Apr 29
2025
Neighbors say site of Allentown murders was ‘unsafe’
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Boarded window allegedly kicked in during deadly assault on St. Louis Place. Photo provided by Jordan Bidwell.
Neighbors of Mickey Harmon and Jordan Celotto — the Allentown couple murdered in their home on March 4 — say the tragedy might have been averted if the building they lived in had been better maintained and secured.
The couple’s landlord disputes that notion.
Harmon and Celotto moved into the lower apartment at 5 St. Louis Place last September. Their upstairs neighbor, Jordan Bidwell, who lived in the property since 2021, was not was not home during the break-in, but she claimed the basement window that accused murderer Bryan Chiclana used to access the house was boarded up with a thin piece of plywood.
“It had been that way for as long as I had lived there, and I asked the former downstairs tenant who was there for a year or two before me, and she said it was that way as long as she could remember, too,” Bidwell said.
She shared pictures and video with Investigative Post of what she said was the original piece of wood lying next to the window, which has been boarded up again since the break-in.
Bidwell also shared a photo she said one of Harmon’s friends had taken a day after the break-in, which purportedly shows the original piece of wood in the window frame after it was kicked in.
Neighbors reported that Chiclana tried breaking into other homes and cars before breaking into 5 St. Louis Place. Bidwell said she believed the tragedy could have been prevented if she, Harmon and Celotto were provided with a more secure apartment.
“Ours was the first one that he could get into because of its condition,” she said.
“I think it was 100 percent preventable if [the landlord] had glass and bars on the windows,” said Ashlee Jedrzejewski, a former tenant at 1 St. Louis Place, next door to the site of the murders.
Real estate agent Eric Hauser, the owner of both 1 and 5 St. Louis Place, said the window was never boarded up until after Chiclana broke in, but that there had in fact been a glass window.
“He literally kicked it in. Think about it. He killed both Mickey and Jordan. He’s a very strong guy,” he said.
Hauser claimed the Buffalo Police Department has security footage that shows Chiclana kicking in the window. Investigative Post was not able to obtain that footage, as it is evidence in an ongoing investigation.
Hauser also said there were no previous break-ins and that neither Harmon nor Celotto expressed concerns about the building’s safety.
“If they had an issue, I would have fixed it because I loved them as tenants. They were terrific,” Hauser said.
Hauser insists the condition of his property didn’t compromise his tenants’ safety in any way.
“People think, ‘Oh, no, it’s his fault.’ They’re pointing fingers,” he said. “They can point all they want. I’ve got receipts for over $50,000 put into those two buildings [on St. Louis Place] last summer.”
Tricky locks, bad lighting, and other issues
The couple did have concerns about their apartment, according to Bidwell. She said that one day, when she returned their cat to their apartment after it had escaped, she found that their door had been ajar. She said Harmon and Celotto told her the locks on the doors were “tricky.”
“There were no issues with my locks, but I know that there was that issue with theirs. There was an issue with both the front and back door,” Bidwell said.
2 St. Louis Place
Before the murders, there was problematic activity in the neighborhood across the street at 2 St. Louis Place, a vacant apartment complex owned by Charles Dobucki, a notorious Buffalo landlord who was recently arrested on outstanding warrants from Housing Court. Police visited Dobucki’s abandoned apartment more than 100 times for reports of drug paraphernalia, squatters and a dead body.
“Those guys would come across to our house and use the hose between our two houses to wash off, and they would go through the cans many nights and look through the garbage,” Bidwell said.
Both she and Jedrzejewski said they informed Hauser that the activity caused them concern, but they claim he was unresponsive.
“I told Eric many times what was going on. He’s like, ‘You need to call the city,’” Jedrzejewski said. “After a while, it just felt unsafe to live there.”
“They stole one of our recycling bins, and they filled it with a bunch of trash, including drug paraphernalia, and rolled it back across the street to be picked up. But the recycling men would not take it away, because it clearly was not recycling,” Bidwell said.
“We asked Eric, and he said, ‘Oh, well, just try to trick the recycling men by putting newspapers on the top.’”
Hauser told Investigative Post he “never once said that.” He also said paraphernalia was only found in the bin once and that the missed recycling pick-up had nothing to do with it.
“A lot of times they would miss the totes at the end of the street,” he said.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomHe said he contacted the city numerous times about the squatters across the street, but never installed security cameras due to the high cost. He said his rents are low for the Allentown area.
“We’re not a high-security, high-end apartment. I said, as much as you’d like to, you’re not paying $1,800 a month like the people over on North Pearl,” he said.
Hauser did install lights outside the apartments to deter trespassers, but Bidwell said not all of them functioned.
“The porch light didn’t even work until Mickey and Jordan moved in and fixed it,” she said.
Bidwell said she believed Hauser takes advantage of tenants by offering cheaper rents in a desirable area to justify refusing to make necessary repairs. Her rent was $895, about $300 less than the median gross rent for other apartments in the same census tract, according to American Community Survey 2023 estimates.
“I think he knows that people are going to stay there and be okay with sacrificing some safety or some habitability,” she said. “You’re not going to find that price and space in this area.”
Both tenants claimed they had other issues in the homes, including infestations of bats, squirrels and insects, plumbing issues and several damaged windows to both apartments caused by shoddy contractor work.
“There was stuff that he said he would fix or make better [but] he never really followed through,” Bidwell said.
Hauser said his two former tenants had unrealistic expectations about how long it would take to make repairs on the properties, which are about 140 years old and require specialty repairs due to their historic nature. He said he invests considerable time and money into maintaining his properties and that he meets his tenants’ needs as best as he can.
“If you’re looking for a high-end apartment that has full-time maintenance guys on staff, then you’ve got to move. I’m not it. I never will be,” he said.
City inspections
Reports from the Department of Permits and Inspections show that 5 St. Louis Place was cited for exterior violations including missing roof tiles, overgrown weeds, peeling paint, trash and deteriorated exterior walls.
Violations at 1 St. Louis Place include deteriorating windows, water damage and unsecured front steps.
A total of 12 violations between the two properties remain active, according to inspection reports. The city’s database for building permits doesn’t indicate that permits required for the repairs had been taken out for any of Hauser’s properties.
An Investigative Post reporter visited the St. Louis Place properties on April 21 and observed deterioration on the buildings’ roofs and near some of the basement windows on the apartment that was occupied by Harmon and Celotto. Two of the basement windows — including the one Chiclana allegedly kicked in to break into the apartment — were boarded up. The piece of wood from Bidwell’s photographs and video was still there. Bars for the windows were leaning against the outside of the house.
The neighboring apartment at 1 St. Louis Place was still missing bricks from the front porch and had some deterioration of the roof.
Department of Permits and Inspections commissioner Cathy Amdur told Investigative Post via email that Hauser has made “significant progress” on both properties..
A city inspector cited Hauser’s apartments between October 2020 and May 2024, after visiting the neighborhood for Dobucki’s property.
“The inspector originally identified the code violations at 1 St. Louis and 5 St. Louis while investigating a complaint at 2 St. Louis across the street,” Amdur said.
No interior inspections were conducted by city inspectors, the reports indicate.
Jedrzejewski said she made complaints with the Erie County Department of Health regarding the basement, which she said was full of mold and had “disintegrated” some of her belongings after it flooded.
She said she also complained to the health department about infestations of insects, including bed bugs. She believed the bed bugs came from squatters throwing their belongings into her recycling bin and leaning it against the house near a damaged window that she said Hauser refused to fix until after she moved out last September.
“I saw this big crack in the window. I saw little bugs coming through it,” she said, adding that Hauser allegedly told her to spray bug spray and to “stop acting crazy.”
She said he eventually had the apartment treated, but the incident was enough to make her leave.
“I was just like, I can’t be here anymore. I’ll get rid of all my stuff and start over. And that’s exactly what I did,” she said.
Hauser said that neither Bidwell nor Jedrzejewski properly communicated their complaints to him.
“You can’t get them to communicate, then it’s my fault,” he said. “Most of my tenants have no problem picking up the phone or calling me.”
After the tragedy
Hauser said he plans to take extra measures to prevent his tenants and properties from being compromised in the future, following the double homicide and the unwelcome activity that Dobucki’s property brought to the neighborhood.
“I’m going to probably put in all new glass block windows in the basements over there to secure it even further,” Hauser said.
Bidwell said she doesn’t believe that Hauser will follow through on those promises, based on her previous experiences.
“Did he change the locks? No. After it had been a couple days [after the murders], he hadn’t made any move to do that. After promising a couple times, I was like, nothing’s going to change here,” she said.
She’s trying to get her security deposit back from Hauser after moving from the house last month.
Hauser said that while he understood why Bidwell moved, but she violated her lease agreement by giving him only 13 days notice and is not entitled to her deposit.
“Financially, why should I absorb that? That’s like me going to the city and saying, ‘Well, I need some partial time off my taxes because I had a double homicide,’” Hauser said, claiming that he’s accrued extra expenses due to damages Bidwell caused to the apartment.
His two former tenants told Investigative Post that they wish the Allentown properties were in more capable hands.
“I would like to see him never rent those houses out again, to be honest with you, because I don’t think that he deserves it or has the care for it,” Bidwell said.
Jedrzejewski shared a similar sentiment.
“I wish they would just be taken away from him and someone can just fix them,” she said.
