Louis C. Hartdegen, 76, will never go to trial on charges he murdered his wife. He was to go on trial on Oct. 27. Police said he murdered his wife of 50 years in May 2013.
Hartdegen died Sept. 9. According to Shawn Hayes, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia prisons, Hartdegen was taken ill at the Philadelphia Detention Center and then taken to Nazareth Hospital, where he died. Cause of death is believed to be heart problems.
A quarrel over missing money led the Castor Gardens man to strangle his wife, Judith, on May 6, 2013, according to police.
Police said Hartdegen, a well-known figure in his neighborhood, at first told them a neighbor had invaded the couple’s second-floor apartment on the 6700 block of Castor Avenue and had raped and killed his wife. He also said the man had attacked him.
The neighbor was taken into custody, but wasn’t held long because detectives were uneasy with Hartdegen’s story and eventually confronted him with their misgivings.
Police said Hartdegen told detectives that his 74-year-old wife was on the bed in their second-floor apartment when he put a pillow over her face and his hand over her mouth. The elderly man later told the interrogators that he choked his wife with his bare hands, police said. He told police that he earlier had hit his wife when he accused her of stealing rent money he had collected for their landlord. ••
