Judge: Cops did not coerce statements in nursing home deaths

State police investigators did not use unlawful interrogation tactics to coax potentially incriminating statements from a former McHenry County nursing home supervisor accused of complicity in several patients' suspicious deaths, a judge ruled today.

The decision means that if Penny Whitlock goes to trial on seven felony charges linked to the deaths, jurors could hear that she told police she knew a nurse at the Woodstock Residence nursing home had been accused of wrongdoing by co-workers, and that she told subordinates to deviate from protocol for disposing of dead patients' morphine.

Whitlock, 60, of Woodstock, faces five counts of criminal neglect of a long-term care facility resident and two counts of obstructing justice stemming from a 15-month investigation into a rash of unusual deaths of terminally ill patients in 2006. The charges allege Whitlock, the home's former director of nursing, endangered patients by failing to act when other nurses complained co-worker Marty Himebaugh was giving patients dangerous dosages of morphine or other drugs. Instead, charges claim, Whitlock said Himebaugh "could continue to play the Angel of Death in the facility."

She also is accused of instructing another employee to destroy evidence in an effort to prevent the apprehension or prosecution of Himebaugh.

Himebaugh, 58, of Lake in the Hills, faces multiple felony counts that stop short of alleging she killed patients, but instead claim she gave dangerous dosages to patients who later died.

Whitlock was asking McHenry County Judge Joseph Condon to bar from trial statements she made to state police investigators in November 2006, claiming she was interrogated without first being read her Miranda rights. The judge, however, ruled that Whitlock never was under arrest during the interview and, therefore, police did not have to inform her of her rights.

"Considering the totality of the circumstances, the court concludes that a reasonable person innocent of any crime would have felt free to terminate the interview and depart," Condon wrote. "The defendant's statements to police were voluntary."

Next up for Whitlock is a Dec. 22 court hearing at which she will ask Condon for county funds to hire a Pennsylvania toxicologist who previously told authorities she found no evidence of morphine intoxication in three former Woodstock Residence patients whose bodies were exhumed as part of the investigation. Her lawyer, Nils von Keudell, said Whitlock cannot afford the toxicologist's $2,000-a-day fee on her own.