Illness complicates Iowa murder case with Southwest Florida connection
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Debi Joy Olson freely admits that she stalked her ex-husband across the country, then stabbed him to death last summer at a mall in Davenport.
She is representing herself in court, saying she wants to plead guilty and go to prison. Her only regret, she says, is that she can’t be extradited to her home state of Florida where she could face the death penalty.
But what seems like a simple case has been complicated and is nowhere near completion because the 53-year-old woman apparently suffers from Huntington’s disease, a progressive genetic disease that degenerates brain cells.
That has led the court to question her mental competency. A judge has ordered a competency evaluation and threatened to obtain medical samples by “nonconsensual means” if Olson doesn’t cooperate.
Olson, of Sarasota, Fla., faces charges of first-degree murder and willful injury in the killing of Mauricio Droguett, her husband of about 20 years.
“I gave up my Country, my relatives, my friends for him 25 years ago. I will give up the rest of my life for Him now,” she wrote to District Court Judge James E. Kelley in a letter titled “Confession to First Degree Murder.”
“I need to plead guilty now … I want to go to prison for life,” she wrote in the letter, dated Oct. 14, 2008.
Olson is accused of stabbing her ex-husband 10 times at the Northpark Mall on July 10. Droguett was a comptroller for Carson & Barnes Family Circus, a Florida-based operation that was setting up in the mall parking lot.
In a series of letters to the judge, Olson detailed how she tracked Droguett across the country, bought a hammer and knife, and then confronted him in front of about a half-dozen witnesses.
In one of the letters, she wrote that no one except she and her ex-husband will ever know why she killed him, and that she “did not kill him out of anger, it was out of love.”
Olson was arrested a short time later, and police said she immediately confessed and cooperated with the investigation. Court records show she also told an officer that she had Huntington’s.
Since her arrest, however, as court officials have questioned whether she can understand the proceedings, Olson has been less responsive and has refused to share her medical records or be evaluated by doctors.
Huntington’s causes slurred speech and stumbling in its early stages, and as it progresses the person suffers uncontrolled movements, loss of intellectual faculties, and emotional disturbance.