Family, neighbors dismayed over Upper Merion killings

For twins, Joseph McAndrew Jr. and his brother, James, could not have been more different.

James was outgoing where Joseph was quiet and reserved.

James took naturally to soccer and tennis, while his brother preferred listening to music alone.

And when James, 23, went off to Pennsylvania State University to earn a degree after high school, Joseph stayed behind with his parents at the family home in the Gulph Mills section of Upper Merion.

But as friends and family members struggled Monday to make sense of the events that left James and his parents dead and Joseph charged with their murders, even those differences offered few answers.

"If Joseph is mentally ill, and he'd have to be for what he's done, I still never would have dreamed he was capable of this - even as quiet as he was," said Cheryl Beidler, a family friend. "They were both just so loving and gentle."

Police found Joseph Jr. - his pants and shoes covered with blood - just before 7 p.m. Saturday outside the family home on Holstein Road, a stone's throw from the Gulph Mills Golf Course.

Inside, his parents - Joseph McAndrew Sr., 70, and Susan McAndrew, 64 - and his brother lay dead on the kitchen floor, stabbed repeatedly by what investigators called an 18-inch "samurai-style" dagger.

Joseph Jr. left little doubt he had inflicted the fatal wounds, detectives said. Asked what had happened, he allegedly told them, "Extermination." Asked who had been exterminated, he replied: "person named brother," "person named mother," and "person named father," according to court filings.

Police found blood smeared across the house and signs that the family had fought for their lives, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said Monday. A tenant living on the property called police after hearing shouts for help followed by shattering glass and an "eerie quiet."

Joseph McAndrew Jr. offered little explanation, Ferman said.

"There's nothing to say why these events transpired, what happened to provoke them, or what was going on in his head at the time," she said.

It remained unclear whether Joseph McAndrew Jr. had sought treatment for or been found to have a psychological disorder. Authorities refused to discuss the possibility at a news conference Monday, except to say police had not been called to the home for previous disturbances.

Although some relatives suggested that Susan McAndrew had recently become worried about Joseph Jr., others said she had given no such indication.

"She never spoke of any concerns like that - just that the boys were very different," said her aunt Rose Brice.

Beidler - who worked with Susan McAndrew at a health consulting business and remained a close family friend - hardly recognized Joseph Jr. in the dead-eyed mug shot authorities released Monday. The boy she watched grow up appears in the photo wrapped in a white cloth after authorities seized his clothing for evidence.

Susan McAndrew spoke fondly of frequent beach trips she and Joseph Sr., a retired teacher, took with the boys to Stone Harbor, Beidler said. The brothers kept up the family tradition of heading to the beach house with their parents for sailing weekends well into their young adulthood.

"They would hang out together," Beidler said. "They were a very close-knit."

At Penn State, James McAndrew - whom classmates described as bright and engaged - could often be spotted on campus kicking around a hacky sack with friends. He had recently returned home after graduation to hunt for a job.

Ferman referred to him Monday as Joseph Jr.'s "greatest supporter over the years."

But as the crime-scene tape wrapped around the property Monday showed, something destroyed that bond.

Brice says she's unsure the family will ever know why.

"I know that they have to be in heaven," she said. "And I'm praying for Joseph Jr., for the day he realizes what he has done."

As of late Monday, Joseph Jr. remained held without bond on three counts of first- and third-degree murder and one count of possessing an instrument of crime pending a preliminary hearing March 15.

A first-degree murder charge requires prosecutors to prove a defendant intended to kill his victims. The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office routinely pursues all charges that could apply to a given crime, Ferman said.

Although Joseph McAndrew Jr. requested a public defender, he had not yet been assigned an attorney.