Marty Graham: Victims, Cookie Monster Defense, and Sentence

Marty Graham was a Philadelphia serial killer who strangled seven women inside his row house apartment over roughly eleven months in 1986 and 1987, hid their remains in the unit, and was convicted in April 1988 of seven counts of first-degree murder. He is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.

What Police Found in August 1987

Graham, an unemployed 28-year-old, lived in a Philadelphia row house apartment that police described as a known neighborhood gathering spot for drug users. In August 1987, the landlord’s son asked him to leave because of an unbearable stench coming from the unit. Once Graham was out, investigators from the police department and the Medical Examiner’s Office went inside and began pulling bodies from heaps of garbage and bedding.¹

One victim lay on a mattress. Another was on a pile of trash beside it. A third had been wrapped in sheets and buried under debris. A fourth was mummified inside bedding. A fifth was sandwiched between two mattresses. A sixth was crammed upright into a shallow closet, bound with white electrical cord. The seventh was found outside, on the roof beneath a window.²

On August 14, 1987, police also recovered a head and torso buried in a shallow grave in the basement of a house three doors away, along with a leg, foot, and hand from the roof of Graham’s building. The press began calling the case the “House of Death.”¹

The Seven Victims

All seven victims were women, and six were identified as Black. Prosecutors said Graham used drugs to lure them into the apartment, then strangled them during or after sexual encounters. In his confession, Graham told investigators, “I’d be holding them with my hands around their neck when we were having sex. I guess that’s how it happened.”³ Two of the recovered bodies showed clear signs of strangulation at the time of the initial investigation.¹

The women were identified as:

Cynthia Brooks, 27
Robin DeShazor, 29
Barbara Mahoney, 22
Patricia Franklin, 24
Sandra Garvin, 33
Valerie Jamison, 25
Mary Jeter Mathis, 36⁴

Mary Jeter Mathis, a mother of five who struggled with addiction, was the first victim publicly identified. The apartment was a known drug haven, and the women’s disappearances had gone unnoticed long enough for their remains to decompose inside the unit.¹

Arrest and Charges

A warrant was initially issued for abuse of a corpse after the district attorney’s office rejected an early police request for murder charges and asked for more evidence. Graham fled but surrendered on August 16, 1987, about ten blocks from his apartment, ending a seven-day manhunt.¹

Competency and the Cookie Monster Defense

Graham’s mental capacity was contested from the start. At an August 1987 hearing, defense experts described him as psychotic and paranoid, said he could not tell time or make change for a dollar, and pointed to a repetitive rocking motion during questioning. The prosecution’s psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Sadoff, found no significant mental illness that would prevent trial and questioned whether Graham’s reported auditory hallucinations were authentic. Municipal Judge Edward Mekel ruled Graham competent, finding that while he “may be mentally deficient and with a low IQ,” he understood the charges and could assist in his own defense.³

The case went to a bench trial before Common Pleas Judge Robert Latrone. Defense attorney Joel Moldovsky and Graham’s mother chose to waive a jury, concerned that the crime-scene evidence would overwhelm any mental-health argument. Moldovsky built the defense around multiple personality disorder, presenting Graham as having three personalities: “Frank,” a foul-mouthed drug addict and the killer; “Junior,” an uncontrollable toddler-like persona devoted to a raggedy Cookie Monster puppet; and “Marty,” the cooperative handyman neighbors knew. A defense psychiatrist testified that Graham was psychotic during the final two murders, hearing the voices of God and the devil, and that his claimed lack of memory for the first five killings made it impossible to assess his state of mind then.²

The puppet itself became evidence. Graham was known for carrying it, using it to entertain children in the neighborhood, and talking to it constantly. He asked for its return during the proceedings, telling the court, “I sleep with that.”² Assistant District Attorney Roger King countered that Graham’s low IQ did not equate to insanity, calling him “innately intelligent” with “a cunningness in him that you don’t learn in books.”⁵

Verdict and Sentence

On April 27, 1988, after a seven-week non-jury trial, Judge Latrone found Graham guilty of seven counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of abuse of a corpse.⁴

Latrone imposed what was described as a “Solomonic” sentence: death sentences alongside life imprisonment without parole, structured so that the death penalty would only be carried out after Graham had served his life sentence. The defense had argued for life based on Graham’s IQ of 62 and a mental age estimated at nine years old.⁵²

In 2003, the death sentences were vacated. Graham’s low IQ and evidence of early-onset mental illness were cited as grounds for finding him not competent for execution, consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia prohibiting the execution of intellectually disabled individuals. He remains in prison serving life without the possibility of parole.²

1
Los Angeles Times. Bodies Discovered in Philadelphia Apartment
2
Psychology Today. Cookie Monster and the Serial Killer
3
UPI. Graham’s Confession Becomes Basis for Competency
4
UPI. Graham Convicted of Seven Murders in House of Death Case
5
UPI. House of Death Killer Faces Death Penalty