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Last Cruel Days. Homicide?
During a Sunday afternoon, a Latino who neither spoke nor understood English, dumped Nate Vilensky in an apartment at Council House. Vilensky, confined to a wheelchair and naked except for a hospital johnny and a medical ID bracelet, needed immediate help.
The previous week, administrators and an attorney evidently signed a lease for an apartment to house Vilensky knowing that he classified as a vulnerable adult. Council House does not have administrative staff qualified to cater to the needs of people capable of independent living let alone vulnerable adults. Moreover, staff do not work weekends or holidays.
The Latino set up a bed then piled boxes and loose clothing in the apartment and left other items strewn in the passageway before he left the building. Vilensky asked me to help him find his equipment and to hang up some of his clothes. That was my first introduction to the late Naftali Nathan Vilensky (72†) whom I soon recognized as lucid and articulate despite his extensive physical disabilities.
Council House rents independent-living apartments to senior citizens. The building does not classify as a nursing home and may not by law house vulnerable adults. The term “vulnerable adults” means people sixty years of age or older who have the functional, mental, or physical inability to care for themselves. Council House may not legally rent to them although it has done so on several occasions for financial gain. [Vulnerable Adults]
Administrators broke several laws by renting an apartment in a building for independent living to a third party to house a vulnerable adult. They then neglected and abused him - part of a pattern or practice of elder abuse. They should have referred him to a nursing home where he could have received the care that he needed. However, having accepted him as a tenant they had a legal responsibility to care for him themselves. Instead, they neglected him. [Elder Abuse - Preface]
Neglect means a pattern of conduct or inaction by a person or entity with a duty of care that fails to provide the goods and services that maintain physical or mental health. This includes omission and disregard which constitutes a clear and present danger to a person’s health, welfare, or safety. Vilensky died as the result of neglect and elder abuse which could interpret legally as homicide by abuse. [Homicide by Abuse]
Vilensky apparently had enough money to pay for excellent nursing home care. He claimed that he had just sold four properties at 90% of asking price. Seattle Times (29 Oct 99) published that asking price at $249,000 for a single property.
Vilensky, a Jew born in Poland (16 Jul 29), immigrated from Poland to Palestine under a British mandate. That year (1939), Polish Zionist leadership made an unequivocal declaration of allegiance to Britain at the outbreak of WWII by announcing that it would give all the assistance it could muster in the war with Nazi Germany. In reciprocation, Britain introduced a quota system for immigration of Polish Jews to Jewish towns in Palestine (later Israel) similar to its policies for Jewish immigration into Great Britain.
Many Polish Jews with relatives living in Palestine immigrated. The ten-year-old Vilensky qualified and moved to Palestine. At about the same time, Nazis released a nineteen-year-old Jew from a German concentration camp. Britain admitted him as a political refugee and he lived in London for a while.
Both Vilensky and the camp survivor moved to US under similar circumstances. In their third age they suffered similar humiliation and harassment from Stephen A. Mitchell, Council House administrator, to that which they suffered in the past. (The story about the camp survivor will appear in a separate case study. Name withheld to avoid further intimidation of him by Mitchell’s thugs.)
Prior to WWII, US refused admission to Jews and returned many of them to Europe to meet their fate. An upsurge of anti-Jewish feeling, similar to that in Poland, resulted from a general wave of resentment of minority groups between WWI and WWII. That discrimination caused employment problems and tightened quotas on immigration and Jewish enrollment at universities.
US immigration legislation enacted in 1921 and 1924, interpreted widely as anti-Semitic, specifically limited the immigration quotas of Eastern European nations - the same group that Council House now discriminates against and deems “Eurotrash”.
This all followed a period in the 1930s when Polish Jews began abandoning Zionist ambitions. With the Arab revolt, Palestine no longer seemed a solution to their problems. That thinking founded upon anti-Semitism that favored forced deportation of all Jews to Palestine - a practical impossibility.
Many anti-Semites picketed with signs calling for: “Moszku idz do Palestyny!” [Kikes to Palestine!]. Simultaneously, the Arab revolt caused the British government to impose immigration quotas. Both reasons caused Polish immigration to Palestine to fall drastically.
Vilensky lived in Palestine and Israel for about 10 years then decided to immigrate to the US. At that time, I served in a combat unit of the British army as part of a Middle East peace-keeping force. Egypt had posed a reprisal threat to the Suez Canal and Israel after it’s military loss to Israel (1948).
US admitted Jews because it became profitable during the “brain drain” after WWII. It also admitted Werner von Braun who invented V2 rockets and used concentration camp labor to make them. It took US all of six months to forgive Braun to advance US space research. Several prominent Nazi academicians also moved to the US without a problem.
Meanwhile, Londoners still suffered the after effects of V2 rocket attacks. One scored a direct hit on the Home for Aged Jews (built in 1871). It wiped out almost the entire aged Jewish population in a part of South London. A second rocket destroyed about fifty houses adjacent to that home killing my schoolmates, neighbors, and Jewish refugees living with and among us.
Council House directors do not know or care about history. They abused, evicted, and jailed, concentration camp and WWII survivors. While they languished in jail or mental institutions after wrongful incarceration, the directors charged them rent, claimed government subsidies, and confiscated security deposits. The directors run Council House for the same reason that US changed the immigration policy after the war - greed.
After arriving in the US, Vilensky earned two baccalaureate degrees from University of Washington which he attended from January 1953 through June 1957 - Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, (15 Jun 57) and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics (21 Mar 58). He then worked for Boeing most of his professional life as an aeronautics engineer. He also bought and rehabilitated residential properties in Seattle for resale until his health deteriorated. I can find no evidence that he rented them.
The strange thing about Council House dysfunction hinges on how a board of directors, consisting entirely of wealthy Jews, could appoint Mitchell, a neo-fascist sociopath and pathological liar, as administrator. Moreover, elevating him to the board of directors then allowing him and his kapos (thugs) to abuse elderly people, particularly other Jews, beggars understanding. [Five Kapos]
The directors probably did not suffer in the Shoah and may lack any true understanding of its ramifications in their rush to participate in the wealth created by a holocaust industry. However, their whole religious teaching proscribes the attitudes and behavior that they condone in Council House employees. [Neo-Fascism, Violence, and Indifference - Shoah]
How can they condone the abuse of elderly people and still face their peers at Herzl-Ner Tamid or other synagogues each Shabbat? How can they morally allow their operatives to openly refer to European Jewish immigrants as “Eurotrash”, black tenants as “shvarzer” (Yiddish - nigger), and maintenance staff as “kafir” (house-nigger)? Those prejudices probably show a resurgence of the bigotry and denial that occurred between the wars among “old-money zealots” - a West Coast constituency that included assimilated anti-Semitic Semites.
Lynn Wartnik (nee Cohen), former Council House co-president (who appointed the thespian monster as administrator) knows the camp survivor - a former patient of her father - from her childhood. Yet she does not give him the time of day. Lynn and other directors have done nothing to help tenants obtain reparations for their suffering. The camp survivor lost his family to Nazi gas chambers and with them went the family assets in Frankfurt am Main.
Swiss banks recently published on the Internet the names of 3,100 WWII-era account holders whom the Nazis may have persecuted (deadline for application 13 Jul 05). Apparently, Council House has no mechanism to check those lists to see if tenants have entitlement to any of the millions of dollars still on deposit. [Agency Accountability - Full Disclosure]
I would confidently place bets that synagogue and Jewish foundation officials have swarmed like circumcised locusts to see what they can get for themselves. That type of research has become an established function of the “holocaust industry” and its avaricious lawyers.
But why should Lynn W. care? She has her social position to uphold at the country club as the second wife of a superior court judge - albeit a corrupt one. Apparently at his wife’s bidding, Judge Anthony P. Wartnik had a hand in putting me into solitary confinement on charges she trumped-up with other Council House directors.
Wartnik made that ex parte, sua sponte decision (backstage decision made on a whim) in consort with another judge based upon what his wife told him and perjury that she and other directors filed with superior court. When questioned by an investigator about his action he said: “He’s right where he should be”.
Hypocrisy begins in Washington superior court and in your own home Judge Wartnik. “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” on this web site. [Matthew 7:1-2]
Boeing benefitted from employing Vilensky and many other immigrant Jews which increased the value of the company and the local economy enormously. Yet, Council House directors reward them at the end of their careers with humiliation, fear, and abuse because they have become sick and broke.
The day that Vilensky arrived at Council House, I recognized his plight and unpacked some of his things to find the medical equipment that he needed. He told me that he had a medical emergency device that he needed to connect but had no telephone line. As an interim measure, I set him close to the wall of my apartment so that he could bang on the wall if he needed help. I told him that he could use my telephone until I could contact authorities to have the proper equipment installed.
I noticed that he suffered from incontinence and that the bed linen had defecation stains. He could not leave his wheelchair and had to visit hospital three times a week. An Access bus picked him up and returned him usually in the early morning hours. He said that he needed contact with emergency services 24/7 because of his medical condition and particularly if he fell out of his wheelchair. As an apartment block for independent living, Council House possesses none of those services and relies upon tenant goodwill (a scarce commodity) toward people in need.
The next day, I called City of Seattle (CoS) elder abuse program, explained the circumstances and requested help for Vilensky. They did nothing neither did Mitchell when he heard of his condition. Instead, Mitchell rudely ordered Vilensky to remove his remaining possessions from the hallway - something he could not do by himself.
I asked CoS to send someone to move the heavy items and two young men arrived to move them into the apartment. They remained in a pile until the day Vilensky died. HUD and CoS rules make provision for providing help to vulnerable people, however, Vilensky had absolutely no help during his stay at Council House apart from that provided by several maintenance staff and me.
Although Council House directors accept HUD funds for a qualified service coordinator with clearly specified credentials and duties, they consistently employ non-qualified people who perform administrative work (or follow thespian pursuits on HUD sponsored time). They do not service tenants as required by HUD regulations. [Service Coordinators]
At the time of Vilensky’s death, out-of-work stage actors occupied both the administrator and service coordinator positions neither of them available at weekends. They both neglected tenants. Instead, they used Council House time and facilities to work on theatrical projects concurrent with drawing high salaries partly or wholly funded by HUD.
Vilensky classified as a vulnerable adult by virtue of physical infirmity according to any interpretation of law. Council House should not have rented an apartment to attorney Theodore Rosenblume who evidently employed the Latino who dumped Vilensky at Council House. Rosenblume apparently made financial arrangements with Council House administrators the previous week for that purpose.
Later, in a complaint to Council House directors and their attorney about elder abuse (also addressed to Carlita Quintos, HUD Contract Administrator, Bremerton, who has since either ignored requests or refused access to public records), Vilensky described his condition: [Public Records Access]
NV-01-0318-1857. I am a disabled amputee (severe diabetes) wheelchair bound; with no left leg and disabled right foot in a plastic (removable) cast. The toes on my right foot are open to fresh-air to prevent growth of fungus. I have dysfunctional kidneys and go to the hospital every other day for hemodialysis. Machines, however, are not full duplicate of real kidneys and I am therefore suffering severe immune deficiency: I need fresh-air protection from toe fungus.
Quintos should have immediately asked how a person in that physical condition could have obtained an apartment in a building designated for independent living. [Agency Accountability - HUD-Seattle and Bremerton Contract Administrator] [Agency Accountability City of Seattle]
Neither Council House directors nor their attorney responded to Vilensky’s letter (as they have routinely ignored dozens of letters from other tenants with complaints). They neglected to provide the services that Vilensky needed despite accepting money and the responsibility to provide services suitable to his well-being and care.
Mitchell retaliated for the complaint by personally and publicly humiliating Vilensky for several months about his physical condition which he said offended some tenants. He then retaliated against Vilensky when he filed a complaint with HUD about the food service. In one of his hysterical and paranoid tantrums, Mitchell claimed that tenant complaints formed part of a conspiracy against him.
Instead of following mandated procedures, Quintos informed Mitchell about Vilensky’s letter which immediately sent him into a paranoid tirade. He then conspired with his kapos to retaliate against Vilensky and anyone associated with him.
Quintos then unlawfully withheld public records to stop me investigating elder abuse which frustrated inquiry into a variety of other practices at Council House. That made her equally culpable in the abuse that followed. If the initial occurrences had received full exposure then the later cases may not have occurred.
Quintos told Mitchell to meet with Vilensky about the food program and said that he must respond to her in writing with a detailed report about the food complaints and their resolution - something Mitchell apparently did not do and which she neglected to follow up. His death probably let her off the hook. [Agency Accountability - HUD-Seattle and Bremerton Contract Administrator] [Agency Accountability - City of Seattle] [Public Records Access]
To thwart the complaint on the food issue, Mitchell instructed the cook to give Vilensky second helpings of food. Two other people asked for second helpings at the same time but the cook refused to serve them. (The issue of the food service, fraud connected with it, and denial of special diets or exemption from the program despite recommendations of medical doctors, will receive comprehensive coverage in a separate article.) [Ptomaine Grotto]
Vilensky told Mitchell that he would not meet with him in his office for fear of Mitchell calling the police to have him arrested on trumped-up charges. He had a well-founded fear. Mitchell called police about other tenants after cornering them in his office. They had complained about neglect and harassment and he had them incarcerated. Mitchell repeatedly filed false, misleading, and defamatory statements with both government agencies and police to harass tenants and to build blackmail files to justify arbitrary eviction and incarceration.
Mitchell agreed to meet Vilensky the following Tuesday in the dining room. Instead of the meeting required by HUD, Mitchell choreographed an inquisition with the sole purpose of humiliating Vilensky in front of other tenants. He regularly used this theatrical tactic to warn tenants that they could suffer the same indignities if they did not bow to his will. They acquiesced to his threats in fear. Mitchell’s, predecessor, Mark T. Mullen, used similar tactics to create fear and discomfort by persuading tenants to ostracize and to file false police reports against his targets to intimidate them.
Mitchell regularly threatened to evict elderly tenants under what he called his “zero-tolerance policy”. He blackmailed and allowed his thugs to assault anyone who complained despite HUD regulations that call for use of a complaint procedure. Consequently, a majority of tenants still live in fear or trepidation and remain silent.
The inquisition lasted for more than an hour and the transcript that I made of the tape recording runs to 43 pages. A source called this writer to witness the incident and a tenant legally tape recorded the meeting.
I received the tape the day before Vilensky died. He had suffered neglect, abuse, and lack of medical care over an extended period. Council House directors, HUD, and CoS, did nothing to help him even though repeatedly made aware of his condition. The session with Mitchell obviously took its toll on Vilensky.
Prior to that session, Mitchell and his kapo photocopied and distributed to tenants (at Council House expense) an article from the Seattle Times (29 Oct 99). That article described how Vilensky had failed to keep property that he intended to rehabilitate in acceptable condition. He had several fights with CoS over the condition of the property which he let deteriorate when he became ill.
Mitchell covertly embarrassed Vilensky before the inquisition by getting one of his thugs to distribute copies of the article with propaganda that described Vilensky as a “slum-lord” - a stereotypic and particularly degrading epithet for a Jew especially when uttered by “goys”.
When I interviewed Vilensky about the “slum-lord” accusation, Vilensky explained that he fixed-up old houses for several years and sold them but never rented them. So how could he classify as a slum-lord?
Reporter Susan Gilmore, Seattle Times [29 Oct 99] claimed that Vilensky originally owned eleven properties and owned four at the time she wrote her article. During my interview, with Vilensky, I asked him to explain to me what happened after the date that Gilmore wrote her article.
Vilensky said that he sold the four remaining properties and received 90% of the asking price for each of them. As he had no relatives, one might now ask what happened to real estate residuals estimated at $750,000 (after commissions, taxes, and legal fees) when he died one year later. How much did Rosenblume pay Mitchell to dump Vilensky at Council House and how much of the real estate proceeds ended up in their coffers?
Some excerpts from the 43-page transcript of the inquisition show the level of abuse and humiliation suffered by Vilensky in front of his neighbors and friends:
Mitchell. I said, [that] a violation of the house rules constitutes a violation of your lease. Please be aware that further violations may result in eviction. I had so many complaints from residents about the sight of you when you were in the dining room. It made them sick to their stomach and they could not eat their meal. Again, when you moved in you signed the house rules that clearly state when you are in public areas you will be dressed for public appearance. I reminded you countless times. Don’t come down. Don’t come down with your foot exposed. I don’t care if your foot needs fresh air. You can sit in your apartment with your window open all you want. You can go outside and take it off. But when you are in public areas you need to cover your foot. We’ve talked about you coming down with your hospital gown.
Vilensky made his risk of injury clear to Mitchell during that session. Then Mitchell declared that he did not have a responsibility to cater to vulnerable adults.
Mitchell. I just had a meeting with some people who want to give it [an emergency call device] to everyone and I thought, wow, I am not going to ask the residents to wear bracelets.
Vilensky. Why not? If I fall on the floor I cannot get up.
Mitchell. Because this is where it gets kind of gray, but because we are an independent living facility by your living in, you are saying, I am able to take care of myself. Or I am able to put services in place to take care of myself. Which is exactly what you did. So you’re empowered, if you fall on the floor you’ve got the button. If you fell on the floor you would not be able to reach that call box anyway. . . . But I couldn’t imagine asking residents. First off, we would have to buy a separate phone for every apartment and then each resident would have a bracelet or a necklace. . . . but if people want it they can always provide it for themselves.
Vilensky. If I need it I pay for it?
Mitchell. Right. Because we are not an assisted living facility. We are not a nursing home. In fact we are not even supposed to pick you up if you fall because it’s a risk to us and a risk to you. So we call 911. So that same thing would happen if you lived anywhere, unless you lived in a nursing home or an assisted living facility.
Vilensky. Well this happens maybe two or three times a year. But for those two or three times a year I do need some help.
Mitchell. And we do have people who fall. It’s unfortunate. . . . But if you are at that level of care need you then probably should be looking into someplace to live.
Three days after M-tc h-ll set up this catch-22, Vilensky fell out of his wheelchair. He had no means to call anyone for help and died. I saw him curled up in a fetal position on his bathroom floor where he had fallen - naked except for a johnny. He had left his door unlocked in case of emergency and a Meals-on-Wheels delivery man found him. Paramedics arrived at 11:35 in the morning and found his body still warm. As with Jackie Nations, Council House administrators did not hold a memorial service - normal for tenants who die from natural causes - and the issues disappeared as though Vilensky and Nations never existed. [Who Killed Jackie Nations?]
Vilensky suffered a nightmarish existence during nine months preceding his death. He suffered constant abuse from Mitchell, his staff and kapos, also from an elite among tenants. They constantly ostracized him for his physical appearance in the same way that they treated other tenants with disabilities by constantly humiliating and defaming them.
Along with other tenants who complained, Vilensky suffered constant harassment by Mitchell and his staff primarily because he appeared as a witness in an action brought against Mitchell by another tenant for similar abuse. Although Mitchell had a temporary retraining order against him for harassment he ignored it and tampered with six tenant witnesses in that case and allowed his thugs to assault several of them.
Council House elite complained about his condition when he went to meals under the mandated meal program. He also had meals on wheels. Then administrators and their kapos started publicly humiliating him because his black “rotted” feet showed. He could not cover them up because his doctor said they had to stay exposed.
Vilensky, asked me how to complain to HUD about his treatment. Many other tenants with complaints also asked me for information, I gave them copies of the relevant HUD regulations and explained that they must interpret them themselves or instruct an attorney to act for them. As a journalist, I cannot and do not give legal advice.
Vilensky drafted letters of complaint by hand which I typed and faxed for him. As with other tenants who incurred Mitchell’s displeasure, he doubled the charges for faxing and photocopying to $2.00/page for faxes and $0.20/page for photocopies.
During my stay at Council House, I regularly typed letters and copied or faxed medical and other business documents free of charge for tenants who could not afford to pay the inflated prices charged by management. Several of them feared that Mitchell would use document content to blackmail them and they used outside commercial services or trusted me to do it for them. Many instances have occurred where he has used private information from tenant files for blackmail and intimidation.
One tenant wanted to fax twenty pages of medical documents to an agency for which the office wanted to charge him $40.00 (for a local telephone call). I sent them for him at no cost to myself or to him. Mitchell has since accused me of inciting tenants to complain by providing free copying and fax services which indicates that he intended the prohibitive charges to act as a deterrent to filing complaints.
When Mitchell and his directors accepted the money from Rosenblume they also accepted responsibility for Vilensky’s well-being and care. Instead, Mitchell hounded and humiliated him about his physical condition and retaliated against him for filing a legitimate complaint with HUD about an inadequate and fraudulent food service.
Council House deprived him of emergency care that he obviously needed which led to his untimely death. When authorities finally wake up and take action on at least two alleged incidences of homicide by abuse, Vilensky and Nations will posthumously receive their last hurrah. Stephen A. Mitchell and Audrey F. Dunbar richly deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars for the cruelty that they have maliciously inflicted upon dozens of senior citizens and vulnerable adults. [Homicide by Abuse] [Vulnerable Adults] [Who Killed Jackie Nations?]
[Nmesis]
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