An Ohio woman pleaded guilty Friday morning to murdering her 93-year-old grandmother by drowning her in the kitchen sink, according to Preble County Sheriff Mike Simpson and a police report.
35-year-old Heidi Matheny faces 15 years to life when she is sentenced.
The sheriff says the case returns to Preble County Common Pleas Court next week.
Her March 13 trial was canceled earlier this week.
Matheny has been held in lieu of a $500,000 bond at the Preble County Jail since her arrest last year.
She was charged with drowning her grandmother, Alice J. Matheny, inside their apartment on East Somers Street in Eaton.
Heidi Matheny’s arrest report has graphic details of her confession to an Eaton police detective.
She said she climbed out the window after killing her grandmother, walked to the jail and “turned herself in for killing her grandmother.”
“I asked her what happened,” the detective wrote. “She stated she held her head in the sink until she stopped blowing bubbles. Then she drug her to the couch. She started blowing bubbles so she put her in the bathtub until she stopped.”
She told the detective her grandmother’s doctor “needs to be in a nursing home but they cannot afford it.” She said her grandmother was stressed out and had panic attacks almost every day: “She shouldn’t have to live like that.”
She also told the detective, according to the report, “I just lost my s—. It’s nothing that she did. She’s not, she’s a perfect freaking grandma.”
She said she had grandmother by the hair and told the detective “she struggling, she was strong.”
The detective asked her if she was able to overpower the older woman even though she was struggling.
“She said yes,” the report states.
The detective asked Heidi Matheny what her thought process was at that time, “maybe we could stop this. She said ‘no, she wanted her to be at rest.’”
He clarified and asked her if it was her “intention to keep doing what you have been doing even though she could still be alive. She said yes.”
He also asked her if her grandmother was breathing or moving at that point.
Matheny responded, “No, just bubbles coming out.”
She explained then, the report continues, that she filled the bathtub and drug her grandmother into the bathroom. She removed her clothes, placed her in the bathtub and held her underwater for 15 minutes.
“She was face up so she was pushing her down by the chest. She said she kept floating back up to the top, so she rolled her over. Face down. Then she left. She went out through the window. She didn’t want the neighbors to see her.”
The detective asked her “if she planned this,” the report reads.
“She said no but they did discuss this before. Whenever her grandmother was manic she would tell Matheny to just kill her. She said we all say this.”
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