SCRANTON — The district attorney identified Thursday the victims of Tuesday’s fatal machete attack at the Hotel Jermyn Apartments in the city, including a surviving victim he said remains in critical condition.
All three women were or are “wonderful people,” a neighbor said Thursday afternoon.
Linda P. Fortuna, 61, and Terry M. Muller, 59, were killed in the heinous attack, as was Muller’s service dog, a roughly 18-month-old golden retriever named Nayla, Lackawanna County District Attorney Brian Gallagher said in a news release. It notes Muller was a military veteran.
Marilyn Joan Waller, 66, seriously wounded in the attack that killed Fortuna and Muller, remains in critical care at Geisinger Community Medical Center.
“She’s still considered critical,” Gallagher said Thursday morning. “I think she has to undergo a number of surgeries. … I don’t think she’s out of the woods yet, but everything looks promising.”
The Hotel Jermyn Apartments in downtown Scranton on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
A family member of Waller’s declined an interview request. Efforts to find and reach family members of the deceased victims were not immediately successful.
The man accused of the attack, Michael Willie Marquis Woods, 38, and his victims lived on the sixth floor of the apartment building at 326 Biden St. Officers responding to the building Tuesday night found Woods covered in blood holding a machete near Biden Street and Wyoming Avenue and took him into custody.
Woods (Submitted)
Gallagher has called the attack “pure evil.”
‘Beautiful people’
Paula Taylor, who said she also lives on the sixth floor of the apartment building but wasn’t there at the time attack, knows or knew everybody involved in the tragedy. She described the victims as “beautiful people.”
“Linda especially,” Taylor said of Fortuna, describing her as a kind, sharing and very neighborly woman with a great spirit. “She’s fairly new here, but you know some people are just one-of-a-kind.”
Linda P. Fortuna
An obituary for Fortuna notes she loved bus trips and lunch with her friends and was a member of the “Waldorf Tiki Bar.” The Waldorf Park German American Federation, or Waldorf Park G.A.F., is a social club located in the East Mountain section of Scranton; a club officer confirmed Fortuna was a social member.
Born in Miami, Florida, Fortuna earned an associates degree at Lackawanna Junior College and worked at Moses Taylor Hospital and later Boscov’s in Scranton prior to her retirement, per her obituary.
A memorial service will be held Sunday at the Lawrence E. Young Funeral Home in Clarks Summit, beginning at 3 p.m. Friends may visit from 1 p.m. until the service. A graveside service will follow Monday at 10 a.m. at Cathedral Cemetery in Scranton.
“All are welcome to attend,” the obituary notes.
Little information about Muller was immediately available, but Taylor described her as “a good woman, too.”
“Terry was very helpful,” Taylor said. “My boyfriend was sick, (and) she always was giving me suggestions and different things.”
Taylor said Waller, the surviving victim, “kept to herself” but called her a “very nice lady.”
“They were all wonderful people,” she said. “I (saw) them on a daily basis. … They were all good people.”
The attack
Woods, machete in hand, stabbed Fortuna in the chest Tuesday as she stepped off an elevator about 6 p.m., police said. He then attacked Muller, throwing her to the ground and stabbing her in the chest. Both women were pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police found Waller, who suffered a “severe chest wound” and whose hand was nearly severed in the attack, in apartment 605. The assailant attacked her with the machete when she opened her apartment door, according to charging documents.
Woods, who lived in apartment 612, told police he smoked PCP, a hallucinogenic drug, earlier in the day.
Investigators are still waiting on the results of a laboratory analysis of what, if anything, was in Woods’ system at the time of the homicides, Gallagher said Thursday afternoon.
District Attorney Brian Gallagher responds to questions regarding Tuesday night’s machete attack at the Hotel Jermyn during a news conference at the Scranton Police Department headquarters on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Woods faces two counts of criminal homicide, as well as counts of attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated cruelty to animals for killing the service dog, Nayla.
He remains in Lackawanna County Prison. District Judge Alyce Farrell denied bail at an arraignment Wednesday morning.
Former Hotel Jermyn
Officials had removed police tape from the front of the apartment building where the attack took place, the former Hotel Jermyn, as of Wednesday afternoon. There was little activity outside the building when a reporter interviewed Taylor there Thursday.
A historic downtown landmark, the building once served as a nightspot for dinner and dancing at the Manhattan Club or the Omar Room and was a shopping destination for many, according to the Lackawanna Historical Society. It transitioned into apartments in 1997.
Developers announced a financing deal to create the apartment complex there in June 1996, the Hotel Jermyn having been closed since 1995, when its heating system failed. The building was converted to include 85 affordable apartments for older adults and individuals with disabilities, per an article published in The Sunday Times in January 1997, while the conversion was ongoing.
A woman who answered a call to the phone number listed for the Hotel Jermyn Apartments said Thursday she could not comment. The Hotel Jermyn Apartments’ Facebook page describes it as affordable housing for eligible people aged 55 and older and the permanently disabled.
A “no soliciting” sign on the doors of the Hotel Jermyn Apartments in downtown Scranton on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Taylor, a resident of the Hotel Jermyn Apartments for about three years, said her experience there has been positive. She essentially described Tuesday’s episode of horrific violence as an uncharacteristic aberration.
“Things have been so good here,” Taylor said. “My manager has really turned this building around. … I don’t want the public to start thinking: ‘oh God, you know, it’s a bad place.’ It’s not.”
In addition to the victims, Taylor also knows Woods, the alleged perpetrator who lived on her floor.
“I would have opened the door for him, I would have, because every now and then he might ask me for a cigarette,” she said. “You would have never thought. Never in a million years.”
Gallagher said the criminal investigation is ongoing.
Staff Writer Geri Gibbons contributed to this report.