ASHTABULA, Ohio — The grim details of the case are shocking and surreal, and have left a family and investigators stunned in Ashtabula.
"I couldn't do that to an animal," James Hubbard says. "I don't understand what they were thinking and how that money meant that much to them."
For Hubbard, it's hard to think of what happened to his stepfather, 80-year-old Doug Layman. Police said 63-year-old Karen Casbohm and 55-year-old Loreen B. Feralo took the elderly man's body to a bank drive through to withdraw hundreds of dollars from his account, propping him up in the front seat. The women live with him and told police they found him dead in the home Thursday morning.
"It's a first for all of us, I think, here," Ashtabula Police Chief Robert Stell told 3News. "I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this, and this is where someone used a dead body to withdraw money from the bank. It's just very, very unusual."
Stell says the women dumped Layman at the emergency room of Cleveland Clinic's Ashtabula County Medical Center and drove off without leaving any identification or information.
"Twenty-seven years, I've never seen anything like this," Ashtabula Detective Lieutenant Mike Palinkas said. "We know that the individual died at the house a short time before he essentially was loaded up into the car driven over to the bank where he had his accounts."
Hours later, one of the suspects called the hospital, after they were back at his house. That led police to the women, who were later arrested and charged with gross abuse of a corpse and theft.
"This is just unconscionable behavior, the fact that he was propped up in the front seat to essentially fool the bank teller so they could make the withdrawal," Stell lamented. "That's what we're alleging took place, and that's how it appears."
Hubbard says Casbohm was his stepfather's girlfriend of roughly three years. He was concerned about previous behavior, repeatedly asking Layman if he should help remove Casbohm from his home.
"He was in a position where he didn't want to live alone," Hubbard explained. "He's been run through hell with this woman — three years of drugs, stealing, selling his stuff. [She] sold my mom's pistol."
According to Hubbard, Layman was with his mother for 33 years. She passed away about four years ago.
"I went over there numerous times trying to get him to allow us to do something and he was just too scared to be alone as he was getting older, and I understood it," Hubbard admitted. "Now I feel even worse because of what they've done after the fact of him helping her for years, allowing her to take his money, allowing his house to be back on taxes. They haven't paid in three years since she's moved in."
Hubbard now hopes his stepfather isn't remembered by the tragic circumstances surrounding his death.
"Just a great guy, he really was. He didn't bother no one. He kept to himself, he helped people as much as he can. He’s always been there for our family," Hubbard said. "I just hate to see everything splattered out like this and then thinking that he had no family, because he did. He just didn't want to be alone."
Police say more charges could be coming as they continue to investigate. The coroner's office would not comment on a cause of death pending the investigation, adding that an autopsy could take up to eight months.