Woman charged with killing husband, leaving body wrapped in plastic outside Pittsburgh home

PITTSBURGH — A woman has been charged with stabbing her husband to death, wrapping his body in plastic and leaving it next to their front porch in Pittsburgh’s Brighton Heights neighborhood, police said.

Janet Winbush, 50, told police she stabbed her husband, 53-year-old Deric Davis, once in self-defense during a fight, according to a criminal complaint.

Investigators said Winbush wrapped Davis’ body in garbage bags and tried to hide it under a deflated air mattress outside their duplex, “where the smell of decay was overwhelming.”

Davis was missing for two weeks before his body was found in December. During that time, Winbush pretended to help search for her husband, even making calls to hospitals looking for him, police said.

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And on the inside of the home there where traces of blood on the carpet, steps and sofa along with a blood-stained umbrella, police said.

Stacey Davis, sister of the victim, said she does not believe the self-defense argument.

“My brother was mild-mannered, he had all the friends in the world, he wouldn’t hurt a flea,” she said. “He was just all around a good person. That self-defense she is claiming is a lie. She stalked him his whole life. She harassed him his whole life.”

The criminal complaint states that Davis and Winbush have a child together and in the past due to her aggressive and threatening behavior he requested their custody exchanges happen at the Wilkinsburg Police Department.

Stacey says Davis was estranged from his wife and originally went to the California Avenue home to ask for a divorce.

“He told her he was done, she got upset and stabbed him. She wrapped him up, like he wasn’t a human being, like he was an animal and hide him. Then she told us she knew nothing about it,” Stacey Davis said.

Family mourns loss of man found wrapped in plastic outside Pittsburgh home

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