Man recounts finding remains in Allentown
A wide-open door caught Robert Terwilliger’s attention as he walked up a narrow Allentown street about midnight on March 11.
The night was snowy and bright, and the door — ajar at a 90-degree angle — called to Mr. Terwilliger. He was taking a new route home after picking up cigarettes and halfand-half from the only 24-hour store nearby, and he routinely explores abandoned houses, worried about neighborhood kids getting inside, he said.
On this night, he figured he’d at least check to see if the door at 932 Manton Way had a lock.
As he climbed the steep steps toward the pale green house, the thick stench of garbage hit him full in the face. He reached the open door and stepped inside, wielding his iPhone as a flashlight.
White bags of garbage filled the kitchen, packed together in a single layer like too many bumper cars in a rink.
“It looked like someone had just stopped taking the trash out,” Mr. Terwilliger said.
“There was just trash everywhere.”
Mr. Terwilliger waded through, pushing garbage bags aside so he didn’t step on them. Children’s toys were scattered everywhere. He reached a doorway on his right, but it was blocked by a couch. He peered over the couch. And saw the top of a head. At first, he thought it must be a Halloween costume, a thin, reddish dummy slumped on the floor, propped up against the couch.
But as he stared into the dark living room, he realized it was a badly decomposed body.
Dazed and shaken, Mr, Terwilliger turned and retraced his route out. Walked home. Told a few people, who urged him to call police. But it took him three days to muster the courage. Diagnosed with autism, Mr. Terwilliger, 49, said he sometimes struggles to process events. A friend finally made the call, then handed the phone to Mr. Terwilliger.
And when officers arrived at 932 Manton Way, they found not one, but two decomposed bodies inside.
It’s an indictment of modern living, Mr. Terwilliger thinks, that no one noticed the bodies for months. How does that happen?
“It haunts me to this day,” he said.
••• An elderly man and woman lived in the home at 932 Manton Way, neighbors said. They were private people, quiet.
Neighbor Michelle Douthett, 26, said she saw the woman come outside only to take the trash out. She’d traverse the steep front steps to leave bags on the curb.
The older man, however, would walk down Manton Way to a corner store, then trek back up the hill with his groceries.
He’d often stop and rest on a stoop at the top of the hill, just about 20 feet short of the home at 932 Manton Way. More than once, Ms. Douthett offered to help him with his groceries. But he never accepted. “He didn’t want help with anything,” she said.
Before Mr. Terwilliger discovered the bodies, Ms. Douthett hadn’t seen the woman for a year, she said. And she hadn’t seen the man for about eight months. The front gate, which the man usually kept locked, hung open.
Once, Ms. Douthett went over to the house and knocked on the door, peered into the hallway. It looked normal, she said, with a stack of phone books on a table.
Another time about six or maybe eight months ago, she told her Uber driver — an off-duty police officer — about her neighbor’s disappearance, and he said he’d call in a well-being check.
As she stepped out of the car, she heard him make the call, she said.
But the Pittsburgh Police Bureau has no record of any calls for service at 932 Manton Way since at least July 2016, spokeswoman Emily Schaffer said.
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office hasn’t identified the two bodies found in the home or determined how they died. Ms. Schaffer could not say whether police suspect foul play in the two people’s deaths. Mr. Terwilliger said he saw no drug paraphernalia in the home.
The house at 932 Manton Way is owned by a woman who died in 2014, property records show. A current caretaker or manager for the estate could not be reached.
It’s not clear whether the elderly couple who lived in the home were squatters or were renting the property. Ms. Douthett said she never saw lights on in the home, although she did on occasion hear a radio playing inside.
She never had any trouble with the older couple, she said, and they never had visitors.
“It just looked like a sad ending,” Mr. Terwilliger said. “And a lonely ending.”