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Mother Of Hospital Rape Suspect Has Doubts About His Guilt

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By VALERIE KALFRIN

vkalfrin@tampatrib.com

Published: December 6, 2008

TAMPA - Hours before his arrest on rape charges Thursday, Thomas Kelly Bolduc told his mother over the phone that police were on the psychiatric ward of St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was being treated.

"Somebody got raped," his mother, Carol Wood, recalled him saying.

When Wood asked if he was involved, he said no, she said today.

Friday, she learned through news reports that Bolduc, 39, had been charged with two felony counts of sexual battery. Tampa police say he raped another patient, a 32-year-old woman, by forcing her to the floor of a bathroom in her room about 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Detectives saw that her arm was bruised, according to an affidavit.

"I cannot see him doing something like that," Wood said today. "It blew my mind when I saw it. … I don't know which way to turn. I don't know where to go from here."

Bolduc is being held without bail at the Orient Road Jail.

The state Agency for Health Care Administration and the hospital are investigating the incident, which the hospital said appears to have occurred during a 15-minute time frame between regular rounds that identify each patient's location.

Wood said her son had been treated at St. Joseph's for about two weeks. He suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has been institutionalized at least twice since he was 19.

She provides him with money and clothing but doesn't allow him to live with her because she cares for several grandchildren, including Bolduc's young son.

"It's not that I don't trust him. I don't trust the illness," she said. "I'm afraid of the illness."

Public records show Bolduc has been in and out of state prisons from 1989 through 2006 on charges ranging from burglary to grand theft, mostly on convictions from Citrus County.

Wood said her son is not violent and that his illness gets him into trouble. He was once charged with arson after he turned on an oven to dry newspaper wet with spilled coffee, she said. He has been arrested for trespassing because he forgets while under his delusions that he's not supposed to be on certain property, she added.

"He is in constant fear of something happening to this family," she said, describing an incident where he barged through her front door one night and awoke his son, asking, "Are you all right? Are you all right?"

He was so nonchalant when he mentioned the detectives at the psychiatric ward Thursday, Wood said she wonders what actually happened.

"I think we need to check into that a little further," she said.

Police said they arrested Bolduc after consulting with prosecutors about his and the woman's mental issues.

News Channel 8 photojournalist Indira LeVine contributed to this report. Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800.

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