And I’m Paul.

Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.

Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-

Dave: –and retired detectives from small town USA.

Paul: And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Dan: Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.

Dave: Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare personal account of how they solved the crime.

Paul: Names, places and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

Dan: And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-

Dave: -out of respect for what they’ve been through.

Unison: Thank you.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Yeardley: Today, on Small Town Dicks we have the usual suspects. It’s such a good day. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: Yay. I’m number one again.

Yeardley: Yay. By the way, I’m never number one, so y’ all can fight over it. [Laughs] We have Detective Dave.

Dave: I am here as well.

Yeardley: You are here. And I am so happy about that. And we have the one and only Paul Holes.

Paul: And I’m bringing up the end once again.

[laughter]

Yeardley: Listen, we’re like a four-legged table without any of you. We’re a less stable table. There you go. So quit complaining. I love you all. [Laughs] And Small Town Fam, we are so lucky and really excited to have our most returning guest on the podcast, Detective Robert, which is his stage name, but he’s a sergeant now. But we’re going to call him Detective Robert because that’s how you guys first met him and that’s what I’m going to do. Hi, Robert.

Robert: Awesome. Hi there.

Yeardley: So great to see you.

Robert: Great to be back. Thanks for having me.

Yeardley: We are always delighted to have you. You are such a wonderful, detailed, thorough and compelling storyteller. I really feel like it gives the listeners an opportunity to put themselves in your shoes, kind of like a virtual ride along. And it’s really important, true crime is everywhere these days, and I think one of the ways we set ourselves apart is we get the story from the source, from the people who investigated it, and also really try to infuse the action with the pertinent details so that you can really like, “Oh, God. Oh, I get that. Oh.” And then of course, all the procedural stuff, which can also set your hair on fire, so, look forward to that. So, Robert, please tell us how this case came to you.

Robert: All right, well, this case came in through the patrol division who had responded to one of our hospitals in our county. And it’s kind of an unusual case. So, an elderly woman named Ethel, who’s 94 years old, Ethel makes a report while she’s in the hospital. And patrol deputy responds out to the hospital. And Ethel is already talking to hospital security about an incident that happened. And so, our deputy does a preliminary interview with her with a female nurse present in the room before I know anything about this case.

So again, Ethel’s 94 and she’s reporting that she was fondled by a hospital employee. And she reports that it was very painful. In fact, she says, “He hurt me tremendously.” And Ethel says that the person who fondled her was someone who had helped bathe her and helped her numerous times go and use the restroom.

Ethel provides a detailed description of the suspect, said he was overall a nice-looking man. And she recalls that they had been discussing some personal things, such as, you know, whether he was married or not. So, Ethel said that the suspect, whose name is Zee, had denied being married and denied having kids. And while Ethel’s making her statement to the deputy, she begins crying, saying that “She’s 94, almost turning 95. Why would this guy think I’d be interested in sex?” she said.

Yeardley: And Robert, this hospital that Ethel is at, is she there for a sexual assault exam?

Robert: No, she’s there for something completely unrelated.

Yeardley: Oh, and the hospital Ethel is at is not the one that Zee works at, is it? I hope.

Robert: It is the one.

Yeardley: Oh, no. Okay.

Robert: Yeah, yeah. Just warning, there’s a lot of yucky stuff ahead on this one.

Yeardley: Okay.

Robert: So Ethel says that the suspect, who she’d interacted with several times during her stay in the hospital, she said that he behaved himself, the first several times he helped her to the bathroom, but that Zee had fondled her the previous day while helping her use the commode in her room.

And specifically, she says that she uses the commode in her room, and while Zee is helping to wipe her, he puts his finger into her vagina, where it stays for three to five minutes. Ethel says this causes her intense pain. She’s describing it as 10 out of 10, and she says it’s the most painful thing she’s ever experienced. She said while he’s doing it, she tells him several times to stop and that he was hurting her and it didn’t have any impact. He continued doing it.

Zee then invites her to go down the hallway with him to the bathroom, which she refuses. Zee also asks Ethel if he could come visit her at home so that he could take care of her there or that they could have sex. He asked her for her address and she refuses all of those things. And she is kind of hoping that this is all done and she doesn’t see him again. But at the end of his shift, Zee comes to her door, waves to her and says bye, which made her feel creepy.

She reports that she couldn’t sleep last night because she was in so much pain. And our deputy noted in his report that she was emotional during the interview and was very consistent with details and timelines. And Ethel says that she thought about keeping it to herself as she didn’t want to cause any grief for her son and daughter who helped take care of her, which that made me really, really, really sad that was a concern considering something so nasty happened to her.

Ethel also told one of her friends who told her that she needed to make a report to law enforcement. And based on the description that Ethel provided, the deputy at the hospital asked the nurse, “Hey, does this description describe anyone who’s been caring for her while she’s here?” And the nurse says, “Yeah, that only matches one of our co-workers whose name is Zee.”

Yeardley: And Robert, do we know why Ethel is in the hospital? Because she doesn’t live at the hospital. She’s not like in assisted living or anything?

Robert: No, no. So, Ethel had been admitted to the hospital two days earlier for dizziness and a UTI. So again, she’s there for something totally different. So as part of the original investigation, the hospital provided a list of 13 staff members who had interacted with Ethel since she arrived at the hospital. Out of those, only two of them were men, and only one of those matched the physical description of Zee that was provided by Ethel.

The hospital immediately places Zee on admin leave due to the allegations. Just instantly, they call him in, “Hey, don’t come back, you’re on leave.” They deactivate his mag card. He has no possibility of re-entering the hospital because we want to make sure that a suspect can’t have access to the victim anymore.

And then while Ethel’s there in the hospital, a sexual assault nurse examiner comes in and conducts a forensic exam of her. And a few hours later, the same deputy comes back to the hospital and picks up that kit.

So, the hospital risk manager, her name is Susan, she’s a former registered nurse herself. So, the risk manager, Susan, hears about this, she immediately reaches out to the deputy and she helps with this and a lot more as the case goes on.

So, part of our protocol is if a patrol deputy takes a felony sex crime, then they are alerting the on-call detective sergeant. So, this deputy calls the on-call detective sergeant and he says, “Yep, write it up, send in your report, and I’ll have a detective take a look at it on Monday or Tuesday.” So again, it sits and it sits and it sits and a detective gets assigned three days later. And that detective, he checks some databases. He doesn’t see any prior criminal history and doesn’t find Zee’s name in any police reports. So, he does a phone interview with him, which this is absolutely horrible. There’s so much that’s lost in a phone interview or even in my mind, a video interview versus an in-person interview. So, he does a phone interview, he calls the suspect up and has a chat with him about these allegations, which is not how I would have handled it.

Yeardley: You might as well have a text interview where all the nuance is lost-

Robert: Yes. [Laughs]

Yeardley: -right?

Robert: Yes. Yes. So, I asked this detective later, I said, “Hey, why did you do a phone interview on this one?” And he said, “Well, Zee’s already on admin leave and he knows police are involved, so why not?” And so, I feel like he literally just kind of phoned this one in.

Yeardley: Literally.

Robert: So, Zee admits to the detective that he got to work around 07:00 AM and his first task was to help two people with showers. And I should clarify, Zee is a certified nurse’s assistant, a CNA, and this case also helped me learn about the different layers of nursing, because I don’t think I really knew that before this. But he is a certified nursing assistant who can work in a clinical setting, so a hospital.

Yeardley: And what sort of duties does a CNA have?

Robert: So, he helps people with their toileting and bathing, showering, basically, mobility if you need to get from one place to another, he’s going to help you. And he has some training involved in that. But this is a $16 an hour job. The certification process is not very lengthy. It’s a few weeks and some clinicals. And I’ll probably say this multiple times, it’s a pretty thankless job. It’s not very glamorous at all. So, you know, wiping rear ends and front ends and–

Yeardley: Bedpans and all sorts of things.

Robert: Yeah, it’s not very glamorous. I still didn’t know they got paid that little. That doesn’t seem like enough for doing that kind of job. Yeah, so Zee, in the interview with the detective on the phone, says that he got to work about 07:00 AM, was assigned to shower two patients, and one of the patients was Ethel. And he remembers taking Ethel twice for commode breaks, which is just a little toilet on wheels that’s in her room. And he remembers Ethel was very kind to him and thanked him for taking good care of her. And then he remembered that during the second commode break, Ethel told him how handsome he was and wanted to know how many girlfriends he had. And Zee said that he told her he was married. And Ethel was apologetic that she needed his help and that he had to do this. And he described to her that, “Hey, that’s just my job and I’m happy to help.”

And Zee, when asked if anything was different about this, Zee said that there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about it. And Zee remembered that he had helped Ethel shower while she was sitting in a chair. He said she was able to wash herself. He only had to wash her back area in areas she could not reach. He specifically denied touching her vagina, said “He would never touch a patient that way.” And Zee said he had no idea why Ethel would make any kind of allegation about him touching her inappropriately.

Zee said he was completely genuinely shocked when the hospital HR people put him out on leave. Zee then said something that I knew we would need to follow up on later. He told the detective that he had worked in a lot of nursing homes and knew this allegation was very bad. Zee said he would not be messing around with a 95-year-old and what was reported was very unprofessional and unethical, and he would know that.

So, Zee said he was born in another country where he was a math professor before coming to the United States, and he’d been working in this field as a CNA because he wasn’t able to continue in his profession teaching math.

Zee encouraged the detective to investigate and look at camera footage and swore he didn’t do what was alleged. So, this detective then calls Ethel’s son. And Ethel’s son, first thing out of his mouth is, “You know, I don’t like having a male CNA caring for my mom.” He’s clear that he believes his mom and says that she doesn’t have dementia. She’s clear in her thoughts, and he’s pretty upset, he’s like, “Why is this guy asking my mom for her home address? And why does he want to take her to a separate bathroom with a door that opens and closes when there’s a commode right there and she needs help anyway.”

So, to that the detective tells Ethel’s son, “Hey, there’s little evidence of any crime happening here and there’s really no chance anything is going to be prosecuted.” And that’s that detective’s thought is that after talking to just Zee and Ethel, and Ethel’s son that he’d formed an opinion and that there wasn’t going to be anything moving forward.

[Break 1]

So, to this other detective’s credit, he actually does have Zee come in for an interview at a later time and it’s in person. And Zee reiterates again that he helped Ethel shower in the morning. And Zee says that helped Ethel urinate in the commode in her hospital room, after which he wiped her. He repeats that during the second bathroom break, Ethel told him that he was handsome. And then to his great surprise, he was at home the next day, when the HR called him and told him he was under investigation and that the sheriff’s office would be calling him.

The detective asked him, “Hey, Zee, what is your understanding of what the complaint is?” And Zee said, “I’m being accused of putting my finger in Ethel’s vagina in a sexual way.” Zee denied that wiping a patient ever involved penetrating the vagina. And Zee says that Ethel never complained of any discomfort or any pain whatsoever. Zee is asked kind of broader questions and Zee says he’s never had his hand in any patient’s vagina. He denied asking Ethel for her home address. He denied flirting with Ethel. And Zee points out that he’s worked at the hospital for two years. He’s had zero complaints about him.

The detective then follows up with Ethel’s son and again explains, “Hey, there’s no evidence of any crime here.” He does look up the nursing board complaint log, and we see that Zee has zero complaints filed against him in the past. So, this detective then calls the hospital. He calls Susan back at-risk management and says, “Hey, criminal investigation done. This is unfounded.” And because of the workload, Zee immediately returns to work for his next shift.

Paul: Hey, Robert?

Robert: Yeah.

Paul: Who told Zee the detail about the allegations against him? Was that coming from hospital staff in their HR process, or did the original investigator tell him that?

Robert: No, unfortunately, when they put him on leave, they got pretty specific, which obviously is not what we would like, but, yeah, they told him pretty specifically.

Paul: Okay.

Yeardley: And I’m guessing the reason you wish the hospital hadn’t done that, Robert, is because you lose the element of surprise when you go to interview Zee and ask him what his version of events are.

Robert: Yeah. So now I’m going to introduce victim number two. Her name is Gladys, and Gladys is 87 years old. And this is less than three months after Ethel makes her report is when Gladys comes forward. So, another victim comes forward in the hospital. She’s 87 years old. And Gladys tells her daughter, and her daughter contacts law enforcement and the hospital, and Gladys’ daughter actually takes her to the same hospital where Zee works and where the incident occurred. So, the hospital gets informed, and they immediately place Zee on admin leave again. And the call comes into dispatch, and basically the dispatcher types up a call and it goes into a system. And the same deputy that handled Ethel’s complaint sees that call holding and thinks, “Huh, there might be a pattern here,” and so this same deputy goes and chats with Gladys, which, again, we don’t work seven days a week. So, it’s pretty interesting that he was working at the same time and saw a similar call and recognized it and went and took it.

Dave: I’d also point out that there are a lot of patrol deputies and officers who would have seen that call on the call screen and said, “I want nothing to do with that.” So, bravo to this deputy who says, “Hey, I’m going to take that one because I’m familiar with these circumstances.”

Robert: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. There are calls that hold for hours and hours because that doesn’t look like fun, that looks like a lot of work. And so unfortunately that is something we see. But yeah, this deputy, again, I’m glad he did it because we might not have made the connection three months later.

Yeardley: Should we give this deputy a name?

Robert: Yeah, this is Deputy Adam. He did a really good job. Okay, so Deputy Adam, he responds there, he notifies the on-call detective sergeant and again he’s told, “Hey, take a statement, collect any relevant evidence.” And risk manager Susan, she’s also present and she’s in the room when Deputy Adam is interviewing Gladys and her daughter.

So, what Gladys reports is that two nights earlier she was in the hospital and Zee comes into her room. She says he opens the door very softly and closes it very softly. And she kept using the word sneaky. She said, “Zee was very sneaky.” And says he walks into the room and he immediately comes over to her and puts his hand up her vagina and she said this lasted for a couple minutes and then he moved her to her side and inserted his penis into her vagina where he proceeded to have sex with her for about two minutes. And she described being in great pain and she remembered that when he was done, he wiped off his penis with something.

She said the next morning she saw him when it was time for discharge and her daughter came to pick her up at the hospital and she says that “After Zee raped her, he asked her where she lived.” And she’s able to provide a really accurate description of Zee also including a comment that he’s a nice-looking man, which it’s interesting that both of these women, even despite what Zee did to them, they’re paying him compliments.

Yeardley: Yeah, that’s bizarre.

Robert: Yeah. Gladys lives with her 99-year-old sister and her great grandson and she said she didn’t want Zee coming over.

Yeardley: So Gladys did not give out her home address, I hope.

Robert: No, she did not. And she was in the hospital because she’d had a heart attack, she had water in her lungs, she has a pacemaker, she has a stent and she’s progressing and getting better and able to be released and this happens the night before she gets released.

So, Susan, the hospital risk management person, she said that she had spoken to Gladys before the deputy got there and she said that Gladys’ statement was 100% consistent with what Gladys had told her. So, this is also a case where a specially trained nurse, what we call a SANE nurse, a sexual assault nurse examiner comes and collects evidence from Gladys. And so, we call that a safe kit, a sexual assault forensic evidence kit.

And the nurse did come and did the exam, which again is not fun for any person to have that done. It’s very invasive, takes a lot of time. It’s just very unpleasant. So, we’re grateful that Gladys was willing to do that. And ultimately DNA was collected from Gladys and unfortunately while there was sperm present, there wasn’t enough to create a suspect profile. So, we later also tested a second time for Y-STR after we got a sample from Zee and there was still insufficient evidence for comparison. So that was pretty disappointing.

Paul: What year was this?

Robert: 2016.

Paul: 2016. Okay.

Yeardley: Wasn’t the testing pretty robust back then or was that still sort of semi dark ages?

Paul: No, no, 2016, that was during an era of very robust STR testing. Now, starting in right around 2017, that’s when labs started adopting the latest greatest STR kits that are much more sensitive. And so, my question, if I were to be taking a look at this testing process, I’d be starting with the swabs collected. What did they actually find on the swabs? Did they quantify the number of sperm they’re seeing? And did they go back to the swabs once they saw that they did not have enough to proceed in the DNA testing, did they go and consume more of the swab to try to get it over the hump, so to speak. So that’s where, I think the era in which this testing was done was probably plenty of sensitive enough. Given the circumstances of this particular case, I’m just questioning, okay, how much effort did they put in to try to get what they needed to get a DNA profile.

Yeardley: Interesting. So, Robert, the technicians don’t get a DNA profile from the swabs that are taken from Gladys.

Robert: Correct. So, the next step, the deputy on scene interviews Gladys’ daughter. And you know, these are questions that we have to ask. It’s not pleasant, but we have to ask. And so, deputy Adam asks Gladys’ daughter if there’s any dementia or Alzheimer’s or any kind of memory issue. And the daughter reports no. Gladys is super sharp and she’s with it. And basically, the daughter tells the same story that she came to pick up Gladys earlier that day after she’d been discharged from the hospital. And as soon as they got home, there’s no delay or anything. As soon as they got home, Gladys disclosed to her daughter about what happened.

Now, another nice thing on this case is the daughter, as her mom’s talking, takes notes, she’s writing down notes so she doesn’t forget anything, so she gets it right, which I don’t know if that’s happened another time in my career, so, this is great. It’s a handwritten record of what happened. She takes notes of what Gladys is telling her.

And then the daughter also remembers her mom crying and saying that she was ashamed about what happened. Gladys tells her daughter that she disclosed right away because she didn’t want it to happen to anyone else. And her daughter picks up the phone immediately, calls the charge nurse at the hospital to make a report. So, there’s no delay. This is really fresh information.

What makes it not fresh information is that this case takes three days to get assigned to me. So, I don’t get it until three days after it’s submitted. And my sergeant at the time, he knows that Zee has already been looked at by this other detective before. And he tells me, “I want you to take it. I think it deserves a fresh set of eyes.” And I think that was probably a good decision. So, he just wanted a fresh set of eyes. Whereas typically what we do is if you’re dealing with someone that you dealt with before, you might be assigned to them because you’re familiar with them, you have rapport with them. But on this one, he’s like, “Nope, I want you to look at it.”

So, I’m happy to put a fresh set of eyes on this case. I start with the state nursing board. I go on their public-facing website and I see Zee listed. There’s no complaints, no disciplinary history. But I see he’s only been a licensed CNA for a year and seven months at this point. And then I learned, like I said, I learned a little bit more about how the different layers of nursing start. So, there’s a very, very low-end CNA certified nursing assistant, and then there’s one level up called a clinical certified nursing assistant. And so, Zee had only worked in the hospital as a CNA for one year and seven months, but I later learned he had worked for years in a local nursing rehab hospital.

So, I make a phone call, just a cold phone call over to Susan and risk management and we hit it off right away. She is very professional. I did not get the sense that she was trying to hide anything or avoid police contact or make any excuses like we sometimes find when dealing with large entities. No, she absolutely wanted to make sure the right thing happened and provide whatever information she could and really collaborate.

And so, over the next many, many months, she was a wonderful person to collaborate with and she was a great witness when we needed her to be a witness. And just an absolutely phenomenal individual. I have great respect for her. So, we hit it off and I can tell that she wants to get to the truth of the matter. And again, she never tried to deflect or do anything other than help. She provided information that Zee had only been working at the hospital for four months at this point, so two complaints in four months.

Yeardley: Wow. But because Zee had been at CNA for a year and seven months, we can assume that he was stationed somewhere else prior to coming to your attention.

Robert: Yes. Yep. And that’s going to come up. Susan knew from looking at Zee’s employment history on his application maybe that he had previously worked at a health and rehabilitation center in a nearby town.

Now, this particular health and rehab center is close by, but it’s right over the line and it’s in a different county and a different city. So, Susan told me that Zee had a clean license prior to starting at her hospital. And Susan told me that she was aware of and involved in the previous criminal investigation into Zee and that she had already reported the current concerns to the state nursing board. So, Susan, she’s on it. She’s very much a doer.

Yeardley: Susan was clocking the assault both on Ethel and Gladys.

Robert: Correct. Yeah, she was familiar and she remembered it. And Susan, upon my first meeting with her, she has timestamped photos and videos of Zee entering and exiting Gladys’ hospital room. So really clear video, really clear photos, timestamps, great. And Susan was also able to provide us with Zee’s time card records.

One of the things that obviously would be important is that we could prove that he was there at the alleged date and time. Susan also knew that their HR had interviewed Zee about the past allegations, which he denied anything inappropriate happening.

So, I go and I knock on Gladys’ door, but her daughter tells me that Gladys is resting and that Gladys had retained an attorney. So that involves another layer. There were many attorneys involved in this case. So, I pair up with the former detective who did the first investigation and we show up– Surprise, date and time, we show up at Zee’s house and we really like the element of surprise. I didn’t want to call and make an appointment. We like the element of surprise, so he doesn’t have time to get a story straight and think about what he’s going to say to us.

He doesn’t want to talk to us at his house. But he says he’ll come into our office the next day for an interview. And then I got a call from an attorney saying he was representing Gladys and Gladys’ daughter. In this phone call, he tells me that Gladys’ daughter retained two pairs of Depend underwear that they believe have some male hair in there that might belong to the suspect.

Yeardley: Gladys’ attorney is reporting this to you?

Robert: Yes.

Yeardley: Okay.

Robert: And then he directs– the attorney directs Gladys’ daughter to turn over those Depends to me. I’m also aware from this phone call from this attorney that Gladys’ daughter has taken notes when Gladys made her disclosure and so, I asked for those. And his response kind of surprised me. He said “He’ll need to think about it as it might be privileged communication,” which really surprised me. But that was his stance at that point.

So, Zee comes in for a video interview. We’re in person and we have a video interview with him. And the interview lasts over 90 minutes. And I’ll kind of walk us through the interview. There’s a lot that’s said. Zee says he’s married, he has two kids. He says his wife is currently pregnant with kid number three. We talk about his prior work history since he came to the United States and he said he’s worked at a convenience store and a thrift store. He told us that getting his CNA training was at a local vocational school. And then he had another three-week class that made him a clinical CNA that allowed him to work at a hospital.

Earlier when I said that this is not a very glorious job. He was making $14 an hour at the nursing home or the rehab hospital. And the jump up to working at the hospital gave him a $2 raise an hour to $16 an hour. So, these are not glamorous jobs. Not a well-paying job.

Zee estimated that he worked at the nursing home prior to the hospital. He estimated that he was there for one year. And he denied ever having any patient complaints during his time at the nursing home. I asked him if he’d ever been investigated before and he looked at the detective sitting next to me and admitted the prior complaint from three months earlier-

Yeardley: -from Ethel.

Robert: Yep.

Dave: That’s a pretty easy way to gauge honesty right there.

Robert: [laughs] But I also wonder if I would have taken a different detective if he would have been truthful about it or not.

Dave: True.

Robert: You know, when you go knock on doors as strangers, I was hoping to get in the door. And so, I thought taking this other detective where obviously Zee had told his story too and nothing happened, I thought that would be at least beneficial to get us in the door.

So, Zee kind of told us what he does for work every day. And he says that he works with 10 to 20 patients a day. He helps them with feeding, toileting, ambulating and bathing. And part of his job is cleaning up after patients who are incontinent and have accidents. Part of his job is checking patients’ blood sugar. And he reported that he really likes working at the hospital. He reported that he was well treated there and just really happy.

I showed Zee a picture of Gladys and he said he recognized her as a patient but didn’t know her name. And I asked him why he was on leave and Zee said that there was an allegation. And they didn’t go into details this time. They said there was an allegation and that he would be getting a call soon from the sheriff’s office. That’s all they told him. They didn’t tell him what the allegation was.

Dave: That’s not helpful either, like them saying, “Hey, by the way, you should expect a call from the police.” Some of the issues I was anticipating with this with big organizations, especially around HIPAA, I’ve not had a great past with that. So, you’re sitting there going, “Don’t do anything, let me do everything, don’t tell anybody, don’t call anyone.”

Robert: Yep. So, I explained to Zee because I believe in being transparent and hey, we’re there, and I want his reaction and I want to see what comes across his face and I want to see the body language. I tell him, “Hey, it was reported that you have digitally penetrated Gladys’ vagina and then that you raped her and then you put your penis in her vagina.” And his response was, “I asked her whether she had ordered breakfast. She said she had a good time with me and that I had taken very good care of her,” which was a very, very unusual response.

And granted there is a little bit of a cultural barrier, but not really a language barrier, his English was quite good, but there was a little bit of a cultural barrier, and I was really confused by his response. I got Zee to agree that his time card that I showed him was correct and that he did not go into work on his days off. And I again repeated the allegations to Zee. And Zee responded with something under his breath which I couldn’t quite hear. And when I asked him what he said, he then said, “I didn’t do anything,” but it was really kind of under his breath.

So, Detectives have different strengths. And I have learned over the years I had a great mentor, Detective Chuck, and he is amazing in the interview. He’s amazing in an interview. He wasn’t here with me on this one, but I learned many things from him over the years, and we kind of learned from our coworkers and you take little nuggets from each of them that you do interviews with. And so, I kind of had, by this point, a strategy and kind of way I like to tackle these. So, I asked Zee, I just basically told him, I said, “Hey, I’m just looking for the truth. I’m not going to judge you. I’m not going to say you’re a bad person. Nothing you say is going to surprise me. I’ve been doing this for quite a while. You’re not a bad person. I deal with people every day in my job who struggle with various issues. Is this an issue that you’re struggling with or dealing with?” And he said, “No.” And I said, I just really want to understand why these things happened with Gladys and kind of what the context was. And he didn’t elaborate on that, so, I asked him, “Hey, are you attracted to older women?” And he said, “No, not attracted to older women.” And I said, “Well, what is the age range you’re attracted to?” And his response was that because of his religion, he only has sex with his wife and his religion does not allow for sex with other women.

Yeardley: But that’s not actually the answer to the question.

Robert: Correct. And I had to explain, well, you know, I’ve interviewed lots of people who have religion in their life, and they still do stupid stuff.

[laughter]

So, I also let him know that this was not a mistake. I told him, I said, there’s now two complaints against you in three months. This is not a mistake. This is not a false allegation. These women don’t know each other. There’s no vendetta against you. There’s literally nothing that I think that Zee could come up with that would cause me to believe that these two elderly women are making this up. This is definitely not a common thing. The commonality here is that he did something.

So, an interview, as I like to say it, an interview is who done it. Whereas an interrogation is you did it. So, I think there’s one that’s friendly and nice. And then there’s one that’s a little more confrontational. And so again, this was a 90-minute interview. Zee never told us to stop. He never told us he wanted an attorney. He was talking. And I think that he’s one of those people who believes that I can talk my way out of this. I can convince these detectives that I didn’t do this. And so, we talked and talked. And I said, “I think you’re struggling. I think you’re struggling with something. And I’m hoping that you would trust me well enough to tell me what you’re struggling with.” And he denied struggling and he said “He didn’t do this with his patients, that he wouldn’t do this.”

And I have now taken the tone in this interview of, “Look, Zee, this did happen and I need you to get to a place where you can tell me the truth. All I’m looking for is the truth,” which is also a dance because you got to have a friendly tone during the interview and make sure he doesn’t feel compelled or coerced. I made very clear because English is not his first language. If there’s anything you don’t understand, tell me so I can explain it, we can talk through it. And I said, same thing. If you say something I don’t understand, I’m going to make sure to ask you questions about it to make sure I understand.

So, I asked Zee just flat out, “Hey, why’d this happen?” And he said, “I don’t know.”

Yeardley: That’s a crack in the wall.

Robert: Yes, exactly. So, I explained that in my experience that sex crimes are seriously underreported throughout the country. And so, I said, “Hey, are there other victims or is this just Ethel and Gladys?” And he said, “No.” So, I showed him a picture of Ethel, and at first, he said he didn’t remember her, but then he said he remembered her as the person who made the earlier complaint against him.

So, we’re talking and he denies anything happened with Ethel. He denies that he put his fingers in Gladys’ vagina. He denies that he had sex with Gladys. And I let him know, I said, “Zee, after the first complaint with Ethel, the hospital’s been watching you pretty closely. Obviously, they’re concerned about you.” And then I moved into showing him the color photos I’d printed out from the video of him entering and exiting Gladys’ room. And we’re kind of still where he’s like, “Ah, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” And we’re finally starting to move into the realm where I let him know, “Hey, Zee, this is not a question of if this happened. I know this happened. You can stop denying that you didn’t do it. And I’m just wanting to find out the context.” I let him know that I wanted him to get help, that there was help out there for sex addicts. I then moved into asking Zee if he forced Gladys, and he said he did not force her. And he said that if he would have forced her, someone else would have heard. He says, it’s a hospital. There’s a lot of people around. And I reminded him that this was a room with a door that closed, and no one would have necessarily had to have heard anything.

Yeardley: I’m guessing there’s a reason why you ask that question that way, but it implies that it was consensual, that this sexual act between Zee and Gladys was okay,

Robert: Yeah. I’m conveying to him that he can literally tell me anything, and I’m not going to judge him. It’s not going to surprise me. Basically, you have this poker face because if he doesn’t feel comfortable, he’s not going to share what happened. And so, I’m just trying to help him again, because I’m a stranger, when I knock on his door the day before, I’m a stranger. He’s never met me before. And then, I’m sure that was a long drive from where he lives to my office to park in the parking structure, get out, cross the street, come upstairs. I mean, all those were times where he could have turned right around. So, he came in and so I wanted to be respectful and also do my job.

Yeardley: Right.

Robert: So, anyway, as we’re having this conversation with Zee, Zee says, “Robert, you should take action based on the evidence that you have,” which I thought was an interesting thing to say. And at the same time, I assured him I would be doing my job. I let him know, “Don’t you worry. I’ll be. I’ll be doing my job.” [Yeardley laughs] So, as we talk about interviews, there’s different techniques and different strategies, and just one of the little nuggets I picked up along the way over the years was, no matter what someone is accused of asking them, what should happen to someone who does what you did? What do you think should happen? Sounding familiar.

Yeardley: Dave is nodding in agreement.

Dave: I think we must all go to the same classes.

Robert: Yes. [Yeardley laughs] Yes. So, I asked Zee, “Hey, Zee, what should happen to someone who has sexual contact with a patient?” And his immediate response was, “They should be fired.” And I said “Zee, what about someone who did what you’re accused of? Would someone like that deserve a second chance?” And he said, “Everyone deserves a second chance.”

Yeardley: Oh.

Robert: And that’s also telling, in my opinion, too, because you’re accused of something heinous, generally, people come up with the harshest actions that come to mind. They should be strung up by this. They should have this body part cut off. They come up with something like that. So, for him to say, “Everyone deserves a second chance,” I also felt like, “Okay, we’re getting closer. We’re getting a little bit closer step by step here.”

So, I had Zee walk me through his activities again. And he says that when he changed Gladys’ diaper that morning, he used some warm wipes. And Gladys told him that it felt good. And Gladys asked him to wipe her more. Okay, as soon as I’m hearing this, I’m like, “Okay, we’re getting closer and closer to the truth.”

So, Zee is saying, based on what he understands the allegation to be, that this is the point in the process where Gladys says that Zee stuck his finger inside of her. And so, he says while his finger is supposedly in her, this is when Gladys asks him to continue wiping her. So, I said, “Well, what happened next?” And he said, “A nurse came into the room.” And I said, “Well, that doesn’t make sense. Based on what Gladys reported. She says, you know, X, Y, and Z happened. And then next thing she knows, you’re wiping yourself off.” And he said multiple times, “No penis, no penis, no penis.” And I said, “Well, look, Zee, Gladys clearly saw you wiping off your penis.” And he said that that must have been a dream on her part.

Yeardley: Oh, for God’s sake.

Robert: So, Zee swears to us, “Hey, I’ve told you detectives everything like nothing else happened,” and I persist. Again, I’m used to people telling us, “Hey, this interview’s over, or I’m not talking to you, or asked and answered, we’re not going there,” but Zee does none of those things, so I keep challenging him. I say, “Zee, look, there’s two victims here. This is not a mistake. This is not coincidence.” I keep persisting and I change course and I ask Zee, “Hey, why’d you choose Ethel and Gladys? Why’d you choose them?” And Zee says, “Well, Gladys was nice and was happy to have me care for her, and ‘I was just trying to help her feel good.’” So again, we’re getting these statements that are getting closer, but there’s also that slight language and cultural barrier, so I don’t want to read too much into it, because I know how defense attorneys can be in trial and how any of these are going to be twisted into just something completely opposite or “My client didn’t understand you. My client had no idea what you were saying.” So again, just being really careful and really trying to understand this.

Zee denies doing anything other than regular wiping for Ethel. And he says, with Gladys, as he thought about it, he says, “Gladys was holding my right hand with both of her hands, and my hand was on her vagina for maybe four or five seconds, that’s it.” So again, we’re getting to this point now where we’re like, “Okay, we’re getting closer to the truth.”

Zee then makes the statement, “Hey, what happened with Gladys happened because, ‘she wanted to.’” And I’m like, “We got you. We got you, guy.” Zee says that he didn’t force Gladys to do anything she didn’t want to do. And I say, “Okay, Zee, was Gladys telling the truth?” And he said, “Yes.” He said yes about the finger, but she’s lying about my penis going into her. That’s when I break the news, “Hey, dude, some of your hair was found in her Depends that she was wearing at the time.” And he pauses. There’s a pause as he considers what that might mean for him.

I then launch into what DNA is, and I let him know that one of my goals of this interview is to collect a buccal swab from him, stick a Q tip in his mouth and get some of his DNA on that Q tip before he left our office. And again, he’s thinking about this, and I think the wheels are turning. And we talk a little bit about what DNA is and how it helps us in these cases, especially if it’s a he said, she said. And I asked him just flat out, “Zee, come on, have you been truthful about whether your penis went into her body?” And he responded, “I just checked in,” and kind of caught me off guard. And then there’s a long pause. And then he says what every detective wants to hear. He says, “Okay, I’m going to tell you the truth now.”

Yeardley: Just like on TV.

Robert: Just like on TV.

[Break 2]

So, he says, okay, I’m going to tell you the truth now. And Zee admits, “Hey, I didn’t tell you everything because I was very embarrassed. And I also don’t want to come back to your office over and over. I don’t want to come back to your office again.” So, Zee then goes on to say he denies anything sexual happening with Ethel. And then he returns to Gladys and he says that Gladys told him when he came into her room that she needed sex and she asked him to rub her vagina. And he said that he agreed. And he said that she held his hand with both of her hands and told him, “Just do it.”

And then after they did that for a little bit, he reports that Gladys told him to take off his pants and told him to do it. He said that he complied and he put his penis on her vagina. And he said after that she was very happy. He said he wanted to leave, but Gladys held her legs open and wanted to do more and begged him to do more. At which point he says his natural urges then took over and he inserted his penis into her body for approximately two minutes. So, Zee continues to deny ejaculation. He denied using a condom. He denied changing her body position and said she was on her back the whole time. He reported that she was very aggressive and that Gladys was trying to kiss him. She wanted him to lie down on the bed with her so they could have, “Normal sex.” And then he leaves the room. Next time he visits her room for his duties, Gladys is telling him how much she loves him. And Zee is admitting now he’s okay with admitting that this is something he should not have done at work.

Paul: You know, it’s so obvious what Zee is doing. He is now turning this into a he said and she said. This is now a consent issue. And I think, Yeardley, you brought up sort of that aspect of consent. And this is an interesting question. When you are dealing with somebody who’s 87 years old, who’s in a hospital, there is going to come a time in which that person’s mental acuity and what they may have acknowledged what they wanted or didn’t want would be called into question, particularly by the defense. And so, we all know there’s an age in which you cannot consent, but there must be circumstances in which when somebody does consent, you can’t accept that consent if you are a responsible adult.

Robert: True.

Dave: Yeah.

Yeardley: Yeah. I’m outraged by the whole thing, but also Zee’s willingness to humiliate these women in saying that it was consensual. When you prey on people who are incapacitated, they’re obviously already in the hospital, not because they’re well.

Paul: Right. This is all about self-preservation at this point, so that’s what he’s doing. He’s been caught. And Robert, in listening to your description of Zee, I’m confused because he was a math professor, he ended up getting the CNA. He worked at the nursing hospital before coming to the current location. I don’t know how old he is. How old is Zee?

Robert: Zee is 34 at the time I get this case.

Paul: Okay, I’ll circle back around to the age of Zee as well as the age of the victims a little bit later.

[laughter]

Robert: But now might be a good time to talk about the victimology or the victim selection because I did so many child abuse cases too where people are picking kids because if there’s a credibility contest, people are more likely to believe the adult or the adult’s credentials. But this is very similar, he’s selecting the most vulnerable. And then let’s say they did report, which we know is vastly underreported. So, let’s say they did report. He’s going to say this is a 95-year-old woman who has dementia or this is an 87-year-old woman. Why would you believe her versus me? So, there’s absolutely the same kind of victim selection going on with a mindset towards, well, if she reports anything then I can get away with it. I have the credential. In fact, I have a reason to be down in that area. I was wiping her bottom or I was wiping her vagina. There’s a plausible reason for him to be close to that part of that body which makes him even more dangerous.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Paul: Yep. So, kind of along those lines, as I was listening to Zee and Ethel and Gladys in the circumstances. On one hand to go to the extreme, and I have to give credit to Mark Safarik who is a now retired FBI profiler, but one of his areas of expertise was dealing with predators that attack the elderly. And generally, the statistics have shown that when you see an elderly woman who is a victim of, let’s say a sexual assault or a sexually motivated homicide, oftentimes it’s a much younger male, often a teenager. And this is because this budding predator doesn’t have the confidence to be able to victimize maybe their sexual preference, age range, an adult female who can fight back. So, they go after the elderly in order to carry out their fantasies.

Let’s say it’s 17-year-old boy, knows physically can overpower an 85-year-old woman. But this is a matter of selecting a victimology based more off of MO what I need to have as a victim to accomplish the crime. But then there’s the other side. And when I hear About Zee, he’s 34 years old, he does not fall into the younger male. He is now a full-grown adult male who’s married, married to an adult woman who he has children with. He has the ability to have sexual interactions with his wife, yet now he’s in a position. Zee is in a position where he is sexually assaulting an 87-year-old and a 94-year-old woman. Now I start thinking, “Oh, there’s a paraphilia here.” There is a paraphilia called gerontophilia, and this is a sexual attraction to the elderly. He is sexually attracted to these elderly women. And in this hospital setting, I think he’s rolling the dice thinking, “Well, they’re not going to disclose,” or even if they do disclose, he can discredit them.

Yeardley: Right.

Dave: Yeah. It’s interesting when Robert was detailing the first few minutes of this, Robert went into Ethel and the setting and her age, and I wrote down right above Ethel’s name, “Offenders deliberately put themselves in places to offend.”

Paul: Predators go to where the prey is at.

Yeardley: Yeah, I was thinking that exact thing.

Robert: When I was a new deputy, I had a field training officer. He loved doing DUI enforcement. And so, he would park outside bars and watch with binoculars, people walk in their cars. And so, people used to tease him about that and he looked at me and he says, “Hey, if you want to arrest a bank robber, you got to be near the bank. You got to watch the bank.” [Yeardley laughs] And so, yeah, same thing, whether it’s someone who is attracted to kids or to the elderly or to whatever, yeah, this is a chance where Zee legitimately put himself into a place where there’s ready access. So, we’re still in the interview with Zee.

Yeardley: Right. Zee admits this is something he probably shouldn’t be doing, that is raping Ethel and Gladys.

Robert: Correct at work.

Yeardley: At work.

Robert: And what’s interesting is Zee continues to deny that anything happened with Ethel. He’s very adamant about that. Zee denies that there’s been any other victims. He said, he’s positive. And he says, “I’m not animal.” Zee denies any issues at home with his wife. He says simply that the way Gladys was acting and pushing caused his natural urges to take over. And he said, “Hey, detectives, to be totally honest with you, ‘she totally needed sex.’” And this is all great video. I always picture if a grand jury sees this or a jury sees this, how this is going to work out, not very well for him. But he says, “Detectives, in a normal day, I see vaginas of all ages. No reason for these two to stand out.”

He said, “I don’t know of any other co-workers who were having sex with patients.” Zee says he doesn’t need sex. He just wanted to help Gladys. He said it was no different than someone asking him for a dollar to go buy coffee. He said, “If I had a dollar, I would give it to the person.” Zee mentions, “Hey, part of my job is to help people.” I was like, “Okay.”

We collect DNA swabs from Zee. And I asked what he used to wipe down his penis after he was done with Gladys. He said, wipes that were provided by the hospital, which he discarded at the hospital. Zee said, “I’ve learned from this and I will never do it again.” And I asked him, “What was the lesson you learned from this?” And he said, the lesson he learned for this was that it was natural for people, regardless of age, to ask for sex.

Yeardley: Wow.

Robert: And I said, “Okay, well, what would you do if this happened again?” And he said, “I would walk out immediately and tell the nurse.” And I said, “Okay.” And then I think in the interview’s done, but Zee continues, he says, “I just want it to be clear.” He says, “Gladys was practically jumping off the bed and really pushing me for sex.” And in his mind, he said consent was as long as she was alert that he could do it. And he knew that if she was unconscious, he couldn’t do it and that was his standard.

So, I have a great admission now about Gladys, but I still want to know about Ethel. And Zee continues to deny anything sexual with Ethel. He says her room was right in front of a nurse’s station and that if he had done something with Ethel, that he would tell us. So that’s it. I mean, it’s a 90-minute interview. I consider it pretty successful. But he still doesn’t tell us anything about Ethel. And that’s the end of Zee, he doesn’t get to go home. We walk him downstairs to the jail, and he’s there almost 300 days before he goes to prison.

So, we walk him downstairs to the jail. He’s booked and lodged for rape in the first degree. And we have a crime called unlawful sexual penetration in the first degree. And these are serious charges that have a really high bail amount and so he is not able to bail out of jail. I call Gladys’ family, I call Ethel’s family, I notify them of the arrest, I notify the state nursing board. And Zee gets a very decent public defender, someone who is well respected and that’s who represents him. And we push out a media release, which is what we do on a high-profile case, especially one where we believe that there’s the potential for additional victims.

And I think I mentioned this before on another case, but when you push out a media release, it’s either feast or famine. Your phone’s ringing off the hook or no one calls. And on this one, the phone did not stop ringing for weeks. We had so many people calling in. And this is how we learn about another victim named Henrietta.

Paul: How old is Henrietta?

Robert: Henrietta is much younger. Actually. She’s in her mid-30s-

Paul: Oh, wow.

Robert: –so she’s much younger, but she’s the only victim who doesn’t match the earlier victims. And Henrietta saw the TV news coverage, and she said that she froze in her seat when she saw the booking photo come onto her screen. She said the exact same thing happened to her at the hospital.

Yeardley: Same hospital as Ethel and Gladys?

Robert: Same hospital, yeah. And she said she was wearing a heart monitor. And so, she only had a hospital gown on because staff needed to come in and check the monitor and the leads. And it happened to be Zee that came into her room to check the leads from an earlier EKG. And she says obviously she knows he needs to check where the leads are. But she says she instantly knew that Zee was touching her chest inappropriately because the leads weren’t anywhere near the nipples on her breasts and that’s where his hands were.

She froze. She didn’t know what to say. She said in conversation with Zee, he mentioned that he’d been a math professor in his country. And Henrietta kind of doubted herself. Didn’t know if there was something she didn’t know about the leads he needed to check. She did not make her report to the hospital. It was only because of our media release that she felt comfortable calling in and talking to us. And Henrietta agreed to participate in the prosecution.

So, on this date, once this hits the news, every news station’s covering it. And I get a call from a plaintiff’s attorney, and he lets me know that he’s representing X number of victims. And he wants to know who the other victims are, which obviously I’m not going to tell him. And he asks me to tell anyone else who calls in to come sign up with his firm. And I’m absolutely not going to do that. This seems very, very slimy to me, very unethical to me.

But after I hang up with him, I get a phone call from the executive director of the nursing or rehab hospital where Zee had worked. In her words, she says, “I’m very concerned,” and I let her know, “Yes, so am I,” and I figured there would be some calls and maybe where Zee had worked previously was definitely on my list of places to talk to.

Now, there was one issue with that. I mentioned earlier that this nursing rehab hospital where Zee had started his career, it’s very close by, but it’s over the county line and it’s in a different city. And so, jurisdiction is so important for what we do. I investigate crimes that happen in my county, and that’s what my employer pays me to do. They don’t pay me to investigate crimes that happen in another jurisdiction because they have their own police department, they have their own sheriff’s office.

So as a courtesy, before I talked more with this executive director from the nursing home, I needed to reach out to the local police in that area. I reached a sergeant. I explained what I had going on, and he begged me, “You please take it.” He goes, “I don’t have the resources to do this. You already have a case going. Will you please just take this?” And he practically begged me to keep running with it.

Yeardley: Are you allowed to do that even though you don’t have jurisdiction there, or do you have jurisdiction there?

Robert: Great question. So, we do have jurisdiction statewide. So, I can make an arrest anywhere in the whole state, but where a crime happens determines where it needs to be prosecuted. So, it’s interesting, we can arrest statewide, but then you’re dealing with a DA from that county and the courthouse in that county. And so anyway, so my sergeant was okay with it, and so I continued investigating it with this other police agency’s “Great blessing. Yes, go forth and conquer. You handle all this.”

I think if we knew how much work and how many days of interviews and everything that this was going to take, my sergeant probably would not have said the same thing. So anyway, Desiree’s the executive director of the nursing home and she’s nice, but she’s very corporate. And you get the vibe almost instantly, “Hey, I don’t really want to talk to you. I want to call our corporate office in another state and I want to have our high-priced attorney weigh in on all this before I tell you anything,” and that’s really the only option. I can’t force her to talk to me. And so, I tell her, “Great, please reach out to those people and call me,” and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever hear from her again.

So again, the media release spurred all these phone calls. I got a call from another county nearby. It’s a deputy and he’s off duty. But he saw the news on TV and he says, “Hey, I just had a case like this at another hospital, and the description of the suspect is the same. And the hospitals were sister hospitals, so they’re within the same chain. They’re just different hospitals.” And so, I looked into that, and I was trying to reach out to the patient, and we learned that the patient had died. So, there’s no chance of getting any more information on that particular case.

And what’s interesting was I had the risk manager, Susan, look into this, and she told me that Zee had never worked at that hospital, but this hospital is really close to his house. So, it was way closer to his house than-

Yeardley: where the incidents did occur.

Robert: Yeah. So, it’s one of those. We’ll never know. Also, victimology, Zee was targeting people who could easily die before a case makes its way to a courtroom.

Yeardley: Except for Henrietta, who’s the outlier.

Robert: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, then the calls just started coming in. I’m going to try to go through them pretty efficiently here. But a former coworker of Zee’s from the nursing home called in. The coworker said there were several allegations made by residents against Zee when he worked at the nursing home. And this coworker said the management there kept things very quiet for obvious reasons, but he himself had been interviewed by management in the past about complaints against Zee, which I found interesting.

Dan: Bad for business.

Robert: Yes, that’s exactly right. That was a quote. That was a quote. It’s bad for business.

Yeardley: This is like passing a pedophile priest off to the next church in another state in another town.

Robert: Absolutely.

Yeardley: Fuck off.

Robert: Absolutely.

Dave: Some people, they don’t have the strength to do the right thing sometimes. It’s like, let’s look out for liability and let’s look out for my paycheck versus just doing the right thing.

Yeardley: Don’t rock the boat.

Dave: Yeah.

Robert: So this male co-worker, he said that Zee had been barred from working with several female patients, not just a couple, he said several female patients wanted nothing to do with Zee in their room. And this former coworker mentioned one female patient by name from memory who had made an allegation of a sexual nature against Zee. This is not anyone that I’d heard about before. This coworker goes on to say that at the nursing home, and this was not a surprise. I know this to be true from other cases. He said there’s a skeleton crew on at night. It would be really easy to perpetrate against someone if you wanted to. So, in a place that probably has 100 residents. He says there’s three people working graveyard shift, so you might not even see another coworker.

He also knew Zee to be one to flirt with all the female employees who he was working with. I asked him what else about Zee should I know? And he says, “Well, he got employee of the month once and he’s kind of regarded as a hard worker around the nursing center.” Another female coworker called in. She said that she had worked with Zee at the nursing rehab hospital. She goes on to tell us about a time where Zee grabbed her during night shift when they were working together and there was a skeleton crew. He comes up from behind her, he puts his arm around her, grabs her breast while they’re walking down the hallway together. Before he grabbed one of her hands and put it on his penis. This female coworker said he kept it there less than a minute and told her, “We would be great together,” before she quickly pulled her hand away. She did report that to management.

Another phone call came from a former nursing home patient who was 73. She said that Zee had been her caregiver at the nursing home for four months while she was rehabbing there. She described him, “As a perfect gentleman,” and said that after she was discharged from the rehab hospital, they had been keeping in touch by phone and that Zee had come to her home about once a month. She noted that she once saw Zee go into a patient’s room and close the door, but she didn’t know if anything inappropriate had happened.

And then she made her own disclosure, she said that one time when Zee came to her home, they had sex in her house and that after they had sex, he never contacted her again. This woman reported to me that she still loved Zee even though he lied to her about having a wife and kids. And she believed that he stopped reaching out to her because Zee’s wife had recently come to the US from their country. I was about to hang up and her last question is, “What is the jail’s address? I want to write to him.”

Yeardley: Oh God. Oh no.

Robert: So she wanted to write to him and she lamented the fact that she didn’t have the $250,000 bill to bail him, otherwise, she said she would have.

Yeardley: Oh.

Robert: So, the calls keep coming in more and more and more. Next on the phone was a 73-year-old female who called in and she made a patrol report. She saw Zee on TV and said that he was her caretaker at the hospital. She reported that Zee was in her room for 10 or 15 minutes, making her feel very uncomfortable. And he, at one point, was helping her put a nightgown on. She said held it in a way that basically made it where he could view her naked while he was putting it on. Very different than any other CNA who had helped her. And this was an allegation that we were able to confirm with the hospital video system. So, we were able to see that he went into the room and was in there that long. With Susan, being a former nurse, she’s like, “I can’t think of any reason why CNA would be in a room for 15 minutes with a patient.” So, again, her knowledge and her expertise was really helpful on this.

[Break 2]

Yeardley: Robert, it sounds like in the tens, this number of phone calls, these people coming in, reporting these sketchy incidents. At the end of the day, I know that you guys, let’s say you had 50 calls, you can’t slap Zee with 50 charges. How do you parse out the crimes and decide what to charge Zee with?

Robert: So, we do have to be efficient. But I would rather have an investigation go slowly and be thorough than try to rush through something and miss something. Here’s another thing, we don’t want to prematurely charge him either. We don’t know if there’s other victims that are going to have more serious things to report. We really don’t know what’s going to happen. And so, there’s nothing wrong with charging him for what he did against 50 victims. And if it takes a little bit longer to do that, normally, that’s fine.

In this case, we had to be acutely aware of the potential for Ethel and Gladys to both die. This is one of those weird cases, like, once in a career for me, where I had to be very much aware that we could lose them. And so, I had– Now is a great time to give her a shout out too. I had a really great prosecutor, prosecutor Megan, and she, 10 out of 10. She was absolutely wonderful. When she went to meet with Ethel and Gladys, she took them flowers and plants and a card, and it was just– It was absolutely adorable. And she has a very kind demeanor, and she instantly hit it off with these ladies, and they instantly trusted her, and it was like they’d been friends forever. So, I will always respect prosecutor Megan for how she did that and how she approached that.

And she also was strategizing and talking to her coworkers and other prosecutors in the area. “Hey, I’ve got this case. I got these solid witnesses, but they might die. They’re in fragile states and they could die.” So, one thing she thought we could do would be to video record their statements, possibly video record grand jury, just in case they weren’t available for trial. And she, if I remember right, she petitioned for a court order that was going to allow video testimony to be played in a trial if these witnesses were not available because they had died. And I haven’t had that come up in any other case except for this one. And I respect that she had a strategy preparing for that just in case.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Robert: So these calls keep coming in. So, a 66-year-old lady called in after making a report to patrol. She saw the media release. She said that while she was a patient in the hospital that Zee had rubbed her inner thigh repeatedly and told her she had really soft skin. Zee told her he was going to take really good care of her. And her recollection was that Zee stayed in her room with her, “for hours.”

Another hospital patient called in, who was 58, female, saw the media coverage and she said that one morning after being admitted in the hospital, she wakes up and Zee is standing right by the side of her bed pulling her covers. She told Zee she needed to go to the bathroom. He untangles her IV cords, puts his hand on her right breast and says, “Nice breast.” And she said when she tried to urinate, Zee refused to close the door and basically just watched her. So just multiple, multiple, multiple victims. In fact, every time my phone rang, I was like, “Oh my gosh, there’s more.”

Paul: It seems like Zee is victimizing every time he goes on shift.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Robert: There’s a little more content with the former nursing home, so maybe I’ll just talk about that real quick. So, after a few weeks go by, the nursing home does call back. And Desiree, the executive director, she calls and she goes, “Hey, I’ve consulted with my home office and corporate counsel and I’m not going to be allowed to give an interview, but I will respond to written questions.” And so, I prepare a list of questions and then weeks and weeks and weeks go by and they provide minimal answers to those questions.

Dave: School districts and hospitals are the worst at cooperation.

Yeardley: The lack of accountability is shocking.

Robert: Yes. So, another coworker calls in and says, “Hey, admittedly I want to be anonymous here, but there is a lot of secrecy in this industry. She said, there’s a lot of things that should be reported and a lot of complaints that we should be making, but management tells us it’s bad for business.” And she also noted, “Hey, there’s only three CNAs on duty, on nights.” So literally anyone could get away with anything.

Yeardley: That’s crazy.

Robert: Yeah. So, there’s a lot. And she says there’s something wrong with the system, which I agree with.

Yeardley: I hope that this case was sort of a watershed moment, at least locally, for that system, where they went, “Oh-oh, now we got caught. Let’s make some changes that are real changes.”

Robert: Well, I think we all know that sometimes the only impetus for change sometimes is litigation. So, either the regulating agency comes down hard or government agency comes down hard on something, or someone gets sued and they have to pay a lot of money. And sometimes that’s the only way change happens at all.

Yeardley: Right.

Robert: I did hear back from the written questions I had, and Zee’s former employer let me know when he started and stopped his employment. They were comfortable telling me that. They told me that Zee had resigned their rehab hospital in order to go work at the hospital. They told me that Zee had worked in their center prior to getting licensed, so kind of like learning the job and stuff before he was certified. They said his only discipline was getting a written education for failing to chart something.

They noted they only had one complaint the time he worked there and that was from a patient that we hadn’t heard of yet. So, this is yet another person. Her name is Esmeralda. And they said that when he worked there, Esmeralda, who was Spanish speaking and is a dementia patient, screamed and yelled when he would come into her room. And so, they sent an interpreter in there. And basically, through the interpreter, Esmeralda said that Zee had penetrated her vagina. And every time he would come into the room, she would scream in response to him and move and fidget about. And so, they basically just told him, “Don’t go in there.” And she wasn’t taken very seriously because of her dementia diagnosis. But I think there’s something there that’s just me.

Well they also noted that Zee was employee of the month and that they would require a search warrant or subpoena for any other records that I wanted to get.

Dan: Sometimes you like writing those search warrants though, just so you can say–

Robert: Yes. [Yeardley laughs]

Dan: Yeah. You didn’t think I would do it, but here we are.

Robert: Exactly. Yeah. I’ve written a few search warrants in my day. I’m not scared away by that.

[laughter]

Yeah, there’s a lot more victims I’m going to skip over.

Dan: The pattern is pretty clear at this point.

Robert: Yeah.

Dave: And I’m guessing there were no male patients at these facilities that were saying, “Zee came in and put his hand on here and here and here.”

Robert: Correct. There were no male victims that came forward.

Dave: I don’t want to rehash all of it, but the consistency is you’re getting the same types of contact, which is Grooming 101. Test the waters, see what the reaction is. It’s like on repeat over and over again.

Yeardley: What are you ultimately able to charge Zee with?

Robert: So, he does get charged with some really, really good crimes. [laughs] So, we go to grand jury twice on him also because the time that was allotted for grand jury was not enough. So, we go back twice to allow all the victims who wanted to come in and testify. So, lots and lots of charges, lots and lots of counts. Some of them, of course, we were unable to match up with what date it was because of the things Zee did not chart on these patients’ charts is what he did with them, that would have made it very nice and easy. [Yeardley laughs]

But we go to grand jury, and Zee is indicted on several counts of sex abuse in the first degree, which is a mandatory prison sentence in our state. It’s 75 months for each count. And then he got indicted for a lot of sex abuse threes, which, again, is just touching of the intimate parts for a sexual purpose. And being who I am, I called Zee’s attorney and I said, “Hey, more victims have come forward. Would we possibly be able to talk to your client?” And of course, he said, “Absolutely not.” So, we didn’t have Zee’s input or confessions here. Do you remember the lady I talked about who asked for the address so she could write to him?

Yeardley: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robert: So, one day I’m at my desk, and I get a call from a deputy in the jail, and they said, “Hey, Robert, we intercepted a letter from this lady to Zee, and we’re wondering if you’re interested.” And so, of course, I walk over to the jail and I look at it, and in this letter, this woman writes, “Zee, I think about you all the time. I can’t stop thinking about you. I just want you to know that I was in court to hear your plea and show you some support. And I want to come visit you. And if you go to prison, I want to see you in prison. The most important thing, I just want to see you in person.”

She then goes on to say, “Zee, I think you have an evil demon in you that needs to be cast out. I think you’re headed to hell, and I’m the only one who can save you.” Surprisingly, that letter writer was also not someone that we had interviewed in person. So, I went and interviewed her in person and learned exactly what you’d expect, but with a twist. So, she gets discharged from the hospital. He goes over there once a month, and she talked about having wonderful, very consensual sex with him. She said many, many times during the interview how great the sex was. She kept repeating that. And then she was sad that this all stopped when Zee’s wife came to the US and the only twist on this one was that each time Zee came over to her house, she paid him $40 to $60 each time he visited. So that was a twist.

Yeardley: Oh, so now we have prostitution.

Robert: So now we have prostitution, yes. [Laughs]

Yeardley: Perfect.

Robert: So, yeah, we did lots more interviews. I had an interviewer from the county adult protective services who had expertise in talking to older folks and folks with dementia. He came out and accompanied me. We spent several days at this adult nursing rehab hospital talking to people and didn’t really learn more than we already knew. I sent letters to the school and the practicum sites where Zee did all his studying to become a CNA. And so, I talked about the charges in addition to the ones for Gladys and the other victims, for the original victim, Ethel, even though Zee did not admit to anything, he got indicted quite heavily for what happened to Ethel. So, he was indicted for three counts of sex abuse in the first degree, two counts of sex abuse in the second degree, three counts of sex abuse in the third degree, four counts of unlawful sexual penetration in the first degree, and kidnapping for moving her against her will from one place to another.

Yeardley: Ethel?

Robert: Ethel. Yeah, the first victim. So, lots of charges, lots of lawyers. So, lots of civil litigation going on right at the tail end of this criminal investigation. Lots of lawyers calling, lots of information request for reports. One lawyer, the one that called me early on, he wanted me to know he had seven victims signed up just under him. And then there’s probably a dozen more lawyers with at least one or more victims. So, lots of litigation against the hospital and against the nursing and rehab hospital.

I don’t know how any of those turned out. I’m sure there were very confidential settlements that they couldn’t speak to anyone about. There was no one talking to the media. I’m sure that was all part of the settlements. But at the end of the day, I feel like the criminal justice system finally did something right here. And Zee, in consultation with his lawyer, he ended up pleading guilty to rape in the first degree, one count. And one count of unlawful sexual penetration in the first degree. And the agreed upon sentence to prevent all these people from having to come to court for a trial was 125 months in prison.

So, he is still in prison right now. I just checked. Somewhere along the way, after he went to prison, he appealed. He appealed his decision, which is really difficult to do when you have pled guilty. It’s really difficult. And so, our state court of appeals didn’t want anything to do with him. They affirmed his decision without an opinion, which means there’s no statement or anything. They just said, “Nope, we agree with the circuit court.”

And then one nice thing after this happened too, is that Susan, probably the best hospital risk management manager, she had me come teach at a regional gathering of their risk management staff. So, from all their hospitals in the region, she asked if I would come out and teach a class. And I was happy to do that. And it was fun, and they were fun, but it just showed me even more her commitment to want to improve and her commitment to learn from these things so that more patients aren’t affected by someone like Zee.

Yeardley: Yeah.

Paul: Which might include not having male CNAs dealing with female patients.

Robert: Well, it’s just tough because, you want to believe– Just like any profession, you want to believe that a large percentage of them are doing the right thing. And if you’re a male and you want to be a CNA could limit your job opportunities. And then, on the other hand, I think there’s male patients who would want a female caregiver or some that would only want a male caregiver. It just really depends on the individual.

Paul: Yeah. It seems like maybe there needs to be like an explicit opt in by the patient saying, yes, I’m willing to have– If the patient is female, I’m willing to have a male CNA help me with these very intimate aspects of life.

Robert: Yep, I like that.

Yeardley: That’s well said. Like, you pick the gender of your massage therapist when you go to a spa.

Paul: Yep, there you go.

Yeardley: God, Robert, just like, I don’t know how after a case like that you ever go to work again, it’s not the worst thing you’ve ever investigated, but the sheer numbers of these women who had been abused by one person in a setting where trust is everything and you’re in a vulnerable position to boot is just shattering.

Robert: Yeah. Very sad. And I think all of us have parents, all of us have older family members, and again, we have to trust strangers. And so, it’s just terrible when something like this happens and, you know, it’s happening every day. It’s just really sad to think about.

Paul: The way I’m looking at this is that there’s certain professions in which you’re put in a position of trust and then when that trust is violated, it is on the extreme. So, the work that Robert did in essence was something that had to be pursued because as we’re hearing, how many victims did Zee have that never came forward. So, credit to the Ethels and the Gladys’ that came forward, had the courage to come forward and got Zee out of the position of being able to continue to victimize. Everybody goes into a hospital expecting to have healthcare, not expecting to be sexually assaulted.

Yeardley: Yeah, it’s brutal. Thank you for sharing that with us today. It seems weird to say, but I really appreciate your work. That’s what I appreciate.

Dan: I have no commentary to add. Good job, Robert.

Dave: Nice work, Robert.

Robert: Thank you.

Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editor is Christina Bracamontes. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. And our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.

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