DICKSON CITY, Pa. — Newly unsealed records filed in Lackawanna County Court confirm that a suspicious death reported earlier this year in Dickson City is being investigated as a homicide.
County detectives suspect Mary Harvey, 68, suffered several head injuries Jan. 30 at her home on Bowman Street. The person who initially called 911 — a man who was temporarily staying there — told the police Harvey fell. The extent of the injuries to her head suggested otherwise.
Investigators have not arrested anyone for Harvey’s killing, but they do have a suspect in mind. Asked for comment, District Attorney Mark Powell would only say the case remains under investigation.
The new details on the still ongoing investigation were included in an affidavit accusing a woman of tampering with evidence to protect that suspect, and in a motion to seal the case from public view. The records were unsealed last week at the request of the county district attorney’s office.
That woman, Elaine Peters, has been jailed at the Lackawanna County Prison since her arrest March 8 on charges of evidence tampering, giving false information for allegedly soliciting others to help her mislead police. Her bail is set at $50,000, according to her docket.
Peters, 63, waived her right to a preliminary hearing and entered a plea of not guilty in county court, according to her attorney, C.J. Rotteveel. She has not been charged with murder.
Rotteveel declined to comment further on the case.
Peters was in frequent contact with a suspect in the homicide investigation, prosecutors said in a motion to seal. They believed she washed a “puffer” jacket worn during the crime before investigators could get a search warrant and seize it, records show.
In the newly unsealed court documents, detectives also alleged Peters also asked a person to make a bogus 911 call falsely claiming that a woman cooperating with the investigation was smoking crack cocaine.
The investigation began shortly before 11 p.m. Jan. 30 when a man who referred to Harvey as “his boss” called 911 to report she fell, hit her head and lost “a lot” of blood, according to a sealing motion filed last month.
" That evening somewhere around 11 o'clock, I believe it was, the ambulance was here,” said neighbor Lori Zlotnicki. "I saw the ambulance go up the alleyway.”
EMS from Pennsylvania Ambulance took Harvey to Geisinger Community Medical Center, where she died in surgery.
After an autopsy, Coroner Tim Rowland determined Harvey died of blunt force trauma to her head and ruled her death is a homicide.
According to an affidavit filed by Detectives John Kane and Sheryl Turner, the autopsy revealed Harvey suffered “multiple significant injuries to her skull.” The EMS workers who took her to the hospital doubted she got those injuries in a fall, the detectives wrote.
Zlotnicki told the police she heard yelling the night Harvey was wounded.
“I did hear Mary yell several times,” Zlotnicki said. “I believe that…there was an argument, there was fighting going on. I don't know what her what it was over, but I did hear it. I learned the next day that she had passed away.”