Oatmeal for breakfast. Hot dog in a bun with a Diet Coke for lunch. Chicken noodle soup three times a week for dinner. Defendant says bad
food made her killA care home patient claims she
lost control and knifed the ownerBy Debra Barayuga
dbarayuga@starbulletin.comThose were just some of the meals 57-year-old Emelie Rauschenburg said she objected to while living at a Waipahu care home run by Agapita Alcaraz.
But it was the soda crackers for snacks one afternoon that apparently was the last straw.
"She knows I don't like crackers for snack, but she gave it anyway and I lost control and stabbed her," Rauschenburg said.
When Alcaraz fell, Rauschenburg said, she stabbed her a second time in the back, then called police. "I know I did wrong so I wanted to get arrested."
Rauschenburg, on trial for second-degree murder, later told psychologist Gary Farkas that Alcaraz "was a mean care home lady who didn't deserve to live, fed her junk food and took all her money."
The defense contends Rauschenburg was suffering from an extreme mental and emotional disturbance when she stabbed Alcaraz to death on Sept. 30, 2000. The state contends she knew what she was doing. "She wasn't feeding me right ... I used to pay her a lot of money and it was building up inside of me," Rauschenburg testified.
She said she paid Alcaraz $1,022 a month for food and board at the Kahualena care home where three other patients also lived.
She said she felt like a "prisoner" because she couldn't eat the foods she wanted. She admitted that Alcaraz would sometimes make her spaghetti, which she likes, and once complied with a request for fish sticks. But when she asked for tartar sauce to go with the fish sticks, Alcaraz gave her ketchup instead.
She said she purchased a knife from Times Supermarket two days before the stabbing after she got paid from her part-time job as a packer and hid the knife under her pillow. She said she planned to kill Alcaraz on three previous occasions but "didn't have the guts."
Glenn Del Rosario, Alcaraz' son-in-law who lived upstairs, said he was taken aback at Rauschenburg's statements given that she and the other patients "ate what the family ate," and were welcome to have seconds. Except for one patient who had a strict diet, the other patients were fed the same meals and no one else complained, he said outside the courtroom.
He said the menu for the patients had to be approved by a state social worker and that his mother-in-law at times went "out of her way" to accommodate Rauschenburg's requests even if it was late at night and she had already cooked a meal for the others.
Farkas, who was appointed by the state to examine Rauschenburg, said he saw her as a "disgruntled customer" who had misperceptions about the food she was being served and the care she was receiving. During his examination of her, he said he saw evidence of her ability to "make decisions and maintain control over impulses in real life behavior." The attorneys are to file written closings and findings by Feb. 3, after which Circuit Judge Wilfred Watanabe will issue a verdict.