Fatal foreclosure
Real Estate News From the We buy houses Team
The husband of a Taunton woman who police say shot herself after faxing a suicide note to the company foreclosing on her home had a troubled financial history, including three recent bankruptcy attempts and an earlier foreclosure filing, the Herald has learned.
Taunton police said Carlene Balderrama, 53, shot herself to death Tuesday after faxing her mortgage company a note implying suicide hours before her home was to be auctioned off.
“ ‘By the time you foreclose on my house, I’ll be dead,’ ” Police Chief Raymond O’Berg said the note read.
Mortgage Corp. received the fax at 2:27 p.m. and called police at 3:38 p.m., less than 90 minutes before the house was to be auctioned off.
When police arrived at 103 Duffy Drive minutes later, O’Berg said, they found Balderrama dead from a single gunshot wound from her husband’s rifle.
Next to her body, the chief said, was a note telling her husband and their 24-year-old son Jamie, a cook at the local 99 Restaurant, to “take the insurance money and pay for the house.”
“It is a tragedy,” O’Berg said. “There’s victims all around in this. . .Something’s wrong with the system when you have working people being foreclosed on.”
Although the mortgage company called off the auction, prospective buyers began arriving at the house at 5 p.m., while Balderrama’s body still lay in the house, he said.
A spokeswoman for Harmon Law Offices, the Newton firm handling the foreclosure for PHH, said, “We are shocked and saddened by what has occurred. Our deepest sympathies go out to the family for the terrible loss it has suffered.”
When Balderrama’s husband, John, 52, a plumber and longtime employee of North Shore Mechanical Contractors, arrived home from work, he “just went into shock,” O’Berg said.
“He told us she handled all the finances,” the chief said. “He had no idea the house was being foreclosed on.”
Court filings show that John Balderrama had a history of financial problems. Three times since 2004, he sought protection from his creditors by filing for bankruptcy, according to court records. When the court dismissed his third bankruptcy filing in 2006, Balderrama was still $45,000 in debt.
Yesterday, the family declined to comment. Neighbors on their quiet, middle-class street were stunned by the suicide. Although the couple bought the split-level ranch-style house six years ago for $232,000, according to city records, few neighbors knew them.
Noreen Mendes, who has lived on the street for 34 years, said only two weeks ago, she had seen Balderrama in her yard, talking to a contractor about repairing the roof of the house.
“There were no family problems that I knew about. She was just a nice person to talk to - quiet, sweet,” Mendes said. “I always figured her husband didn’t want her to work because he was of good means. . .I just can’t fathom (her suicide). You try to make do, and if you can’t make do, you try to find other avenues.”