***Warning: Some readers may find details of the case included below disturbing.
Debra Fox died brutally on her birthday.
Fox died because Sarai Doyle and Desiree Linnette beat and strangled her to death after months of starving and abusing her and living off her Social Security benefits, arrest affidavits charging both with criminal homicide reveal.
“Deb had to go,” Doyle told police, recounting her mother’s words.
By “go,” Linnette, Doyle’s mother, meant killing Fox, according to the affidavit.
After they killed Fox, Linnette made sure she was dead.
“Linnette said she put her ear to Debra Fox’s chest and could not hear a heartbeat,” according to the affidavit.
This was on the morning of Jan. 8, 2024, Fox’s 69th birthday. Fearing detection, they covered Fox with a blanket and waited until midnight.
It was snowing as they lifted Debra Fox onto a luggage cart, covered her with garbage bags and wheeled the body to the back of the hotel where they all lived.
With Linnette acting as a lookout, Doyle removed the garbage bags and threw Fox over a guardrail and down an embankment.
Death penalty a possibility
At a news conference Thursday, Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce said he’s considering seeking the death penalty for both women.
“It offended the senses of police officers that have seen some pretty horrible things over the course of, you know, 20 or 30 years,” Sanguedolce said, according to a recording of the news conference posted on the Fox56 News website.
Police charged both with criminal homicide and abuse of a corpse. Linnette is also charged with theft for stealing from Fox. Doyle's preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 6, Linnette's for Feb. 11.
One of two murders
The charging of Doyle and Linnette in Fox’s death on Wednesday marked the latest development in a grisly case that started with the murder of Nicole Cuevas Ingram. Ingram was found buried in the basement of a South Wilkes-Barre home.
Linnette and Doyle were already charged along with three others — Faith Beamer, William Wolfe and Jason Race — in Cuevas Ingram’s death, but the circumstances of Fox’s death remained a public mystery until last week. All five remain in prison without bail.
Fox owned the home at 142 Carlisle St., Wilkes-Barre, when Cuevas Ingram was killed there in April 2023 and buried, but Sanguedolce said investigators don’t think she knew anything about the murder. Records show Fox lost the home in a tax sale in January 2024, the same month she was killed.
When authorities found Cuevas Ingram’s body in the home on Feb. 27, 2024, they still believed Fox owned it. They went looking for her, thinking she would know who lived there.
Daughter worried about mom
Two days later, they found Fox’s daughter, Danielle Fox, who told police she hadn’t spoken to her mother since a week before Thanksgiving 2023.
Fox, who had a prosthetic leg, lived with her daughter in Minersville, but returned to Wilkes-Barre to live with Linnette and Doyle because she considered Linnette “a good person,” Danielle Fox told police.
Linnette and Doyle once lived at the Carlisle home but eventually moved to room 302 at the Host Inn in Wilkes-Barre near the Wyoming Valley Mall.
The inn manager knew Linnette and Doyle because they lived there for 175 days and “constantly caused problems,” according to the affidavit.
When they moved out Jan. 18, 2024, security camera video showed only Linnette and Doyle moving out.
Accused killer offered excuses
Linnette told people who asked that Fox left the area with a new “trucker” boyfriend or left to be with Linnette’s daughter-in-law.
Linnette told others Fox was dead, according to the affidavit.
Fox’s friends and daughter suspected something was wrong. Danielle Fox told police Social Security began paying her mother’s $1,600 a month in benefits to Linnette instead of Fox after Fox moved into the Host. Before that, Debra Fox managed her money herself.
One acquaintance remembered seeing Fox’s hair in a “buzz cut,” a style Fox never had before. Fox also had a lot of makeup but never wore makeup before. Fox looked thin and as if she “was not being taken care of.”
“A few weeks later, Linnette told (the acquaintance), that Debra Fox had died in Linnette’s arms,” the affidavit says.
One witness, a former lover of Linnette’s who visited the Host room, saw bruises on Fox’s face.
When the witness asked about the bruises, Linnette said Fox hit herself.
Lawyering up
Police briefly interviewed Linnette on March 8, 2024. She told police she loved Fox, but quickly corrected herself and said she loves Fox.
After a few more questions, she asked for a lawyer.
Police interviewed Doyle the same day. She said Fox was in Kentucky and she and her mother sent Fox’s Social Security income to “someone using a private number.”
Investigators found out she lied, according to the affidavit.
They tried to reinterview her three days later, but she asked for a lawyer, too.
Renewed search finds body
By March 26, 2024, police had a solid tip that Fox’s body was behind the Host, perhaps in a drainage pipe.
They searched there the day they interviewed Linnette and Doyle. A cadaver-detecting dog even picked up a scent at one end of the pipe but seemed too uninterested to look further, according to the affidavit.
By the time they searched again, Fox’s body wasn’t in the pipe. Shortly after entering, investigators found human remains halfway up a steep bank. Using ropes, they rappelled down the hill to bring up the badly decomposed body.
An autopsy the next day confirmed it was Fox but left the manner and cause of death undetermined. That’s because the body was so badly decomposed and missing organs and bones, according to the affidavit.
Kids saw the abuse
The day they searched the woods, police also interviewed a minor child, who saw Linnette bash Fox’s head against a wall. Linnette asked the child “to keep it a secret.”
The minor saw Linnette hit Fox before for “acting up,” including trying to play Legos with a child.
She also saw Linnette and Doyle load Fox’s body onto a luggage cart and cover it with garbage bags.
Linnette told the minor child they dumped the body behind the hotel. Another minor child said she heard a loud bang as Linnette and Doyle tried to give Fox a shower.
The child came out of her room and saw Fox lying dead on the floor. Linnette told the child “to never tell anyone” because she would go to the jail and the child would be taken away from his mother.
Bruises and a blanket
Other witnesses recounted seeing Fox with black eyes and facial bruises; Linnette denying Fox a blanket for sleep; and Linnette wanting Fox to sleep standing up, despite the prosthetic leg.
One witness recalled Doyle boasting about “how easy it was to hide a body” and saying “I’m not going down for something my mom did.”
Another witness told police he lived in the hotel room a for a while and saw Fox in “very poor” condition.
The witness said Fox was never fed breakfast, received a slice of bread for lunch and “got the smallest dinner portion of anyone at the hotel.”
“There was a standing order for the children to yell at Debra Fox or hit the elderly woman if she asked for food,” the affidavit says.
Linnette told the minor children to slap Fox’s hands and take food from her if she got some from the refrigerator.
“Linnette would also make Debra Fox ask for permission to go to the bathroom,” the affidavit says.
Doyle, Linnette fess up
Eventually, Doyle and Linnette cooperated with police. Doyle told detectives Linnette subjected Fox to daily beatings, striking Fox with her own cane or punching her.
The day of the murder, Doyle told police, “she and her mom took turns strangling Debra Fox and holding her down.”
“Doyle also repeatedly stomped on Debra Fox’s head in her final moments,” the affidavit says.
In disposing of the body, Doyle suffered a cut on her right leg and lost both of her shoes. Police later found the shoes on the embankment.
“If challenged, their plan was to say Debra Fox committed suicide,” the affidavit says.
Linnette told police a similar tale, according to the affidavit.
Police say both murders bear a striking resemblance:
- Linnette or Doyle shaved both victims’ heads in a buzz cut.
- Linnette accused both of stealing from her and took money from both.
- Linnette accused both victims of having sexual attractions to Linnette boyfriends or associates and sexually molesting children.
One witness who recounted how Linnette told him of disposing of the bodies differently also offered another tidbit.
“Linnette claims she has found God now and is a different person,” the affidavit says.
