Police identify 13 deaths at unlicensed Arlington, Mansfield group homes since 2022

At least 13 people have died since 2022 under the care of a woman who was running five unlicensed group homes in North Texas, police wrote in a warrant to search one of the homes.

Regla “Su” Becquer, 49, was arrested Monday and charged with one count of abandoning or endangering an individual creating imminent danger of bodily injury. She is being held in the Tarrant County Jail with bond set at $750,000.

Regla’s attorney, Joseph J. Bonney, could not be reached for comment Thursday by the Star-Telegram. A message was left at his law offices requesting comment. On Monday, Bonney declined comment when reached by phone.

The charge against Becquer stems from the treatment of a woman police said was put on a mattress on the floor and abused while she soiled herself and her diaper wasn’t changed.

According to police, the 53-year-old woman has cerebral palsy and diabetes and cannot move her legs. She was kept on the mattress on the floor, unable to move and prevented from leaving, she told Arlington police. Even when she cut her wrists, hoping she would be taken to a hospital, she was not allowed to leave the home, she said.

Police have said more charges are expected in their ongoing investigation. Search warrants obtained by the Star-Telegram, written by Detectives Krystallyne Robinson and Devon Coffer, show police believe the abuse was extensive.

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Police wrote in the warrant to arrest Becquer that she would put family members with no medical licenses in charge of the properties that housed people with disabilities and medical needs.

13 deaths and a will

The 13 people died at four Arlington and Mansfield houses owned by Becquer and operated by her company Love and Caring for People LLC, according to police: 1210 Woodbrook St. in Arlington, 7411 Lake Whitney Drive in Arlington, 7419 Fossil Creek Drive in Arlington and 2059 Turtle Cove Drive in Mansfield.

The house on Fossil Creek Drive is now vacant, according to police. Becquer also operated a unlicensed home at 1852 Hidden Brook Drive in Grand Prairie, investigators said.

According to a search warrant, police regularly found vehicles registered to the people who died while in or after being in Becquer’s care at houses she owned. Investigators also received reports from family members that the patients’ debit cards and, in at least one instance, an EBT card was fraudulently used while the patients were in the care of the homes.

Some of the deaths were detailed in the search warrant for the property at 1210 Woodbrook St. in Arlington.

Becquer was responsible for caring for Karen Walker, 61, at the Turtle Cove Drive house, according to the search warrant. Walker was put in the group home in either September or October of 2022 after a doctor recommended she be placed in a home because she had been falling. The doctor recommended Becquer.

Walker’s cousin would speak to her when he could, but told police he only ever spoke to her on Becquer’s phone, according to the search warrant. She would tell him she didn’t want to be there, thought the people in the house were trying to kill her and often sounded disoriented. During a call in mid-October, the cousin recommended he obtain power of attorney for Walker while on a phone call. The call was ended abruptly, the warrant states.

Walker died on Oct. 26, 2022, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. The cause of death is listed as hypertensive cardiovascular disease, the manner determined to be natural. Her address is listed on the medical examiner’s website as the house on Turtle Cove Drive.

After she died, a handwritten, one-sentence will was obtained by Tarrant County Probate leaving Walker’s entire estate to Becquer, the search warrant read.

The will gave Becquer ownership of the Woodbrook Street house in Arlington, police said in the warrant to search that house. They’ve opened an investigation to determine whether the will was a forgery.

Police were called to the Woodbrook Street house on Nov. 20, 2023, after a neighbor reported a man had fallen in the back yard and seemed unable to get up, according to the search warrant. When officers arrived, they found a 63-year-old man on the ground.

The man required a wheelchair to move and could sometimes use his arms to “scoot himself around,” according to the search warrant. Officers found out there were two other patients inside the home.

When they spoke with the neighbor who called police, officers were told the home used to belong to Walker. The neighbor said Walker was of sound mind the last time they saw her but was put in Becquer’s care and after she died her home became Becquer’s property.

Walker at one point began having trouble walking, the neighbor said, according to the search warrant. The neighbor would take her for meals, care for her house and take out her trash, police said. At some point after Walker was placed in Becquer’s “bed and board” home, the neighbor found out Walker was in hospice care. She died shortly after.

The neighbor told police she did not know why Walker was in hospice care and said the house “meant a lot to Karen as it used to belong to Karen’s parents and [the neighbor] did not understand how Regla would’ve obtained the home,” according to the warrant.

Another man, Steven Pankratz, also died after being in one of Becquer’s houses, Robinson wrote in the warrant. He was at the Turtle Cove Drive house when Walker died. He was referred to the home by a hospital in late 2022 and when he was being taken there, CareFlite employees dropped him and broke his ankle, the warrant states. Pankratz filed a lawsuit against CareFlite and had appointments with doctors to document his condition during the suit.

Pankratz’s son told police he believed Becquer transferred power of attorney from the son to herself, according to the search warrant. During his time in Becquer’s care, he missed 13 doctor’s appointments. One doctor said that during one appointment, Becquer refused to leave Pankratz and the doctor alone and ended up leaving before the appointment was finished.

Pankratz’s son told police he was only allowed to talk to Pankratz through Becquer’s phone, and when he did speak his father in January he said Pankratz seemed disoriented and confused, according to the warrant. He was concerned about his father’s well being. The next day, on Jan. 12, he received a call that his father had died.

A 911 call was placed from the Lake Whitney Drive house regarding Pankratz, according to the warrant. When paramedics arrived, Jesse Kuprat, Becquer’s son, told officers that Pankratz was his uncle. Later on he would change his story and say the man was a family friend, the warrant states. He told police that 911 was called after Pankratz was moved to his bedroom and passed out. Kuprat told officers they noticed he didn’t have a pulse and tried to get him to open his eyes.

Another person in the house who was not identified by police told officers that Pankratz had vomited, according to the warrant. Kuprat told police all of that happened about 10 minutes before staff at the home called 911.

Robinson wrote in the warrant that medical personnel had trouble opening Pankratz’s mouth to insert a breathing tube when they arrived because his jaw was stiff. She wrote that she “knows based on her training and experience, individuals who die experience rigor mortis” and that “rigor mortis usually takes anywhere from one hour to two hours to begin once an individual has died.”

Pankratz’s cause of death is still listed as pending on the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s website.

When police were called to the house on Woodbrook Street in November 2023, they also found a vehicle registered to a man who was dead.

Phillip Johnson, a 70-year-old man, was living at the Fossil Creek Drive house owned by Becquer when he died, according to the search warrant for the Woodbrook Street property.

Information on Johnson’s death could not be located on the medical examiner’s website Thursday afternoon.

Johnson was reported missing by his daughter, but when officers went to the Fossil Creek Drive house they were told he’d moved, Robinson wrote in the warrant. After officers visited, his daughter received a call from Becquer, who was angry that she’d contacted police, she said. She received a call from a hospice center days later and was told her father was dead.

Another man, 80-year-old Roy Lee, died at the Fossil Creek Drive house on Oct. 25, 2023, according to the warrant.

The Star-Telegram was not able to locate any information on Lee’s death on the medical examiner’s website.

Lee was moved into the house on Fossil Creek Drive on Oct. 1, 2023, after he became violent with staff members at Villages of McArthur, where he’d lived for about five years, according to the warrant. He was healthy and walking. Villages of McArthur referred the family to Becquer and they took him to the house on Fossil Creek Drive. They told police that when Lee was taken there, he was excited to see his room.

At one point Becquer contacted Lee’s family after she found a business card for another facility among his belongings, according to the warrant. She was adamant that he only be transferred to a facility she picked out and stopped communicating with the family, the warrant states. Any time they would visit Lee, Becquer would follow them around and wouldn’t let Lee speak to them alone, the family told police. At one point they got Becquer to leave them in a room alone with him, but the room had cameras, they said.

The family described Lee as being disoriented and lethargic, according to the search warrant. His eyes would be glazed and would drift away from them while they were speaking and he wouldn’t respond to them. His family decided to find a facility to which they could transfer Lee and were told after that visit that they needed to make an appointment with Becquer before visiting.

When they tried to make appointments to visit, the family said, Becquer would say they couldn’t come because Lee was sleeping, according to the warrant. The family found that odd because he would be awake and walking around during the day at the previous facility.

The family told police that on Oct. 23, 2023, they received a call from Becquer saying they needed to meet her at the bed and board house on Fossil Creek Drive to talk about a doctor and hospice care, according to the warrant. The family later received a text from a hospice center saying Lee was disoriented, unable to feed himself and had blood coming from his mouth. The text said they’d ordered “another medication” to help keep Lee calm.

One family member told police she had medical power of attorney for Lee and had never authorized any medication for him, according to the warrant. On Oct. 25, 24 days after Lee been moved, healthy and walking, into the house on Fossil Creek Drive, the family received a phone call from the hospice center to tell them he’d died. The family doesn’t know what happened to the medications he was being given and said the medicine was never given back to them.