Louisiana Voice

The wife of one of the candidates for sheriff of Jackson Parish has responded to Wednesday’s story in LouisianaVoice by denying that her husband, Cody Cheatwood, “never once” directly received from Jackson Parish Hospital’s pharmacy from which she said medications were taken “without charge” on a regular basis by hospital employees.

Elizabeth Cheatwood, along with her husband, were among four persons arrested in connection with an investigation by State Police into theft, drug distribution and payroll irregularity charges. The other two were hospital pharmacy director Aaron Nash and payroll clerk Vickie Booker.

Mrs. Cheatwood, who worked as human resources director at the hospital, in an email to LouisianaVoice, said her husband had “no way of knowing if I was paying for them (medications) or not. I was getting my husband’s maintenance meds from the pharmacist—blood pressure meds, cholesterol meds, reflux meds. The pharmacist never charged me for them.”

She then dropped something of a bombshell when she said, “As a matter of fact, there were 72 people in total that got their meds without charge. If the pharmacist liked you, he didn’t charge you because his idea was that the hospital wrote off every other bill for employees, so why should we pay for meds?”

She said Cody Cheatwood, who at the time was chief investigator for the sheriff’s office, “was the only person” outside the hospital to be brought into the investigation even though there were many others receiving meds. She said Sheriff Andy Brown “was determined to have Cody brought into this once he realized I was involved.”

As for the 16 counts of possession of a legend drug brought against Cody Cheatwood initially, Mrs. Cheatwood said, “That was Cialis. I got one bottle for Cody. There were 16 unaccounted for. The facilities director (of the hospital) was dating a 20-something-year-old (he was in his 50s) and that’s where the majority of the other 15 bottles went.” The remaining “couple of bottles,” she said, were used by the pharmacist himself to his benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH, also known as an enlarged prostate) “prior to be diagnosed with prostate cancer.”

Months after the matter was more or less settled, she said Nash “called and asked us to come to his house because he needed to talk to us face-to-face. When we got there, he said all he could do was ask us to forgive him and he would explain why he did what he did.  In this meeting he explained that when he went to meet with the undercover officer and the pharmacy board rep, the undercover officer slid a piece of paper to him and told him to sign it. It was basically stating that all 16 bottles of Cialis had gone to Cody. The pharmacist told him he couldn’t sign it because it wasn’t the truth.  He was again told to sign it. Again, he said he couldn’t because it wasn’t accurate.”

She then dropped her second bombshell when she said the undercover officer then asked Nash if he had a daughter enrolled in ULM school of pharmacy. “He (Nash) said he did. Then he was asked how she could be on the clock at JPH when she was at school.  He said at that point he knew they had him because he’d been clocking in his daughter to get hours while she was at school.  He said the undercover officer told him if he did not sign it, he was leaving there and going straight to ULM and his daughter would no longer be enrolled. At that point he signed the document.

“He again asked us to forgive him and said he couldn’t let them ruin his daughter’s life,” she said.

She said the attorney general’s office told her and her husband that “all of Cody’s (charges) would be dropped because it was a bunch of crap. When arraignment day came, it was all dropped except for one malfeasance charge. He said he had to have the approval of the sheriff to drop that last charge and Sheriff Brown refused.”

“Sheriff Brown told him he needed to retire before any arrests were made,” she said. Cheatwood retired from the sheriff’s office December 31, 2014.

From January 2009 to December 2014, the documents claim Booker stole $56,131.38 from the hospital and Mrs. Cheatwood took $99,451.30. Mrs. Cheatwood said the only difference between her and Booker was “I had to pay full restitution up front to avoid jail time. She was given the opportunity to pay over time.”

“I’ve said this too many times to count in the 11 years since this happened,” Elizabeth Cheatwood said. “I did what I did. I never denied it. But let me give you a little of the story as it pertains to my husband, so that it might clarify things. There was never any accusation of him taking money”