York man accused of killing mother, sister
YORK COUNTY — A 55-yearold York County man was charged Thursday with killing his mother and sister — then dumping their remains in an abandoned pool behind their Edgehill home.
Andrew Donald Buchert, 55, of 201 Aspen Boulevard, is charged with the slayings of 83-year-old Patricia Buchert and 63-year-old Linda Buchert Daniels. Court records say the deaths could have happened as early as March 4.
The women were first reported missing March 28, York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Shelley Ward said.
“It was a friend of the ladies who called and asked us to do a welfare check,” she said.
Deputies went to the home that day, but Buchert told them that his mother and sister were out of town in Georgia on a trip.
Court documents say Sheriff’s Deputy C. Layne Forrest went to the home at 5 p.m. Wednesday to follow up, with Buchert telling him he last talked to his mother and sister by phone April 14.
“We asked if he had caller ID on his phone, and he stated yes,” Forrest wrote in a criminal complaint. “We then asked to see the caller ID, and he could not produce the fact that they had called.”
While inside the house, Forrest wrote, deputies noticed a blue sheet “with a large red substance on it which appeared to be blood.”
“We then were allowed to check the rear of the home, and upon doing so we detected an odor of decomposition coming from the area of the pool,” Forrest wrote in the complaint, filed Thursday in York Juvenile and Domestic Relations District
Court.
“I then asked Mr. Buchert if he killed his mother, and he said yes,” saying she was in the backyard pool, Forrest wrote. The investigator said Buchert then admitted to killing his sister, and that she too was in the pool.
Deputies executed a search warrant at 8:22 p.m. Wednesday and found two sets of human remains.
They also confiscated a blue sheet and other bedding, an “axe handle,” a pipe, “a piece of fabric from chair” and other items, according to a list of seized items filed in York-Poquson Circuit Court. They also took four swabs of blood as part of the investigation. “It is believed that Mr. Buchert murdered Mrs. Patricia Buchert and Mrs. Linda Daniels inside the home, due to the red substance on the blue sheet,” the search warrant affidavit said. “It is currently unknown how Patricia and Linda were murdered.”
The State Medical Examiner’s Office is determining the cause of deaths “and how long they have been deceased,” Ward said.
The arrest warrants estimate that the two died between March 4 and April 22.
Buchert was taken into custody Wednesday night and charged at 2 a.m. Thursday on two counts each of second-degree murder and
“disposing a dead body on private property without the permission of the owner.”
He’s being held without bond at the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail.
The Aspen Boulevard home is owned by Buchert’s father, 88year-old Donald Buchert, according to York County real estate assessment records. A neighbor said Donald Buchert also lives in the home, as does Andrew Buchert’s wife and a child.
Court records say Andrew Buchert attended trade school, collects $350 a month in food stamps and has two prior misdemeanor convictions.
In Buchert’s initial appearance
Thursday, Judge Wade Bowie appointed Buchert an attorney, Doug Walter, and set an Aug. 5 court date.
Relatives who answered the door of the Bucherts’ home on Thursday declined to comment to a reporter, saying it was too soon to discuss the case.
A neighbor said the Buchert’s in-ground pool — dilapidated and empty of water — has not been used since she and her family moved in in September 2017.
The neighbor, who requested anonymity out of concern for her privacy, said she was outside working on her yard on April 11 when she smelled a strong odor wafting in the area.
“It was awful,” she said. “I jokingly said to myself, ‘Something is dead over there.’”
But she didn’t think much more of it.
She only met Patricia Buchert once, she said, when one of the Bucherts’ trees fell onto her property, and Patricia came out to apologize. “She seemed nice,” the neighbor say, adding that Andrew Buchert came over with a chain saw to remove the tree.
Andrew Buchert and his wife “would come outside a couple of times a day and sit on the porch,” the neighbor said. He recently stopped by to offer some children’s books the family had come across as they were cleaning.
The killings marked York County’s third and fourth homicides of 2020. The other two slayings, in March, were also domestic-related.
Anyone who can help with the investigation is asked to call the Crime Line at 1-888-LOCK-U-UP or call our office at 757-890-3621.