Woman Arrested In Fatal Stabbing Of Missing San Jose Man
SAN JOSE (CBS SF) -- A 46-year-old woman was arrested Thursday on suspicion of murder in the stabbing death of a San Jose man whose body was found that day, weeks after his family reported him missing, San Jose police said Friday.
Regina Louise Butler is set to appear in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Monday but she had not been formally charged by the district attorney's office as of Friday, a court clerk said.
San Jose police arrested Butler following the discovery of the body of a man identified as Stanley Jacobson, by his family members around 11:30 a.m. Thursday, police said.
When police arrived, they found Jacobson, who had been fatally stabbed, inside his residence at Hilltop Manor, a low-income apartment complex for seniors at 790 Ironwood Drive in South San Jose, police said.
Jacobson's family filed a missing person's report on him on Feb. 18 and a neighbor had last seen Jacobson, who suffered from dementia, at his home on Ironwood Drive on Feb. 5, police said.
The 69-year-old man's body was overlooked by relatives, neighbors and police in the early search of his home.
Officials say Stanley Jacobson's granddaughter finally discovered the corpse Thursday under a pile of bedding, which officers had photographed two weeks earlier when they searched the home in the Hilltop Manor retirement community.
Jacobson's granddaughter and neighbors had visited the apartment numerous times since he went missing, but the pile of bedding was big enough to mask the decomposing body's odor.
Neighbors describe Butler as the girlfriend of Jacobson.
Police had said after his disappearance that Jacobson may have been with Butler and driving a tan 1996 Ford Taurus.
According to court documents, Butler on Feb. 13 pleaded no contest to a charge of petty theft after an employee of the Regional Medical Center of San Jose said his cellphone, worth about $800, was stolen from his office there.
The medical center employee told San Jose police that on Feb. 8 a woman later identified as Butler wore clothing similar to a nurse's uniform, entered a restricted area of the facility and stole the man's cellphone.
Butler, identified in a police report as a transient, was sentenced to two years of probation, according to court records.
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