Maryland Woman Doesn't Hear From Her Dad For Weeks, Drives 500 Miles To Visit Him Only To Find He Died Days Before And His Caretaker Living In The House, Stealing It From A Dying Man

A Maryland woman made a heartbreaking 500-mile drive to check on her ailing father in South Carolina, only to learn he had been dead for days and his caretaker had already taken the house.

Nora Rowland hadn’t heard from her 75-year-old dad, Robert, for weeks. That was unusual. The pair FaceTimed every week. When Father’s Day passed with radio silence, she packed up and drove from Baltimore to his home in Conway.

What she found was a nightmare.

The front door had been swapped out. A new Ring doorbell stared back at her. When she pressed it, nurse Sarah Smalls answered on camera.“This isn’t the way that I wanted to tell you, but your dad died, and there’s a bunch of other stuff I have to tell you too. Just wait there,” Smalls said, according to Rowland.

Robert had been dead three days.

Rowland crawled through an unlocked emergency window. Inside, the house looked like someone else’s life. Random photos of strangers covered the walls. The rooms were painted a blinding highlighter orange. Furniture had been moved. It looked like a whole new family had moved in.

Smalls soon returned, and called the cops on Rowland for “breaking in.”When Conway police arrived, Smalls produced a deed listing herself as the new owner. Officers cuffed Rowland and her partner on the spot.

“I’m walking out of the house expecting them to come and help, and they put me and my partner in handcuffs immediately,” Rowland said. “I just kept saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on; this is my dad’s house. My dad is dead.’”The charges were later dropped. The house fight is not over.

Records show Smalls started caring for Robert through Griswold Home Care in March 2024. By the end of that month, he was moved into a senior living facility. In April, she became his power of attorney. On April 17, a quitclaim deed transferred the Conway home to her — for five dollars.

Bank records allegedly show money moving from Robert’s account to Smalls even after he died.

A neighbor told police he had been worried for weeks. He said Smalls started moving furniture out and that Robert “was not within his wits at all. You could’ve talked him into just about anything.”Smalls told reporters to talk to her lawyer, then called police on the news crew. Griswold Home Care has not commented.

Rowland says her father had Parkinson’s and a brain injury and was classified as a vulnerable adult. She believes he never understood what he was signing.

“It’s so easy for them to get taken advantage of,” she said. “He was a nice man; he would never think that someone could do this to him.”Conway police say they are investigating. Rowland is still fighting to get the house back.