Mother who 'murdered her special needs roommate' is blind after losing both her eyes in prison fight in the 1980s



Geraldine Cherry had her eyes gouged out at the Clinton Correctional Facility For Women in New Jersey

She was last month charged with murder after the body of Kathleen McEwan was found at their shared apartment in Philadephia



A mother-of-two accused of murdering her 70-year-old roommate has been blind for more than 20 years after losing both her eyes in a prison fight, it has emerged.

Geraldine Cherry, 50, had her eyes gouged out in the 1980s during a confrontation at the Clinton Correctional Facility For Women in New Jersey.

She was last month charged with murder after the body of Kathleen McEwan, a grandmother who had special needs and needed round-the-clock care, was found in their shared apartment in Roxborough, Philadelphia.

Crime scene: Geraldine Cherry has been charged with murdering her roommate Kathleen McEwan at their shared apartment (pictured) in Philadelphia last month

Cherry and Ms McEwan were living together under the care of social services agency Resources for Human Development

Bizarrely, she was initially thought to have died from natural causes and police said there was no reason to suspect foul play.



It was only when undertakers attempting to embalm her body found ten inches of cotton rope, a candy wrapper, a lotion bottle and a piece of a diaper that a murder investigation was launched.

Jeff Thompson, of John J Byers Funeral Home, said that he knew something was amiss from the moment he saw Ms McEwan's body.

He said: 'I've done this for 20 some years, on thousands of people, and obviously I knew right away this didn't appear to be a natural cause of death.



'We called the medical examiner.'

Cherry and Ms McEwan were living together under the care of social services agency Resources for Human Development (RHD), reports Philly.com .

A few days after her arrest, Cherry reportedly told an RHD employee that she was a 'bad person' and 'did something', according to an affadavit.



The full extent of Cherry's troubled background has now emerged.



Her sister Brenda Cherry-Hamilton, 48, of Ohio, said she used to be 'scared to death' of her.



She added: 'My mom put locks on the inside of her door because of Geraldine.'

Police had ruled out foul play in Ms McEwan's death, but funeral director Jeff Thompson (pictured) said ten inches of cotton rope was among the items found in her throat

Discovery: It was while undertakers at John J Bryers Funeral Home were preparing to embalm the dead woman that they found her throat was obstructed

Mrs Cherry-Hamilton revealed that both she and Geraldine were physically and sexually abused as children.



The sisters, two of 16 siblings who were split up by social workers and sent their separate ways in 1974, shared a room in Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey and at foster homes during their teenage years.



Mrs Cherry-Hamilton said: 'She used to tell me if I went to sleep she would choke me to death.



'My sister had a mental illness and she was violent, and I don't know why they would have put her together with another woman unsupervised. I feel terrible for this woman's family.'



By 1980, Cherry had spent 2.5 years at the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission's Johnstone Campus. During her time there, 72 assault charges were recorded against her.



That same year, she pushed a woman onto a railway track and was sentenced to ten years at the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women.

It was there that she lost both her eyes in a prison fight. According to relatives, she was either stabbed in the eye with a pencil or broken glass, stabbed herself in the eye, or was stabbed by a prison officer.



She was also charged with arson while in prison in 1986.



Her lawyer Fred Goodman said: 'We're very early in our investigation, but the one thing that is crystal clear is that she had the most horrific childhood imaginable.'



Cherry has an estranged son and daughter, who keep track of their mother's condition and whereabouts.

