Murder suspect's caregiver contradicted

A man's claim of experience is disputed by his previous employer

The man who was appointed to care for suspected triple murderer Adam Mau-Goffredo told a judge he had a decade's worth of experience working with mentally ill patients, according to court transcripts, but his former employer says he was with her care agency for only a year and half.

The caretaker's claim was made on May 31 during a petition for guardianship hearing initiated by Mau-Goffredo's mother, Lynette L.L. Mau-Goffredo, and William Roy Carroll Jr., who was listed as a caregiver with whom Adam lived in Carroll's 10th Avenue home.

Mau-Goffredo, 23, was charged by a state grand jury last week for shooting three people at the Tantalus lookout on July 6.

During the May 31 hearing, attorney Francis O'Brien, who represented both petitioners, questioned Carroll about his experience in order to establish that he was qualified to become Mau-Goffredo's guardian.

According to the transcripts obtained by the Star-Bulletin, Carroll answered the question by saying he had been "working with an agency called PDMI for the past 10 years and basically working with people with primary schizophrenia and bipolar and dual personalities."

But Carroll's former employer, Sharon Fountain of Physically Disabled and Mentally Ill Care, otherwise known as PDMI-Care, said he worked at the agency for about a year and a half.

Fountain said Mau-Goffredo was a client of PDMI and Carroll was his case manager after he was hired in 2002. When Carroll left the company in 2003, he took Mau-Goffredo with him as a client.

Prior to working with PDMI, Fountain said Carroll had no previous experience with the mentally ill.

When asked about the discrepancy, Carroll's attorney Keith Kiuchi said he had not seen the transcripts, and therefore had no comment.

"She (Fountain) can say whatever she wants to say," said Kiuchi. "We're not making any statements."

Fountain said prior to working for her, Carroll was a program director at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility.

"I remember because I went there to see what he did," Fountain said. "He ran an exercise program for the kids ... things like when they came out of lock-up he organized basketball games, that sort of thing.

"There's no way he worked for us for 10 years; my husband didn't start the company until 1998."

State Department of Health officials said they are investigating Carroll and his Palolo home on 10th Avenue where he cared for Mau-Goffredo. Although the state has strict standards for licensed care homes, officials said those who have been made guardians of mental health patients do not fall under the same guidelines because the guardianship is almost a family-like relationship.

"A court-appointed guardian in that setting does not require licensing," said Diane Okamura, chief of the department's Office of Health Care Assurance. "However we are in the process of investigating that address."

While Mau-Goffredo was with PDMI the company received $2100 a month for their care of him in 2002 at the home where Mau-Goffredo grew up in Kahala. Their fee increased to $4900 a month in 2003 because Fountain said Adam's mother wanted more services.

"We made sure he had food, made sure he ate, took him shopping if need be," Fountain said. "We'd do an exercise program, took him to the beach, took him hiking. We basically kept him busy for eight hours."

Police sources said Mau-Goffredo's previous home on Aukai Avenue was a daily stop for them, because Adam often wanted to generate false police reports and would refer to himself as a CIA agent who had been brainwashed by the government.

The U.S. Secret Service even paid Mau-Goffredo a visit at the Kahala home, because word had gotten to them that Adam was saying that someone was going to kill the president. The incident came up during Mau-Goffredo's May 31 guardianship hearing when O'Brien told the court that "Adam is a person of interest to the United States Secret Service because Adam wrote a letter to President Bush so that they periodically check in about him."

Jeannette Ostrow, who lived next door to the Mau-Goffredos for 20 years, remembers that until he and his family moved out a few years ago, Adam was always doing something that she thought deserved a good scolding.

"One time he was shooting his BB gun at my fence and I would yell at him and say, 'Adam! You're going to shoot me in the eye! Or the mouth!'" said 76-year-old Ostrow. "Sometimes I would hear him call the dog and the dog would come, then Adam would hit the dog and it would run away.

"Then he would call the dog over again and it would start all over again. Every day I would catch him doing something and scolded him."

The Honolulu Police Department's initial investigation showed that Mau-Goffredo caught a taxivan driven by 50-year-old Manh Nguyen between 6 and 6:30 p.m. along Kuhio Avenue and took it up to the lookout.

From there police said Mau-Goffredo may have tried to rob Nguyen, who appears to have gotten out of his van and ran over to Colleen and Jason Takamori, a Kapahulu couple who were there to take pictures at the lookout. Colleen Takamori and Nguyen were shot once in the head, and Jason Takamori was shot twice in the head.

Mau-Goffredo then allegedly took Nguyen's taxivan over to the Round Top Drive home of retired U.S. Magistrate Judge Joe Gedan where he tied up Gedan, his wife, and their housekeeper and stole the Gedan's green Jaguar.

Sources said when Mau- Goffredo was arrested trying to evade a police roadblock he claimed to be a CIA agent. Police found a gun magazine in his pocket and later recovered a handgun from a bag in the Jaguar. Police are still testing ballistics on the weapon to see if it matches the one that killed Nguyen and the Takamoris and if it is the gun reported stolen by Carroll after the shootings.

Mau-Goffredo's psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Gibson, testified in court during a second day of the guardianship hearing on June 14 that Mau-Goffredo was a paranoid schizophrenic who at the time was prescribed two different anti-psychotic medications to help with "delusional belief systems, as well as perceptual abnormalities."

Gibson testified that on his last visit with Mau-Goffredo on March 27, his patient's status had deteriorated because he was not taking his medication, which was the reason his mother and Carroll were petitioning to become guardians so that they could make decisions for him.

"His delusional system seemed to be stronger," said Gibson. "His hygiene had decreased, his ability to do self-care ... his ability to understand reality I think was also more distorted at that point."

Ostrow said despite all her troubles with Mau-Goffredo, she would like to visit him in prison if he allows her to do so, mostly because she said on one occasion, she saw the glimpse of the boy he might have been.

"I saw him at the mall and I started scolding him again for something, I forget what," she recalled. "And he just looked at me and said I've always loved you and then he cried and I cried and I felt like a mouse for scolding him."