Unknown Gender History: Evelyn Miller - Suspected Serial Killer Landlady

The following article cites five “mysterious deaths” that occurred in the Parnell Boarding Home in Philadelphia. It is suspected that three or four boarders may have been killed in 1968 in order to fraudulently collect welfare benefits. Another died from injuries sustained in a beating given him on orders of the proprietress for a minor household indiscretion in 1970.

The m. o., if the suspicions are justified, resemble those of the Sacramento, California Dorothea Puentes case of the 1980s.

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FULL TEXT: In 1968, two social workers from Philadelphia State Hospital inspected a boarding house in Mantua and found seven welfare recipients living there is squalor.

They found former mental patients dressed in tattered clothes, eating soured food. The odor in the place was described as “stifling – a mixture of feces and garbage.”

Shortly after that, Philadelphia State Hospital removed the house from a list of “acceptable” facilities to which patients are transferred after their release. The State Welfare Department was notified of the action.

Three years later, the same house at 3212 Wallace st. has turned up in a confidential report up in a confidential report by Auditor General Robert P. Casey. The new report lists the home stills remains open and accepts welfare recipients.

City and state authorities say there is little they can do about it. Neither has jurisdiction over the licensing and regulation of boarding homes.

The house is one of 16 “undesirables” listed in Casey’s top-secret report, which discuses what appears to be a bizarre criminal conspiracy involving wholesale fraud in public assistance checks and the unregulated warehousing of elderly and sick public relief recipients.

Among the findings of the report, now under investigation by the State Police and the District Attorney’s office are these:

– BOARDING HOUSE dwellers, many of them former mental patients live in wretched squalor and are poorly fed, clothed and often go begging to neighbors for food.

– A BOARDING HOUSE operator collects the Social Security checks of her boarders after they died.

– SEVERE BEATINGS are meted out to some recipients.

In one documented case. Jesse Schultz, living at the Miller Boarding Home at 4228 Parkside ave., was beaten last year by two men at the request of the owner, Mrs. Evelyn Miller, also known as Evelyn McCoy and Evelyn Hill. His offence was allowing two dogs to escape in the back yard. The house is among those on Casey’s undesirable list.

~ FORGE SIGNATURES ~

At another boarding house, a woman told of being ordered to forge signatures on welfare checks of recipients. She claims she was raped by the landlady’s husband.

In a third incident, Gladys Poles,53, told of being taken for a ride in a car by her landlady and being beaten over the head with a rock. Her offence: refusing to work at the Pannell Boarding Home, 326 N. 39th st., for $3 a week.

According to the confidential report welfare recipient Arnold Adams also lived at this home. From there he was admitted to Philadelphia General Hospital suffering malnutrition and dehydration. He died in April 1970.

Four other welfare recipients also died at the Parnell home in 1968, one of uremic poisoning [kidney failure]. The other three deaths were diagnosed as heart attacks.

~ TOTALLY UNFIT ~

A social worker described the Barrett Boarding Home of 3305 Haverford ave., as totally unfit for humans, according to the report.

“The SPCA would close a kennel as dirty as this hovel as unfit for animals. It is so dark that the clients have to lead you by the hand,” the social worker reported.

In 1968, a social worker from Philadelphia State Hospital described the premises at 3212 Wallace st, this way:

“One of the boarders reluctantly let us in, and we could see why. A group of four female patients were seated in the living room and their condition looked deplorable. They were ill-dressed, ill-cleaned, and ill-fed.

~ SOUP WAS SOUR~

“One patient, blind, was eating a piece of bread for lunch because she said the soup, made two days before, had turned sour.

“The odor was stifling – it was a mixture of feces and garbage. In the dining room a woman was eating soup, almost hypnotically, while it dripped down her dirty, torn dress onto her bare feet. A closer inspection showed maggots in the soup. The patient was used to this type of food and these consitions and accepted it . . . “

The doors to the Wallace st. house rurn by Mrs. Ethel (Moore) McCoy, are kept locked. Attempts by two Inquirer reporters to gain entrence were met with resistance.

~ NEVER ENTERS ~

Residents refused to answer the doorbell. And once, when a woman in a disheveled dress and stain on her mouth came outside to empty trash, she told newsmen to return in 20 minutes when the owner arrived.

An hour later, the owner had not returned nor could she be found at another home she operates at 60th and Pine sts. She is reported to drive up to the Wallace st. house in her latemodel Cadillac or station wagon, drop off a carton of food at the curb and drive off. Neighbors say Mrs. McCoy never enters the premises.

Welfare recipients have reportedly not been recently referred to any of the places on Casey’s list by any city or state agencies. The houses are not included in a list of acceptable accomodations carried by the County Welfare Department.

Residents reportedly drift there through “other recommendations,”or newspaper ads, or they are picked up homeless by enterprising landladies, The Inquirer learned.

~ $29 A MONTH ~

The recipientsreceive $128 monthly from welfare. While the law does not spell it out specifically, welfare officials say it is “implied” that after room and board costs are deducted, the recipients should receive a return of $29 monthly from their landladies.

Many receive nothong. Others may get anywhere from 50 cents to $3 a month for clothing and incidentals.

Mrs Virginia Gardner, assistant community services supervisor for the Department of Public Assistance, says welfare authorities can neither monitor nor control this practice.

“The proprietors of these boarding houses feel they are entitled to more than they are geeting. They have a paternalistic feeling about these boarders. They (the landladies) feel they are entitled to the whole check.

“If one of the boarders gives them trouble, they can throw them out. A boarder who is not well is often faced with the choice of returning to the state hospital. So they just tolerate it.”

Not only are boarding houses unregulated by the state, they are unregulated and unlicensed by the city. As far as Philadelphia is concerned, there is no such thing as a boarding house. The classification simply does not exist.

There are only houses, hotels, apartments, and rooming houses, according to Peter C. Cremens, chief of the city’s Housing Division of the Bureau of Licensing and Inspections.

Therefore, he considers anyboarding houses to be “bootleg” rooming houses. They are bootleg, he says, because they are rooming houses that serve food, and there’s nothing in this city’s code which requires inspection of such facilities.

Nevertheless, there are 151 boarding or “bootleg” rooming houses in Philadelphia. And the city has not acted to regulate them or to shut them down.

Deputy City Welfare Commissuioner Manuel Kaufman blames the state for the problem. The state three years ago discontinued its regulation of boarding houses.

“This is an area which now lacks governmental supervision following the sate’s abdication of its responsibility,” Kaufman said in a prepared statement.

“We would welcome a complete overhaul of the state’s program of the utilization of homes for boarding the elderly and mentally disabled and offer our professional assistance in any way which could be of help.”

Cremens said these homes are now inspected only for fire and safety hazards. He knows of none his departmnent was forced to shut down. They are inspected once a year.

~ POLICE RECORD ~

Auditor General Casey’s probe rolled into high gear two weeks ago with the disclosure of a jailhouse lettewr from a parole violator to the landlady of several boarding houses. He asked her to pick up and cash at least five public assistance checks issued to fictitious persons.

The landlady, identified in the confidential report as Evelyn Miller (also Evelyn Hill and Evelyn McCoy), has a police record of 10 arrests dating back to 1940. They include, among other things, charges of forgery of U. S. checks and unlawful use and possession of narcotics.

~ SAY THEY’RE HAPPY ~

Interviewed at once of her four properties, 921 N. 45th st., Mrs. Miller vehemently denied that she beat or starved her boarders.

All 10 boarders presently under her charge at the 45 th st. address say they are happy and well-fed. She displayed four refrigerators stocked with food. The premises were clean.

She closed one of her properties at 4943 W. Girard ave. several weeks ago. Last December, L % I inspected the place and ordered a series of repairs in 30 days. Purchased in August 197 0, for $3000, the property is assessed today at #3300.

Another property she owns at 4232 Parkside was purchased in 1966 for $8500. It is assessed at $10,000 and is now closed for renovations. She owns a one-story home in Trevose, Bucks County, and one apartment building.

~ MYSTERIOUS DEATHS ~

In Casey’s confidential report, it is disclosed that in a number of cases, her boarders “have died or left, and checks continued to go out, due to failure of Miss Miller to inform our office of the fact.”

Involved were Social Security checks.

The writer of the memo added that in the Parnell Boarding Home there is “strong evidence to suspect mysterious deaths connected with the proprietor being beneficiary of insurance policies of the deceased.”

Mrs. Miller drives a 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood and a second car. She admits she owns fine jewelry and a mink coat. She considers herself, by her own definition, “a hustler.”

~ ‘CAN’T WAREHOUSE’ ~

Mrs. Miller, at 49, a short, plump woman, explained: “I mean, I’m a woman who knows how to make her own way. I came up in the ghetto. I know hard times. I know how to stretch a dollar and how to respect a dollar.”

She branded the accusations by Auditor General Casey “a lie.”

“You can’t warehouse human beings,” she said. “I live at the Parkside ave. address, also. So I must be warehousing myself.”

[Edward N. Eisen & Dennis Kirkland, “Welfare Housing: A World Of Violence, Squalor, Hunger,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (Pa.), Apr. 4, 1971, p. 1]

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