Cops: Duo charged in brutal Chester home invasion
CHESTER >> The pink bikini did them in.
The bathing suit that 25-year-old Erinn Howarth came to the East 25th Street house and retrieved just hours prior to a brutal home invasion was later found at the crime scene — tucked inside a neon green backpack recovered as evidence in one of the bedrooms of the partially ransacked house.
Howarth and her boyfriend, 23-year-old Richard Samuel Johnson, both of Philadelphia, are being held at the county prison in lieu of $1 million bail each on offenses involving the Aug. 23 attack at gunpoint. The pair is accused of tying up both a 75-year-old man and his 49-year-old daughter, and beating the daughter nearly unconscious before they made off with a safe containing an undisclosed amount of cash and possibly jewelry.
Charges against Howarth include robbery and related assault and weapons offenses. Johnson is charged with conspiracy to robbery and related assault offenses, as well as firearm violations, according to online court records.
Authorities believe the 75-year-old man, a widower, and Howarth, his housekeeper, were intimately involved and that she used information gained by the relationship to allegedly orchestrate the crime — including knowledge of the safe he kept in a hall closet.
“They knew exactly what they were looking for,” city Police Maj. Steven Gretsky said Wednesday.
When the suspects were arrested Wednesday night as a result of a joint investigation by Chester police and the Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division, Howarth was found hiding in the garage of Johnson’s residence. The safe was recovered, unopened.
It was shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday when investigators traveled to Philadelphia with warrants to arrest both Howarth and Johnson, as well as warrants to search Howarth’s residence on Keyser Street and Johnson’s residence on East Pike Street.
As of Thursday afternoon, Gretsky said, “This remains an active investigation.”
According to authorities, as many as four thieves including one woman entered the home around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. But the ordeal was reported to police around 8:17 p.m., after the father managed to free himself and flag down a neighbor who called 911.
When police arrived at the house, the victimized man was sitting outside. He immediately asked for an ambulance for his daughter. As of Thursday, she remained hospitalized in stable but critical condition.
Charging documents, written by city Detective Lawrence Weigand and county Detective Anthony Ruggieri, include information provided by the 75-year-old man as well as two of his daughters who were at the house in the hours prior to the home invasion.
The two daughters were at the house to assist their father with his medical needs. He had recently been hospitalized for broken ribs. They reportedly left the house between 4–4:15 p.m.
One of the daughters told authorities she was in the kitchen fixing lunch, sometime between 1:30-3 p.m., when she saw Howarth and a slender man with puffy hair wearing khaki cargo pants walk up the sidewalk and enter the laundry room, off the kitchen.
When the daughter asked Howarth what she was doing, according to the affidavit, Howarth said she was looking for her pink bikini. Noting that she noticed it earlier and wondered to whom it belonged, the daughter then went to her late mother’s bedroom and retrieved the bikini. She gave the bathing suit to Howarth who then placed it inside a bag. Howarth and the man then left the house.
Another daughter said she was in the kitchen with her sister around 3 p.m. when they noticed someone walk by the window in the kitchen area. This sister then saw her sibling speaking with Howarth in the laundry room of the house, the affidavit states.
As the one sister retrieved the bathing suit, the other sister told authorities she engaged Howarth in small talk, and then saw Howarth leave the house with a backpack on her back.
The two sisters left the house between 4-4:15 p.m.
Their father told authorities that he walked to the bathroom, which is adjacent to his bedroom on the second floor, around 5 p.m. He was brushing his teeth when he felt something hard pressed against his head — which he realized was a gun.
In the mirror, he saw a man wearing a black and white bandana over his face and something on his head. The intruder – whose exposed arms had tattoos from wrists to shoulders, including a peacock on his left forearm — repeatedly asked for the combination to the safe.
The man told the intruder he didn’t know the combination to the safe. When he told the intruder he couldn’t breathe and needed oxygen that was in the bedroom, the intruder allowed him to get it. But then the intruder tied the man’s hand and feet with cords, and ordered the man not to look at him. It was then the man saw a second intruder. As the intruder who held the gun at his head then began to ransack the bedroom, the accomplice tried to open the safe.
The man then told the intruders that a daughter was due home, but she didn’t know the combination either. The man remained bound until about 7 p.m. The house was quiet and he thought the intruders had left. After managing to untie himself, he walked down the hallway and saw his daughter lying on the floor, tied up with electrical cords. She had been beaten and was bleeding profusely.
As he attempted to untie and render aid to his daughter, a third intruder entered the room brandishing a gun. The silver semiautomatic firearm was similar to the one that had been pressed against his head.
This intruder, according to the affidavit, was wearing tight white pants with a zebra print, clothing that appeared to be female.
He said this intruder threw him to the floor, sat on his back and tied him up again. The intruder then went to the dresser where he kept his medications and placed them and other items in a bag or pillow case.
The man said he lay quietly on the floor and after some time, he untied himself a second time. He looked but couldn’t find a phone. He went outside and flagged down a neighbor who called 911.
Shortly after midnight on Aug. 24, the daughter who had been at the house prior to the home invasion returned to collect some clothing for her father. When she found a backpack in her late mother’s bedroom that did not belong to anyone in the family, she notified Weigand.
Weigand and county Detective Robert Lythgoe later retrieved the backpack. The zipper was undone and inside, Weigand saw a bikini with a pink bottom and top, as well as a bottle of liquor, a few cans of soda, a bottle of bleach and a towel.
It was then that the daughter began to tell Weigand “of events surrounding the bikini which took place earlier in the day,” the affidavit states.
Subsequently, the other sister who was at the house on Tuesday prior to the invasion positively identified the backpack as the same one she saw on Howarth’s back as she left the house, hours before the home invasion robbery.
The preliminary hearings are listed for Sept. 12 before Magisterial District Judge Wilden H. Davis.