I Returned from My Mother’s Bedside and Found My Wife Locked in Our Basement – Our Daughter Had Locked Her In…

But she never called back. I tried calling Margaret directly, but her phone went straight to voicemail, too.

I told myself it was fine. Jennifer had it under control, and my mother needed me.

I stayed in Vancouver. Detective Morrison listened to all of this, taking notes.

Then he asked the question that made my blood run cold.

“mr holloway during those two weeks did you give your daughter power of attorney over your wife’s affairs?”

“no absolutely not.”

“did your wife sign any documents that you’re aware of?”

“not that I know of why?”

He closed his notebook.

“we’ll need to investigate further but Mr holloway this appears to be more than just neglect we’ll be in touch.”

Margaret stayed in the hospital for three days. They rehydrated her, treated her for malnutrition and exposure, and ran a battery of tests.

She kept asking where Jennifer was.

“where’s Jenny she was just here she was making me lunch”

“no sweetheart she wasn’t”

On the second day, while Margaret was sleeping, I went home to look around more carefully. I needed to understand what had happened.

What I found made me physically ill. The basement door had been padlocked from the outside.

There was a bucket in the corner. That’s what Margaret had used as a toilet.

A thin blanket on the concrete floor. No food, no water.

The light bulb had been removed from the socket.

My wife, who sometimes forgets what day it is, but who can still laugh at silly jokes and loves watching the Blue Jays play, had been locked in darkness for two weeks.

Upstairs, I found more disturbing evidence. Jennifer’s laptop was still on the kitchen table, password conveniently saved.

I’m not proud of what I did next, but I looked through her files. What I found was methodical, calculated evil.

There were scanned documents, power of attorney papers with Margaret’s signature, real estate documents, bank statements, and a file labeled “investment opportunity Kyle’s fund.”

I sat there for an hour reading through everything, my hands shaking so hard I could barely click the mouse.

Here’s what they’d done. The first week I was gone, Jennifer had taken Margaret to a lawyer’s office, some sketchy notary in Scarboro, not our family lawyer.

She’d had Margaret sign POA documents, using her Alzheimer’s confusion to convince her it was just paperwork for Dad.

The notary apparently didn’t ask many questions. Margaret’s signature was shaky but recognizable.

With that POA, Jennifer had accessed our bank accounts. She’d withdrawn $75,000 from our savings, money we’d carefully set aside for Margaret’s future care as her Alzheimer’s progressed.

She’d also taken out a home equity line of credit against our house for another $100,000.

We’d owned our home in Leslieville outright for twenty years. Now, we owed the bank $100,000.

All that money, $175,000, had been transferred to something called Thornhill Capital Management.

Three clicks later, I discovered that Thornhill Capital was Kyle’s company, a numbered corporation registered just six months ago.

Its business was cryptocurrency investment and blockchain consulting.

In other words, Kyle was running some kind of crypto scheme, and they’d used my wife’s confusion and my absence to fund it.

But here’s the part that made me want to vomit. They couldn’t let Margaret talk to me.

If I’d called the house, Margaret would have told me something was wrong. Even with her Alzheimer’s, she’d know something wasn’t right.

So they needed to keep her quiet. Their solution: lock her in the basement.

I found a text exchange between Jennifer and Kyle from day three.

“kyle she keeps crying for your dad this isn’t going to work”

“jennifer she’ll forget give it another day the confusion helps”

“kyle what if someone checks on her”

“jennifer who dad’s in Vancouver mom’s friends haven’t visited in months because of her condition we’re fine”

They’d planned this. They’d knowingly locked a confused, vulnerable woman in a basement to steal her life savings.

I called Detective Morrison immediately. He came to the house with two other officers.

I showed them everything: the laptop, the documents, the text messages, the state of the basement.

“mr holloway,” Morrison said carefully. “this is elder abuse financial exploitation and unlawful confinement we’ll need your wife’s testimony when she’s able but there’s more than enough here for charges”

“where’s my daughter now?” I asked.

“we don’t know yet do you have an address for her?”

I did. Jennifer and Kyle lived in a condo in Liberty Village, about twenty minutes away.

Detective Morrison made a call, and within an hour, officers were dispatched to their address.

They weren’t there, but what the officers found in that condo would lead to even more charges.

The place was nearly empty. Furniture was gone; closets cleaned out.

But in the trash, and this is where they got sloppy, officers found bank statements, paperwork for one-way tickets to Portugal, and a printed email from a property management company in Lisbon about a six-month rental.

They were planning to run, take the money, and disappear to a country with no extradition treaty for financial crimes.

But they’d left too much evidence behind, and they’d underestimated how quickly I’d return.

My mother’s recovery was faster than expected, and I’d come home three days earlier than originally planned.

If I’d stayed in Vancouver for the full two weeks as planned, Margaret might have died in that basement.

Jennifer and Kyle would have discovered her body, played the devastated daughter, and been on a plane to Lisbon before anyone asked questions.

Detective Morrison was blunt about it.

“your early return saved your wife’s life”

That realization, that my daughter, the little girl I’d taught to ride a bike, who’d cried in my arms when her goldfish died when she was seven, had been willing to let her own mother die for money, I couldn’t process it.

The manhunt began. Toronto police issued warrants for Jennifer and Kyle.

Their faces were on the news within 48 hours: daughter and son-in-law wanted in an elder abuse case.

The media had a field day. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing; reporters, neighbors, people from my old workplace reaching out.

I ignored all of it. My focus was Margaret.

She was released from the hospital on day four, still weak but recovering physically. Mentally, though, she was confused.

She kept asking where Jennifer was.

“is Jenny coming for dinner?” she’d ask.

“no sweetheart not tonight”

“did I do something wrong why won’t she visit?”

How do you explain to someone with Alzheimer’s that their daughter is a monster?

That the woman she gave birth to, raised, and loved, had locked her in a basement to steal from her?

I couldn’t. So I just held her hand and said:

“Jenny’s busy right now but I’m here i’m not going anywhere.”

On day six, Jennifer and Kyle were arrested at Pearson Airport. They’d tried to board a flight to London, England, their first stop before connecting to Portugal.

Border services flagged them immediately. Detective Morrison called me within the hour.

“we’ve got them they’re in custody”

I felt nothing. No relief, no satisfaction, just emptiness.

The charges came down like a hammer: two counts of elder abuse, two counts of financial exploitation of a vulnerable person, two counts of unlawful confinement, two counts of fraud over $5,000, and one count of forgery related to the POA documents.

Kyle faced additional charges related to his investment fund, which turned out to be, surprise, a Ponzi scheme.

He’d taken money from at least thirty other investors, all elderly or vulnerable people, promising 40% returns on cryptocurrency trades that never actually happened.

He was just shuffling money around, paying old investors with new investor money. Classic fraud.

The Crown Attorney assigned to the case, a sharp woman named Patricia Chen, met with me a week after their arrest. She laid out the case in detail.

“mr holloway this is one of the most egregious elder abuse cases I’ve seen in my career the premeditation the exploitation of your wife’s cognitive condition the financial devastation they cause this is serious we’re pushing for maximum sentences”

“how long?” I asked.

“elder abuse with unlawful confinement combined with the financial exploitation we’re looking at 8 to 12 years for Jennifer 10 to 15 for Kyle because of the additional fraud charges”

“and the money?”

Patricia’s expression softened.

“that’s going to be harder kyle’s fund is bankrupt the money is gone spent moved offshore or paid to early investors to keep the scheme running we’ll pursue restitution orders but I want you to be realistic about recovery”

In other words, the $175,000 was gone. Our savings, our home equity, vanished into Kyle’s crypto scam.