A Houston woman has been arrested after she allegedly killed an elderly landlord more than two years ago, collected rent from tenants, and told investigators, when they found the remains of the landlord, that they belonged to a dead dog.

Pamela Ann Merritt, 43, was charged in May with the murder of 78-year-old Colin Kerdachi, but police didn’t find her until last week, KHOU reported.

Court documents say Kerdachi was reported missing in February 2021 after friends reported they hadn’t seen him since a deadly deep freeze left tens of thousands of people without power. Tenants told cops they hadn’t heard him moving around upstairs in the triplex since February 15.

On February 23, a tenant reported to Houston Police that he’d come home from a long trip and found a strange woman living in his unit refusing to leave. The woman, identified as Merritt, reportedly told the man that she’d killed Kerdachi.

Officers took Merritt to a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation, but by October, she was back in Kerdachi’s house. On October 2, a woman called police and said she’d found bloodstains on a mattress and on the bathroom floor in Kerdachi’s unit and a bloody knife in a locked mailbox, KRIV reported. She said she had been paying rent to Merritt and her boyfriend, Michael Brown, and got a discount for cleaning the second and third floors.

The tenant told investigators she asked Merritt and Brown about the landlord. They reportedly told her he had fallen on a sharp object and died at a hospital.

On December 6, 2021, that same woman called police again to report finding skeletal remains in the backyard.

“I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before because, once you realize, it’s kind of obvious but it kind of blended in at first,” the woman told KHOU.

Although Merritt and Brown initially told police the remains were from a dead dog and that blood was from meat cleaned out of the refrigerator, the coroner confirmed that the remains actually belonged to Kerdachi. The autopsy report said he from sharp and blunt force trauma to his head, neck, chest, and torso and that the manner of death was homicide.

Investigators asked Merritt about her story about Kerdachi falling on a sharp object, she fell back to that tale and said she had nursed him back to health before he went to the hospital.

Court records say the detective asked if Kerdachi “crawled back from the hospital and then died in his back yard,” and Merritt replied, “I guess so.”

Merritt and Brown were released without charge. Fifteen months later, court documents say, detectives looked at Kerdachi’s phone and bank records and saw no activity after February 15, 2021. Brown was arrested in May and charged with tampering with evidence after he admitted Merritt killed Kerdachi but denied being a part of the murder. He said he’d seen Kerdachi with a stab would to the stomach and thought he “just left” and went to the hospital

Merritt was charged with murder, but was nowhere to be found until August 18.  She’s being held on a $500,000 bond and is due back in court on November 1.

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[Featured image: Pamela Merritt/Houston Police Department]