Murder Suspect Ordered to Return Father’s Estate

When Susan Van Note was charged with murdering her father, authorities discovered that it had only been four months after she was appointed the personal representative of her father’s Missouri estate. 

The Missouri Appeals court said Tuesday that Van Note could be held in the Clay County Jail until she repays at least part of her father’s estate.  The appeals court noted in its eight-page opinion that, as the estate’s personal representative, Van Note had “made numerous distributions of property to herself including real property, personal property, and cash,” and then she had “sold several of the pieces of real property she had distributed to herself during that time.”  Court records estimate Van Note’s father’s estate to be at least $1.6 million. 

It is alleged Van Note shot and stabbed her father’s companion Sharon Dickson in October 2010.  Her father was also shot in the attack, but survived and was transported to the University Hospital in Columbia.  The next day, Van Note showed hospital officials a durable power of attorney document giving her the authority to make her father’s health care decisions, and she said he preferred death rather than being kept alive by medical intervention.  Once life support was withdrawn he died.  Prosecutors later charged Van note with forgery for that document and with first-degree murder.  Her trial is set to begin next February. 

See Bob Watson, Court Upholds Order for Murder Suspect to Return Part of Father’s Estate, News Tribune, Sept. 24, 2014.