An Oakland man was found guilty last week of torture, rape, threats and elder abuse after holding a 74-year-old woman in a Belmont hotel room for two years, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
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Ian Edard Kroe, 57, was convicted Feb. 20 of 33 felony counts, including intentional infliction of torture, nine counts of forcible rape, nine counts of forcible oral copulation, ten counts of forcible sodomy, threats, elder physical abuse, elder theft and false imprisonment, the DA’s office said.
The jury also found several enhancements to be true – including great violence, a particularly vulnerable victim and sophistication. Kroe could face multiple sentences of 25 years to life, the DA’s office added.
The woman, a friend of Kroe’s mother who lived in Minnesota, reached out to Kroe to express her condolences about his mother’s death in 2016, beginning a friendship between the two. She moved to New Mexico, where Kroe lived, to be closer to him, but he soon took control of her finances and drained her bank accounts.
When the woman agreed to accompany Kroe on a road trip from New Mexico to Oregon to get a pickup truck, the pair stopped at the Belmont Hyatt House hotel on the way back. Kroe held her at the hotel “virtually as a prisoner” from 2020 to August 2022, including an eight-month stretch when she was not allowed to leave the room under threat of death, the DA’s office said,
Kroe threatened to torture and kill the woman, according to prosecutors. Kroe raped the woman “numerous times”; in 2021, the woman broke her ankle and Kroe did not permit her to get medical care despite “intense pain.”
In August 2022, the woman was able to secretly contact a friend in New Mexico who alerted police. Belmont police officers responded to the hotel and found the woman naked, bruised and with a broken finger – and unable to move on her own, the DA’s office said.
The jury trial lasted 24 days and was overseen by San Mateo County Judge Rachel E. Holt.
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Before the second phase of the trial began, Kroe began to convulse and shake, claiming that he was having hallucinations, the DA’s office said. He then asked the court for a competency hearing, which Holt denied after laying out a record of why she believed Kroe’s symptoms were fabricated.
Kroe currently remains in custody with no bail, and is set to be sentenced at an April 24 hearing.
San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe and Kroe’s defense attorney could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
