Violent end: For years, neighbors called authorities about family

ZACK PRITCHETT left his home so rarely that when he trudged up his block, he held his arm over his dark eyes, locked in a squint, to shade his face from the sun.

With bent knees and hunched shoulders, the rail-thin teen with pasty skin and matted hair had an ostrichlike walk, neighbors said.

The longtime neighbors on Reynolds Street in Bridesburg, where Pritchett, now 19, lived with his mom and ailing grandmom, saw him only twice a year, on Halloween and Memorial Day.

Then, not at all.

But they always heard him:

His loud screams at all hours from a second-floor bedroom, even over a blaring TV. And the boom-boom-boom from what sounded like Pritchett hurling himself or kicking his bedroom wall in a ramshackle house with no running water or gas.

Eleven neighbors told the Daily News that they had called city authorities about Pritchett since the mid-2000s - seven called the city's Department of Human Services and four called police.

In just the last year, cops from the 15th District visited the house 10 times. Neighbors said that the last couple of times, Pritchett's mom told officers that he had Tourette syndrome, a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary movements and sounds.

"That wasn't it," said neighbor Donna McGrath. "He was a prisoner. She kept him like a caged animal."

"We all knew something bad was going to happen," said Danielle Carbaugh, who called DHS several times.

"We just didn't know when it was going to happen, and how."

No one was shocked when, just after 6 a.m. March 27, they found out.

Zack Pritchett, his hands bloodied, stood in a driveway across the street from his faded gray house. A red-handled butcher knife lay nearby.

"You cage someone like an animal long enough," neighbor Tony Luniewski said, "sooner or later they will bite you."

Cops wore hazmat suits to enter the three-story rowhouse, the one neighbors dubbed "the House of Horrors."

Pritchett's room was filled with feces and trash.

"The living conditions were deplorable," said Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore, who has seen photos of the house. "His room was uninhabitable. There was a mattress and box springs, but no sheets. The mattress, walls and floor were brown."

Pritchett first told police that three masked men had broken into the home and stabbed his mom, Melizza Wiley, 53, and his grandmother, Joan Wiley, 74.

It didn't take long for him to confess to police.

He'd argued with his mom about cleaning his room at about 2:30 a.m. He didn't care anymore how it looked.

So she hit him, then went to bed, he said in a statement to police. He cried, thinking about "all the abuse that I've had. It just built up and I snapped."

He told police that he grabbed a knife from the kitchen and went up to the third floor and stabbed his mother all over her face and body as she slept. He cut his hands in the attack and she started to fight back. So he used a pillow to suffocate her.

Then he went down to the living room where his grandmother slept in a hospital bed near the front door.

"I was sleeping," Joan Wiley told the Daily News last week.

"I see him looming over me with a pillow. I fight the pillow off. Then I saw the knife," she said.

"He has anger-management problems," said the frail Wiley, as she lay in a hospital room, on oxygen, with stitched stab wounds on her face, ear, hands and neck.

She said her daughter had not mistreated Pritchett.

She didn't know that her daughter was dead, or even that she had been stabbed. When asked where she was, Wiley replied, "At home, I guess."

She said she wasn't mad at Zack.

"I just know him. I love him," she said.

"He's my only grandson."

The residents of Reynolds Street near Richmond are a tight bunch, almost like family. Several have lived on the street their entire lives.

Melizza Wiley was always a little eccentric, neighbors said. She often slept in the day and stayed up at night, sometimes sitting outside smoking Marlboro Light 100s.

She legally changed her name from Melissa to Melizza, pronounced as in Liza, thinking that it sounded more like the huge singing sensation she would become, said Jen Bardall, who used to live next door.

Years ago, Wiley was overly generous to neighbors. She baked them platters of Christmas cookies and cross-stitched personalized stockings for Reynolds Street babies.

At first, Wiley doted on Pritchett, her only child.

"His early birthdays were like a second Christmas, full of presents," Bardall said.

But when he was about 7, she pulled him out of first grade. Neighbors said she told them that a child had inappropriately touched him.

She told them she was home-schooling him, but they didn't believe her.

Neighbor Kelly McGrath told the People Paper that she called the Philadelphia School District and DHS about the family.

The school district did not respond to a request for Pritchett's educational history.

"He seems very smart," said Pescatore, who saw a videotape that Pritchett recorded for police.

"He speaks very well and he uses some big words," she said, adding that he can read.

Kellyann Kelleher, who repeatedly called police about the family, said Pritchett wasn't allowed outside to play with other children since he was about 10 years old.

That's when the screaming started.

"Normal kids go outside in the sun and go to school," she said. "He wasn't afforded normality."

Zack's mom had become a religious fanatic, neighbors said.

"She said, 'Get away from those kids. They're the devil,' " said neighbor Luniewski, who said he called DHS about the family about twice a year over the last decade.

"She told my daughters who got tattoos that they were going to hell," he said.

"She wanted to be a nun and told everyone that Zack was going to be a priest. She gave me and other children on the block books about the end of the world," Kelly McGrath said.

"She said that Zack is in love with crucified Christ."

Pritchett's mother had not been employed since he was a boy, and the house slipped into disrepair, neighbors said. With no running water, she had bottled water delivered.

Real-estate bills went unpaid since 2001 and Joan Wiley, listed as the homeowner with her late husband, owes the city more than $30,400, city records show.

But neighbors say Joan Wiley has been sick for years. Nurses or home-health aides regularly visited her in her hospital bed near the front door.

It's unclear whether the workers ever saw Pritchett.

"They were in and out of there all the time," said neighbor Suzanne Galson. "Why didn't they report anything?"

When neighbor Pat Ryan called DHS around 2005 to tell a worker that Pritchett's mother never let him outside, "the worker told me she doesn't have to," he said.

Kelly McGrath and Danielle Carbaugh said they began calling DHS about the family in 2006.

"They said they would investigate," said McGrath. "All we heard is, 'We'll look into it.' "

"How many calls does it take for someone to do something?" Carbaugh added. "We tried and tried."

DHS spokeswoman Alicia Taylor said she couldn't comment.

"We are saddened by the tragic events of this case, however, confidentiality laws prohibit us from confirming or denying anyone's current or past involvement with DHS," Taylor wrote in an email.

Around 2006, Wiley seemed to know that DHS was investigating, said former neighbor Sue Morgan, who is Pritchett's godmother.

"She was afraid DHS would take him away from her," she said.

Morgan had moved several blocks away. "She asked me if I could take Zack so when they came, he wouldn't be there," Morgan said.

Morgan said no. "I couldn't lie for her and hide him," she said.

About that time, Pritchett went to live with his father in New Jersey, neighbors said.

They believe that his dad enrolled him in school there and took good care of him.

But after a few months, he drove Pritchett back to Reynolds Street, where the screams and banging from his room got louder and more frequent.

Pritchett's dad died in 2008, according to a public record.

Stefanie Carbonaro said she called DHS on March 23, to report the disturbing noises from Pritchett's house. She didn't leave her name but gave Wiley's address and told the worker that Zack was never allowed outside.

"The woman said she would investigate," Carbonaro said.

Three nights later, Carbonaro said, it got worse.

"I heard him say, 'Please leave me alone! Get away from me! Don't do this!' " she said.

Then, silence.

Pritchett told police that after he stabbed his mom, he stopped himself when he was thrusting a knife into his grandmother. He said he told her to tell police that three men broke in and did it.

He tossed his mom's purse outside, a few houses down, and left a knife in the driveway across the street.

Then he called 9-1-1.

Now he's in jail, awaiting trial on murder and attempted-murder charges.

Pescatore, the prosecutor, said that on the videotape, Pritchett told police that his mother hit him and that he endured "what I would classify as psychological abuse."

"I don't know what will happen in this case," she said. "A lot more investigation has to happen. But we have one person dead and another person who could possibly die . . . It's still a murder case."

Pritchett's attorney, Daniel Conner, said he would have a psychiatrist evaluate him.

"I want to make sure he's competent and dig deeper into what happened here," he said. "As this case goes on and we probe more, we'll get to the bottom of this. It's a tragic situation."

But the people of Reynolds Street don't want to see him sent to prison.

"He won't survive," said Donna McGrath. "He deserves some type of life. Finally, have a life."

- Staff writers Vinny Vella and

Lara Witt contributed to this report.