Holloway guilty of elder abuse

William Lowe’s family visited his grave Thursday to share some very good news.

Lowe’s former caretaker, Linda Suzan Holloway, was convicted of elder abuse nearly three years after the 76-year-old man’s body was found in his Colusa home.

“We’re ecstatic,” Lynnda Lowe-Salek of Newton, Mass., said after the verdict was handed down in Colusa County Superior Court after a non-jury trial. “He died  in ‘06, so we’ve been waiting for three years. It’s been a long time coming.”

Lowe-Salek, Lowe’s eldest daughter, was joined by her sister Laura Lowe of Colusa and Laura’s daughter Lindsey. “We’re just thrilled with the verdict, and happy,” Laura Lowe said.

Holloway faces up to 13 years in prison when she’s sentenced May 12, according to Colusa County District Attorney John Poyner. She was convicted of elder abuse with a “strike” for a previous robbery conviction and an enhancement for great bodily injury.

However, the voluntary manslaughter charge filed against Holloway in 2007 was dropped several months ago, Poyner said, after pathologists concluded that blunt force trauma didn’t cause the heart attack that ended Lowe’s life. He described the case as “complicated.”

“I did not have a lot to work with, except a top-notch investigator (Pamela Craig) who dogged this case from the get-go,” Poyner said. Beyond conflicting autopsy results, he said, Holloway gave several different accounts of what happened before Lowe died.

“She was his care provider, and she had served a four-year prison term for stabbing him 12 to 14 times in Lake County” in 1999, Poyner said, but she re-entered his life after her release. Lowe-Salek said she had “no doubt” that Holloway caused the suspicious injuries found on her father’s body.

“There was a history of her abusing him,” she said. “We knew this was going to happen. She’s absolutely going where she belongs.”

Lowe’s body was found July 27, 2006, after Holloway called 911. She had spent the night before in the Colusa County Jail after being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, then overdosed on antidepressants in an apparent suicide attempt. Before Thursday’s verdict, she was already in custody for violating probation on the DUI case, Poyner said.