"She was very disoriented, did not know where she was (or) her own name, and spoke gibberish," the charging documents stated.

Wolford told officers that his wife has suffered from dementia for about five years, three years longer than doctors had expected her to live. According to the Daily Record, he said she wandered off at last year's York Fair and was missing for about 90 minutes before she was found trying to leave the fairgrounds.

Wolford said he decided to use a leash to keep her from wandering away this year, the newspaper said.

"Walter told me that he originally placed the leash around her waist, but somehow it had moved up around her neck and when she walked away from him and (when) all of the slack became taut, he 'gently tugged on the leash so she would stop,'" an officer wrote in the charging documents.

Investigators wrote that they spoke to the couple's son, Walter Wolford Jr., who "did not offer much info in this case" but said his father was not abusive to his mother, the Daily Record reported.

The annual York Fair, billed as "America's First Fair," is held every September in York. It began in 1765, 11 years before America's founding, as a two-day agricultural market on the town commons, the fair's website states.