An elderly woman’s valuables are stolen according to the victim’s family members. Two cleaning ladies are now accused of stealing the jewelry and selling them to pawn shops.
The victim's family says it had no idea what was going on, until an employee told them everything.
The two woman--arrested for theft and conspiracy Ronda Etherington...the house cleaneand Jamie Lewis her employee.
The victim's family needed help cleaning her house and thought they could trust them. Now they are heartbroken.
“We had so much faith in her and she turned,” said John McCreary.
A family trust shattered, after they say Etherington stole over $12,000 worth of Jewerly from 87-year-old Betty McCreary.
“Gold coins, cougar ann, gold bars, swiss gold bar, some fairly unique jewelry items that my grandpa had had custom made for my grandma,” said Meghann Youngblood, the victim’s granddaughter.
The family says they hired Etherington in 2013 to clean some vacant houses they owned-and they needed someone to take care of betty-and Etherington offered to help out-not knowing that she would steal from them.
“I never expected her to steal and then for me to hire the woman and have her steal from my mother was really a shell-shocker,” said McCreary.
A hidden crime they didn't know until they said Ehterington's employee Jamie Lewis confessed to them in February-saying her conscious was bothering her and the stealing has been going on since June of last year.
“Like you have huge punch in the gut and then everything inside of you goes cold because you trusted this gal,” said Youngblood.
Youngblood said the value of the jewelry is more than dollars and cents it's family heirlooms passed on to generations.
“I was led to believe would go to me and then to my daughter and would live on in our family and Ronda took that away from us she took every bit of it away from us we are left with nothing,” said Youngblood, “She devasted our family and that i hate her.”
Both women had $20,000 bonds. Ehterington had her preliminary hearing on May 10th and her arraignment set for June 12th.
Lewis has her preliminary hearing on May 17th.
