Inside the 3 infamous Philly-area murders that kick off a new Oxygen series

PHILADELPHIA — Several high-profile homicides in the Philadelphia region will be under the true crime spotlight in a new series from Oxygen that premiered last week.

“Philly Homicide” will recount the stories of 10 slayings that gripped the region in hourlong episodes featuring archival footage, detective interviews and cinematic recreations. Hosted by Bucks County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Chris Mullin, the series will air Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET.

Crimes covered in “Philly Homicide’s” inaugural season span several decades. While the season has 10 episodes, Oxygen has only revealed the focus for the show’s first three episodes, which cover the killings of a Chester police officer, a Center City radiology technician and a Bensalem chiropractor.

Here is how The Inquirer and Daily News covered them:

‘End of Watch’: The slaying of Chester cop Michael Beverly

On Oct. 16, 2001, Chester police Cpl. Michael Beverly was found shot and killed in the Highland Gardens section of the city. An 11-year veteran of the force, Beverly was found 10 feet from his unmarked cruiser, his service weapon still holstered, according to an Inquirer report from the time.

Beverly, 36, left behind a wife and five children, and was remembered as a “conscientious officer” and a “hard-nosed street cop who made good, clean busts,” Wendell N. Butler Jr., commissioner of the Chester Police Department, told The Inquirer in the days after Beverly’s killing. On the day of his funeral, about 1,000 mourners representing more than 80 police departments from as far away as Ottawa, Ontario, paid their respects.

Working as a night shift supervisor at the time of his death, Beverly, The Inquirer reported, was known to be a “stickler for procedure.” He did not, however, radio his location to headquarters ahead of the shooting that took his life, or tell colleagues what he was doing the night he was killed. Butler speculated in an interview about a month after Beverly’s death that the corporal “did not expect anything to happen.”

Investigators faced a frustrating lack of leads early in the investigation. But Butler, who would later go on to become Chester’s mayor, told The Inquirer that he refused to accept a dead end.

“We will not fail,” Butler said. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

And almost a year to the day after Beverly’s death, on Oct. 12, 2002, police had their man: Maurice Richard Day.

Investigators determined that Beverly had stopped at a local restaurant to pick up a meal for Edwina Cottman, Day’s mother, whom he had befriended. Day, who was allegedly associated with the neighborhood’s Boyle Street Boys drug gang, faced criticism from his friends over how often Beverly had been at his mother’s house, where he also lived, The Inquirer reported. So, prosecutors alleged, Day killed Beverly as the officer delivered food to his mother as a way to end the “teasing, taunting, and ridiculing” he received, Deputy District Attorney James Mattera said.

Day was ultimately found guilty of first-degree murder, and was sentenced to life without parole in March 2004.

On the day that Day’s sentence was handed down, Beverly’s twin sister, Michelle, told The Inquirer that her family “accepted the jury’s verdict.”

‘The Center City Devil’: Patricia McDermott, a Philly serial killer’s final victim

Patricia McDermott began May 17, 2005, like any other. A radiology technician who worked the early shift at Pennsylvania Hospital, McDermott, 48, caught a SEPTA bus into the city in the wee hours of the morning from her home in Elkins Park.

She took the shift to be done by 1 p.m. in order to spend more time with her two children, The Inquirer reported. But after she stepped off the Route 33 bus and headed down Ninth Street, a man walked up behind her and shot her once in the head. She was pronounced dead at 4:50 a.m., according to an Inquirer report from the time.

McDermott’s slaying was captured on U.S. Postal Service surveillance cameras, which showed her killer fleeing the scene. Police released a composite sketch of a person of interest and investigators found a fired cartridge casing from the gunman’s pistol, The Inquirer reported.

Investigators, however, were unable to determine a motive. McDermott had not been robbed, and friends and neighbors described no enemies who may have wanted to harm her.

After police received an anonymous tip in July 2005, the case broke. On what would have been McDermott’s 49th birthday, they arrested Juan Covington, 43, of Philadelphia’s Logan section.

“The other day I thought if something happens, it’s going to happen on her birthday,” McDermott’s sister, Mary Moran, told the Daily News. “I guess she made it happen.”

Covington, a former SEPTA bus driver who was a medical waste hauler, was identified as a potential suspect through an anonymous tip, and police arrested him on July 12 after spotting him carrying a handgun. He was permitted to carry the weapon, but his paperwork was incorrect, allowing police to take him in. A man matching Covington’s description, The Inquirer reported, had also been seen on surveillance cameras at Pennsylvania Hospital “a short time” after McDermott’s killing wearing similar clothes to the man in the surveillance footage. Covington had no criminal record.

Covington quickly confessed to McDermott’s slaying, telling police that he killed her because “she pushed a cart into and activated a machine that exposed him to radiation,” detectives told The Inquirer. He would go on to confess to two other killings, as well as two attempted killings dating back to 1998.

Charles Peruto Jr., Covington’s attorney, maintained that Covington suffered from schizophrenia, and psychiatric experts interviewed by the Daily News said that he had showed signs of being a “schizopath,” on par with serial killers like David Berkowitz and Jeffrey Dahmer. Covington, the Daily News reported, appeared to have not taken pleasure in killing, instead obsessing about people he considered threats, eliminating them when he could no longer control his anxiety.

In March 2006, Covington would plead guilty but mentally ill to three slayings, including McDermott’s, as well as two attempted slayings. A judge sentenced him to three consecutive life terms, plus two 20- to 40-year sentences, The Inquirer reported.

‘A Minute Changes Everything’: James Sowa’s killing in Bensalem

A popular chiropractor in Bensalem, James Sowa ran the office for his business out of his family home on Hulmeville Road near Street Road. But on Nov. 2, 2020, medics responded to his home for a report of a medical emergency, and arrived to find Sowa, 64, dead with severe injuries to his head. The Bucks County coroner ruled Sowa’s death a homicide by blunt force trauma.

On the day of his death, The Inquirer reported, Sowa had talked to his wife around 8 a.m., but did not answer calls from family members or patients, causing his sons to worry. That afternoon, one of Sowa’s sons went to the office, and found him suffering from severe injuries to his head and jaw. The chiropractor’s life, District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said, had been “brutally taken from him.”

“He’s just well missed,” Bensalem Mayor Joseph DiGirolamo later told The Inquirer of Sowa. “His was an incredible story with an ending no one can believe, because no one had hate for this man. He is the type of man you’d want in your community.”

By January 2021, police arrested and charged a former patient in connection with Sowa’s death.

Joseph O’Boyle, 22, had suffered from jaw pain for years, and started seeing Sowa for treatment, The Inquirer reported. The treatment, however, didn’t work, and O’Boyle believed it may have made his pain worse. As a result, his family told investigators, O’Boyle said he had contemplated suing Sowa.

But on the day of Sowa’s killing, surveillance footage showed a Nissan Altima driving into and out of Sowa’s parking lot. The vehicle, investigators found, had been registered to O’Boyle’s mother.

When detectives interviewed him, O’Boyle appeared agitated, and lunged at one of the investigators, punching him several times in the head, The Inquirer reported.

His parents later told a grand jury that O’Boyle had told them about a week after Sowa’s death that he killed the chiropractor — a fact they initially kept from police, The Inquirer reported. A friend also told the grand jury that O’Boyle had told him in Snapchat messages that he was fascinated by Cosmo DiNardo, who had killed four men on a farm on Solebury Township, Bucks County, in 2017.

In May 2022, O’Boyle would plead guilty to killing Sowa, as well as assaulting the detective who interviewed him. He entered a general plea to criminal homicide, admitting to Sowa’s slaying, but disputing the degree of murder that applied in his case.

The following month, O’Boyle was convicted of third-degree murder, and sentenced to 37 to 74 years in prison.