One year after death, mystery lives

COEUR d’ALENE — A year ago this week, Larry Isenberg was reported to have drowned after falling from his boat in Lake Coeur d’Alene near Powderhorn Bay, but an autopsy showed the cause of death was a lethal amount of benadryl.

Neither the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, which says the case is under investigation, nor the prosecutor’s office have over the last 12 months released any information regarding Isenberg’s death. He died around the same time his wife, Laurcene “Lori” Isenberg, 65, was terminated from her job as director of the North Idaho Housing Coalition. Lori Isenberg was subsequently convicted of having embezzled more than a half million dollars from the nonprofit.

Authorities took a two-pronged approach to investigate Lori Isenberg’s involvement in the theft, and into her husband’s death.

Coeur d’Alene Police were assigned to investigate the embezzlement, while the Sheriff’s Office took over the death investigation.

The police department filed grand theft and forgery charges against Lori Isenberg on Feb. 26, 2018, five days after being assigned the case. She later pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud in U.S. District Court and is awaiting sentencing.

Two of her daughters, Jessica F. Barnes, 33, and Amber A. Hosking, 40, also pleaded guilty and have already been sentenced to three years probation and 100 hours of community service on conspiracy charges. Two other daughters, Traci Tesch, 34, of Rathdrum, and April Barnes, 42, Coeur d’Alene, each pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to commit program theft.

But a year later, the Sheriff’s Office’s murder investigation continues under a cloak of silence.

Although county authorities aren’t talking about the suspicious circumstances leading up to Larry’s death, authorities have called Lori Isenberg a person of interest in a possible murder.

According to a search warrant filed in Spokane last summer, Barnes and Hosking, who pleaded guilty to helping their mother defraud the government, are also under investigation for conspiracy to commit first degree murder.

And although no one has officially used the word “homicide,” evidence surrounding Larry’s disappearance has been suspect from the beginning.

Suspicions were heightened when Coeur d’Alene police investigators found a bloody latex glove at the Isenbergs’ residence, 10019 W. Bobcat Trail at Cougar Gulch south of Coeur d’Alene, while they investigated the fraud case.

Police detectives served a warrant Feb. 23 — 10 days after Larry was reported missing — at the residence, where one of the detectives found “a bloody latex glove in a garbage can” in a room he was searching for financial records, and “bloody tissue,” according to police reports.

A later report mentioned that police also found Larry Isenberg’s billfold with his driver’s license and four credit cards, things he may have wanted had the couple been heading to The Coeur d’Alene Resort for breakfast — as Lori Isenberg intimated to authorities — on the morning Larry was reported to have fallen overboard.

In addition, three people close to the Sheriff’s Office investigation have indicated that the Isenbergs’ boat, the last place where Larry was supposedly seen alive by his wife while floating near Limerick Point at Powderhorn Bay, was never taken into police custody, and even if it was, it wasn’t held long.

Instead it was released to Lori and possibly sold, according to all three sources.

Lori Isenberg told authorities that blood found in the boat and photographed by Sheriff’s Office investigators in the hours after she reported the incident was a result of injuries she sustained. She told investigators she bloodied her nose after Larry fell overboard.

Larry Isenberg’s body was found almost two weeks later, floating 3 miles to the west — across the lake’s main channel — near Sun Up Bay.

In an email a day after her husband’s disappearance, Lori Isenberg wrote that Larry had been sick with the flu.

“He was feeling better yesterday, and he felt bad that I had spent these past days since we got back (from a Florida vacation) taking care of him so he wanted to take me on a date to watch the sunrise on the lake and go out to breakfast at the resort. We never made it there.” And she intimated that Larry may have had a stroke, which prompted him to fall off the prow of the boat while checking the electric motor.

It was well known among family and friends, however, that Larry Isenberg was extremely health conscious, walked 3 to 4 miles daily, and worked out an additional 45 minutes each day. He kept in constant contact with his physician by email. He discussed his health with his good friend, Michael Holmes, in a Feb. 10 telephone conversation.

“Holmes could not detect anything in their conversation that would lead him to believe Larry was feeling bad or previously ill,” according to the warrant investigators served on Isenberg’s daughters in Spokane. “Holmes believes they would have talked about that.”

In an email to his physician four days before he was reported missing, Larry Isenberg mentioned having the flu while he and Lori were in Florida.

“I had the shakes, terrible equilibrium and even my brain was foggy. I am better today by quite a bit,” he wrote in a Feb. 9 email to Post Falls physician Dr. Cher Jacobsen.

But he did not seem to be worried by whatever caused the symptoms.

“I have every intention of living long enough that you have to make house calls on Mars,” he wrote.

Internet medical sites describe symptoms of a benadryl overdose as causing “drowsiness, blurred vision, increased heart rate, low blood pressure, confusion and delirium,” according to MedlinePlus, the site of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Other sites refer to dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, unsteadiness and hallucinations.

The day before Larry Isenberg was reported by his wife to have fallen overboard, he and Lori were met near their Bobcat Trail home by neighbor Steve Snarr, who told investigators that Larry was “Happy as hell. In a great mood. Very happy.”

On Feb. 13, the morning Isenberg was reported drowned, Jessica Isenberg, Larry’s daughter, received a picture via social media at 6:43 a.m. from her father’s phone of the Sun Up Bay boat launch.

The accompanying message read, “It’s easy to see why Sun-Up Bay got its name,” and explained that Larry and Lori were going for a morning boat ride before breakfast at The Resort.

Lori told investigators that Larry shot the photo and sent it, but detectives later found it had been taken and sent from Lori’s phone.

In addition, a text message sent the same morning, at 7:49, from Larry’s phone number to Holmes discussed his previous illness — something he had not mentioned in the earlier phone call — and the possibility Larry had a “mini-stroke” and wasn’t feeling well enough to fish. The message explained that Larry and Lori were out for a boat ride and then headed to breakfast. It was followed by a “Thumbs up” emoji.

Holmes later told investigators that he didn’t believe the text was from Larry.

“Larry doesn’t use emojis,” Holmes said. “He doesn’t have time for them.”

In a review by investigators of six months worth of text messages from Lori and Larry Isenberg’s phones, “Larry never used an emoji,” detectives noted. That contrasted sharply with “Lori’s regular use of emojis.”

Lori told deputies she did not call authorities after her husband went overboard because she left her phone in the pickup truck parked with the boat trailer at the Sun Up Bay launch, and that she was unaware that Larry’s cellphone was inside the boat’s cabin when he fell overboard.

Investigators found Lori Isenberg’s phone inside the pickup at Sun Up Bay after the incident.

Investigators photographed blood drops and smears “on the trolling motor foot control on the bow; drops on the bow side of the driver’s windshield and a smear on the left side of the driver’s console leading from the upper left section down to the ignition switch.”

It was later learned that hand-written changes were made in January to Larry’s will. Those changes would have left 80 percent of assets “to Lori’s kids and 20 percent to Larry’s kids,” according to the search warrant application.

A few days after Larry went missing, Lori asked Dean Isenberg, Larry’s son, to “help get Larry’s things out of the residence,” according to the search warrant application.

Larry Isenberg’s autopsy, released from county coroner Dr. Warren Keene in April after toxicology results were in, showed no signs of a stroke and no evidence of drowning.

Keene told investigators that Isenberg’s physician had relayed to him how healthy Larry Isenberg had been just prior to his death.

“There was no way Larry had a heart attack,” the doctor said.