Beaten and bloodied, elderly Kentwood attack victim pulls out John Wayne comparison

By Barton Deiters | The Grand Rapids Press
February 09, 2010, 5:40PM

GRAND RAPIDS -- After having her teeth knocked out, her jaw broken and a knife held to her throat during a struggle with her attacker, 80-year-old Geraldine "Betty" Oosterhouse managed to wriggle out of her bonds and get out the door where she stood, covered in her own blood, in the driveway.

"I thought 'John Wayne would be proud of me,'" Oosterhouse said Tuesday as she testified in the trial of Randall Lachniet. "I don't know where that came from, but it wasn't from the front burner."

Lachniet, 46, is charged with breaking into her home, armed robbery, torture, unlawful imprisonment and a handful of related crimes -- all of which could add up to life in prison if he's convicted.

Her testimony in Kent County Circuit Court shows why she was the wrong kind of person for a would-be thief to take for an easy mark.

The grandmother said on the day of the attack last fall, she was standing in her Kentwood home's kitchen in the 100 block of Farnham Street, preparing a Labor Day dish for friends and family. She heard a knock at the door and said she saw Lachniet standing there -- she said she recognized him because he was one of a crew of workers putting a new roof on her house over the summer.

He told her he had car trouble and asked to use the phone. As her back was turned, he grabbed the paring knife she had been using from the counter, put the small woman in a choke hold and held the knife to her throat, she testified.

"He said 'All I want is your PIN numbers' and I said something like 'You'll have to kill me first,'" Oosterhouse said.

She said her attacker then swept her legs out from under her, sending her to the kitchen floor. He then straddled her and gave her an "upper-cut" to the jaw, still holding the knife to her throat, she said.

"All I could think about was getting that knife away from my throat," Oosterhouse said.

Somehow, the grandmother managed to get her attacker's hand in her mouth and she chomped down "to the bone." After that, her attacker rained blows down on her, hitting her in the head and jaw, she said. Photos taken not long after the attack show a pool of blood on the kitchen floor and spatters and smears on the cabinets and refrigerator.

Oosterhouse said she passed out. When she came to, Lachniet was using the cord from her window blinds to bind her hands and cut a toaster cord to tie her ankle. He allegedly left her in the basement as he disappeared from the home, along with her cash, credit cards and the 1994 Buick Park Avenue she'd driven to McDonald's for breakfast that morning, she said.

Oosterhouse said she wriggled her way free of her bindings.

Soon, she was spotted by a neighbor who called 911 and then she was at Saint Mary's Health Care getting stitches, holes drilled into her head to relive pressure from the potential bleeding on her brain, and being questioned by police.

There was not a moment's hesitation for Oosterhouse when it came to identifying Lachniet in court as her attacker. She gave feisty, sometimes sarcastic responses to defense attorney Christopher Dennie's questions.

He challenged her testimony about his client allegedly knocking her legs out from under her, saying that was not what she said during testimony in District Court earlier.

"Your memory has changed a little bit since time went on?" Dennie asked her.

"My memory has improved," Oosterhouse said.

From: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/02/beaten_and_bloodied_elderly_ke.html