Belmont torture case heads toward trial after court hearing
Ian Kroe is charged with exploiting, sexually assaulting, and keeping captive an elderly woman who was friends with his late mother.
REDWOOD CITY — Criminal charges against a man accused of torturing an elderly woman through sexual, financial and psychological exploitation, and holding her captive in a hotel room for most of the pandemic, will head toward trial after a key court hearing last week.
Ian Edard Kroe, 56, of Oakland, was held to answer in a San Mateo County court for 14 charges encompassing allegations of torture, rape, sexual assault, false imprisonment, criminal threats, and elder abuse and theft. Judge Kevin Dunleavy made the ruling Friday at the end of a repeatedly delayed preliminary hearing, in which a judge decides whether a case has enough evidence to proceed to trial.
According to police and prosecutors, Kroe’s mother was longtime friends with the reported victim — a 74-year-old woman, who the Bay Area News Group is calling Jane Doe due to her being a victim of alleged sexual assault. After his mother passed in 2016, Doe reached out to him to express sympathy.
The two became friends, and in the next few years, Kroe relocated from Minnesota to be closer to Doe. But authorities allege that what followed rapidly became a nightmare.
Once Kroe moved to the Peninsula, he is accused of assuming command of Doe’s finances and emptying her bank accounts. The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office contends that Kroe held Doe “virtually as a prisoner” at the Hyatt House hotel complex in Belmont between April 2020 and August 2022 by threatening to kill and torture her if she tried to leave to her home in New Mexico.
That time period included an eight-month stretch in which she was entirely confined to the hotel room. Prosecutors said when Doe broke her ankle at some point in 2021, Kroe did not allow her to seek medical help.
Based on the criminal complaint, Kroe is accused of raping or sexually assaulting Doe at least eight times while holding her captive.
In August 2022, Doe found a way to contact a friend in New Mexico, which led to a Belmont police officer going to the hotel room and finding Doe, naked and bruised, suffering from a broken finger and “unable to move on her own,” prosecutors said.
Kroe was arrested soon after and has been held without bail at the Maple Street Correctional Center. Shortly after he was charged, the prosecution of his case was suspended after his attorney raised questions about his competence to stand trial. Kroe on multiple occasions refused to meet with court-appointed doctors, and no formal conclusion was reached on competency status, leading to a judge to declare that he was fit to stand trial.
He is next scheduled to appear in court April 15, when he will be arraigned again on the existing charges to kick off trial proceedings.