WILKES-BARRE, PA — Two years after a Saginaw woman was found buried in the basement of a Pennsylvania “house of horrors,” one of the five people accused of torturing her to death has admitted her role in the brutal homicide.
In doing so, she’s agreed to testify for prosecutors against her codefendants, including her own mother, who also hails from Saginaw and allegedly served as the outfit’s ringleader.
Sarai K. Doyle, 26, on Tuesday, Feb. 17, appeared before Luzerne County Judge Joseph F. Sklarosky Jr. and pleaded guilty to third-degree murder stemming from the April 2023 homicide of Saginaw’s Nicole M. “Nikki” Cuevas, 38.
Doyle’s four codefendants — her mother, Desiree K. Linnette, 45; Faith L. Beamer, 41; Jason P. Race, 44; and William B. Wolfe, 56 — each face the same six counts: criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, kidnapping to inflict injury or terror, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, aggravated assault, and abuse of a corpse.
The judge indicated he would not sentence Doyle until her codefendants’ cases have been resolved.
Cuevas, a mother of two teens, left Saginaw for Pennsylvania in late March 2023 with Linnette, Doyle, and three children. Cuevas was pursuing a relationship with Linnette at the time, according to a police affidavit. They began living at 142 Carlisle St. in the city of Wilkes-Barre, where Beamer, Race, and Wolfe already resided, the affidavit states.
Cuevas’ family back in Saginaw stopped hearing from her in April 2023. Police found Cuevas’ body buried in a shallow grave in the squalid house’s basement on Feb. 27, 2024.
Luzerne County District Attorney Sam M. Sanguedolce said on Tuesday that Doyle has agreed to participate in the prosecutions of her mother and the others, while accepting responsibility for participating in Cuevas’ killing. He expects there to be numerous pretrial hearings in the other defendants’ cases, the first likely to be scheduled in about 60 days.
Doyle on Tuesday also pleaded guilty to a second count of third-degree murder, this one stemming from the homicide of 69-year-old Wilkes-Barre resident Debra J. Fox, who had owned the Carlisle Street house and was last seen alive in January 2024. Fox’s body was found in a wooded area near an expressway on March 26, 2024.
Linnette is also charged with criminal homicide, theft by unlawfully taking movable property, and abuse of a corpse in connection with Fox’s death.
Sanguedolce alleges the mother-daughter duo of Linnette and Doyle abused Fox to death at a hotel.
“Debra Fox was regularly starved, made to stand in a corner without her prosthetic leg, beaten repeatedly in the hotel room with hands and fists, and also with her own cane,” Sanguedolce said during a January press conference. “She had her head shaved. Her head was struck against the hotel room wall. She was strangled, and her body was placed on a luggage cart where it was then dumped behind the hotel.”
Linnette allegedly continued cashing Fox’s $1,600 monthly Social Security checks after her death.
Case background
It wasn’t long after Cuevas and Linnette arrived at their destination that the relationship between them soured, police wrote in their affidavit. Linnette began attacking Cuevas’ character, including accusing her of inappropriately touching one of the children present.
“Investigators believe Linnette’s intention was to tarnish Cuevas’ reputation and turn the house against Cuevas,” police wrote.
Witnesses also told police Linnette “was calling the shots in the house” and that she supplied the rest with crack cocaine. Within a few days, Cuevas called her mother and asked for money for a bus ticket, saying she was “in Pennsylvania with friends,” the affidavit states.
She also sent a message through Facebook Messenger to a friend saying Linnette had hit her and she was bleeding and in tears. She was desperate enough to leave that she was considering walking back to Saginaw, she messaged her friend.
After an unusually long delay, Cuevas’ Facebook account began responding in a more aggressive tone, demanding money and denying she’d been abused, the report states.
According to police, it was not Cuevas authoring the messages, as Linnette had taken her phone. As witnesses later told police, Linnette and Cuevas got into a fight, with the latter initially getting the upper hand. Beamer and Doyle then joined in and overpowered Cuevas, police wrote.
“After that fight, Cuevas was subjected to daily beatings and torture,” police wrote.
Her confinement and abuse ended with her death on April 21, 2023.
A witness on Feb. 21, 2024, reported to police that Cuevas had been killed inside the Carlisle Street house. This person and a subsequent witness indicated an 8-year-old girl saw Cuevas’ beating and killing. The girl claimed Beamer and Race were using animal feces and urine to mask the odor of Cuevas’ body, the affidavit states.
Police spoke with Linnette, who admitted to driving from Saginaw to Wilkes-Barre with Cuevas. She said she left the Carlisle Street house at some point and when she returned, Cuevas was gone. She assumed she had returned to Michigan, she told police.
Investigators spoke with Cuevas’ mother, who said she contacted Michigan authorities in January 2024 about her daughter’s disappearance. She said she hadn’t heard from her since April 2023, when her daughter asked her for money for a bus ticket. She had sent her daughter $400, but she never arrived home.
Police on Feb. 27, 2024, entered the house, having obtained permission to do so from its current owner, who bought it at a tax sale the previous fall. Entering the basement, they were greeted with the overwhelming smell of mothballs and noticed an anomaly in the dirt floor, they wrote.
They returned that day with a search warrant and excavated the basement floor, finding Cuevas’ body buried a foot deep, quicklime and mothballs mixed in with the dirt.
Her body had been wrapped in a tarp tied with rope and an extension cord. Autopsy results revealed she suffered broken bones and stab and slash wounds before dying of asphyxia, the affidavit states.
Arrests and admissions
Police interviewed numerous witnesses and suspects during their probe. Beamer, Doyle, Wolfe, and Race all made incriminating statements, according to the police affidavit.
Through this, investigators put together a timeline of Cuevas’ final weeks after Linnette, Doyle, and Beamer allegedly beat her.
Multiple witnesses described Cuevas being handcuffed to items in the house, including a post in the basement. The affidavit states Cuevas had to ask to use the bathroom and was only being fed bread and water at Linnette’s direction.
Beamer admitted to digging her fingers into Cuevas’ eyes, punching her, and stabbing her, the affidavit states.
Doyle told police she regularly struck Cuevas and helped Linnette shave her head because “no one could be prettier than Linnette,” the affidavit states. Doyle said the hierarchy in the house had Linnette at the top, followed by Race, then Beamer, then everyone else.
All the interviewed suspects said Linnette had hit Cuevas in the face with a hammer, causing her to lose a tooth, affidavits state.
Race and Wolfe also told police they had tortured their prisoner. Wolfe and Beamer told police Cuevas was killed during an escape attempt, with Wolfe saying he and Race kicked and stomped her.
Doyle gave a slightly different account, saying Beamer, Wolfe, and Race attacked Cuevas after she had soiled herself on being unable to make it to the bathroom. They then fetched a stethoscope, with which they determined Cuevas was dead, the affidavit states.
The group considered placing her body in an abandoned house down the street before electing to bury her in the basement, the affidavit states.
Police arrested Linnette, Beamer, Doyle, Race, and Wolfe on April 9, 2024.
The discovery of Cuevas’ body wasn’t the first time police responded to the Carlisle Street house for violence. In July 2023 — after Cuevas’ death — a man was badly beaten in the house, telling police Linnette, Race, and two others kept him captive in the basement for hours and accused him of inappropriately touching a young girl. Linnette and Race are facing a combined 11 charges stemming from that incident.
Paris Scroggins, Cuevas’ younger brother, has described his sister as an unflinchingly honest woman, a lover of banana splits and vintage arcade games, who was trying to improve her and her children’s lives.
“She didn’t deserve what happened to her,” Scroggins said of his late sister. “She didn’t deserve the ending she got. But we want to remember who she was and who she was striving to be.”