Accused killer struggled with homelessness, mental illness, family says

When Antoinette Pelzer was on her medication, family members said, she was funny, would laugh at anything, and was a stickler for cleanliness.

"When she doesn't have her medication, she is a different person," said Ellen Slaughter, 22, of Philadelphia, the youngest of the 44-year-old Pelzer's three children.

While Pelzer was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at 24 and struggled with homelessness, she wasn't violent, family said, unable to reconcile their image of her with that of the frenzied attacker who allegedly stabbed two Canadian tourists to death Monday in Atlantic City.

The victims were identified on Wednesday as Po Lin Wan, 80, and her daughter Alice Mei See Leung, 47, both of Scarborough, Ontario. A spokeswoman for the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office said authorities managed to contact at least one relative in Hong Kong, but couldn't say whether other family was notified. The spokeswoman also declined to say whether Wan and Leung had family in Canada, or how, and when they arrived in Atlantic City.

Her family "is very, very sorry for the family that lost their family," said Slaughter's older sister Justine, 27, of Philadelphia.

Ellen Slaughter said she last spoke to her mother in early April, finding her in a Philadelphia shelter. Justine Slaughter said she had not spoken to her in about a year.

While little was known Wednesday about the two victims, a clearer picture emerged of Pelzer, who was being held on $1.5 million bail in the Atlantic County Jail on murder and weapons charges.

She stabbed the two Canadian tourists with a 12-inch butcher knife outside the Bally's Atlantic City Casino Hotel during a robbery, authorities said.

In interviews, relatives said she was a teenage mother, who could barely read and write, who only had one job in her life - working at a Wendy's while in middle school - and she could never hold onto her disability checks.

She shuffled in and out of shelters in Philadelphia and Cleveland, where she had other family, they said. She lived in a Northeast apartment with the help of one program at one point, but months ago slept in the Gallery and on the streets.

Family members said they believe Pelzer was not on her medication when she allegedly attacked the tourists.

"She didn't have any money; she was homeless. She definitely wasn't taking her medication," said Justine Slaughter.

When she doesn't take her medication, Ellen Slaughter said, "she's hearing things, it's just crazy."

Tobi King, a cousin, said Pelzer grew up in North Philadelphia and attended West Philadelphia High School but did not finish.

Pelzer's mother, Gladys, said she enrolled Pelzer in Job Corps, a training program that helps young people develop a career and earn a high school diploma or GED, but at 17, she became pregnant with Justine.

She would later have a son, Angelo Slaughter, now 24, and then Ellen. The three share the same father.

A single mother with three children, Pelzer would later marry another man, Justine said.

Justine said her mother could just about sign her name, write her children's names, and likely read street signs only because she knew them.

Around Memorial Day in 1991, signs of schizophrenia started to emerge.

"She stood up and started hollering and screaming in front of everybody," said Gladys Pelzer. "She said, 'Look over in the yard, the . . . Mafia is holding my mother hostage.' "

Then the children were taken in by their grandmother on their biological father's side, Justine recalled.

"I don't think she was stable enough to take care of us," Justine said of her mother.

But Pelzer saw them on weekends and holidays, she said.

"She still did Christmas with us. She still did dinner on Easter and Thanksgiving. She brought us school clothes for the beginning of the school year," Justine said.

But family members also recall that Pelzer would "just get up and go," as Ellen put it.

"Wherever her mind tells her to go, she gets up and goes," said Nadine King, 57, Gladys Pelzer's sister.

Once, Pelzer made it to California, Las Vegas, and Florida, taking her young son with her.

Another time, Ellen said she wired her mother $80 to take a bus ride back from Cleveland.

"When I woke up the next morning and I went to her room, she was gone, clothes and all," Gladys Pelzer said of one occasion.

In 2008, Pelzer left the apartment where she lived with Justine and Justine's family and babysat her four grandchildren.

Around October last year, according to King, Pelzer left a Cleveland shelter to return to Philadelphia when her mother told her to live with her at Opportunity Towers, a senior-housing complex, but was not allowed to stay there.

Pelzer then stayed at a shelter in North Philadelphia until New Year's Eve, King said. She likely went to Atlantic City some time after that, she said.

Around that time, according to King, Pelzer designated her mother to receive her disability checks and send her the money.

The two, King and Gladys Pelzer, offered differing accounts of whether the younger Pelzer regularly received the money from her mother, with King suggesting she didn't.

"Mind you, she's in the street, she needs to eat, she has no place to go," King said.

Gladys Pelzer said she did give her daughter a weekly allowance, but they argued when she didn't give her all the money at once.

"She was homeless on her own accord," Gladys Pelzer said. "It wasn't like nobody didn't care about her."