Three people accused of transporting an elderly woman across the country between 2009 and 2011 all entered no contest pleas in Lincoln County Superior Court April 26.
Barbara Davis, 41, Nicholas Davis, 41, and Jonathan Stevens 21, were arrested July 12, 2011 after the then 85-year-old woman was discovered in a cabin at the Pine Crest Motor Court in Edgecomb the previous day. The case attracted national attention.
Twins Nicholas and Barbara Davis each pled no contest to one felony charge of intentionally endangering the welfare of a dependent. They were both sentenced to three years in prison, all suspended, and placed on two years probation. The Davis’s were both ordered to pay a $25 victim compensation fee.
Nicholas Davis was additionally ordered to pay $5000 restitution to the victim.
Stevens pled nolo to a misdemeanor charge of endangerment and was sentenced to 364 days confinement, all suspended, and one-year’s probation. Stevens was additionally ordered to pay $10 victim compensation fee.
All three were ordered to have no contact with the victim, identified in court papers as Sarah Cheiker, 86.
The Davis’s and Stevens were arrested after a pair of concerned residents called Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputies to check on an elderly woman living in a tiny cabin at the Pine Crest Motor Court in Edgecomb.
When deputies arrived, they found the woman, left alone for several days in a sweltering cabin with almost no food. At the time of her discovery, witnesses said the woman appeared to have been living on fast food and oranges.
The LCSO alleged Barbara and Nicholas Davis, and Stevens, whom the Davis’s call their godson, transported Cheiker from Los Angeles in 2009 and drove her around the country. At the time of the arrest, Cheiker told deputies she had been in Maine with the Davis’s for over a year, moving from place to place.
According to the LCSO, the woman has no known friends or family. The suspects allegedly kept her isolated from contact with other people and controlled all of her finances, according to an LCSO press release.
This week, LCSO Det. Robert McFetridge expressed some satisfaction that the Davis’s received felony convictions on their records. Citing the Cheiker’s age, McFetridge said the benefit of the pleas is that they spare Cheiker from having to testify.
“I would have liked to see them get jail time, but I think the DA did a good job, all things considered,” McFetridge said.
Cheiker is currently housed in a nursing home in Fryeburg, McFetridge said. She is in good health and good spirits.
“What she’s been through, it’s amazing, but it’s over, she’s safe; she’s healthy and she is being taken care of,” McFetridge said. “She will never get her life back to what it was, but she does have a civil attorney to see if they can recover any of her assets. Right now she is here; she is safe.”
The Davis’s do own some high valued properties in California but Cheiker’s effort, if any, to obtain those assets will be a civil proceeding. McFetridge declined to speculate on how much money Cheiker may have lost in the case. It is known that Cheiker once owned a home in California that was valued at more than $500,000.
Cheiker has expressed a desire to return to California, but McFetridge said she has no known living relatives and it remains unknown if there is anything to go back to, he said.
