A Michigan City husband and wife who admitted stealing more than $100,000
from a local widow have been sentenced to time served in jail.
Bary Bostic, 47, and Robbin Bostic, 41, with a listed address of 425 Walker
St., were each charged with a single count of theft, a Class C felony
punishable by a term of two to eight years in the Indiana Department of
Correction (DOC).
On Wednesday, the Bostics were sentenced to eight years each in the Indiana
Department of Correction with all but 16 months and 24 days suspended, the
time which they served in the Porter County Jail while waiting disposition
of their case.
Under a plea agreement with the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the Bostics
will serve the balance of their sentence on formal probation.
In her sentencing order, Porter Circuit Court Judge Mary Harper made note of
one aggravating factor: “The victim of the crime is blind” and the Bostics
were “in a position of trust as (her) caretaker.”
Harper also made note of one mitigating factor: the Bostics admitted their
guilt.
Both were accused of stealing and then selling multiple bars of gold,
silver, and platinum which belonged to an elderly Chesterton woman under
their care.
According to the probable cause affidavit filed by the Chesterton Police
Department, on March 16, 2012, officers responded to a burglary complaint in
the 300 block of South 10th Street, the elderly woman’s home. The widow was
not at the residence at the time but staying instead at hotel in Michigan
City, police said.
Responding officers were told by a woman taking care of the home in the
widow’s absence that she found a safe in the living room open and a file
cabinet opened and all paperwork pertaining to the widow’s late husband’s
estate missing, police said.
A short time later, one of the widow’s co-guardians arrived at the scene,
where she advised officers that the safe in question had contained silver
and platinum bars and coins and that Bary and Robbin Bostic, as the widow’s
caregivers, had access to the residence, police said.
Further investigation determined that a Michigan City jeweler who had, over
the course of 30 years, sold multiple gold, silver, and platinum bars to the
widow’s husband had recently re-purchased many of those bars and had issued
multiple checks to the Bostics or to their real estate broker on their
behalf, police said.
Those checks include two on Feb. 8 in the amounts of $96,695 and $56,224.45;
one on Feb. 9 for $67,080.55; and three on March 9 for $42,695, $14,755, and
$45,000, police said.
In addition, police said, in May investigators learned that Ameripawn had
re-issued to the widow $118,755.55 for silver and platinum bar and jewelry
which the Bostics had pawned there.
The Bostics had been held at the Porter County Jail since November 2012 in
lieu of a cash-only bond of $100,000. They petitioned for a lower bond late
last year, citing health issues, but Harper rejected their request, noting
in her order that, should the Bostics fail to bond out, their medical
appointments would be the responsibility of the jail staff.