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THREE heartless care home operators cut off a vulnerable pensioner from her family before stealing her £175,000 estate.
Graham Walker, 74, his wife Lyn, 71, and former manager Jamiel Slaney-Summers, 65, conspired to defraud frail 85-year-old Rita Barnsley.
Rita Barnsley, 85, was the victim of a cruel scamCredit: SWNS
Heartless Jamiel Slaney-Summers, the care home manager at the time, was captured on CCTV swapping money in Rita's purseCredit: SWNS
Graham & Lyn Walker were also complicit in this despicable schemeCredit: SWNS
The callous trio, who operated Amberley Care Home in Brierley Hill, devised a fraudulent will to seize Rita’s life savings.
With no immediate family and a significant estate, the pensioner became a target for Slaney-Summers shortly after her arrival at the care home in May 2020.
Simultaneously, the mobile phone that Rita had brought with her vanished, and attempts by her only living relative to communicate with her through the main home phone were consistently thwarted.
“They wouldn’t let me speak to her on the phone,” her cousin, Verna Woolley, stated.
The 82-year-old continued, “There was always an excuse as to why I couldn’t talk to her.”
Woolley, who suffers from agoraphobia—the fear of crowded, public places—was unable to visit Rita during this period.
She told Channel 4: “You can see from her photograph how frail she was. If it hadn’t been for that, I would have gone down and helped her, and this would never have happened.”
The Walkers and Slaney-Summers then fabricated a document to steal her £175,000 estate, as revealed in Wolverhampton Crown Court.
Described as a “sham” by the court, the document was created the day after Rita passed away in August 2021.
This document would have named Slaney-Summers and Walker as the executors and primary beneficiaries of the will.
Efforts to enforce her will were initiated just four days after the 85-year-old’s death by the cruel trio.
Ruthless Slaney-Summers had also withdrawn £6,000 directly from Barnsley’s bank account.
The scam was uncovered thanks to Rita’s cousin Verna, who alerted Dudley Council’s Trading Standards team—leading to one of the largest elder fraud investigations in the UK.
All three defendants were found guilty by a jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
Recently, a jury unanimously convicted Graham, Lyn, and former manager Jamiel Slaney-Summers of fraud and theft.
They are set to be sentenced in December for the financial exploitation of Rita, who paid them £700 a week for her care.
Slaney-Summers was slated to receive 50 percent of Rita’s estate, while Mrs. Walker would obtain 25 percent.
A further £5,000 was also designated for the care home staff.
The court heard that Rita had moved into the care home in May 2020 due to illness.
Woolley was her only surviving family member, and due to her agoraphobia, Rita was left isolated from the outside world.
However, instead of receiving the care she needed, she was financially exploited by those meant to safeguard her.
‘HORRIFIC ABUSE’
When Rita passed away in August 2021, Slaney-Summers called Woolley with the news.
The care home manager arranged the funeral herself, which Woolley believes did not align with her cousin’s wishes.
The following month, on September 7, 2021, Woolley received Barnsley’s will in the mail from a solicitors’ firm.
She discovered that the majority of the estate had been left to the care home operators.
Rita’s signatures appeared inconsistent, and the document seemed to have been written in various handwriting styles.
Trading Standards officers identified several “red flags” in the will, prompting the arrest of the Walkers and Slaney-Summers.
Afterwards, Councillor Phil Atkins, the cabinet member responsible for trading standards at Dudley Council, stated: “Their intentions were obvious—to rob this poor, vulnerable woman of all the money she had worked her entire life to earn.
“It was a horrific abuse of trust by three individuals who she relied on to act
