Oxygen's Philly Homicide covers infamous murder cases in 10 episodes

Several high-profile murders in the Philadelphia area will be in the true crime spotlight in a new series from Oxygen, premiering Saturday.

Philly murder will tell the stories of ten murders that shocked the region in hour-long episodes using archival footage, detective interviews and cinematic recreations. The series airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. and is hosted by Lt. Chris Mullen of the Bucks County Sheriff's Office moderated

Covert crimes Philly murderThe inaugural season spans several decades. While the season will consist of ten episodes, Oxygen has only revealed the focus of the show's first three episodes, which revolve around the murders of a Chester police officer, a Center City radiology technician and a Bensalem chiropractor.

Here's how The Inquirer and Daily News reported it:

“End of Watch”: The murder of Chester police officer Michael Beverly

On October 16, 2001, the Chester Police Commissioner was appointed. Michael Beverly was found shot to death in the Highland Gardens neighborhood. According to an Inquirer report from that time, Beverly, who had been on the force for 11 years, was found 10 feet from his unmarked patrol car with her service weapon still holstered.

Beverly, 36, left behind a wife and five children and was considered a “conscientious officer” and “a tough street cop who did good, clean raids,” Wendell N. Butler Jr., then commissioner of the Chester Department of Police, told The Inquirer in the days after Beverly's murder. On the day of his funeral, approximately 1,000 mourners from more than 80 Ottawa, Ontario police departments paid their respects.

Beverly, who was working as a night shift supervisor at the time of her death, was known to be very stickler to procedure, The Inquirer reported. However, he did not radio his location to headquarters before the shootout that claimed his life, nor did he tell his colleagues what he was doing the night he was killed. Because of the radio silence, Butler speculated in an interview about a month after Beverly's death that the corporal “didn't expect anything to happen.”

As the investigation began, investigators were faced with a frustrating lack of leads. But Butler, who later became mayor of Chester, told the Inquirer that he refused to accept an impasse.

“We will not fail,” Butler said. “I won’t let that happen.”

And almost a year to the day after Beverly's death, on October 12, 2002, the 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, with whom he had become friends. Day, who was reportedly associated with the neighborhood drug gang Boy Street Boys, was criticized by his friends because Beverly was so often at his mother's house, where he also lived, The Inquirer reported. So, prosecutors alleged, Day took matters into his own hands and murdered Beverly as the officer was delivering food to his mother to put an end to the “teasing, taunts and ridicule” he had received, he said Assistant District Attorney James Mattera.

Day was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole in March 2004.

On the day Day's verdict was announced, Beverly's twin sister Michelle told The Inquirer that her family “accepted the jury's verdict.”

“The Center City Devil”: Patricia McDermott, the latest victim of a Philadelphia serial killer

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

She finished the shift by 1 p.m. to spend more time with her two children, The Inquirer reported. But after she got 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 at the time.

McDermott's murder was filmed by 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 shell casing from the shooter's handgun, The Inquirer reported.

However, investigators were unable to determine a motive. McDermott had not been robbed, and friends and neighbors reported no enemies who might have wanted to harm her.

But after the police received an anonymous tip in July 2005, the case was solved. On McDermott's 49th birthday, they arrested 43-year-old Juan Covington of the Logan section of Philadelphia.

“The other day I was thinking, if something is going to happen, it's going to happen on her birthday,” McDermott's sister, Mary Moran, told the Daily News. “I guess she did it.”

Covington, a former SEPTA bus driver turned medical waste hauler, was identified as a potential suspect through an anonymous tip and was arrested by police on July 12 after they saw him with a handgun. He was allowed to carry the weapon, but his documents were incorrect, allowing the police to arrest him. A man matching Covington's description was also seen on surveillance cameras at Pennsylvania Hospital “a short time” after McDermott's killing, according to The Inquirer, wearing the same clothing as the man in the surveillance footage. Covington had no criminal record.

Covington quickly confessed to McDermott's murder, telling police that he murdered her because “she pushed a cart into a machine and activated it, which exposed him to radiation,” investigators told The Inquirer. He then confessed to two more murders and two attempted murders in 1998.

Charles Peruto Jr., Covington's attorney, claimed Covington suffered from schizophrenia, and psychiatric experts interviewed by the Daily News said he had shown signs of being a “schizopath” on par with serial killers like David Berkowitz and Jeffrey Dahmer. As the Daily News reported, Covington apparently did not enjoy killing but instead became obsessed with people he saw as threats, eliminating them when he could no longer control his fear.

In March 2006, Covington pleaded guilty to three murders, including McDermott's, and two attempted murders, but was mentally ill. A judge sentenced him to three consecutive life sentences and two terms ranging from 20 to 40 years, The Inquirer reported.

“One minute changes everything”: James Sowa’s murder in Bensalem

James Sowa, a popular chiropractor in Bensalem, ran his company's office at his family's home on Hulmeville Road near Street Road. But on November 2, 2020, paramedics went to his home to report a medical emergency and arrived to find 64-year-old Sowa dead with serious head injuries. The Bucks County coroner ruled Sowa's death a homicide by blunt force trauma.

On the day of his death, The Inquirer reported, Sowa spoke to his wife around 8 a.m. but did not return calls from family members or patients, worrying his sons. That afternoon, one of Sowa's sons went to the office and discovered that he had severe injuries to his head and jaw. The chiropractor's life was “brutally taken,” District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said.

“He’s just missed,” Bensalem Mayor Joseph DiGirolamo later told The Inquirer of Sowa. “It was an incredible story with an ending that no one can believe because no one felt hatred for this man. He’s the type of man you would want in your community.”

In January 2021, police arrested a former patient and charged him in connection with Sowa's death.

Joseph O'Boyle, 22, had been suffering from jaw pain for years and began seeing Sowa for treatment, The Inquirer reported. However, the treatment did not work and O'Boyle believed it may have made his pain worse. His family then told investigators that O'Boyle had considered suing Sowa.

But on the day of Sowa's murder, surveillance footage showed a Nissan Altima driving in and out of Sowa's parking lot. Investigators determined the vehicle was registered to O'Boyle's mother.

As investigators questioned him, O'Boyle appeared agitated, lunged at one of the investigators and punched him in the head several times, The Inquirer reported.

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

In May 2022, O'Boyle would plead guilty to killing Sowa and assaulting the detective who interviewed him. He entered a general plea of ​​criminal homicide and admitted the murder of Sowa, but denied the seriousness of the murder, which applied to his case.

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