SC Man Strangled His 83-Year-Old Mother-In-Law To Death In Her Assisted Living Home, Cops Say

A man in South Carolina was taken into custody and accused of strangling his mother-in-law at an assisted living facility, law enforcement officials said.

Around 8 p.m. on July 9, officers from the Charleston Police Department responded to a call about an unresponsive resident found on her bathroom floor inside an apartment at Indigo Hall Assisted Living and Memory Care, The Post and Courier reported, citing an arrest affidavit.

The victim, 83-year-old Annette Boyle, was face down and had a hand towel around her neck, police wrote in the affidavit.

Investigators said Boyle, who battled dementia, had bitten through her neck and suffered bruising and other marks to her neck.

Henry C. Galvin III was taken into custody and charged with the elderly woman's murder, police said.

According to the affidavit, staff told detectives Galvin had been visiting Boyle with a golden retriever puppy earlier in the day. The workers claimed to police they could see Boyle standing in her apartment around 6 p.m. when they came by to give her medication, but her son-in-law refused to let them enter.

Twenty minutes later, surveillance video allegedly shows Galvin left the residence, the affidavit states.

In an interview with police the following day, the suspect alleged Boyle had locked herself into a bathroom and he left to seek help before coming back to the apartment — claims surveillance footage doesn’t back up, according to the affidavit.

Detectives serving a search warrant on Galvin’s home found what appeared to be a blood stain on a white t-shirt he was wearing during the visit as well as a “long grey hair” that “was affixed to the stain on this shirt,” police wrote in the affidavit.

Galvin was booked into the Al Cannon Detention Center.

The investigation is ongoing.