Murder case a glimpse into stresses of caretaking

Published online on Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The scenes seared into the minds of those who know Bobby Yurkanin differed only in place: Whether in the pool, around the dinner table or at the bowling alley, he was the 50-something man whose life had long before been handed over to the sickness of his parents. Always his father was by his side.

Yurkanin moved across the country to care for his dying mother, only to do it all over as his father sank into the fog of Alzheimer's disease. When the octogenarian grew combative, his son would calm him. When he didn't want to eat, his namesake would cajole him to take some fruit.

The son assumed his caretaker role out of necessity, friends said, despite a strained family history and a less-than-perfect childhood. And those who observed him and his father together often describe the younger Yurkanin with similar adjectives of praise:

Dutiful. Patient. Dedicated.

Yet all of this disappears into a single scene: A beachside argument, the father's lifeless body lying in the sand, and the accusing fingers that then pointed the son's way. It disappears into the accounts of witnesses certain they saw the son drag his father into the ocean, let the waves steal his breath, then tell the 911 dispatcher called by an onlooker to turn the ambulance around.

Yurkanin arrived at his lowest point following a well-worn path of the relentless, thankless, solitary task of caring for someone no longer recognizable under a mask of dementia. Millions of others know it. But Yurkanin's downward spiral ended with a charge of murder.

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The success of Yurkanin's father as an engineer, businessman and inventor allowed a comfortable existence. The family home in New Jersey sold for nearly a million dollars, and there were two other more modest homes in Florida.

But Yurkanin has told psychologists his father was an abusive alcoholic, his mother prone to psychotic episodes triggered by mental illness. He told his ex-wife that his father abused both his mother and his grandmother.

For Bobby, an only child, childhood was traumatic and his family life strained, says his attorney, Michael Weinstein. Still, he went on to finish college and graduate school. He started law school but dropped out. He set up a paralegal business.

And he excelled at something that would be cited when his father lay helpless on the beach. For years, he was a lifeguard, whose skill is evident in weathered newspaper clippings accounting his wins at regional competitions.

In the last decade, he had stood guard within his family. He moved home to Short Hills, N.J., in the late 1990s to help care for a mother, who was struggling with cancer. It wasn't long after she died in 2001 that his father showed signs of illness, too. It became clear it was Alzheimer's. When the father resisted going in a nursing home, his son felt he had no choice but to take over his care.

After Bobby Yurkanin assumed round-the-clock supervision and he and his father moved permanently to Florida, the disease progressed. And in time, the son began to show signs of losing control.

At their home in Palm Coast, a neighbor, Kathy Mittelstadt, told police she once saw the father wandering the street only in a diaper. Numerous other times, she said she heard the son erupt in yelling and cursing.

"I can't wait till you're no longer one of my problems," she said she heard him say.

At the Playa Del Sol condominiums in Fort Lauderdale, where the father and son ultimately settled, the complaints began to amass. The father was repeatedly found wandering hallways, sometimes nude, and into others' apartments. Residents complained he dressed in front of an open door. Once, when Yurkanin was alerted his dad had been wandering again, condo employees said he went into a profane tirade in the lobby.