Margaret Kearney said she smothered her boyfriend to death with a pillow ‘to prevent him from any further pain’ (Pictures: Pasco County Sheriff’s Office/Google)
A woman allegedly confessed to smothering her cancer-stricken boyfriend to death with a pillow because she was ‘disgusted’ from caring for him.
Margaret Kearney, 69, of New Port Richey, Florida, was arrested on Tuesday in the death of her boyfriend who was in hospice care with terminal rectal cancer, according to a complaint affidavit obtained by the New York Post.
A visiting nurse discovered Kearney’s boyfriend of 15 years dead on December 20.
The unnamed victim had ‘no concerning injuries’, according to Pasco County Sheriff’s deputies who arrived at the scene.
Margaret Kearney has been charged with premeditated first-degree murder (Picture: Pasco County Sheriff’s Office)
A day later, Kearney’s friend of over three decades told officials that a few phone calls they had together raised red flags.
Kearney ‘expressed disgust with having to care for the victim, as the victim was defecating himself due to his illness and she did not wish to clean him and would wait for Hospice or a home health care nurse to clean him next time they visited,’ stated the affidavit.
The friend said Kearney had called her just after 10.30pm the prior night saying ‘that she smothered the victim with a pillow and that he was “gone”‘.
Kearney said she intended to cover him with a blanket so the hospice nurse visiting the next day would think he died in his sleep, her friend claimed.
The boyfriend was found dead in the couple’s home in New Port Richey, Florida (Picture: Google)
In a controlled call Kearney had with her friend the next day, the suspect said she felt ‘better’ and confirmed that she used a pillow to smother the victim, according to the affidavit.
Kearney told detectives that her boyfriend called her into his bedroom complaining about pain, and that she pressed a pillow onto his face for five minutes. He went from ‘alive and alert’ to no longer having a breath, she said.
Rather than calling 911, Kearny said she slept on the couch and told the visiting nurse that she believed her boyfriend died in his sleep due to natural causes.
The girlfriend also allegedly confessed to giving him more liquid morphine than he needed.
Kearney justified her actions by saying that she killed her boyfriend ‘to prevent him from any further pain’.
She has been charged with premeditated first-degree murder and is being held with no bond.
New Port Richey is about 35 miles northwest of Tampa.
The boyfriend’s death comes four months after a North Dakota woman allegedly poisoned her boyfriend to death after discovering he had received a $30million inheritance and intended to break up with her.
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Florida woman Margaret Kearney allegedly ‘expressed disgust with having to care for the victim… defecating himself due to his illness’.