A Lexington man who cashed his children’s social security checks and spent thousands of dollars at casinos while his mentally handicapped son starved to death will spend the next two decades behind bars.
Jerry Lakes was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday, attorneys in the case tell LEX 18.
On May 2, Lakes pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and several counts of neglect, theft and abuse of a disabled adult.
http://liarcatchers.com/wrongful_death.html
His wife, Peggy Whitlock, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on two counts of neglect.
Lakes, Whitlock and their four adult children – all of whom are mentally disabled – lived in a motel room on Stanton Way off Newtown Pike. Hotel staff called for an ambulance on March 13, 2013, after one of the sons, Gerald Lakes, was found dead.
An autopsy revealed Gerald Lakes starved to death. Two other adult sons with severe mental disabilities were filthy and severely malnourished. But an adult daughter appeared to be clean and well fed, detectives and prosecutors have said.
Meanwhile, Lakes was cashing the children’s social security benefits and spending some of the money gambling at casinos, prosecutor Traci Caneer said. On top of the prison sentence, Lakes was ordered to pay about $55,000 in restitution, the amount he was accused of stealing from his children.
Caneer said not all the money went toward gambling, but “he certainly did not use it for their benefit.”
Jerry Lakes and Peggy Whitlock were originally charged with murder. A Fayette County grand jury reduced those charges to manslaughter when the couple was indicted in November, and the manslaughter charge against Whitlock was dropped when she pleaded guilty to neglect.
“It’s good that the grand jury understood that this was not murder, that it was something less than murder,” said Public Defender Jeremy Kemper, who represented Lakes. “That doesn’t take away from the tragic nature of the circumstances.”
Kemper added that Lakes “hopes that his children and his wife can forgive him at some point.”
The three surviving children are being cared for by the state, Caneer said.They are in good health.
