Man Held Mentally Ill Wife Captive in Home, Police Say

A mentally disabled woman who apparently had been kept locked away in a stark, cell-like bedroom in Pomona was under psychiatric observation Saturday while her truck driver husband was free on bail after being arrested for allegedly imprisoning her.

Authorities said they could not immediately determine how long or why Marianne Coenan, 31, had been kept in the room. They described her as incoherent when police officers and Los Angeles County mental health workers found her late Friday.

“Her husband didn’t want us in there, but we went in anyway,” said Pomona Police Lt. Larry Todd. Police had been tipped off by a doctor who had examined the woman earlier in the day. It was not immediately clear why the woman had been examined or by whom.

When officers and mental health workers arrived at the one-story, wood-frame house, located at 3 Rolling Hills Drive in the Phillips Ranch area, they found that the door to one of four bedrooms inside had been bolted shut. Steel bars covered a 5-inch square opening in the door.

The only window in the bedroom had been covered with plywood. The carpeting had been removed, leaving a bare concrete floor. The only furnishings, Todd said, were a mattress, a blanket and a plastic dishpan. A naked light bulb shone from the ceiling.

“She was incoherent, rambling on” when authorities opened the door, Todd said. “The (mental health) people evaluated her as being psychologically . . . disabled.”

Marianne Coenan, Todd said, was wearing a shirt and pants but no shoes. Her legs were bruised, and scratches covered her wrists and neck, but she was otherwise uninjured.

She was taken to Pomona Valley Medical Center for evaluation, then placed by county health officials in an unidentified psychiatric facility in the Pomona area for a 72-hour observation period.

Todd said the husband, Edwin Clemens Coenan, 41, a truck driver from Hendersonville, Tenn., refused to answer any questions without an attorney present. He was arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment and endangering a dependent adult.

Coenan was booked into the Pomona jail and released a few hours later after posting $5,000 bail, Todd said.

On Saturday, a man with graying brown hair who identified himself as Marianne Coenan’s husband answered the door of the house but declined to discuss the case with a reporter.

“A lot of people have been asking me about this, and we just don’t have any comment,” he said.

The exterior of the house offers no hint of the prison-like conditions that police said they found inside.

The house and grounds are not well-maintained compared to other homes on the street, some of which have elaborate front yards adorned with shrubs trimmed in perfectly shaped geometric forms.

At least three other adults live in the house where Marianne Coenan was found, according to officers, but neither police nor neighbors knew whether they were friends or relatives.

No one questioned Saturday was sure how long the Coenans had lived there.

“One of the things I noticed was . . . they’re never out doing yard work,” said next-door neighbor Roger Sparkman. Neighbors, including Sparkman, 34, said they had little, if any, contact with the Coenans.