Woman’s life on lam ends

CANONSBURG – Life on the lam ended Friday for a woman who Canonsburg police said has at least a dozen aliases and specializes in thefts.

Marianne E. Sadelmyer, 48, who identified herself to Canonsburg police as Marion Jean Freeman, was taken into custody at a home at 313 Reed Ave., Chartiers Township. Not only was she wanted in three New York communities on criminal charges, she was wanted as a material witness in a homicide by police in Tonawanda, N.Y., near Buffalo.

Police Sgt. Don Cross said Officer James Eckels was investigating the theft of a wallet earlier this month from Walgreens pharmacy. The woman who owned the wallet had put it on the counter at the cash register while she looked for coupons and went over the circular with the clerk.

“Sadelmyer was standing next to the victim the whole time,” Cross said. “She was actually at Walgreens to return something she had taken from Shop ’n Save.

“Once the victim opened the flier, Sadelmyer grabbed part of it and used it to cover the wallet so she could slip it out from under,” he said.

A credit card that had been in the wallet was used at Shop ‘n Save on Pike Street in Canonsburg to purchase prepaid Visa cards. Police got surveillance from the stores and determined the woman who stole the wallet was the same one who used the card.

“It so happens, the store manager was suspicious of Sadelmyer and the people she was with,” Cross said. “He got a license plate on the car she had been in, and we were able to trace it to the Reed address.”

The owner of the vehicle told police that he had been helping out the woman, whom he knew as Freeman, until she was able to get her own place.

“We asked to talk with her and recognized her as the woman in the surveillance at both stores,” Cross said. “She told us that she had been involved in a domestic violence incident in the state of Washington and had been relocated throughout the country, which was a fabricated story.”

Police asked her for identification. She told the officers the only thing she had was a birth certificate from the state of New Jersey.

“Since she was not a Pennsylvania resident, and with her story about moving across the country, we took her into custody,” Cross said. “When we checked her Social Security number, we learned she was wanted in New York for identity theft,” Cross said. “I asked a 911 dispatcher to dig in, and they came up with the name of Marianne E. Sadelmyer with the same date of birth and Social Security number.”

A further check of her criminal history showed Buffalo authorities will extradite her. Police were able to verify she is also wanted in Tonawanda and Hamburg. Cross also said a Tonawanda detective told him she was wanted on a material witness warrant.

“She has at least 13 aliases and her criminal history from just two states is 100 pages long,” Cross said. “And they were still running her background, so we don’t know how many more aliases she has.”

Sadelmyer was arraigned before District Judge Ethan Ward on a charge of arrest prior to requisition for the Buffalo warrant and placed in the Washington County jail without bond. She was also arraigned on charges filed by Canonsburg police including access device fraud, theft, theft by deception, false identification to police and forgery. Ward set bond on those charges at $10,000.