Cops: Cut From Will, She Killed Dad and His Girlfriend

A Pennsylvania woman charged Tuesday with murdering her 87-year-old father and his girlfriend of 15 years had just been removed from his will, a friend of the couple told police. Sherry Lee Heffernan, 55, allegedly drove an RV from her home in Landenberg, Pa., to her father's property in Surf City, NJ, in the early hours of Sept. 29 before stabbing John Enders and 75-year-old Francoise Pitoy to death. Police said the couple's friend told them Heffernan, a real estate agent, was "disgruntled" that her father had chosen another agent to list his bayfront home, which had a pending sale of $1.999 million, per the Star-Ledger. (The listing is no longer active as of Thursday.) The friend also said Enders had written Heffernan and an estranged daughter out of his will within the last month.

The friend added that Heffernan owned a 28-foot Winnebago. On Sept. 29, cameras captured a white RV heading toward Surf City, pulling up near Enders' home around 5am, then leaving the area around 6am with its headlights off, according to an affidavit obtained by the Star-Ledger. Cameras also captured a person walking toward the home around 6am, and later hopping a backyard fence nearby wearing oversized clothes and carrying an orange bag. Called to the scene Sunday Oct. 3 for a welfare check, police found Enders dead in his recliner and Pitoy dead on a stair landing, per the Asbury Park Press. Both had "multiple obvious stab wounds," according to the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.

Police also found a discarded rubber glove, bloody foot and shoe prints, and blood on a fence post near where the person had been spotted on camera, per the affidavit. Heffernan was arrested on an unrelated warrant at her home on Monday. Her son then backed up the home sale dispute, telling police that he and his mother believed Pitoy to be a "gold digger" who had driven the decision to sell the home, per the Asbury Park Press. He also said his mother had made a "midnight dash" to her father's home the previous week and was the only person to have recently driven the RV, which was parked at the home. Per the affidavit, officers executing a search warrant found stains "consistent with dried blood" inside. (More murder stories.)