Escapee Who Killed Mother Is Captured

A woman committed to a state hospital in 1981 for killing her mother and slashing her daughter’s throat was captured in Fountain Valley on Tuesday after escaping from a psychiatric halfway house in March, Los Angeles police reported.

Police apprehended Arlyne Louise Genger, 46, as she arrived at FHP Inc.’s Fountain Valley Medical Center, 9930 Talbert Ave., to pick up a paycheck for her work there as a telemarketing representative, Detective Walter DeCuir said. Genger had quit her job at the center Wednesday, he said.

She was being held at Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Los Angeles pending a hearing, DeCuir said.

Genger failed to return to the Gateways Satellite residential mental-health facility in Silver Lake after leaving without permission on March 7, said Dr. Harry Goldberg, program director at the facility. She had been staying there since a judge, on the recommendation of psychiatrists, ordered her release from Patton State Hospital in April, 1988.

Genger had admitted 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 in the family’s North Hollywood apartment. Her daughter, Selena, then 13, survived.

A Superior Court judge found Genger not guilty by reason of insanity.

After her escape from Gateways, Genger apparently had gone to Las Vegas, where she lost most of her money gambling, DeCuir said. She later lived with friends at three or four locations in South Orange County, he said.

Police discovered that Genger had recently applied for a California driver’s license and traced her to an apartment in Huntington Beach, DeCuir said. But when they arrived there last week, she had moved out, he said. They found a letter addressed to her from her former employer, who told police that she was expected to come to the office this week to pick up a paycheck, he said.

Genger most likely will be returned to Patton State Hospital, DeCuir said.