Suspicions attend the death of opera diva

She was a leading light, faded with age. She died bruised in a Sarasota hospital in what is termed a ''suspicious death.''

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 2, 2002

SARASOTA -- She was 86, a retired opera singer and actor who performed at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera.

He is 38, a man who described himself to police as her long-suffering friend and live-in caregiver. Born as the sun began to set on her career, his own resume in recent years includes temporary construction work.

On April 19, when Marthe Errolle struggled to breathe and finally died in a Sarasota emergency room with severe bruises on her head, it was a grim ending to a life filled with soprano solos and standing ovations.

It also has brought scrutiny to Ms. Errolle's unique and sometimes stormy relationship with Roy Anthony Westmoreland, the much younger man with whom she shared her home for about 10 years.

Among her circle of longtime friends in Sarasota's vibrant theater scene, Ms. Errolle's death has sparked outrage and anticipation about the Police Department's next move.

Sarasota detectives have classified it as a "suspicious death" and have announced this week that they are investigating. But no arrests have been made.

When police showed up at her dingy, two-bedroom ranch on a dead-end street near downtown, a paramedic told them, "something is definitely wrong here." Officers noticed severe bruising to her face and other parts of her head. "She appeared to have been severely battered," one police report stated.

Westmoreland told police Ms. Errolle had fallen off the toilet at about 2:30 p.m. that day and hit her head on the bathtub. He said he straightened her out on the bathroom floor, gave her a pillow and checked on her every five minutes for 90 minutes to two hours. At about 5:30 p.m., Westmoreland said, he got her into bed.

When her breathing became labored, he said, he called 911.

In other statements to police, he said Ms. Errolle had been "clumsy" and had started to fall repeatedly. He said she refused to go to a nursing home or use her walker, and refused to let him call 911 that day.

"It's finally over," officers heard him say. They also listened as Westmoreland speculated that maybe it was her time to go and that she had had a good life. They noted that he offered explanations about her bruising, though they had never asked.

Police have been to the home twice in recent years to break up arguments between Westmoreland and Errolle.

Westmoreland was not at the home Wednesday. But he told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune this week he had done Ms. Errolle no harm, that they loved each other and that "she made me promise years ago that I would take care of her."

At the Golden Apple Dinner Theatre in downtown, Ms. Errolle's friends are not buying the image of her as feeble and incompetent.

"That's bull---- about her falling; She was in remarkable shape for somebody her age," said Roberta McDonald, who met Ms. Errolle when they starred together in a Rochester, N.Y., production of Kiss Me Kate.

McDonald and others at the Golden Apple recalled seeing Ms. Errolle in January at the theater's production of Crazy For You. Without a hitch, she climbed down two sets of stairs to get to the buffet and climbed back to her table with a full plate of food.

McDonald is an owner of the theater with her husband, Robert Turoff, her son, Ben Turoff, and other family members.

"We all were so very upset that we hadn't done more about the situation," Ben Turoff, the general manager, said of Ms. Errolle's relationship. "Everybody had done things, but no one pushed it." It was, he said, "not a very healthy situation for her to be in."

Alluding to Westmoreland's story, he added: "I never saw her with a walker -- ever."

Ms. Errolle retired to Sarasota in the mid 1980s to be with friends and to dabble in local theater after a long career based in New York. The daughter of opera star Ralph Errolle Smith, she was born in Los Angeles while her father was on tour.

In the 1930s, '40s and '50s, Ms. Errolle was a leading light in New York's opera circles, performing title roles in La Traviata and La Boheme at the Metropolitan Opera, and singing opposite her father, a tenor, in Carmen, Faust and other operas.

She also became known for the roles she played in Broadway shows, appearing often in regional performances of Kiss Me Kate and Merry Widow. She was in the first national company of The Sound of Music, playing the baroness Elsa.

In her last known performance, she played Mother Abbess in an early '90s production of The Sound of Music at the Golden Apple in Sarasota. In that role, as the nun who mentors Maria, she gave a tear-inducing rendition of Climb Every Mountain, said Ben Turoff.

Her dramatic soprano voice held its force and clarity well into her later years, he said. "Gorgeous voice," Turoff mused. "Gorgeous soprano voice."

Another friend, veteran actor Ian Sullivan, remembered a 1981 performance of Errolle's at the smaller Carnegie Recital Hall in New York. More than 1,500 people came, he said, and "she knocked them right on their butts."

As a co-executor of Ms. Errolle's will, Sullivan, along with other theater friends, will inheritsome of her memorabilia. But Westmoreland stands to inherit her home, which is valued at about $70,000.

Though her body has been cremated, the service has yet to take place. Sullivan said her ashes will be spread in the Bahamas, where those of her second husband's were spread in the 1940s.

She had three husbands, Sullivan said. And she was "the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

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