Cathy Boone Oregon homeless woman died with $884K unclaimed inheritance in bank. Afflicted with drugs addiction and mental health issues.
How could she have not known? Unless she did …?
An Oregon woman died homeless last year while $884,000 in inheritance money sat unclaimed in a state bank account, a news report said.
Cathy Boone died in January 2020 in a warming shelter after living on the streets of the city of Astoria, amid drug and mental health issues, KGW News reported.
‘It just didn’t make any sense to me,’ her father Jack Spithall told the outlet.
‘That money just sitting there – and she needed help in the worst way.’
Efforts to find woman
Boone who passed away at age 49, grew up in the Portland area and later moved to Astoria, where her mother lived after her parents had separated. When Boone’s mother died in 2016, representatives of the estate tried to locate the daughter to no avail.
Newspaper ads went unanswered and a private investigator couldn’t locate her – so her unclaimed money was transferred to the Department of State Lands, KGW stated. In total, the afflicted woman was owed $884,407.
‘Given a year and a half of effort taken by the personal representative and the attorney for this particular estate, there really isn’t much more that the state could do,’ Claudia Ciobanu, a spokesperson for the department, said.
‘This is a unique case and we sympathize with the family.’
Fractured family
‘She was a special person as far as I’m concerned,’ said Donny Holder, who often shared cigarettes and coffee with Boone.
‘She was a sweetheart,’ said Holder, who carries photographs of Boone, wrapped in a Ziplock bag in his coat pocket. ‘I fell in love with her.’
Added Boone’s father: ‘I think my failure to recognize her mental health issues. I kind of gave up on her because of the drugs and shouldn’t have done that.’
Friends and acquaintances said they had no idea Boone had money available to her. She struggled to survive, like many others living unsheltered in a harsh outside environment.
What happens to Boone’s money now is unknown, with her two biological children and others potentially having claims to the money according to KGN.
