I Moved In To Help My Daughter With Her Triplets, But I Just Found Out She Is Drugging Me Every Thursday. She Thinks I Have Dementia, But I Am Actually Recording Everything She Says In The Nursery. How Do I Tell The Police My Own Daughter Is A Monster?
Caught in the Act
Sunday night, I made a show of drinking the tea Emma offered. But when she went to check on the babies, I poured it into the potted plant by the sofa. I went to bed at my usual time but I didn’t sleep.
I watched the camera feeds on my phone, the app showing me two small windows of live video. At 2:23 a.m., they came. Emma pushed open my door slowly. I kept my eyes closed, my breathing deep and steady.
She approached the bed and I felt her touch my hand.
“Mom,”
she whispered.
I didn’t respond. I made my body limp.
“She’s out cold,”
Emma said.
Brad appeared in the doorway.
“Good. Get the papers.”
Through my barely open eyelids, I watched Emma leave and return with a folder. She sat on the edge of my bed and opened it. Documents. Bank documents. She pulled out a pen and gently placed it in my hand, wrapping my fingers around it.
“Okay, I’m going to guide your hand,”
she murmured.
“Just like Thursday.”
She positioned my hand on the paper and moved it, forging my signature. Once, twice, three times on different pages. I wanted to scream. I wanted to jerk my hand away and slap her. But I stayed still. The camera in my room, positioned on my dresser where I’d hidden my phone, was recording everything.
When they left, I heard them go to the nursery. I watched through the camera feed as Emma took out a small bottle and a syringe. She drew liquid into it and went to Sophia’s crib first. She gently squeezed a small amount into the baby’s mouth. Sophia stirred but didn’t wake. Emma moved to Michael, then Grace.
“There,”
she said to Brad.
“They’ll sleep like little angels for the rest of the night. No interruptions.”
“How much longer do you think we can keep this up?”
Brad asked.
“As long as we need to. We’ve got almost $200,000 so far. Another three months and we’ll have close to $400,000. Then we can ship Mom to a nursing home. We’ll say the grief over Dad made her unstable. That she was showing signs of dementia. No one will question it.”
My heart shattered. Actually shattered. But I kept recording.
The Trap is Sprung
Over the next week, I gathered evidence. Every night I pretended to drink the tea and poured it out. Every night they came. The cameras captured it all: Emma forging signatures, them drugging the babies, their conversations about money, about their plan to institutionalize me.
I also discovered where they were keeping my signed documents: in Brad’s home office in a locked filing cabinet. I found the key in his desk drawer on Wednesday afternoon while he was out getting groceries. I photographed everything. The forged signatures next to examples of my real signature, the bottles of Diphenhydramine and Melatonin hidden in their bathroom, the syringes, the bank statements showing transfers to their accounts.
On Thursday afternoon, one week after I’d started collecting evidence, I made my move. I called my attorney first. Bernard had handled Robert’s estate and had known our family for 20 years.
“Bernard, I need you to come to Emma’s house immediately. And I need you to bring a notary.”
“Margaret, what’s wrong?”
“Everything. I’ll explain when you get here.”
Then I called the police non-emergency line.
“I need to report financial elder abuse and child endangerment. I have significant evidence and I need officers to come to an address.”
The dispatcher took me seriously.
“Ma’am, are you in immediate danger?”
“No, but three infants are being routinely drugged and I have video evidence.”
“Stay on the line. I’m dispatching officers now.”
Bernard arrived first, looking concerned. I met him at the door and ushered him into the guest room.
“Margaret, what on earth?”
I showed him the videos, the photos, the bank statements, the forged documents. I watched his face go from confused to shocked to angry.
“My god, Margaret. Your own daughter.”
“I need you to witness me revoking Emma’s power of attorney if she has one. I need you to help me secure my assets. And I need you to be here when the police arrive.”
Confrontation
Emma and Brad came home at 4:30 p.m., Brad carrying takeout bags, Emma juggling her purse and phone. They walked into the living room to find me sitting on the sofa. Bernard was beside me. Two police officers stood near the fireplace.
The look on Emma’s face was almost comical. Almost, if it hadn’t been so tragic.
“Mom? What’s going on?”
“I know everything, Emma,”
I said. My voice was steady, stronger than I felt.
“I know about the tea, the drugging, the forged signatures, the money you’ve stolen. Everything.”
Brad dropped the takeout bags.
“Now wait a minute,”
“We have video evidence,”
one officer interrupted.
“Multiple nights of video and audio. We’ve already reviewed the footage Miss Chen provided.”
“This is ridiculous,”
Emma said, but her voice wavered.
“Mom’s been confused lately. Grief does that. She hasn’t been herself.”
“Actually, I’ve been myself more than I have in months,”
I said.
“Myself enough to install hidden cameras. Myself enough to document everything you’ve been doing. Myself enough to freeze my bank accounts before you could steal more money. And myself enough to call Child Protective Services about the fact that you’ve been giving Diphenhydramine to three-month-old infants.”
Emma’s face went white. The next hours were a blur. The officers asked questions. I showed them everything on my laptop. Bernard certifying that the evidence was legitimate and unaltered. A social worker arrived for the babies.
Emma was crying, begging, saying she’d made a mistake, that the stress had gotten to her.
“I would have given you anything,”
I told her at one point while the officers were on the phone with their supervisor.
“If you’d needed money, I would have helped you. But you drugged me, Emma. You drugged your own mother. You put your babies at risk for money.”
“You don’t understand the pressure,”
she started.
“I understand that the daughter I raised would never have done this. I understand that greed turned you into someone I don’t recognize.”
Brad tried to run. He actually tried to walk out the back door. An officer stopped him. They were arrested that evening. Financial exploitation of an elder, forgery, child endangerment. The charges kept adding up.
