A Florida county official claimed he “helped” his 90-year-old grandfather by loading him up with a deadly cocktail of prescription drugs while the nonagenarian was in home hospice care earlier this year.
Christopher Balter, 35, resigned from his position as Indian River County’s Planning and Development Services director after his August 3 arrest for delivering a controlled substance and forgery, WFTV reported.
According to Balter’s arrest affidavit, police knew about the allegations since February 3, two days after the death of his grandfather, Gilbert Balter. Investigators learned from a friend of Balter’s, Kristen Rutherford, that Balter had announced in a group text that his grandfather had died and subsequently told her in a phone conversation that he “killed” him using his own prescribed medications, including Ambien.
Balter further told her that his grandfather was about to be cremated and so “no evidence would be found of this ever happening.” He also said that his grandfather was in a “vegetative” state, unable to move or speak for the past four days.
Rutherford told police she was “distraught” over what she had learned and struggled with what to do, especially since she was “terrified of Chris Balter’s connections with the city” of Palm Bay. When she spoke with investigators, she agreed to call Balter in a “controlled phone call” on speaker phone in front of investigators.
Affidavit for Arrest Warrant by kc wildmoon
A transcript of that call in the affidavit indicates that Rutherford told Balter she was “freaking out” over their previous conversation about his grandfather.
“Ok, people do that all the time to help people out,” he told her. “That is what hospice is. They load them full of f****** pain meds and ease their way out.”
When Rutherford told him she was still freaked out about it, Balter told her she was “thinking about yourself in this which is very selfish.”
“You called me and aid ‘I killed him’ while you were at a restaurant,” Rutherford says, referring to Balter’s telling her that he was having sushi out after his grandfather’s death.
“I didn’t kill him,” Balter replied. “I helped him out.”
Balter further claimed that his grandfather asked him to do, saying “he didn’t want to be spitting up and spuing on himself like he was.”
The conversation continued for some time, with Balter ultimately telling Rutherford that he “will sleep gladly at night” over what he did.
When investigators contacted the hospice company that provided care for the elder Balter, they learned that he had been a patient since January 6 and that his grandson was his emergency contact. The elder Balter’s son and daughter-in-law were his primary caretakers and legal representative. Gilbert Balter had a full care team assigned to his case — and that two days before his death he was alert, not in a “vegetative” state as his grandson said.
But on the day before his death, he was described as “nonverbal and sleeping, as he was on the morning of his death.
As investigators looked into the case, they paused the planned cremation of the elder Balter’s body. A subsequent autopsy found levels of Balter’s usual prescriptions in his body, along with Ambien — which was his grandson’s prescription and not his.
Further investigation uncovered a quit claim deed submitted to the court by Chris Balter, transferring his grandfather’s property to him. The document was filed on the day the grandfather was admitted to hospice. Kristen Rutherford’s signature was on the document as a witness, but she told investigators that Chris Balter had asked her to notarize the document, already signed by Gilbert Balter, and that she had refused. She denied signing as a witness and said that while she knew the notary who documented the signature, she had not had any contact with her in several years.
Toxicology tests and an autopsy were unable to determine with certainty that the drug cocktail Balter fed his grandfather resulted in his death, so he was charged only with delivering a controlled substance.
Balter posted bond and was released from jail, WFTV said.
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[Featured image: Christopher Balter/Brevard County Sheriff’s Office]
