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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Saturday, August 8, 2009

Man, 86, ruled mentally unfit to stand trial in wife's killing


By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Tadeusz "Ted" Jandura

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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

L. Jandura

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Murder charges against 86-year-old Tadeusz "Ted" Jandura have been dismissed after a state judge yesterday found Jandura mentally unfit to stand trial and unlikely to ever regain fitness.

Jandura, who holds dual Canadian-Polish citizenship and is a survivor of the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, Poland, was accused of stabbing his 82-year-old wife, Ingeborg, more than 100 times at their Ilikai Hotel timeshare unit in March 2007.

Circuit Judge Michael Wilson ordered Jandura committed to the Hawai'i State Hospital, where staff must determine if he is a danger to himself or to others.

Defense attorney Richard Hoke said that if Jandura is found not to be a danger, arrangements have been made to have him discharged to the custody of U.S. Immigration authorities for deportation to Poland, where relatives have agreed to care for him.

Jandura's two children in Canada want nothing to do with him, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Maurice Arrisgado said after the hearing.

"They expected in a cynical way that their father was going to get off," Arrisgado said.

The children had resigned themselves to the fact that "they weren't going to get any justice" for their mother, he said.

Psychiatrists and psychologists who have treated Jandura at the state hospital have said he is "delusional" and believes staff there are poisoning his food and torturing him at night with "electricity and radio beams," a doctor said in court last month.

Dr. Klebert Jones quoted Jandura in a fitness hearing July 24 as saying the torture he believes he is receiving "is worse than anything he saw at Auschwitz."

Jones said Jandura has told him that "what they are doing to him is worse than Hitler."

Two court-appointed fitness examiners found Jandura mentally incapable of assisting in his own legal defense, while a third, psychologist Dr. Steven Gainsley, said he believed Jandura might be "malingering," or faking his delusional symptoms.

But Wilson ruled yesterday morning that Gainsley had been under "the mistaken conclusion" that Jandura had been benefiting from treatment at the hospital meant to restore his mental fitness.

Members of Jandura's treatment team reported that Jandura completed "fitness restoration classes" but showed no improvement, defense attorney Hoke pointed out in court.

Jandura and his wife had been married for 58 years and vacationed in Hawai'i every winter for many years.

Ingeborg Jandura had accused her husband of being abusive, according to Canadian court documents.

The Janduras lived in Edmonton, Alberta, where court records showed the couple had marital trouble for years.

Ingeborg Jandura filed for divorce after separating from her husband in the summer of 2003, saying he was "verbally abusive" and "impossible to live with," according to Canadian court documents.

They later attempted unsuccessfully to reconcile.

Why the couple was together here in 2007 has never been made clear.