Local News in Brief : Killer Who Was Ruled Insane Disappears
A woman declared insane after she killed her mother and slashed her daughter’s throat with a razor eight years ago has disappeared from the psychiatric halfway house where she has lived since her release from a state mental hospital.
Arlyne Louise Genger, 45, left Gateways Hospital in South-Central Los Angeles Tuesday morning after she received permission to go to the bank. She never returned, said Dr. Harry Goldberg, program director at the residential community mental health facility.
Genger has lived at Gateway since June, when she was released from Patton State Hospital. She was committed there in 1981 after admitting that on New Year’s Day, 1980, she stabbed her mother more than 20 times and cut her daughter’s throat and wrist with a razor. The attacks took place in the family’s North Hollywood apartment.
After a court battle last April, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge C. Bernard Kaufman ruled on the basis of psychiatric testimony that Genger no longer was a threat to the community and should take continued psychiatric treatment at a halfway house with no physical restraints to keep patients on the premises.
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