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Pair charged with breaking into dead man's house
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
The two men charged with breaking into a dead man’s West Side house Wednesday morning told police they were his relatives and also complained of the smell that still lingers from the man’s decomposing body that was found last month.
Spiro Frangos, 38, of Kennedy Road, Lowellville and Joseph Duarte, 31, of Youngstown, are in the Mahoning County jail on charges of breaking and entering after they were caught in a truck that had a stove from the home, which is in the first block of Halls Heights.
Jerry O’Hara, head of the Garden District Neighborhood Association, lives down the street from the home and said the incident is something that is happening all too frequently on his block watch.
O’Hara said as older people die, their relatives either do not want their house or leave it to sit empty, which attracts thieves.
In the half-block where the home is located, there are six other vacant homes. A woman who lives two doors down told a reporter Thursday she had no idea someone in the home died and no one else in her house was awake at 11 a.m. to talk.
Another woman across the street who was talking on a phone also said she knew someone died there, but she thought the home was occupied. An elderly man across the street said he knew nothing.
The home belonged to Daniel Millard, 58, who was found dead about 1:30 p.m. May 7. Police were called by a mailman who noticed mail backing up and a swarm of flies by the back door.
The fire department had to be called in to break down the door. They found Millard inside on a mattress in what reports described as a “makeshift” bedroom on the first floor. It appeared he had been dead for weeks. There was a bloody knife in his lap and another bloody knife by his arm, as well as a bloody pillow and bloody fingerprints next to the mattress.
A spokeswoman for the Mahoning County Coroner’s Office said a cause of death is pending.
Since then, police department radio logs show officers had been called to the home May 12, when police were called after boards put on the door by neighbors were ripped down, and again about 7:45 a.m. Monday. There was no disposition noted for the calls and no incident reports linked to them.
On Wednesday, police were called just after 10 a.m. on a report that someone was breaking into the house. As officers were on their way, they saw a pickup truck at Mahoning Avenue and Halls Heights with a stove in the bed and stopped to question the two people inside. Frangos and Duarte told police they were there to get their “Uncle Danny’s” stove, and a neighbor said they told her the same thing.
Reports also said that Frangos said the inside of the house was disgusting because of the odor that was still there from Millard’s decomposing body. Officers conferred with detectives who are investigating Millard’s death and they were told by the detectives to arrest the two, reports said.
Duarte has been to prison twice and is facing a felony drug charge in common-pleas court, records show.
Vindicator files show an arrest in 2014 on drug charges for Frangos in Campbell, but the records for that case could not be found in the Campbell Municipal Court’s online records system. Both men are expected to be arraigned in municipal court today.
Detective Sgt. Tom Parry, who specializes in robberies and burglaries, said it is not uncommon for the home of a dead person to be broken into. He’s even had cases in which different factions of families of a dead person will break in as soon as possible to make sure they get the property they want.
“They’re in there looting the house before the bones even get cold,” Parry said.
O’Hara said there is not much that can be done with such properties, except to watch them for any unusual activity “and call the police if we see something.”
Outside Millard’s home on the walkway are several potted plants that are now overgrown with weeds.
O’Hara said at one time, he would notice the plants all over the yard and the driveway.
“He had that for years,” O’Hara said.