When an inmate was reported dead at the Washoe County jail earlier this week, advocate Aleene Carrino sent a worried email fearing it might be Roger Hillygus, who is facing charges of kidnapping his mother from a Reno Alzheimer’s care facility in 2019 and taking her across state lines to California.
“We pray it’s not Roger Hillygus because his last report was yesterday around 12:30 p.m.,” Carrino wrote. “He is very sick with some type of intestinal illness.” Carrino says Hillygus, who is in his 50s, has lost 65 pounds in detention, which we couldn’t independently confirm.
“We don’t want him to die in there,” she said.
The dead inmate turned out to be Mark Forcum, who was facing an open murder charge in the death of his wife. Media have indicated Forcum hung himself in his cell.
Carrino is one of several advocates who has been leading an all out charge to clear Hillygus. While in detention, Hillygus has also become a whistleblower for renewed accusations of alleged mistreatment and inhumane conditions at the Washoe County jail.
Another advocate joining her in trying to help Hillygus and also improve conditions at the Parr facility is Annemarie Grant, whose brother Thomas Purdy died in 2015 after being hog tied at the jail, leading to large settlement payouts.
A third member of the pro-Hillygus team trying to raise awareness with media and keeping in constant contact is Matt Skarlatos. What unites Skarlatos and Carrino to Hillygus are lived experiences in guardianship disputes. Skarlatos had his rights to visit his ailing father terminated in 2017 in Virginia over disputes over his care in an assisted living facility.
The Ohio-based Carrino, who has become an advocate for the elderly and disabled as well, had her own guardianship disputes concerning her mother.
“A lot of us, we follow each other’s cases, we try to support one another,” she explained during a recent joint phone call with Grant and Skarlatos.
In the Hillygus case, former Mineral County Sheriff and Reno Sparks Indian Colony police chief Steward Handte also faces charges, with a jury trial now scheduled for January.
Media have reported that Susan Hillygus was suffering from dementia when Hillygus took her with Handte from the Reno care facility, allegedly without permission, saying she was being overmedicated. Hillygus was located several days later in Bellflower, California and arrested after a standoff. His mother died two months later.
Hillygus who had been out on bail was arrested again in Missouri in October last year after a decision that he had failed to report for a disputed psychological evaluation in Washoe County, where he was sent back after additional proceedings earlier this year.
Handte, who was charged with conspiracy, has admitted to helping Hillygus because a similar dispute had taken place in his own family. He told police at one point that he was distraught when he had learned that Hillygus had lost a court battle with his sister over guardianship.
Skarlatos alleges a “slick lawyer” helped “re-engineer the original trust” which had made Hillygus the sole successor trustee. These arguments now look likely to be decided in court.
The case has gotten national attention with guardianship reform advocates backing Hillygus, including a group called Veterans for Guardianship and Probate Reform. During the pandemic they started a change.org petition to recall Washoe County District Attorney Christopher Hicks.
All the while pleading his innocence, Hillygus has been conveying near constant information about difficult detention conditions for himself and others. Grant says she has been trying to get body cam footage from incidents of alleged wrongdoing advocates are being told about but hasn’t been able to get any.
“Every time I request body cam for an incident they deny all of them,” Grant said. “I don't want to see another person killed there.”
Earlier this year, Grant had written an email indicating her concern was first and foremost with “the safety and well-being of the incarcerated HUMAN BEINGS at the WCSO. I truly believe Attorney General Aaron Ford needs to exercise his powers he was given during the 82nd Nevada legislative session when AB58 passed! [This] gives him authority to investigate any state governmental authority who may be engaging in certain patterns or practices that deprive persons of certain rights, privileges or immunities and to file a civil action to eliminate such a practice or pattern.”
This past summer, a Washoe County Sheriff’s Office captain expressed concerns of overcrowding. In recent years, there have been repeated spikes in deaths of inmates at the Washoe County jail.
Speaking about Hillygus and Handte at a Board of County Commissioners meeting in April, Washoe County Commissioner Jeanne Herman said “I believe they have not been treated fairly.”
Handte himself wrote an email in April to Washoe County Chief Deputy Ralph Caldwell warning that “if my friend and co-defendant, Roger Hillygus, suffers some type of catastrophic medical event that renders him unable to go on with any [semblance] of a normal life (or worse), I will go to whatever ends, afforded to me under the legal system in this state and country [t]o make sure that you and your staff face the most severe criminal and civil repercussions available to identify, expose and take down all of you because of what you have done to my friend. Be forewarned, Chief Deputy Caldwell. This is not a threat in any way, shape or form. This is a forthright statement of fact!”
The email also included allegations of wrongdoing and mistreatment Hillygus has also been relaying which we have been unable to verify independently. Handte who was re-arrested in September for leaving Washoe County, a condition of his release while out on bail. has called conditions inside the county jail “deplorable.” Our Town Reno wrote the Sheriff’s Office asking about these comments and allegations but did not hear back by the time of publication.