Northwest Philly woman who staged her husband’s death as a suicide pleads guilty to third-degree murder
Danielle Baxter, 40, lied to investigators about the nature of 38-year-old Jordan Baxter's killing, prosecutors said.
A Northwest Philadelphia woman who fatally shot her estranged husband and staged his death as a suicide plead guilty to murder and related crimes on Wednesday.
Danielle Baxter, 40, was accused of killing 38-year-old Jordan Baxter at her Andorra home in March 2025.
Investigators said Baxter shot and killed her husband, a longtime SEPTA employee, in the bedroom of her home before dragging his body down the stairs and staging his body between two cars in a nearby driveway.
Police found Jordan Baxter there around 7 a.m. covered in blood. He had been shot through the back of the head, they said.
While investigators initially believed Baxter’s death was a suicide because he was found with a 9mm pistol in his hand, they soon questioned the nature of the crime after finding irregularities in statements made by Danielle Baxter.
Assistant District Attorney Ashley Toczylowski of the homicide unit outlined those details during Baxter’s plea hearing before Common Pleas Court Judge Scott O’Keefe.
It was Danielle Baxter who called police to report her husband’s death, Toczylowski said. She told investigators she came across her husband’s body while she was taking out the trash that morning at her West Bells Mill Road home.
But investigators noted that Baxter was breathing heavily on the call and was unable to answer basic questions about her husband’s condition, she said.
Inside the home, police found blood pooling on Baxter’s bed where a pillow would be. Baxter, Toczylowski said, lied when she told police the blood was there because she had recently had her period.
Investigators later downloaded data from Baxter’s Apple Watch and learned she had recovered a “very steep level of activity” between 1 and 4 a.m. the morning Jordan Baxter was killed, activity they attributed to climbing multiple flights of stairs.
And investigators eventually determined that the bullet that killed Jordan Baxter was not of the same caliber of the weapon found on his body.
Rather, the bullet matched a gun that investigators recovered from Danielle Baxter’s closet, Toczylowski said.
Taken together, those factors led investigators to believe the killing “was not a suicide, but rather a staged homicide,” she said.
Baxter said little in O’Keefe’s courtroom acknowledging that she was pleading guilty to third-degree murder and possessing an instrument of a crime.
She is expected to be sentenced Nov. 18 and could face five to 15 years in prison.
Jonathan Strange, Baxter’s attorney with the Defenders Association, declined to comment.
