By Police1 Staff
On a quiet Friday night in 2011 in Bucks County, Christopher Moyer dialed 911 and reported in a calm, matter-of-fact voice that he had killed his wife and son. This call, placed shortly before Moyer took his own life by lying in front of a SEPTA train, came after he had used a baseball bat to murder his family in their Warrington home.
Court records indicated that Moyer had no previous criminal charges or history of domestic violence, according to phillyburbs.com. The Moyers had cleared a lien on their home in 2006, and another was filed in September 2010. Initially, financial issues were suspected as a possible motive. However, Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler later noted that the true motivation behind Moyer’s actions in killing his wife and son and then himself might never be determined.
Original story:
By Larry King
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — “Ah, I need to report a murder.”
The caller sounds calm, matter-of-fact, his tone and cadence more suggestive of someone setting a tee time or dinner reservation.
The words are, however, among the last believed spoken by Christopher Moyer.
The 44-year-old Bucks County man called 911 Friday night after clubbing his wife and young son to death with a baseball bat in their Warrington home.
And he was about three hours away from killing himself by lying in front of a SEPTA train in nearby Hatboro.
Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler on Wednesday released a recording of Moyer’s 911 call in response to media requests.
The call came in at 9:40 p.m. After hearing Moyer’s opening pronouncement, a surprised-sounding dispatcher takes down his address on Redstone Drive, then asks: “OK, can you tell me about what’s going on there?”
“Ah . . . a mother and son, bludgeoned to death,” Moyer replies evenly.
“And you just found that?” the dispatcher asks.
“Yes.”
“OK,” the dispatcher says. “Who are you?”
“I’m the husband,” Moyer answers.
“Did you do it?” the dispatcher asks.
“Yes, I did.”
Elsewhere in the two-story, $450,000 home lay the bodies of Moyer’s wife, Irina Geller Moyer, 39, and the couple’s son, Dylan, 7, who had just completed first grade. Both had been killed in their beds by blows to the head, police said, and Irina Moyer’s body had been dragged into an adjacent bathroom.
Christopher Moyer had left the house by the time police arrived. About three hours later, his body was found along the SEPTA tracks in Hatboro, where he lay with his head on a rail, awaiting the train that would kill him.
Heckler has said there was nothing left for his office to investigate in the tragedy, because it appears Christopher Moyer acted alone and cannot be prosecuted. Though an exact time of death for Irina and Dylan Moyer has not been determined, Heckler said pending toxicology results may indicate whether the victims were drugged before being killed.
The only possible motive authorities have identified is financial problems the Moyers had been having.
Dylan “was supposed to have been dropped off that afternoon” with his maternal grandparents, Heckler said. Concerned that they had not heard from the Moyers, the grandparents went to the home in the evening and found police already there.
“That makes this doubly infuriating,” Heckler said. Moyer “could have dropped the kid off and done whatever he wanted to do to himself.”
Christopher Moyer did not explain his actions to the dispatcher, but was strangely polite in reporting them.
“OK, are you sure they’re dead?” the dispatcher asks.
“I am positive,” Moyer says.
“OK, are you still armed?”
“Ah, no.”
“OK, I’ll get somebody right out for you, Chris.”
“Thank you,” Moyer replies.
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Copyright 2011 Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC
This article, originally published on June 23, 2011, has been updated with relevant information and a video featuring the 911 call from the case.