Nine months ago, Doris Guthrie hadn’t thought much about what happens to victims of violent crimes.
She was still mourning the loss of her only son in a car accident and coping with the illness of her 87-year-old husband, Paul, who was battling cancer and dementia.
They both had worked hard to be financially secure in their retirement, and were enjoying their peaceful and orderly life.
But on March 22, 2012, a man broke into their home on Coral Drive in Fort Walton Beach, beat them, robbed them and changed their lives forever.
“You don’t just have a home invasion and that’s it,” said Doris, who is 83. “Once you’re a victim, things do change. We lost a lot — our savings, our money, our automobile, our quality of life.”
Doris also lost Paul. They celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in a hospital just days before his death June 23.
Although the medical examiner did not link Paul’s death to the beating he had received three months earlier, Doris is convinced that the events of that March night shortened Paul’s life by a year or more.
Certainly, they tainted his remaining weeks and months. He had a broken jaw, broken nose and broken arm.
Doris took him back to the emergency room three times for bleeding on his brain. His wounds healed slowly, requiring near-daily visits to doctors and therapists.
The Air Force veteran spent the last weeks of his life in hospice care at Eglin Regional Hospital.
“We just took care of what we had to,” Doris said of their last months together. “Paul was more angry, I think, than I was. He was beat up more.”
Four light knocks
The man accused of breaking into their house was arrested that same night.
Jonathan Edward Fennell, a 34-year-old Georgia man, was charged with home invasion robbery, false imprisonment, aggravated battery on persons over 65, motor vehicle theft and aggravated fleeing and eluding.
He had been hanging around the neighborhood for several days before the robbery, trying to sell small appliances and asking for money, according Doris and other neighbors.
Paul and Doris had helped him, too. Doris gave him some cash, while Paul gave him cash and a ride.
She described Fennell as clean-cut and well-spoken, although she was suspicious of him by the third day. When he asked for a glass of water and returned it half-full, she put the glass in a plastic bag, planning to take it to the police the next day.
Instead, he returned to their house that night and knocked on the door leading from the carport to the living room.
Doris was sitting alone in the living room watching television when she heard four light knocks, and then another four.
She peeked through the drapes and recognized him.
“I thought something is not quite right,” she said.
She put her hand on the knob and turned it slightly. He burst in, grabbed Doris’ slight frame and put her into a rough headlock.
Using the cord from a clock radio, he tied her hands tightly behind her back and then tied her to the coffee table.
She didn’t resist.
“I remember thinking, ‘Curl up and get loose. It can’t hurt you as much,’ ” she recalls. “I wasn’t afraid of him. He didn’t threaten to kill us. He didn’t have a knife or a gun.”
But when Paul came out of the bedroom and saw his wife being tied up, the frail older man yelled at the intruder.
“He knocked Paul down, screaming at him,” she said. “He beat him till he got him beat down so he could tie him up. Paul never quit. He kept yelling. He kept kicking. At one point he told him, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’ ”
After the attacker got Paul tied up, he allegedly took money out of Doris’ purse and Paul’s wallet, then grabbed keys and left in the couple’s van.
Doris managed to free herself from the coffee table and made her way to Paul, where she shouted at him to untie her. He was in and out of consciousness by then, she said.
She went to the phone and tried to dial 911 without being able to see the keypad.
Hands still tied, she backed up to the door, turned the knob and ran across the street to a neighbor’s. There, she rang the doorbell with her chin.
“Paul was tied up, blood everywhere,” she said. “You do anything to survive.”
She turned to see a police cruiser coming down the street. The Fort Walton Beach police officer detailed the encounter in the incident report attached to Fennell’s arrest report.
“Doris had her hands tied behind her back and advised she had just been robbed,” he wrote. “A radio electrical cord, with radio still attached, was used to tie Doris’ hands behind her back.”
She led officers back to their house, where they discovered Paul tied up and bleeding from lacerations to his head and arms, the report said.
They were taken to the hospital.
Fennell, officers reported, ran over something with the stolen van and blew the engine up. He ditched the vehicle and took off on foot. He was taken into custody shortly after, reports said.
The price of being a victim
Although the emotional toll has been the heaviest burden, Doris said crime victims pay in countless other ways.
They were billed twice to have their car towed — first to the police station and later to their home.
“It’s unfair,” acknowledged Fort Walton Beach Police Chief Ted Litschauer. “It is also unfair that they were the victims of a crime.”
But, he asked, who should pay for towing stolen cars?
“It should go to the perpetrator, but you have no means of collecting it unless they’re convicted and the judge orders them to,” he said. “It’s part of the cost of crime.”
Although close to $100 was taken from their home that night, Fennell only had a few dollars in his pocket when he was caught, reports said.
Doris would like to get the full amount back. So far, she hasn’t even gotten the few dollars that the police recovered.
Their medical bills have easily topped $1 million, paid for almost exclusively by taxpayers.
None of the repairs on their van were covered by insurance because Paul had changed the policy just before the break-in.
It took Doris three days to get her purse back from the Police Department, which kept her from getting onto Eglin Air Force Base to see her own doctors.
And it took her six months to get a copy of her husband’s death certificate, which she needed to file forms with the military.
Those are just a few of the tasks she has struggled with over the last few months.
“I thought everything would be really easy to do, but it hasn’t turned out that way,” she said.
Fennell’s court date has been pushed back several times. His next appearance is scheduled for Feb. 8.
At first, Doris had worried about a young man like him spending the rest of his life in jail. That has passed.
“He violated our house,” she said. “I don’t know why a young person like that would think that he had the right to come in and demand my money and my car.
“So now I want to see him go to jail.”
‘Everything is in turmoil’
Over the last nine months, Doris has been overwhelmed. When Paul died, she lost the person who shared her life and helped make decisions.
She had thought they had their affairs in order. After the break-in, she realized she was wrong.
“I thought my life would be planned and peaceful,” she said. “Now everything is in turmoil. I’m here with all these problems I can’t solve.”
Decisions big and small overwhelm her these days, and she isn’t sure how to handle them or who to ask for help.
And it’s hard for her to accept help, even when it’s offered.
Assistant State Attorney Angela Mason and her husband have been very kind to her in spite of her hesitation, she said.
They even came over and washed her dog one weekend.
Her grandson, who lives in Tennessee, calls her every day, but she doesn’t share with him all the worries in her life because it’s not her way.
She and Paul were always independent and that’s how she still wants to be.
“I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’m not traumatized. He didn’t leave me afraid, a nervous old woman.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Wendy Victora at 850-315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @WendyVnwfdn.