San Jose man charged with poisoning mother with fentanyl amid inheritance dispute
It was during a police interrogation over an alleged assault on his father that Bradley Dexter reportedly confessed to lacing his mother’s oat milk and wine with the powerful opiate.
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.
Bradley Dexter, 40, of San Jose, has been charged with murder, poisoning, and two counts of elder abuse, one of which involved an alleged assault of his father that was reported last week.
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.
An investigation into the poisoning began after the June 6 death of 72-year-old Kathleen Dexter at her East San Jose home near the city’s east foothills. Her grandson called 911 that afternoon after finding her in bed unconscious and not breathing, and he performed CPR, police said. A responding paramedic pronounced her dead about 30 minutes later.
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.
The victim’s husband told police that for the past two weeks, she had exhibited dizziness along with vomiting, and that about two weeks before the death, she was sick enough that she was taken to a hospital, but was discharged the same day.
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.
The investigation came to include interviews with Kathleen Dexter’s family and friends, and a troubling trend emerged in the form of multiple implications that her son Bradley was a likely culprit. They reportedly described the victim being in an “ongoing dispute with the suspect over inheritance property and stolen social security benefits involving Bradley.”
They also alleged that Bradley Dexter had recently threatened to kill his mother, and one of the interviewees went as far as to say that “if anything were to happen to her, they should look at her son.”
A big break in the case occurred after the suspect’s father was treated at a hospital Sept. 22 for an assault two days earlier, in which he alleged that Bradley Dexter hit him with a collapsible metal baton a dozen times, inflicting several injuries including a head contusion and fractures to his arm, knee and ribcage.
Tuesday, Bradley Dexter was summoned to the San Jose Police Department for an interview about the reported assault, to which he reportedly confessed and stated “that he was prepared to kill his dad but decided to show him mercy.”
But during that same interview, detectives wrote, he “also admitted killing his mother.”
“He stated he first put fentanyl in victim Kathleen’s oat milk,” the investigative summary reads. “He stated that he again poisoned her, putting the fentanyl in her wine when she was on the phone, the evening before she was found deceased in her bed.”
Bradley Dexter was arrested and booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail shortly after his reported confession, and he was being held without bail as of Thursday. He was scheduled for arraignment Thursday afternoon.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.