An elderly woman found dead inside a Perry Township home while police were executing a search warrant there has been identified by the Franklin County Coroner's Office.
Maia Mertz, 85, was officially pronounced dead at 9:34 p.m. Aug. 19, more than seven hours after Perry Township and Upper Arlington police executed a search warrant at her home in the 1300 block of Oakbourne Drive, according to a news release by the coroner's office.
Police said the search warrant was obtained in connection with a financial fraud investigation, but did not say how Mertz may have been involved or who is the target of the investigation.
As officers began searching the home, they discovered Mertz's body, Perry Township police Sgt. Eric Delbert said. Officers secured
the scene and contacted the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to launch a death investigation.
Officers detained and questioned three people who were at the home, Delbert said. Two of them were sisters, and the third person was a boyfriend of one of the sisters, Delbert said. None of them had been charged with a crime, he said.
Delbert also wasn't able to say if the three people who were found at the home are related to Mertz because at the time she hadn't been positively identified. It's not clear how long Mertz had been deceased, Delbert said.
Mertz was a retired Ohio State University professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, according to her LinkedIn page and the OSU faculty and staff directory. She retired in 2007, according to her LinkedIn page.
The coroner's office has not released a cause or manner of death.
Reporter Shahid Meighan can be reached at smeighan@dispatch.com, at ShahidMeighan on X, and at shahidthereporter.dispatch.com on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Perry Township woman found dead in home identified by coroner
