Apologies, folks ... this post should've been up hours ago.
Murder-suicide proved to be the causes of death for a Northeast Philadelphia couple whose bodies were found in a gruesome house of horrors on Saturday, police said.
Investigators had found “plenty of blood” in nearly every room of Robert and Sophia DiAndrea’s split-level house on Greycourt Road, said Homicide Sgt. Frank Hayes.
The husband and wife both bore numerous stab wounds, which led detectives to initially wonder if the couple had savagely battled to the death.
Further investigation led police to conclude that Robert, a 40-year-old Water Department supervisor, had stabbed his wife in the chest numerous times, then turned the knife on himself, Hayes said.
“She had quite a few defensive wounds on her,” he said. “[Robert] slashed both of his arms multiple times.”
Sophia, 39, a fifth-grade teacher at Anne Frank Elementary School, was found in a rear bedroom.
Police found Robert in a front bedroom. He didn’t leave a suicide note, but detectives believe that the episode was sparked by a “domestic issue,” Hayes said.
He declined to elaborate because the couple has three surviving children, two of whom — Joseph, 13, and Anthony, 10 — alerted neighbors when they found blood on the back door of their house on Saturday.
Sources previously said that the couple had a history of domestic problems and had been seeking a divorce.
Dana DiFilippo has covered murder, mayhem and miscellany at the Daily News since 2000. She grew up in Delaware County and studied journalism and photography at Penn State University. E-mail tips to difilid@phillynews.com.
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Stephanie Farr has been reporting for the Daily News since 2007, covering everything from gay porn stars who entered the burglary business to moon trees, skinheads, murders and naked bike rides. She covers crime, both in the city and suburbs, and keeps clippings of bizarre Associated Press articles. Her favorite this year was the story about the drunk in Punxsutawney who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead opossum. E-mail tips to farrs@phillynews.com.
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Phillip Lucas joined the Daily News crime team in 2011. He grew up on the mean streets of Seattle and studied journalism and psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Before landing in the City of Brotherly Love, Phillip was a reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del. Email tips to lucasp@phillynews.com.
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Morgan Zalot is the newest crime reporter at the Daily News, starting in 2011 after interning at the paper twice as a Temple University journalism student. In her past stints at the DN, she covered just about everything, from drunken Phillies fans to a barber shop in a high school to a grisly murder-suicide. She’s a born-and-raised Philly girl who grew up in the Northeast. E-mail tips to zalotm@philly.com.
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