Warrant alleges body hidden a month

Decatur woman’s death concealed by nephew, police say.

You wouldn’t have known by the looks of things that Elizabeth Stewart was dead inside her Decatur apartment.

A computer was on, clothes were scattered about, and dirty dishes were piled in the sink, DeKalb County police Officer C.M. Delon noted in his police report. A cellphone was near the door, and unopened mail sat on a side table nearby. Prescription pills were found throughout the apartment.

“It was obvious that someone was still residing in the apartment,” Delon wrote.

It wasn’t until Delon smelled the distinct odor of a decomposed body and pulled back the covers of a bed in a back room that he found the 88-year-old woman inside the Emory Square apartment complex. A white towel covered her face and a candle was lit on the dresser near the bed.

Charles Frederick Peters, 37, her nephew, was arrested Tuesday evening inside the apartment, accused of concealing the death, DeKalb County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cynthia Williams said. Warrants allege Peters kept Stewart’s body in the apartment for a month and didn’t tell anyone.

The DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office said Stewart died of natural causes, Channel 2 Acton News reported. DeKalb police said she had suffered from dementia.

She was last seen in September by the apartment complex’s property manager, Vincent Rodriguez, who went to her unit to collect overdue rent. Then, Peters apologized and said he “would get the late payment ‘taken care of,’” according to the report.

When Rodriguez went to check again Friday, the front door was locked and the rear sliding door was open. Rodriguez slipped inside, made his way to the rear bedroom, smelled a strong odor and decided to call police.

Peters, who had lived with Stewart for a little more than a year, was nowhere to be found.

Stewart’s body was taken to Levett and Sons Funeral Home.

She is the fourth person found dead in DeKalb County in a matter of months.

On Friday, a DeKalb police officer found 27-year-old Sergio Ulysses Collins dead from multiple gunshot wounds in a car at the Mall at Stonecrest. He had been reported missing from northwest Atlanta three days earlier, and police said they believed he was in danger. No arrests have been made. Atlanta police are investigating.

On Aug. 17, Millicent Williams, 78, was found along I-20 a month after she was reported missing. She was identified using dental records. Her grandson Gregory Williams was arrested and faces charges of murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault and theft by taking.

A month later, police found 30-year-old Steven Mayer dead in his basement from multiple gunshot wounds.

Police recently released surveillance footage from the night of that crime that showed one man guarding the home as two others searched inside.

They walked away from the home with boxes of marijuana-infused edibles. Detectives think Mayer woke up and startled the men.