Troubled Woman Who Killed Father Gets Estate

If there can be a happy ending to the gruesome story of death, insanity and loneliness that has plagued Sybille Eckstein, it came last week when Eckstein learned that she will inherit the Valley Center home where she has lived for 22 years.

The 62-year-old woman was charged with murder in the Sept. 10, 1989, beating death of her father, 91, who was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease.

Shortly after she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was released on probation last fall, Eckstein’s sister and her family filed suit to wrest the small estate away from her.

They contended in the lawsuit that Eckstein should not be allowed to profit from her crime--the beating of her father, which led to his death a month later.

“She never cared about the rest of us,” Sybille said about her sister. “All she is interested in is the money.”

After her arrest for her father’s murder, psychiatrists pronounced Eckstein mentally ill--suffering from paranoid schizophrenia--and sent her to Patton State Hospital for the criminally insane. She was treated there for nearly a year, then released as stabilized and able to stand trial for the murder of her father, Henry.

She pleaded guilty last summer to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to five years probation. She was given credit for 609 days in custody.

Eckstein’s lawyer, David R. Thompson, said the family’s suit has been dismissed “because her sister’s family did not want to spend the $20,000 or so it would cost to prepare a case against Sybille.” Thompson has moved to transfer the Eckstein property out of a family trust and into Sybille Eckstein’s name.

The estate, consisting of the family home, a small apartment complex and an orchard, lies on a slope overlooking the rural Valley Center community northeast of Escondido. Sybille Eckstein wants “to live out my life in peace and serenity” right there.

Thompson, who came to Eckstein’s defense when murder charges were filed against her, continued to aid the mentally ill woman when her sister, Eleanor Jones, and Jones’ children filed suit contesting the will, which left all of the Eckstein family property to Sybille, who had never married and had lived at home, caring for her parents and being cared for by them.

Until the Jones family’s legal efforts to wrest the property from Eckstein were dropped, Thompson explained, “Sybille faced being forced out of the only place she knew, without any money and without any ability to earn a living.”

Sybille Eckstein was diagnosed as mentally ill in the 1950s and had led a quiet life, protected by her parents. She had never held a job outside the family’s nursery business. She had never learned to drive a car nor to cope with the stresses of modern life.

Her aging mother died in 1984, and a few years later her robust father was found to have Alzheimer’s disease. Eckstein, under medication to control the delusions that mark her mental disease, sometimes failed to take the proper dosage and problems followed.

Sheriff’s deputies had been called to the Eckstein home at least twice before the call that signaled the fatal fight between Sybille and her father, both times because of clashes between Sybille and her father.

Each time, legal action was dropped when law enforcement officers learned of the family’s history and dismissed Sybille Eckstein’s accusations of her father “practicing black magic” on her.

The battle that ended in Henry Eckstein’s death lasted four hours as Sybille Eckstein tried to fight the devil for her father’s soul, she told authorities.

Her friend, Ann Thurley, wonders whether the woman who has spent her life protected from the outside world can function on her own.

Thurley sees Sybille Eckstein’s future as a barren wasteland, “being so far from anyone, so lonely that it gives her time to dwell on it all.”

It is, after all, the place were Eckstein fought for hours with her father. It is also the place where her mother died after a long illness.

Thurley, a Rancho Santa Fe resident, makes the long trip to Valley Center at least once a week to take Eckstein shopping or to the doctor.

“She is happy now, but I wonder, in the long run if it would be better if she had someone to share that large house,” Thayer said.

Sybille Eckstein isn’t worried about that.

“Of course I feel lonely, but I have two wonderful friends, and I am looking forward to making more,” she said.

As for the future, Eckstein is optimistic. “I have taken on responsibility all my adult life, so I don’t worry. I can handle it.”