Thread: MD-Former Victims Mix Up an Antidote to Terror

Former Victims Mix Up an Antidote to Terror
After Home Invasions, 3 Md. Widows Find Strength in Friendship

Video
Attacks on Widows to Be Aired in Court Thursday
Betty Tubbs, 79, and Margaret Arnold, 94, describe how Jose Garcia-Perlera hogtied them in their homes in late 2007. They are two of four widows attacked by Garcia-Perlera. The man is set to be sentenced Thursday for attacking three of them and killing the fourth.
» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER


34 Comments
By Dan Morse

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The three women didn't draw much attention from the lunch crowd at Congressional Country Club. That's only because no one could hear what they were saying.


"Why did he have to tie us up so tight? We are just old people," asked the 94-year-old.

"He didn't have to hit me in the head with his gun," added the 79-year-old.

The three widows were attacked, hogtied and gagged in their Montgomery County homes, where they lived alone, starting in September 2007. One of them, 78 at the time, spent 2 1/2 days bound to a pole in her basement, chewing her way through a duct-tape gag and cracking two molars in the process.

"Help, help, help!" Ann Wolfe called out, although she knew no one could hear.

The women's pluck, candor and even humor as witnesses helped convict the intruder three months ago. Their stories will be aired in court again Thursday, when Jose Garcia-Perlera is to be sentenced for attacking them and killing a fourth widow whose home he also broke into. The crimes terrified large portions of the county.

Montgomery detectives worked the case for 13 months.

Last year, one of them linked Garcia-Perlera to stolen iPods, a radar detector and binoculars believed to have been taken from other houses, police said. Detectives searched his apartment in Hyattsville, finding items that belonged to the three women.

Some of the items were obscure, such as an old ring that Wolfe purchased at a bazaar in Afghanistan five decades ago. Detectives took a sample of Garcia-Perlera's DNA, which they linked to three of the home-invasion crime scenes.

Beyond the case is a story of how the three women drawn together by the crimes, who first met during breaks in the trial, have become good friends.

"It's just been really great to find two people who went through the same thing," said Margaret Arnold, 94, whose emergency medical necklace was ripped off during the attack, leaving a raw mark as if she'd been hanged. "It really makes it almost bearable."


"We found out that we all like to talk a lot," added Betty Tubbs, 79, who was lured into her basement by Garcia-Perlera, who broke in through a window there and threw the circuit breaker to shut off her lights.


Arnold suffers from macular degeneration, making her legally blind. Wolfe is starting to have trouble reading. Arnold plans to show her the visual-enhancement equipment she uses, including a video camera that can be trained on her knitting to display a blown-up image of the needles and yarn on a TV screen.


At the start of 2007, all three were charging into their twilight years with independent streaks that inspired admiration and worry in their children and grandchildren. Arnold was the first of the trio attacked. Then Tubbs. Then Wolfe.

Tubbs first met Arnold after seeing her shuffling with her walker outside the courtroom during a break in the trial. Arnold's daughter said she needed to run an errand.

"Would you mind taking her with you?" she asked Tubbs.

"Of course not," she said, as the two walked off to the cafeteria in the courtroom basement.

They had been through tragedy before. Arnold, born in 1915, was the daughter of a worsted wool sales representative in Chicago. Her husband, a lawyer in the Navy judge advocate general's office, brought her to the Washington area. He died at 52 of a heart attack. Arnold never remarried, wearing her wedding ring and engagement ring until Garcia-Perlera yanked them off.

Tubbs's husband, an Air Force pilot, died in 1955 in a crash near the Azores in the North Atlantic.

Wolfe was married twice. Her second husband died of brain cancer.

The three met at Congressional on June 15.

"Don't tell my daughter I drove here," Wolfe told the other two.

The three talked so much that the waitress had to keep coming back to get their orders. Arnold ordered a crab cake sandwich and fries, Tubbs had a Reuben, and Wolfe had a salad, the women recalled. They spent about half of the two-hour lunch talking about their lives, and the other half talking about the case.

Underlying the trio's perspectives was what happened to Mary Frances Havenstein. Garcia-Perlera broke into her house in September. She was found dead two days later -- tied and gagged -- by a relative who had come to get her for a medical appointment.


The three talked about the photos of her crime scene that were shown in court. "They were so terrible," Arnold recalled saying.

Arnold was lured into her basement by Garcia-Perlera, who disabled her lights as well. She walked down with a flashlight, and Garcia-Perlera dragged her to the floor. He gagged her and tied her up with clothesline, a memory she couldn't get out of her head.

"I keep seeing it," she said.

The trio talked about their victim impact statements, which will be used at the sentencing hearing.

Arnold would write hers at her daughter's home, where she moved after the assault: "This attack has completely altered my life. . . . I left the house at three o'clock in the morning, just hours after the break-in, never to return. I lost my independence and my security, which is a devastating experience. . . . He should be sentenced to the fullest extent of the law."

Tubbs expressed similar thoughts.

"I feel that I was not a victim of chance, but was stalked over a period of time to learn my habits as to bedtime, TV watching, where I kept tools in the garage and where the most isolated window was to break into the house. . . . Others and I feel that the primary motive of the crime was not theft, but the psychological satisfaction of studying our habits and outwitting our defenses."

Garcia-Perlera, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, didn't necessarily steal items of high value, instead making off with lots of costume jewelry from the women that detectives later found stuffed in drawers in his apartment.

Tubbs and Arnold encouraged Wolfe to prepare a strong victim impact statement. She could easily have died after more than two days bound in her basement, according to trial testimony.

Wolfe could not write or type her statement because of lasting wrist injuries from the attack. When she speaks Thursday in court, she plans to clearly state that Garcia-Perlera should be locked in prison the rest of his life.

But in conversations with Arnold and Tubbs, Wolfe also has acknowledged what happened after she was found: Rescue workers helped save her, doctors cared for her, detectives and prosecutors treated her with great respect, and her family gathered around her to help -- and family members are talking more now.

"You know, I'm embarrassed to say it," she told Arnold over the phone recently. "But it's been good for me."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 9081203461

Only a piece of trash would do that to the elderly.

Dixie

Garcia-Perlera, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador needs a harsh sentence and then DEPORTED. What a sicko!

Recently an eder woman about 2 miles up the street on a main throughfare had several Hispanic men rob her. A man knocked on her door with a clipboard and told the woman he was there to survey her back yard. He asked her to assist him and had her get down on the ground to hold a tape measure between two markers. Then he got a call on his cell and started rambling something in a "foreign language". He hung up the phone and told her he would be right back. She waited for about a 1/2 hour and walked to the front of the house. His car was gone. When she went inside she discovered he house a shambles and knew she was robbed. She call the police and filled out a report. Several items that were hidden was a coin collection, jewlrey, and some sentimental items that only meant something special to her. She described the men as Hispancis and said aloT of those people worked constructiion jobs in areas around her home. The police took a report but told her than they men were probably long gone and would never be found. It makes me so sad to see elderly people robbed. THESE KIND OF ROBBERIES WOULD NEVER HAPPEN IF ILLEGAL ALIENS WERE NOT IN THE COUNTRY.