SCRANTON, Pa. — A 58-year-old man confessed to Scranton police he strangled a man last month in Lackawanna County, according to a criminal complaint.
"I'll take the body," Michael Sanitate told the detectives investigating Walter Harmon's death. "I'll take life."
Sanitate and another man, John Pringle, 61, are locked up in the Lackawanna County Prison without bail and face charges of criminal homicide. Their arrests come three days after Harmon was discovered dead inside his home at 1441 Saint Ann Street.
Scranton detectives believe Sanitate went to Harmon's home looking for money and assaulted Harmon, according to a criminal complaint. Sanitate contacted Pringle to come by and, when he arrived, helped Sanitate by tying Harmon up while the doomed man begged for his life.
"Mike don't do it," Harmon said, according to Sanitate's statement to police.
"I'm going to put you in the hole you dug," Sanitate replied, according to Pringle's statement to police.
Sanitate choked Harmon until Harmon went silent and stopped breathing. They moved Harmon to an adjacent room and tried to hide his corpse. Then they ransacked Harmon's home for thousands of dollars he allegedly kept hidden.
"They both started to look through the residence for the money they believed Harmon had inside of the house," detectives wrote in a criminal complaint.
Both Sanitate and Pringle admitted what happened, according to their criminal complaints.
Sanitate told investigators he "pounced" on Harmon because he believed Harmon used his mother's food stamps and that made him angry, the arrest paperwork states.
"He said that Harmon always treated his mother terribly in the past and the food stamps issue made him more angry," detectives wrote.
Sanitate said of Pringle, "we are both responsible for his death."
"I did it for my mother and I would do it again," Sanitate said, according to police.
Pringle's story lined up with what Sanitate told the police, the arrest paperwork shows.
The homicide investigation grew out of a burglary report that brought the police to Harmon's home on March 5, five days before his remains were found.
Sanitate, as it turns out, was the one who reported the March 5 burglary. He told officers at the time his mother lived in the other side of the duplex. He also told the police he was on the back porch shortly before 4 a.m. and heard noises coming from inside Harmon's home, even though his vehicle was gone.
According to court documents, Angel Berdecia admitted to entering Harmon's residence. He tried to flee arrived. Police soon caught up with him.
Berdecia told officers he stole jewelry and power tools from the home to support his methamphetamine addiction. He thought the home's occupant went to live at a nursing home.
Berdecia, however, had the keys to Harmon's Cadillac. Berdecia told police the keys were given to him by Sanitate, who told Berdecia that he was Harmon's nephew.
Officers checked inside the home and found it in disarray. They could not find Harmon, however.
Five days later, on Sunday, Detective Michael Morrison started investigating Harmon as a missing person.
At Harmon's home, he found inside Sanitate, Pringle and another man, Williams Vaskie.
Vaskie was charged with criminal trespass but not in relation to Morrison's other discovery at the home — a dead Harmon, hidden under a pile of blankets and bound at his ankles with a red dog leash.
Sanitate and Pringle have preliminary hearings tentatively scheduled March 26.