A woman accused of lethally drugging her dying mother a year ago was ordered held pending trial.
Josephine Scheid, 36, was arrested in Florida last month charged with murder, more than a year after Gabrielle Michaelis died in hospice care Oct. 31, 2018.
A lengthy detention hearing included testimony from the woman's civil attorney, who offered what he called "an anti-motive" for Scheid.
But in a decision that took an hour and 20 minutes, Superior Court Judge Bernard DeLury found that it wasn't enough to overcome the burden for detention in the "particularly callous act of matricide."
He cited texts the woman wrote that included talking about putting a pillow over her mother's face, which the defense said was "gallows humor," but the prosecution likened to "a confession."
Scheid had a toxic relationship with her mother and financial troubles led Josephine Scheid to kill her mother in a "cold-hearted and calculated manner," Chief Assistant Prosecutor Sav Carroccia said.
But attorneys for the woman insist there is no proof Scheid killed her mother, who was under hospice care in the final stages of cancer, and that her understanding was if her mother had lived longer, the estate she left behind would have been worth thousands more.
The death was first ruled natural, which is how all such deaths in hospice are found unless authorities are notified of suspicions, Carroccia explained to the judge.
In this case, family members were extremely suspicious, Carroccia said.
But defense attorney Brenden Shur said only one person had suspicions, Scheid's sister-in-law. Scheid and her brother have been in a civil battle for about a year.
Her attorney in that case, Tom Duffy, insisted on testifying at the detention hearing, telling DeLury that his client actually has "an anti-motive" for killing her mother.
Michaelis and her two siblings were in the process of closing their own mother's estate at the time of her death. The belief was that Michaelis had to live to closing to get her share, which would have added $90,000 to $95,000 to any inheritance.
"Who hired you? Who are you working for?" Carroccia asked as his only question.
"Josephine Scheid," Duffy said.
Carroccia then told the judge much of what Duffy testified to was not admissible at this point in the case.
"(Michaelis) was actually on an uptick the day before she was killed," Carroccia said, adding that the older woman refused pain medication through the month of October.
"If the victim's not taking it herself, and the defendant has control of the medication... Well, connect the dots," he said. "It's a homicide."
But co-defense attorney John Zarych said Carroccia's argument was "a lot of hyperbole" without many facts.
"I submit there are lots of people at the end stages of cancer who don't get the perfect doses, and the people around them aren't being charged with murder," he said.
Instead, Zarych said this is a case of in-fighting within a family that happens when someone dies.
There were two opiate addicts in the home at the time: Michaelis' husband and Scheid's then-fiance, Zarych said.
