Peach Hardy was starting a business and needed advice.

He and his wife, Danielle, wanted the best for their new beauty salon in Flemington. A slick website and social media presence were important. So were great stylists, the best products and the latest styles. But there was a key ingredient still missing after he spoke with his contemporaries: kindness.

Determined to find someone with a “service-first” approach, Peach finally found his way to Frank Anthony Salon in Chester.

Peach got the owner’s daughter on the phone, who said her father would be happy to meet him. Hardy was thrilled when Frank Warner agreed to sit down on his day off. They talked for three hours.

“I just poured my heart out,” Hardy said. “I told him all our dreams.”

Hardy said he left that meeting nine years ago with a business mentor and a surrogate father. That’s also how most of the 30-plus employees at Frank Anthony came to know Warner and his wife, Joy. The Warners weren’t just their bosses. They were teammates. They were there to help make life’s trials more bearable through compassion and giving.

The same goes for members at South Ridge Community Church in Union Township, Hunterdon County, where the Warners attended services, and their neighbors in the Reserve at Hawk Pointe, an age-restricted golf community in Washington Township.

“This couple was in a whole different league,” said Mark Vesper, a church member. “There was a magnetism about Frank. Everybody felt this way about him. You wanted to be around Frank Warner.”

Years later, when Hardy’s CUT salon in Flemington was thriving, Peach repaid his mentor’s kindness and counseled Warner’s troubled son, Todd.

Todd Warner, who is charged with killing his parents in Washington Township, Warren County, was returned Nov. 5, 2019, from Bucks County in Pennsylvania to Warren County to face murder charges. Here he leaves the police station in Washington Township on his way to the Warren County jail.Tim Wynkoop | lehighvalleylive.com contributor

Todd Warner had struggled with alcoholism and a gambling addiction, according to those who knew him. He had two failed marriages. But when he got out of rehab in 2014 and needed advice on how to start over, Hardy was there for him.

Today, Todd Warner, now 50, is in the Warren County jail. He is accused of killing his parents, Frank and Joy Warner, both 73, in the home they shared.

The Warners were found last month covered in blood, beaten and stabbed, court records show.

They had died how they spent almost every day of the past 58 years: together.

Police captured Todd on Oct. 28, the day after the gruesome discovery of his parents. Police said they grabbed him from behind at Table 112 at the Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. He was playing blackjack with money he stole from his parents. After his arrest, investigators said, he confessed that he bludgeoned, tried to suffocate and later stabbed his parents.

His parents had run their salon for nearly 50 years and were two months away from retiring, according to their daughter, Jen Schneider. They were looking forward to spending their golden years traveling and spoiling their four grandchildren.

“The industry is crying over this,” said Eric Mokotoff, a beauty educator who lives in Florida. “When you look at a man that’s everything you’d want to be in terms of success and he was getting ready to retire, how does his life just end like that? That’s what’s hurting us so deeply.

“We can’t wrap our heads around it at all.”

Frank Anthony Salon is on Route 206 in Chester, New Jersey.Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

World-class service

Frank and Joy met at Bound Brook High School in Somerset County. They were 15. Joy was class president and Frank her vice president sophomore year.

They graduated in 1964, married in 1967 and moved to Branchburg. After Frank worked as a barber, they decided to open their own salon in 1970.

Frank knew about the service industry. He had been helping customers since he was 10. His father owned a gas station, and Frank, one of five children, worked there from an early age. He spoke of the experience during a salon industry podcast last year.

Frank recalled how his father made him wash the windows, check the oil, shake out the floor mats and sweep out car interiors. He was taught to always do more.

“I used to be really angry with him because I really didn’t want to do it,” Frank said on the podcast.

When other kids were building snow forts, he was shoveling out the gas station and his uncle’s shot-and-beer joint across the street.

The service would pay off.

When Frank needed a loan to start his business, his uncle remembered how helpful he had been. Frank asked for $7,000, but his uncle gave him $12,000.

“It taught me to create world-class service in my business. It really taught me how to work,” Frank said.

And so doing just enough would never be good enough at Frank Anthony Salon.

Frank set out to join the elite in the industry, his friends said. He dreamed of taking a seat on Intercoiffure America Canada, a prestigious trade organization with fewer than 250 worldwide members. He became a 30-year member, sat on the board and took home armloads of awards.

But he was never above sweeping up hair clippings.

“He did everything like we did,” said 21-year Frank Anthony employee Shawna Stigliano. “He was never too good. He was taking out the garbage. He was sweeping the floor.”

All the while, Frank and Joy were looking for ways to improve their business as they balanced the needs of their two children. They decided to send Joy to New York to learn the latest coloring techniques, even if it meant Saturdays away. That decision was among the first to put Frank Anthony on the map. Only a handful of salons in New Jersey offered the “foiling” coloring technique in the mid-1970s, so business boomed once Joy became an expert colorist.

Joy eventually took over the finances and insurance for the salon, but Frank could never give up cutting or styling hair.

Stylist after stylist recalled through tears how the Warners changed their lives.

Frank Warner posted this sign in the office of the Frank Anthony Salon on Route 206 in Chester, New Jersey.Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

Alexis DeGroat said she showed up at the salon as a high school dropout. Frank offered her a chance to learn by filling the shampoos and working around other stylists. After a year, she was accepted to beauty school. Frank bought her professional-grade tools.

“I still use them to this day,” DeGroat said.

DeGroat said the Warners did more for her than her own parents.

When Christine Hart needed to care for her cancer-stricken mother, Frank and Joy let her juggle her schedule. And when Christine finally took a much-needed vacation, Frank and Joy took her mother out on a “date,” lavishing her with food and attention.

“You’re not just working here. You’re part of a family,” said Charo Cardinal, one of dozens of employees who considered themselves the Warners’ surrogate “children.”

What kept stylists and clients from leaving is a business model built on personal growth and kindness. In the podcast, Frank said you can get professional-grade hair coloring lots of places. But you can’t always get an attentive ear or a hug.

“I feel like everyone who comes into our salon has something unpleasant going on in their lives. If we can serve them from the heart and with kindness, we can never go wrong,” Frank said.

A son unravels

Todd Warner was an athlete who always stood out. He was a shortstop and quarterback at Somerville High School, following in the footsteps of Frank, who also played football and baseball at Bound Brook High, and played semi-pro baseball, according to longtime friend and co-worker Anthony Gentile. (Gentile is the “Anthony” in Frank Anthony Salon.)

Frank loved coaching his son, and Jen Schneider, the Warners’ daughter, said her mother was Todd’s biggest cheerleader.

Todd graduated from West Virginia University and started out work as a sales consultant for Emiliani Enterprises in Union.

He married Andrea Passanante, a teacher at Roxbury High School, in 1995. They divorced after four years. Todd would marry again, in 2002. He knew a relative of Liz Warner’s in high school but didn’t date until she got a job at Frank Anthony Salon.

Todd handled payroll and hiring at Frank Anthony for about a year after his new wife started working there, workers said. Liz said she was reluctant to discuss her rocky relationship with Todd but heaped praise upon Frank, who always “treated me like a daughter."

Liz recalled how Frank always brought the family a chicken for dinner after shopping at Costco. And each Christmas, she said, Frank placed blankets on gravesites of her loved ones. He didn't forget her deceased family members even though he wasn’t related, Liz said.

Todd and Liz divorced in 2008 and he filed for personal bankruptcy in 2014. Court records show he gambled away $36,000 over a seven-month period in 2013. Hardy, the salon owner, said Todd would brag about his adrenaline-pumping success at gaming tables.

“He would tell me stories about how he would be at the blackjack table. He would be down to his last $5 and would win $10,000. He was into the highs and lows,” Hardy said.

Hardy said Todd also sometimes used steroids, and neighbors and family confirmed Todd’s battle with alcohol abuse, which, according to court records, included a public drunkenness charge in 2015.

After divorcing, Liz and the boys moved to North Carolina while Todd stayed in an apartment in New Jersey, although he had business interests down there, renting out property.

According to news outlets, Todd was involved in a controversial transaction on the Airbnb website in 2016. He rented out a property to a woman in 2015 but reneged when he learned she was black.

She shared messages Todd sent her: “I hate n-----s so I’m gonna cancel you. This is the south darling.”

Ben Breit, who handles public affairs for Airbnb, said Todd Warner was banned from the site and confirmed he’s the same man charged with killing his parents in New Jersey.

No matter how embarrassing his missteps, Todd’s parents were there to help him up, according to friends and family.

They said Frank paid for Todd’s alcohol rehab at least once. Hardy said Frank paid for Todd’s Lebanon apartment after he finished rehab. And the parents picked up the pieces after Todd disappeared to the Caribbean.

“Frank was highly invested in his son’s success and wellness, in time and money and compassion and love,” said Vesper, a fellow church member and friend of the Warners.

But Todd couldn’t stay out of his own way.

Todd Warner, 50, is charged with the deaths of Frank and Joy Warner in Washington Township, Warren County, police say.Rich Maxwell | lehighvalleylive.

A boundless faith

The relationship between Peach Hardy, church member Mark Vesper and Frank was a driving factor in the Warners joining the South Ridge Community Church.

Frank got involved with the Band of Brothers, a group whose members wanted to be better husbands and better men. Everyone remembers that the men started paying attention when Frank spoke.

“Frank was like Yoda and Mother Teresa,” Vesper said. “He just had qualities that made it easy to be around him. You just felt lighter around Frank. Those are unique qualities in the world today.”

Frank and Joy attended church services together, although friends said Joy wasn’t as outgoing as Frank, who always seemed to be impeccably dressed when handing out materials to congregants as they arrived or helping seniors from their car.

“He and his wife just had such contagious joy that they spread and shared with everyone,” said Lisa Derrick, a ministry assistant. “He was just so willing and able to be a servant of God and other people.”

Frank also mentored a teen group, Derrick said.

“There had to be four or five Franks just to have the level of personal investment he seems to have made in each person,” said South Ridge pastor Nathan Tuckey. “Several of them mentioned he had more influence on them than their personal father.”

Frank tried to share his faith with Todd, but he wasn’t easily convinced, friends and church members said.

“Todd was troubled,” Hardy said. “Frank loved his son so much, which is the heart-wrenching thing about it.”

Todd made a few appearances at the Band of Brothers group, and Frank would purposefully stay away when he attended. Frank didn’t want his presence to inhibit his son from sharing, Hardy said, “sacrificing something he loved for Todd.”

After Todd returned from the Caribbean recently, he worked bartending and food service jobs. He briefly worked at the Hawk Pointe Golf Club as a bartender, according to food and beverage manager Janine Stepanich. He also had started a job as a bartender at Bea McNally’s in Hackettstown about three weeks before he was charged with murder, according to restaurant manager Steve Mahaney. Pat Herold, one of the Warners’ next-door neighbors, said Todd also worked at a nearby ShopRite.

Former co-workers described Todd as crude and given to dark humor.

“He joked about shooting ShopRite up. Back then I didn’t really think anything of it, joking, but now it’s a pretty big red flag,” said a former co-worker who did not want to be identified.

Another co-worker said he talked about killing someone he disliked, bragging, “I watch those murder shows. If I could get away with it, I would.”

Todd, according to neighbors, never really fit in at his parents’ reserved, granite-curbed community where he had lived off and on. He was the opposite of Frank, who would take up the garbage can when a neighbor forgot and recut his own grass when community groundskeepers didn’t measure up.

The over-55, quiet lifestyle was a sharp contrast to Todd’s demeanor, which Herold described as “very mean.”

He had “a nasty look on his face,” Herold said. “I was scared that he lived next door.”

The unthinkable

This fall, Todd had been working with members of South Ridge to find better employment. A few weeks before he was charged with killing his parents, Todd sent a church member a series of bizarre, threatening texts, Hardy said.

“My first thought was, was he on steroids again?” Hardy said.

It’s unclear who was notified of the text messages and what, if anything, was done. The recipient of the messages declined to be interviewed.

Jen Schneider told police her brother had sent her alarming text messages, indicating he wanted to harm their parents. She saw a similarly alarming Facebook post. She declined to discuss the messages’ contents.

When her parents didn’t answer the phone Oct. 27, she and her husband, Jeff, drove to the Warner home, police said.

Jeff Schneider looked in the garage window. He saw Joy’s 2019 Kia Soul was missing. He then looked in a living room window and saw his father-in-law tied to a chair with a white bag over his head, police said.

“I heard screaming,” neighbor Pat Schepis said. “It was Jennifer, the daughter. She was out in the middle of the street, hysterical, saying ‘No it can’t be.’”

The rear door was forced open at 6 Peregrine Drive in Washington Township, Warren County. Frank and Joyanne Warner were found killed inside the home where they lived.Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

Police had to break down a rear door to get to the victims. Police recovered the aluminum bat found next to Joy. They also found the kitchen knife they say Todd used to stab his parents.

Police records don’t indicate exactly when the attacks took place.

“It was only so many feet away. We heard nothing,” said Herold, the next-door neighbor. She recalled about eight police cars pulling into the quiet neighborhood. Police were reluctant to brief her, but when an officer needed to use her bathroom, she learned the Warners had been killed.

“What a lovely couple,” Schepis said. “I just don’t know what to say. It’s hard to put into words.”

Todd, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found.

Police were put on notice to look out for Todd or the silver Kia.

They also searched for his phone, hoping it connected with a cell tower. They got a hit near the Wind Creek Casino in Bethlehem.

When they checked casino surveillance footage, they saw him arrive in the Kia around 10 a.m. Oct. 27, hours before his parents were found dead. Court records say he used a credit card stolen from his parents to obtain a cash advance between $4,100 and $8,000. He also obtained a Wind Creek players’ card.

He left at 11:57 a.m. Police turned their attention to other casinos on the chance he might try one of them.

That’s exactly what happened.

Todd was spotted on a surveillance camera at 3:09 p.m. Oct. 28 in the Parx Casino, about an hour away from Bethlehem, in Bensalem, Bucks County. A camera showed him park at 7:49 a.m.

He was playing blackjack when he was removed at 3:50 p.m.

Police said they found pants and shoes with what they believed were blood stains. He made no effort to hide the clothes.

State police moved Todd to the Trevose barracks, where, according to court records, he made an alarming confession: He repeatedly struck both parents with baseball bats. He tried to suffocate both with plastic bags. He also stabbed them both.

Autopsies determined they died of blunt force and sharp force injuries.

Todd waived extradition on Oct. 30 and was moved to New Jersey on Nov. 6. His first court appearance is Tuesday, Nov. 12, four days before services for his parents at the church that became their second home.

Warren County Prosecutor Richard Burke, flanked by investigators from his office and Washington Township police, announces homicide charges against Todd Steven Warner, 50, who is accused of killing his 73-year-old parents, Frank and Joyanne Warner, taking their car and using his dad's credit card at a Lehigh Valley casino. Steve Novak | For lehighvalleylive.com

Why?

The Warners devoted their lives to serving clients, community and family. Their deaths have left so many broken hearts, so many unanswered questions.

To die like this? Why did it have to happen?

“The only person who knows why is (Todd),” said Brianna Rademacher, the manager at Frank Anthony Salon.

By the end of December, the Warners’ 50-year run owning one of the most popular salons in New Jersey would have come to a triumphant end. They loved going to Saint Barthélemy, their daughter said. They loved seeing their grandsons play football and their granddaughters cheer. They were supposed to have more time for both.

Instead, four children, including two of Todd’s, no longer have two of their grandparents. Todd’s children will grow up knowing their father likely faces life in prison.

The Warner family has tip-toed around the question of why. Most family members didn’t respond to interview requests. The ones who did refused to talk about Todd.

“Say anything you want about Todd. Our focus is getting thru this inexplicable tragedy,” Jeff Schneider, the Warners’ son-in-law, said in a Facebook message.

The answers also have escaped the Warners’ other “families.”

As disappointed as the salon workers are with Todd, they won’t condemn him.

Frank and Joy taught them to forgive.

“You have to find peace in your heart and move on,” DeGroat said. “That’s what it is.”

Hardy said he draws strength from an offhand comment Frank once made. He remembers agreeing to shave his head to support someone suffering from cancer and what Frank told him.

“You know why bad things happen to good people?” Frank asked Hardy. “It’s because good people are strong enough to take it.”

Todd Warner, who is charged with killing his parents in Washington Township, Warren County, was returned Nov. 5, 2019, from Bucks County in Pennsylvania to Warren County to face murder charges. Here he leaves the police station in Washington Township on his way to the Warren County jail.Tim Wynkoop | lehighvalleylive.com contributor

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.