The death of 3-year-old Porchia Bennett revealed a pattern of horrifying child abuse and a response from DHS that came too late.
"Shocking. Sickening. Sad."
Those were the words Homicide Capt. Richard Ross used at a press conference Tuesday to describe the events inside 1705 S. Fifth St.
On Sunday around 1:10 p.m., police found the lifeless body of 3-year-old Porchia Bennett pinned between a mattress and bedroom wall in the home, said Ross. The toddler’s body was covered with bruises, police said.
The child’s aunt, Candice Geiger, 18, called police after she found Porchia unresponsive.
The toddler was rushed to Methodist Hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. officials said.
Investigators also found three other girls, ages 10, 6 and 4 — Porchia’s sisters — inside the home. The 10-year-old was so badly beaten, with bruises on her face and head, that both her eyes were blackened and swollen shut, Ross said. The child was rushed to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she was in stable condition.
The other two girls, who were not physically harmed, were placed in foster care, Ross added.
The next day, investigators charged Geiger and her boyfriend, Jerry Chambers, 31, with four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, Ross said. Chambers also was charged with attempted murder of the 10-year-old; pending autopsy results, he could face murder charges for Porchia’s death, the captain added.
Not only were the children "beaten unmercifully," said Ross, but investigators believe all the girls had been starved from time to time.
"It’s absolutely horrible abuse. It’s sad that kids have to be subjected to this," the captain said. Homicide Lt. Michael Morrin described the conditions inside the apartment as "absolutely filthy."
Authorities are not sure why the girls’ mother, Tiffany Bennett, 27, was not living at the residence; Ross described the arrangement with Geiger and Chambers as a sort of "babysitting" service.
Porchia’s death set off stinging allegations that the Department of Human Services had failed the child. Standing alongside Ross at Monday’s press conference, Alba Martinez, commissioner of Human Services, acknowledged DHS "failed" the sisters. More than once during the 15 minutes she addressed the press, Martinez apologized for her department’s handling of the case.
Last Thursday, three days before Porchia died, DHS received a complaint on its child abuse hotline from a neighbor on the 1700 block of South Fifth Street, said Martinez.
The neighbor reported that she had observed — on more than one occasion — bruises on the 10-year-old’s face.
DHS classified that call as an emergency, Martinez said.
Yet it took the department 36 hours to respond.
It wasn’t until Saturday morning that a social worker arrived at 1705 S. Fifth St. Unable to gain entry to the home, the worker left a letter, Martinez said.
Porchia was found dead the next day.
Under state law, DHS officials have 36 hours to respond to an emergency call, so case workers acted in accordance with the law, Martinez pointed out.
But, she added, she was not happy with the response time.
Under ideal circumstances, it should take DHS no longer than 24 hours to respond to an emergency call, Martinez said.
So what went wrong last weekend?
Martinez said when the call came in, the case worker had two other "more emergency" situations to deal with.
"It’s a very, very unfortunate situation. We get 900 calls a month, and what happened here was the exception. Still, we are devastated," Martinez said.
One South Division police source told the Review he thinks DHS more than dropped the ball in its handling of the complaint.
There is hope that the department’s addition of 20 investigators last month will help more children in the future, Martinez said.
Meanwhile, Porchia’s sisters are in foster care and receiving "trauma counseling," the commissioner said.
"They’ve been abused enough. We failed them enough," she said. "We will move forward with getting these children into permanent and loving homes that are in an environment where they will be assured safety for the rest of their lives."
DHS previously maintained a file on the family, from 1994-2000. The sisters were living with their mother and father at the time and received in-home services, Martinez said. An older sibling — the child whose alleged abuse was being investigated during that period — eventually moved to North Carolina with the father. Efforts by social workers to locate Tiffany Bennett failed, and because no further reports of abuse had been received, the court discharged the case.
The mysterious death of a pregnant woman led police to a South Philly murder scene and her killer — after he committed suicide.
Just in case the peanut butter smeared on Susan Brennan’s body wasn’t strange enough, things were about to get even weirder for the investigators probing her murder.
Last Thursday, three days after the pregnant Southampton, N.J., woman was found strangled on the 1600 block of South 49th Street in Southwest Philadelphia, police found her killer.
Only thing is, the suspect was dead.
The murder of Susan Brennan — whose life and death were linked to South Philly — is one of the more bizarre homicides in recent memory, officials said. As one detective put it, there’s enough here for a book.
The tangled tale unraveled when homeless people found 32-year-old Brennan’s nude, multi-tattooed body Aug. 11 on the desolate dead-end block in Southwest Philly, said Capt. Charles Bloom of the Homicide Division.
Scavengers often frequent the area, which has become a dumping ground for furniture and appliances, the captain said.
Brennan’s hands and feet had been bound with electrical cord, and the same cord was tied around her neck, Bloom said. The mother of two had been 25-30 weeks pregnant, the captain added. Brennan’s body had been smeared with peanut butter — probably to attract rodents to the body to hamper identification, a police source said.
An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be ligature strangulation, said Lt. Philip Riehl of the Homicide Division.
Last Wednesday, a sergeant with the Internal Affairs Bureau received a tip from a source that Brennan’s killer had jumped into the Schuylkill River near University Avenue, Capt. Richard Ross, commanding officer of the Homicide Division, said at a press conference last week.
The next morning around 9:30, the body of a man was pulled from the river. The 35-year-old was later identified as Linwood Burley, aka Andy Webb, from the 600 block of North Wilton Street in Southwest Philly.
According to homicide officials, Burley committed suicide by jumping into the river Monday night after he revisited the scene of the crime and saw police converged there, Bloom said.
Burley, who was riding in a car with his nephew, asked him to pull over — and then he jumped, the captain added.
Family members later reported the suicide to police and provided them with a note in which Burley admitted to killing Brennan and expressed remorse, Ross said.
Based on the new information, investigators went to Burley’s sister’s apartment on the 1800 block of South 18th Street, where they recovered a pillow case that matched a sheet found where Brennan’s body had been dumped, Ross said.
In the end, Brennan’s untimely death came down to two things: drugs and money, police said.
Investigators believe Brennan met up with Burley sometime Sunday and that he killed her Monday at his sister’s apartment, where the two had been smoking crack cocaine, said police.
"This young victim was struggling with drug addiction and that’s how they crossed paths with one another," Ross said. "We have information that at some point they were doing drugs together. Apparently this gentleman was providing her with drugs this particular day."
According to a homicide investigator, Brennan frequented drug houses, or "smoke houses," in South and Southwest Philly. A smoke house operates much like a bar: Customers order a drug of choice — usually crack cocaine — and pay the tab. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
But often, addicts cannot come up with the dough. So other forms of payment — usually sexual favors — are accepted, the source said. Brennan often would not have money to cover her drugs, added the investigator. On at least one occasion, her mother, who lives in New Jersey, had to bail her out; other times, she would pay with her body, according to the source.
The day she was killed, Brennan had no money to pay for her drugs, so Burley asked for a sexual favor, the investigator said. When Brennan refused, things turned violent.
Linwood Burley was no stranger to the law. His convictions date back to 1983 for offenses including robbery, assault and trespassing, according to court records. He spent his entire adulthood in and out of the justice system.
Homicide detectives identified Brennan by her many tattoos.
Bloom held a press conference the day after Brennan’s body was found specifically to detail her tattoos and enlist the public’s assistance in identifying her.
"Within 15 minutes of the broadcast, we had calls from family and acquaintances — and every one of them panned out, too," Bloom said. The captain added that normally tips don’t come that quickly, and if they do, most of the time they don’t flesh out.
By interviewing friends and family members, investigators developed insight into Brennan’s lifestyle and the places she frequented, Bloom said.
Several addresses surfaced in South and Southwest Philly.
The manager of Cheerleader’s go-go bar at Front Street and Oregon Avenue confirmed last week that Brennan had worked there. He referred further questions to the club’s attorney, Marc Raspanti. When contacted last Friday, Raspanti said all Cheerleader’s dancers are "independent contractors," meaning they are not employees and work whenever they choose. Brennan worked for the club in the fall of 2002 for what Raspanti believed was "on and off for usually a couple hours a week."
"We read about her untimely death and our heart goes out to her and her family. It was a tragic and brutal event," Raspanti said.
The attorney said he had heard Brennan went to work for Club Risqu� in Bristol. The manager of that club checked past employee records and said no one by her last name ever worked for the club. Club Risqu� on the Delaware, 1700 S. Columbus Blvd., also had no record of Brennan having worked there.
The victim had recently separated from her husband, who disapproved of her drug-addict lifestyle — particularly in light of her pregnancy, a homicide investigator said. She would stay with her mother or occasionally her first husband in Northeast Philly, where she had been Sunday night. Brennan’s ex owns a tanning salon in South Philly, but police declined to say more about him. The two remained friendly after the divorce, said the investigator.
Neither Brennan’s current husband nor her ex was ever a suspect, police said.
In fact, the victim’s husband was in North Dakota or South Dakota at a biker rally when she was killed — he even had the plane ticket to prove it, Bloom said.
As Capt. Ross said at last week’s press conference, "case closed."
