Thieves Beat 91-Year-Old Sacramento Veteran, Steal Life Savings

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A 91-year-old Sacramento man says he's lost his life savings in a home invasion robbery.

Denis Maylor showed off the wounds from when two men broke into his home.

"This was all black and blue right up to me shoulders," he said. "I never slept since. I go to bed and I lie there and it comes right back into me mind, what nasty people there is."

The World War II veteran was sleeping when the suspects hopped his barbed wire backyard fence and smashed his bedroom window. He struggled with one masked man armed with a hammer.

"He kept trying to swing and hit me face," he said.

The other suspect went straight to the closet safe.

"He kept shouting, 'What's the number of the safe,'" he said.

Inside was an estimated $175,000 in cash and collectible coins from Asia and Europe.

Longtime friend Bob Dickens can't believe the robbers could be so brazen.

"You can't have a conscience to beat up a 91-year-old man; you can't be human," he said.

Maylor grew up during the Great Depression at a time when many banks went bust, so he kept his cash in the safest place he knew: his own home.

"A lot of people lost lots of money putting money in banks, and he grew up in that era, and I guess he just hasn't quite gotten over it yet," Dickens said.

Maylor says it took decades for him and his late wife to save up the money.

"We were collecting for if we were old, you see, we could go to a nice care home," he said. "Now I can't."

Now he's left wondering what he'll do in the years he has left.