SAN JOSE — A man has been arrested and charged with fatally poisoning his mother by spiking her drinks with fentanyl, amid an inheritance dispute that included previous threats against her life, according to authorities and court documents.
It was during a police interrogation over that assault report that Dexter reportedly confessed to lacing his mother’s oat milk and wine with the powerful opiate, detectives allege in an investigative summary accompanying the criminal charges. In the immediate aftermath of her death, the grandson told San Jose police detectives that Kathleen Dexter did not have any significant medical issues but that she had recently fallen ill and had “thrown up approximately 20 times” three days before she died, according to the police summary.
On July 18, detectives reported that the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office concluded that Kathleen Dexter had died from a fatal dose of fentanyl, for which she had no prescription. The levels of the drug in her body led the coroner’s office to classify her death as a homicide.