Woman Convicted in Abandonment of Ill Father

A woman who took her Alzheimer’s-afflicted father from a nursing home and abandoned him at a dog-racing track in Idaho was convicted Thursday of kidnaping, theft and perjury.

Sue Gifford, 41, also was convicted of unlawfully seeking public assistance. Her lawyer, Wilbur Smith, said he would appeal the verdict. He had argued that she was abused as a child and suffered from a mental disorder.

“I am convinced that there was no mental disease or defect,” said Circuit Judge Alan Bonebrake, who heard the 10-day trial without a jury. “It is clear she planned in advance the actions she took.”

Her 83-year-old father, John Kingery, was left in his wheelchair on March 21 at a track near Post Falls in northern Idaho, 320 miles from his nursing home in Portland, Ore. A bag of diapers was found nearby and a note misidentified him as John King and said he had Alzheimer’s, which causes memory loss.

Gifford was allowed to remain free pending sentencing on Feb. 5. She faces up to six years in prison.

Kingery died on Nov. 2 at a Morgantown, Ky., nursing home, where children from his first marriage had placed him. They had lost contact with Kingery until they recognized him from news reports of his abandonment.

Gifford, who lives in Hillsboro, was Kingery’s daughter from a second marriage.

She took responsibility for Kingery after her brother left her father at her doorstep in November, 1990, Smith said.

Prosecutors argued that Gifford stole her father’s Ford Motor Co. pension and some Social Security checks over an 18-month period.

Gifford took her father when nursing home officials questioned her about the pension, which by law should have gone to help pay nursing home bills otherwise covered by Medicaid, prosecutors said.

Gifford testified that she removed her father from the nursing home because she wanted to provide better care for him.

She said she left him at the track because she was no longer able to cope with his illness and thought that was the best way to help him.