"I am very ill, your honor, but it's not mental illness, like my husband accuses me of," Koontz wrote, noting she suffered several ailments, including fibromyalgia, trigeminal neuralgia, pulmonary hypertension and lupus. "I have been physically and verbally abused for this!"
Mary Koontz described slights by her husband and daughter. "All they did was criticize me," she wrote in longhand. "Every time I tried to correct my daughter, she would say to her dad, 'Mom's acting crazy, Dad!' and he would always side with her!"
She wrote that her difficulties were compounded when her son Christopher Luca - Ron Koontz's stepson - was diagnosed with a disorder that "caused a true crisis in our family." (She has another son, Robert Luca, known as "Joby.")
She said she joined a support group, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, but that her husband and Kelsey reacted by "gossiping" about "what was happening in our home." It was such gossip, she said, that "destroyed our family, not my son's illness."
She described being removed from the house by a police officer after the evaluation order had been granted and being placed in a restricted area, under guard, at Franklin Square Hospital Center. When she was released after 12 hours, a doctor called Ron Koontz to say he could pick her up and his reply was, "She is no longer welcome here," according to his wife's letter.
A death notice published Monday in The Baltimore Sun said Ronald G. Koontz had died "suddenly" June 19. It said he was the father of Kelsey and stepfather of the two boys, but the notice made no mention of Mary Koontz.
