By Derek Spellman
dspellman@joplinglobe.com
The owner of the Anderson Guest House, where a fire in November claimed 11 lives, defended his track record Tuesday and said the media have portrayed him unfairly.
Robert J. DuPont said news reports have painted an inaccurate portrait of him and his connection to Joplin River of Life Ministries Inc., which ran the Anderson residential-care home and others in Joplin and Carl Junction.
DuPont said neither he nor River of Life Ministries operated without a permit from the state of Missouri, although stories have raised questions about conditions in the Guest Houses.
“If I was that bad of a person, why would the state keep giving me licenses?” he asked.
Some reports, he said, have linked him with troubled care centers with which he had no ties at the time problems were reported. He cited the now defunct Carthage Guest House as an example.
Records from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services show that River of Life Ministries started operating the Carthage Guest House in April 2003.
River of Life leased the building from ANM Enterprises, a limited liability company based in Weatherby Lake.
River of Life Ministries was cited for failure to maintain the home, failure to obtain an annual fire inspection and failure to ensure that the staff could unlock each room from the outside in an emergency, according to state records from Oct. 30, 2003.
The Carthage Guest House closed in late November 2003, while River of Life Ministries was still running the operation, but DuPont said the building was in disrepair long before the ministry took over.
It was “too far gone” for the ministry to salvage, he said.
“We went in with a license on the wall thinking this place was in compliance,” DuPont said.
The state late last year withdrew all operating licenses held by River of Life Ministries after officials said they found evidence that DuPont helped run the organization after his 2003 sentencing for Medicaid fraud. State law bars people who have been convicted of a felony involving a health-care center from operating residential-care homes.
DuPont continued to maintain his innocence in the Medicaid case, saying authorities mistakenly thought he ran one business that was implicated in the scheme, which consisted of submitting fraudulent and/or inflated Medicaid claims. DuPont pleaded guilty in February 2002 to fraud, and he was sentenced a year later to 21 months in federal prison.
He acknowledged that he worked for River of Life Ministries and sometimes gave advice to administrators after his conviction, but he insisted that his wife, LaVerne DuPont, served as the executive director.
He also said authorities, including state inspectors and his parole officer, knew he worked for the ministry.
“I didn’t do a good job of sneaking around,” DuPont said, referring to past allegations that he concealed his involvement.
The fire
An investigation concluded that the cause of the Nov. 27 fire at the Anderson Guest House that killed 11 people and injured about two dozen others remained undetermined. But it noted that the blaze most likely began in the attic on the north end of the building, and that an electrical short could not be eliminated as a possible cause.
Source: Missouri Division of Fire Safety
