Norristown man is charged with murdering a companion and hiding his body in a trash can

The trash can abandoned in the brush by the Schuylkill River Trail in Norristown smelled foul — so much so that one man who walked near it on Monday couldn’t stop thinking about what might be inside.

An hour after he had first traversed that stretch of the trail, the passerby doubled back, opened the trash can, and pushed aside a blanket.

Beneath it was a human leg.

Norristown police on Saturday identified the body in the trash can as 44-year-old Oscar Travezio-Tercero, who had been sleeping at a car wash on Main Street in Norristown.

Felix Santos-Colon, 46, who did odd jobs at the car wash and also often slept there, has been charged with his murder, after a joint investigation between Montgomery County detectives and Norristown police. Police said he beat Travezio-Tercero to death with a baseball bat. Contact information for his lawyer was not immediately available.

The Montgomery County Medical Examiner’s Office determined he had been killed by blunt-force trauma to the head.

Soon after launching their investigation, Norristown police learned that they had already met with Travezio-Tercero, days before he was killed.

On Nov. 2, from the car wash where he slept — Global Gas at 220 W. Main St. — he had called 911, saying he was trying to protect a woman at the gas station. By the time police arrived, she had left.

Police didn’t specify what Travezio-Tercero was trying to protect the woman from. They did learn that she was dating Santos-Colon.

Detectives scoured security cameras in the area and found that Travezio-Tercero was last seen alive on Nov. 4. A day later, security footage showed Santos-Colon pushing a trash can from Global Gas toward the Schuylkill River Trail. Whatever was inside was so heavy that a second man had to help him heave the trash can up a small hill near the trail.

On Friday, detectives interviewed Santos-Colon’s daughter, who said her father had been behaving oddly since Nov. 4.

That night, she told police, he showed up at her house and said he had “done something he should not have done.” He kept using the Spanish phrase “terminé a alguien” — “I finished someone,” she said. She took it to mean that he had killed someone. He told her he was sorry, she said.

The next day, his daughter told police, Santos-Colon told her and her sisters that he would rather die than be arrested and planned to kill himself with a sword.

Less than a week later, when news reports surfaced that a body had been found in Norristown, Santos-Colon’s daughter said she immediately suspected that her father was involved.

The same day, police interviewed Santos-Colon. It’s unclear from charging documents how they located him. He told them that, on Nov. 4, he hit Travezio-Tercero three times with a baseball bat as he sat in a chair near dumpsters at the car wash, head down and hoodie up.

Santos-Colon had been angry at Travezio-Tercero because, he said, Travezio-Tercero had threatened him previously. Police did not specify the nature of the threat or whether it was related to Travezio-Tercero’s earlier 911 call.

The next day, Santos-Colon told police, he decided to bury Travezio-Tercero in a cemetery near the Schuylkill River Trail, digging a grave with a machete. There were too many people around to bury the body, he told police, so instead he hid it in a trash can in the brush off the trail.

The man who helped him push the can into the brush had no idea what was inside, he said. Afterward, Santos-Colon told police, he had considered disposing of the body in other ways, like burning it, but there were always too many people nearby for him to consider it.

He said he knew that he was “in trouble” when he saw a news station helicopter flying over the site where he had dumped the body.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said that the case was not easy to investigate because both the victim and the man accused of his murder were unhoused.

“But as happens again and again in Montgomery County, our detectives and local police work the investigation until it is solved, no matter the difficulty or resources necessary. Violence will not be tolerated. No one should be a victim of violence in our community,” he said in a statement.