Neighbors, lawn guy had no idea couple was dead inside

Life continued outside Maureen Daley and Jonathan Miller's Newport-area house.

Lights lit the two-story home located in the 300 block of E. Highland Ave. Letters were delivered through the door's mail slot. And their lawn was mowed every Wednesday from April through November.  But unbeknownst to anyone, the couple's corpses were rotting inside the 2,509-square-foot property.

"It was more strange than a shock," said Jeff Alexander, who mowed the couple's lawn for more than a decade. "The whole story itself is just really weird to me. The fact that I've been going there for pretty much every Wednesday from April through November all of last year and they most likely were in the house and they weren't alive.

"It's just kind of eerie when you think about it."

The discovery came Wednesday after a neighbor asked New Castle County police to check on their welfare. Officers responded to the home in Lyndalia about 3 p.m. and entered through an unlocked window and found the man and woman dead inside.

"They had been dead for a while," said Cpl. Tracey Duffy, a police spokeswoman.

Duffy said they did not know how long the couple had been dead or the cause of death. Autopsies were being performed Thursday.

Two neighbors told The News Journal that police informed them that 67-year-old Daley was found dead on a couch while 53-year-old Miller was found on the floor. Daley had cared for Miller for years after a motorcycle crash left him unable to move on his own. There was a large pile of mail near the inside of the front door.

Another pile, of bagged newspapers, rested on the porch floor near a lit spotlight and a couple of large packages could be seen in the carport near their couple's car.

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Neighbors interviewed Thursday said they were under the impression the couple was visiting England, where Daley was from. One neighbor said she understood that Daley was going to be in England for a year and only recently did she realize that a year had passed.

And because the couple kept to themselves, their absence wasn't really noticed.

Alexander, who owns Alexander Lawn and Landscaping, said there were entire seasons that he'd not seen the couple in the decade he'd been mowing their lawn, so suspicions weren't raised last year. He said they kept their doors shut and shades down. Alexander said he last saw Daley toward the end of the 2014 and it had been years since he saw Miller. The last contact that he had with Daley was a gift he received from her at Christmas 2014.

"It was a little thing of coasters where you put drinks on," he said.

Despite not getting paid during the 2015 season, Alexander said he chose to cut their grass and hoped they would settle when they returned from England, where he, too, thought they were.

"Again, it didn't raise any eyebrows that they would leave and not tell me because, like I said, they rarely talked to me," he said.

Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.