Marion County investigators ruled man’s death suicide
| Special to the Daily Commercial
DUNNELLON – Eighty-six-year-old Jack Krueger had a big heart.
“He was always taking in strays,” said his neighbor and friend Pat Connell. “Cats, people…”
One of those “strays” was 48-year-old Michelle Isoldi.
But the big heart in the little 5-foot-5 man would be broken when he came home after being hospitalized with COVID-19 and discovered that the ex-con that he loved like a daughter had allegedly rifled his checkbook, burned through his credit cards, put 5,000 miles on his car and bought an automobile with his good credit.
“I can’t take the pain anymore it is all too much for me,” he wrote in a note found by Marion County sheriff’s investigators on Aug. 29. “I loved Michele (sic) but she threw me under the bus when I needed her. She is a non careing (sic) person and never loved me. She now has the money so hope she enjoys money now that she has it. I thank Pat [Connell], Dave and Linda for their help. But it was not enough help to make it worth to live. I hate to leave my Buster and Bob,” he wrote, referring to his cats. “They were my everything so good by (sic) to you all. This is the best for me.”
He signed it “Jack Krueger.”
The story of Krueger’s life and death and his relationship with Isoldi and with his friends, including Connell, is a story of love, trust, suspicion, heartbreak, and questions about character and motive.
Most of all, it is a tragedy.
Battle lines formed
Isoldi, who says she loved Krueger, has not been charged with elder abuse, fraud or any charge related to Krueger’s death.
That infuriates Connell, who has had a hard time accepting her friend’s death. Krueger had no desire to kill himself, she said. He had plans to go to his lawyer’s office the next day so he could cut off Isoldi’s power of attorney status and remove her from his will. He was also going to go to a doctor to have his catheter removed, she said.
“That lady is a nut,” Isoldi said of Connell in a phone interview.
“You can talk to anybody in my family. I loved him. He was my best friend,” Isoldi said, sobbing. “We were going to get married. That lady drove him crazy.”
As for the money: “It took my sister and me three days to pay his bills. It was a mess.”
Isoldi said she never took any money for herself.
Whether there was abuse or not, the chance of getting a fraud conviction when the victim is dead is practically impossible, said Ric Ridgway, now the former chief assistant state attorney for the Fifth Judicial Circuit. He made his comments before he retired from the prosecutor’s office.
That’s because prosecutors have to prove intent. They agreed to look into it, however, because of Connell’s complaint.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office conducted an investigation into Krueger’s death and concluded that it was a suicide. The Medical Examiner has ruled it a suicide and the state attorney agrees.
Isoldi faces other legal trouble, however.
On Sept. 17, she was arrested by police on Pine Avenue in Ocala and charged with driving with a suspended license (habitual) and being in possession of alprazolam. Both offenses are third-degree felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. A pretrial conference is scheduled for March 23
The brand name of alprazolam is Xanax; it is a sedative used to treat depression and anxiety.
The police report stated that they found one pill inside her purse and eight others in a plastic bag.
“The defendant stated that she did not have a prescription for them,” the officer noted.
Alprazolam is one of the drugs prescribed to Krueger and found in his car.
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‘One of the nicest people’
Krueger’s death has saddened his friends.
“Jack was one of the nicest people you could ever meet,” Connell said.
“Jack was a kind, generous man who wouldn’t hesitate to give you the shirt off his back,” a…
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