Officers forced their way into the home through the rear door Sunday. They found Frank Warner dead, his body tied to a chair. On a bedroom floor nearby was the body of Joyanne Warner, Frank’s wife of 50 years.
They had been beaten and stabbed. Plastic bags covered their heads.
A day later their 50-year-old son, Todd S. Warner, allegedly confessed to the brutal slayings that stunned the Warren County community.
These details in the double homicide investigation come from court affidavits obtained Thursday by lehighvalleylive.com, from the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office.
Questioned by authorities after being pulled from a blackjack table in a Pennsylvania casino, Todd Warner told police he had struck his parents with baseball bats – he allegedly used two on his mother after one broke – then tried to suffocate them before grabbing a kitchen knife and stabbing them both, according to the court records.
Todd S. Warner, 50, is charged with two counts of first-degree homicide.Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com
Warner remained in custody in Pennsylvania on Thursday, awaiting extradition to New Jersey where he faces two counts of first-degree murder, as well as weapons and theft charges.
Frank and Joyanne Warner, both 73, were high school sweethearts from Bound Brook, New Jersey, and two months away from retiring from their salon business.
Their bodies were found by their daughter and her husband late Sunday afternoon at the Washington Township home. The couple had stopped by after the Warners’ phone went unanswered. They saw Frank’s body through the window – his head covered with plastic and blood around his head and chest – and immediately called township police, investigators wrote in the court records.
Police forced open the rear door at 6 Peregrine Drive in Washington Township, Warren County. Frank and Joyanne Warner were found dead inside.Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com
Todd Warner lived with Frank and Joyanne at 6 Peregrine Drive in the 55-and-over Reserve at Hawk Pointe community. He was nowhere to be found as police searched the house. Nor could investigators find Joyanne Warner’s car, a silver 2019 Kia Soul.
Todd’s sister told investigators that she believed her brother was responsible for what they had found; he had sent texts and posted a message to Facebook indicating that he wanted to harm their parents, according to the affidavit.
Police said they traced a signal from Todd Warner’s cellphone to Wind Creek Casino in Bethlehem, about 20 miles southwest of the Warners’ home. Surveillance video there allegedly showed he arrived about 10 a.m. that morning – about eight hours before his parents’ bodies were found.
Warner was allegedly driving his mother’s car and used his parents’ credit card for a cash advance of several thousand dollars (it was at least $4,100 and as much as $8,000 – the affidavits list both amounts) before leaving at noon.
Pennsylvania State Police alerted other casinos to be on the lookout for Warner and the Kia as New Jersey authorities drew up warrants for theft and fraud.
Warner was found the following day, Monday, playing blackjack at Parx Casino in Bucks County and detained by a Pennsylvania state trooper. Washington Township police questioned Warner at a state police barracks, and that’s when he allegedly admitted killing his parents. Pants and shoes with possible blood stains were found in Warner’s vehicle, authorities said.
Investigators have not disclosed any possible motive for the crime.
Murder cases are rare but unfortunately not unheard of in rural Warren County, home to a little more than 100,000 people. There were 51 reported homicides in the last 33 years, according to information voluntarily provided by law enforcement agencies and compiled in an FBI database.
The most recent homicides reported in the Washington area were both in 2014. In September of that year, Daniel Lawrence, then 26 years old, fatally stabbed 30-year-old Warren Moore, of Jersey City, outside an ex-girlfriend's home on East Washington Avenue. Lawrence was convicted of murder and in 2017 was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
In May 2014, Ralph Atkinson, then 38, brutally killed his girlfriend, 45-year-old Margaret Graf-White, with a hammer and knife – in front of her children. Authorities say Atkinson did it because Graf-White discovered he was having sex with a child, for which he was also charged.
Atkinson, of Knowlton Township, was sentenced in August 2017 to just 26 years in prison, an unusually light sentence but one prosecutors agreed to so the young sex abuse victim would not have to testify in two separate trials.
Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveNovakLVL and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.