A Maryland woman was handcuffed outside her late father’s home in Conway, South Carolina, after his hired caregiver produced a deed showing the house had been transferred into the caregiver’s name for $5 weeks before he died.
Nora Rowland said her 75-year-old father, Robert, began receiving in-home care from nurse Sarah Smalls through Griswold Home Care starting in March 2024. Rowland said she and her father had been close her entire life and spoke by video call every week.
“My dad was always a daddy’s girl type thing, so it was always him and me throughout my whole life,” Rowland said. “We FaceTimed every week.”
When her father did not reach out on Father’s Day, Rowland drove from Maryland to Conway to check on him. She found the front door had been changed and a new Ring doorbell camera installed. When she rang it, Smalls answered remotely with news that Robert had died.
“She tells me, ‘This isn’t the way that I wanted to tell you, but your dad died, and there’s a bunch of other stuff I have to tell you too. Just wait there,'” Rowland said.
Rowland said her father had reportedly been dead for three days by the time she learned of it. Once inside, she found the house had been altered — new photographs of strangers on the walls, and rooms repainted.
“I went in, and everything was different,” Rowland said. “She had put up random photographs of people I’d never seen before. The walls were painted.”
Instead of an explanation, Rowland said Smalls accused her of breaking in and called Conway police. Smalls then showed officers a deed with the house listed in her own name.
“I’m walking out of the house expecting them to come and help, and they put my partner and me in handcuffs immediately,” Rowland said. “I just kept saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on; this is my dad’s house. My dad is dead.'”
Police body camera footage captured a neighbor’s account suggesting the situation had been developing for weeks before Robert’s death.
“She [Smalls] was allegedly coming here during the day and taking care of him, and one day she started moving furniture out, and he disappeared,” the neighbor said. “She was only in here a very short time, and Bob, he was not within his wits at all. You could’ve talked him into just about anything. I even called senior services and asked them to look into it.”
Documents cited by Rowland show Smalls was named as Robert’s power of attorney in April, and that a quitclaim deed dated April 17 transferred the Conway house to her for $5. Bank records reportedly show additional transfers from Robert’s account to Smalls, including some made after he had already died.
Smalls has directed WMBF News to her attorney and called police when a news crew arrived at the property. Griswold Home Care previously told WMBF News it had no knowledge of the situation, though Rowland says subpoenaed records she later obtained suggest otherwise. Additional calls to the company were not returned.
How a $5 deed becomes public record
Horry County Registrar of Deeds Marion Foxworth III said his office’s role is limited to confirming that a document meets formatting requirements — not verifying that the underlying transaction is legitimate.
“If it contains all the correct information to meet the legal standard, then we record it,” Foxworth said. “We don’t check whether what’s in that deed is fair or right.”
Foxworth said deed theft cases are uncommon in the county and have grown rarer as real estate professionals receive better identity-verification training. But Rowland’s case shows how a document that meets bare legal form can still enter the public record over a family’s strong objections.
The criminal charges filed against Rowland have since been dismissed, according to her account. She is now contesting the deed, arguing her father — who had Parkinson’s disease and a brain injury — may not have understood what he was signing.
“It’s so easy for them to get taken advantage of,” Rowland said. “He was a nice man; he would never think that someone could do this to him. I really can’t emphasize enough how many other people could easily get taken advantage of like this.”
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