Caregiver indicted on theft charges

A Eugene caregiver who spent six years in prison on manslaughter charges for shooting a caretaker on her Polk County property in 2002 was indicted Thursday by a Lane County grand jury on multiple charges of theft and criminal mistreatment of the 84-year-old Eugene resident she was living with, police said Friday.

Bimla Boyd, 55, faces a total of 65 charges that allege she repeatedly stole and manipulated the financial assets of the man she was living with and caring for, police said.

Investigators from the Oregon Department of Justice said Boyd — who before going to prison in 2003 for manslaughter was also a key witness in a triple-homicide case involving another caretaker on her Polk County property — used the man’s food stamps for her own purposes, assigned herself as an owner of his property and sold the man’s car on craigslist for about $7,000 while keeping the proceeds.

Boyd faces 17 counts of first-degree theft, six counts of second-degree theft and 28 counts of false claim for a health care payment.

Eugene Police Department detectives first arrested Boyd April 10 on a warrant for the Justice Department case.

Following Boyd’s arrest, investigators said they discovered several accounts on social media and matchmaking websites that she used in order to find other people to defraud, as well as records of people she had contacted.

Investigators are releasing photos from the accounts in hopes that victims may recognize her. Anyone with additional information about Boyd is asked to contact Detective Mike Rustik at 541-682-6351 or Detective Mercy McDonald at 541-682-5169.

Boyd was being held in the Lane County Jail. No bail has been set for her release.

According to a story in The Oregonian earlier this month, Boyd was convicted in 2003 in the death of caretaker Robert Daniel Spencer, 54, on her rural property outside of Salem.

Boyd said she shot the man who lived in a trailer beneath her rural estate when she learned he was sexually abusing a child. She served more than six years in prison and was released in May 2009.

Boyd was also a key witness in the 2000 trial of a handyman accused of a November 1998 triple-murder inside the same trailer on her property, according to The Oregonian story. The man, Philip Scott Cannon, was freed earlier this year after his conviction was overturned based on concerns about ballistics evidence used in the original trial, the paper reported.

The TV news magazine “Dateline NBC” did a story in August 2010 called “The House on Murder Mountain” about the mysterious triple-murder case and her conviction five years later for shooting Spencer.