Harrison Frank Graham

Serial Killer

Harrison Frank Graham: The North Philadelphia "House of Death" Murders

Background

Harrison Frank "Marty" Graham was a Philadelphia serial killer convicted of murdering seven women during an approximately eleven-month period in 1986 and 1987. Graham lived in a small third-floor apartment at 1631 North 19th Street in North Philadelphia, near Cecil B. Moore Avenue. The deteriorating building stood in an area where abandoned properties and illegal drug activity were common. Graham's apartment itself became a gathering place for people using drugs, allowing numerous acquaintances to enter and leave without attracting unusual attention. Graham was known around the neighborhood as a physically imposing but generally quiet man. He had significant intellectual limitations and a long history of substance abuse. Nothing about his ordinary neighborhood reputation prepared residents for what police would eventually discover inside his apartment. Behind a nailed-shut door, Graham had accumulated the remains of women he had killed, some of which had been concealed for many months.

The Murders

According to Graham's confession and the evidence presented against him, he brought women to his apartment where drugs and sexual activity were involved. Graham admitted putting his hands around the women's necks and strangling them. Rather than removing the bodies from his residence, he left or concealed the victims' remains inside the apartment and immediately around the building. As the killings continued, bodies in different stages of decomposition accumulated in the rooms where he continued to live. The condition of the remains later made reconstruction of the murders extremely difficult. Some victims had been dead long enough to become substantially skeletonized, while two bodies were comparatively recent. Medical examination established strangulation in the more recently deceased victims, while decomposition made the precise medical cause of death harder to establish independently for several of the others. Graham nevertheless confessed to killing all seven women, and the prosecution presented his confession together with physical and circumstantial evidence at trial. ...

Confirmed Victims: (7)

Cynthia Brooks Age: (27), Date of Death: 1987

The Cookie Monster KILLER: Harrison Frank Graham - Audible