I Returned From My Mother’s Bedside And Found My Wife Locked In Our Basement; Our Daughter Had…

On the second day, while Eleanor was sleeping, I went back home to look around more carefully. I had to understand. What I found made me sick to my stomach. The basement door, now broken, still had the hasp for the padlock. There was a plastic bucket in the corner. That’s what she had been forced to use. A thin, dirty blanket lay on the concrete floor. No food. No water. The light bulb had been unscrewed from the socket.

My wife, who sometimes can’t remember what she had for breakfast but who still beams with joy at a silly pun and loves to watch the Cubs game, had been left in utter darkness for a fortnight. Upstairs, I found even more disturbing proof. Chloe’s laptop was still on the kitchen table, the password conveniently saved. I’m not proud of it, but I opened it and started looking through her files. What I discovered was methodical, calculated, and pure evil.

There were scanned documents—power of attorney papers with Eleanor’s shaky but recognizable signature, real estate documents, our bank statements, and a file labeled ‘Investment Opportunity — Mark’s Fund.’ I sat there for an hour, reading through it all, my hands shaking so hard I could barely control the mouse.

Here’s what they had done. The first week I was gone, Chloe had taken Eleanor to a lawyer’s office, some shady notary public in Cicero, not our regular family lawyer. She’d gotten Eleanor to sign the POA documents, likely using her confusion to convince her it was just some boring paperwork for me. The notary apparently hadn’t batted an eye. With that power of attorney, Chloe had gotten into our bank accounts. She’d withdrawn $75,000 from our savings—money we had painstakingly set aside for Eleanor’s future care. She’d also taken out a home equity line of credit on our house for another $100,000. We’d owned our home in Lincoln Square free and clear for over two decades. Now, we owed the bank a hundred thousand dollars.

Every cent of that $175,000 had been wired to an entity called Northwood Asset Partners. A few clicks later, I discovered Northwood Asset Partners was Mark’s company, a numbered corporation he’d registered only a few months prior. Its stated business? Cryptocurrency investment and blockchain consulting. In short, Mark was running a crypto scam, and they had used my wife’s illness and my absence to bankroll it.

But the part that truly made me want to vomit was this: they couldn’t let Eleanor talk to me. If I’d called the house, even with her Alzheimer’s, she would have known something was wrong, she would have told me. So they had to silence her. Their solution? Lock her in the basement. I found a text exchange between Chloe and Mark from the third day.

Mark: She won’t stop crying for your dad. This isn’t working.

Chloe: She’ll forget. Just give it another day. The confusion actually helps us.

Mark: What if someone comes by to check on her?

Chloe: Like who? Dad’s in Seattle. Mom’s friends never visit anymore. We’re fine.

They had planned it. They had knowingly imprisoned a confused, vulnerable woman in a basement to steal her life savings. I called Detective Miller right away. He came to the house with two other officers. I showed them everything. The laptop. The documents. The text messages. The state of the basement.

—Mr. Evans, —Miller said, his tone careful. —This is elder abuse. Financial exploitation and unlawful confinement. We’ll need your wife’s statement when she’s able. But there’s more than enough here for charges.

—Where is my daughter now? —I asked.

—We’re not sure yet. Do you have an address for her?

I did. Chloe and Mark lived in a high-rise condo in the West Loop, about a fifteen-minute drive away. Detective Miller got on the phone. Within an hour, officers were sent to their address. They were gone. But what the police found in that condo would lead to even more charges. The place was almost empty. The furniture was gone. The closets were bare. But in the trash, which is where they got careless, officers found bank slips, printed confirmations for one-way tickets to Brazil, and an email from a property manager in Rio de Janeiro about a six-month lease. They were planning to run, take the money, and vanish to a country known for its challenging extradition process for financial crimes.

They had left behind a trail, and they had underestimated me. My mother’s recovery had been quicker than anyone expected, and I’d come home three days earlier than planned. If I’d stayed in Seattle for the full two weeks, Eleanor would likely have died in that basement. Chloe and Mark would have found her, played the part of the grieving daughter and son-in-law, and been on a plane to Rio before anyone was the wiser. Detective Miller was blunt about it.
—Your decision to come home early saved your wife’s life.

That realization—that my daughter, the little girl I’d taught to swim, who had sobbed in my arms when her pet hamster died, had been willing to let her own mother die for cash—was something I couldn’t begin to process.

The manhunt started. Chicago police issued warrants for Chloe and Mark. Their faces were on the local news within two days. ‘Daughter and Son-in-Law Wanted in Vicious Elder Abuse Case.’ The media feasted on it. My phone rang off the hook—reporters, neighbors, old colleagues from my firm. I ignored it all. My only focus was Eleanor.

She was released from the hospital on the fourth day, still terribly weak but on the mend physically. Mentally, she was adrift. She kept asking when Chloe was coming over.
—Is Chloe joining us for dinner? —she’d ask.

—No, honey. Not tonight.

—Did I do something to upset her? Why doesn’t she come to see me?

How do you explain to a person with Alzheimer’s that their child is a monster? That the woman she raised and loved had locked her away and stolen from her? I couldn’t. So I just held her hand and said, —Chloe’s tied up with work right now. But I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.

On the sixth day, Chloe and Mark were arrested at O’Hare Airport. They were trying to board a flight to London, their first leg before connecting to South America. Border Patrol agents picked them up immediately. Detective Miller called me within the hour.
—We have them. They’re in custody.

I felt nothing. No sense of relief. No satisfaction. Just a hollow emptiness.

The charges landed like a pile of bricks. Two counts of elder abuse. Two counts of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. Two counts of unlawful confinement. Two counts of fraud over $5,000. And one count of forgery for the POA documents. Mark faced extra charges for his investment fund, which turned out to be, shockingly, a Ponzi scheme. He’d taken money from at least three dozen other people, all elderly or vulnerable, promising them outrageous returns on crypto trades that never existed. He was just robbing Peter to pay Paul, a classic con. The Crown Attorney, a sharp woman named Angela Rossi, met with me a week after the arrest. She laid it all out.

—Mr. Evans, this is one of the worst cases of elder abuse I’ve ever prosecuted. The level of planning, the exploitation of your wife’s condition, the financial ruin they’ve caused… it’s severe. We are seeking the maximum sentences.

—How long? —I asked.

—For elder abuse with unlawful confinement, combined with the financial crimes, we’re looking at 8 to 12 years for Chloe, and 10 to 15 for Mark, given his additional fraud charges.

—And the money?

Angela’s expression turned sympathetic.
—That will be the difficult part. Mark’s fund is insolvent. The money is gone—spent, wired to offshore accounts, or used to pay off earlier investors to keep the scheme afloat. We will push for restitution orders, but you need to be realistic about seeing that money again.

In other words, the $175,000 was gone. Our savings, the equity in our home, all vanished into Mark’ crypto fantasy. I had to ask the question that had been eating away at me.
—Did she know? Chloe, I mean. Did she know Mark’s operation was a fraud?

Angela opened the evidence folder.
—Based on the emails and texts we’ve recovered, yes. She knew. She helped him find investors, including two of her own colleagues from the accounting firm. She created falsified financial statements for the fund. She was not a bystander, Mr. Evans. She was a willing participant.

My daughter wasn’t a victim of her husband’s scheme. She was his partner in crime.

The bail hearing was a painful spectacle. Chloe’s lawyer argued for her release—no prior record, deep roots in the community, low flight risk despite the Brazil plan. The prosecution argued the exact opposite: clear flight risk, attempted destruction of evidence, and a continuing danger to Eleanor. The judge agreed with the prosecution. Bail was denied. Chloe and Mark would remain in custody at the Cook County Jail until their trial.

I attended that hearing. I sat in the very back and watched my daughter, in a standard-issue jumpsuit, beg the judge for her freedom. She cried. She said she was sorry. She said she’d made a huge mistake. When her eyes met mine, she tried to mouth something.
—Dad, please.

I stood up and walked out of the courtroom. I couldn’t bear to look at her.

The criminal case moved forward, but waiting for the courts wasn’t enough for me. I hired a lawyer, David Chen, who specialized in elder law and civil litigation. His advice was straightforward.
—Robert, you have a very strong civil case. Sue them for every dollar they took, plus damages for what they put Eleanor through. Even if they have nothing now, they might in the future—inheritance, wages, property. We can secure a judgment that follows them forever.

I filed the lawsuit two weeks later. Chloe Evans and Mark Richardson, defendants. The claims: financial exploitation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, conversion, and breach of fiduciary duty. We were seeking $175,000 for the stolen funds and $200,000 in additional damages for Eleanor’s suffering. But I didn’t stop there. I contacted the Illinois Board of Accountancy. Chloe had used her CPA credentials to give Mark’s scheme a veneer of legitimacy. Her coworkers had trusted her professional opinion. She had violated every ethical rule in the book. I filed a formal complaint. Within a month, Chloe’s CPA license was suspended pending the outcome of the criminal trial. A conviction would mean she’d never work as an accountant again.

It should have felt like a victory. It just felt like something that had to be done.

The months that followed were a fog. Eleanor’s Alzheimer’s grew worse—the neurologist told me that severe stress can accelerate the decline. She eventually stopped asking about Chloe altogether, which was somehow more heartbreaking than the questions. It was as if her mind, to protect itself, had simply erased her daughter. I hired a full-time caregiver to help with Eleanor while I navigated the legal maze. The bills stacked up—medical costs, legal fees, the monthly payments on the home equity line of credit we never wanted. We were sinking financially, and the people who had pushed us overboard were sitting in a cell.

The preliminary hearing was in January, five months after I found Eleanor. I testified. I described walking into the house, hearing the pounding, breaking the lock, and finding my wife. I told them about the laptop, the documents, the horrifying truth. Chloe’s lawyer tried to portray her as a victim herself—manipulated by her domineering husband, struggling with debt, suffering from anxiety. It was nonsense, and the judge saw right through it.
—Ms. Evans, —the judge said, —You are a certified public accountant. You have a sophisticated understanding of finance and law. You knowingly exploited your mother’s cognitive disability for financial gain. I see no mitigating circumstances here.