Autopsy results pending on another death linked to North Texas group homes, police say
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office is reviewing the death of another person connected with unlicensed group homes in Arlington and Mansfield after ruling a 60-year-old man’s death a homicide earlier this month, officials said.
Arlington police are investigating the deaths of 20 people linked to the boarding homes owned by Regla Becquer and her company Love and Caring for People LLC.
According to homicide Detective Krystallyne Robinson, most of those individuals had already been cremated, buried or their body donated to science by the time the investigation started. Police are only aware of two autopsies, Robinson said at a news conference Wednesday.
The results of one of the autopsies are still pending, according to Robinson.
On June 20, Becquer was charged with the murder of Steven Pankratz after the medical examiner determined his death was caused by mixed drug toxicity of trazodone, tramadol and mirtazapine.
According to police, Pankratz was never prescribed trazodone, which is an antidepressant and sedative, and Becquer is accused of giving him “handfuls” of pills daily.
Pankratz died Jan. 12 at Methodist Mansfield Medical Center, according to the medical examiner’s website. He was transported there from one of Becquer’s homes, located in the 7400 block of Lake Whitney Drive in Arlington.
Becquer was first arrested in February on the charge of abandoning or endangering a disabled person, creating imminent danger of bodily injury.
She and her staff have been accused of failing to properly care for patients, giving them unnecessary medication, preventing them from seeking medical attention, hindering them from talking with family members, using their debit and credit cards, and using the phones and cars of people who died, according to affidavits supporting search and arrest warrants.
Officer Chris Powell, who has been with the Arlington Police Department for over 20 years, said the case has been “extremely disturbing.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Powell said at the news conference Wednesday. “And we just had to dig into it and keep going and going.”
The investigation into the death of the 20 individuals in Becquer’s care is ongoing. Even though the fact that many of them were cremated or their bodies donated to science makes the investigation more difficult, Powell said no one will be overlooked.
“Every person on that list is going to be completely investigated to the best that I can,” Powell said.
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