7 People in Custody in Slaying of Fla. Couple
Source: By BILL KACZOR and MELISSA NELSON, The Associated Press
Posted: 07/14/09 3:38PM
Filed Under: Crime Files
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — Masked suspects, some dressed as ninjas, stole a safe and other items during a deadly break-in at the sprawling Florida Panhandle home of a couple known for adopting children with special needs, authorities said Tuesday.
Melanie and Byrd Billings were shot to death Thursday in their nine-bedroom home. Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan hugged their sobbing adult daughter, Ashley Markham, at a press conference Tuesday to announce that three more people had been arrested, bringing the total to seven.
Parents 16 Slain
This 2005 picture shows Byrd and Melanie Billings with their children, 10 adopted and two biological, at their home in Beulah, Fla. Melanie is holding a photograph of their late child, Bailey. Investigators asked the public to be on the lookout Friday, July 10, 2009 for a red van they believe carried three men involved in the deaths of the Florida Panhandle couple who were shot in their rural home while eight of their children slept.
AP Photo/The Pensacola News Journal, Karena Cawthon
This Thursday July 9, 2009 image made from a video surveillance camera released by the Escambia County Sheriff's Office, shows an identified man dressed in what the county sheriff called "ninja garb" heading towards an unlocked utility door in the back of Byrd and Melanie Billings' home in Beulah, Fla. Authorities made three arrests over the weekend, but the mystery around town only deepened Monday July 13, 2009, when Sheriff David Morgan said that as many as eight people in all may have been involved in the shooting death of the Billings and that the crime appeared to have "numerous motives," though robbery was the only one he would mention.
This Friday, July 10, 2009 picture shows the home of Byrd and Melanie Billings in Beulah, Fla.
AP Photo/The Pensacola News Journal, Gary McCracken
This 2005 picture shows Byrd and Melanie Billings at their home in Beulah, Fla.
(AP Photo/The Pensacola News Journal, Karena Cawthon
Booking photos provided by the Escambia County Sheriff Department, Pensacola, Fla., Tuesday, July 14, 2009, show suspects in the home invasion and murder of Byrd and Melanie Billings who were found shot to death July 9, 2009. Masked suspects, some dressed as ninjas, stole a safe and other items during a deadly break-in at the sprawling Florida Panhandle home of a couple known for adopting children with special needs, authorities said Tuesday. From top left: Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Sr., Wayne Thomas Coldiron, Gary Lamont Sumner, a juvenile whom police did not identify; Frederick Lee Thorton Jr., 19; and Donnie Ray Stallworth, 28, who was arrested in Alabama but lives in Florida.
AP Photo/Escambia Sheriff's Department
"It is my honor today to tell you, Ashley, and your family, we have found them and they are in custody," Morgan said.
Investigators had said previously that there were many motives for the crime, but prosecutor Bill Eddins said Tuesday that robbery was the main one. He would not say what was in the safe or what else might have been taken from the house.
Nine of the couple's 17 children were home at the time and three saw the intruders but were not hurt.
Morgan said investigators were still looking for at least one more person in the case and at least one of the suspects in custody may have done work at the Billings home. He has previously said the suspects had no direct connection to the victims.
Several of the suspects were day laborers who knew each other through either a pressure washing business or a car detailing group, Morgan said.
The arrests started Sunday with 56-year-old Leonard Gonzalez Sr., who was originally charged with evidence tampering but will be charged with murder, authorities said. He is accused of driving a red van seen on surveillance video pulling away from the Billings home and then trying to paint over it.
His son, 35-year-old Leonard P. Gonzalez Jr., was also arrested Sunday along with day laborer Wayne Coldiron, 41. Both were due in court Tuesday to face murder charges.
News That Stunned Us
The Rev. Jesse Jackson stands in an area in the rear of Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip Ill. Thursday, July 9, 2009. Prosecutors on Thursday charged three gravediggers and a manager in an elaborate scheme in which hundreds of corpses were dug up at a historic black cemetery near Chicago and strewn in a weeded area or reburied with other bodies so that plots could be resold, authorities said.
AP Photo/M. Spencer Green
Four cemetery workers were charged with one count each of dismembering a human body, a felony. Bond was set at $200,000 each for gravediggers Maurice Dailey, 61, top left; Keith Nicks, 45, top right; and Terrence Nicks, 39, bottom right. Cemetery manager Carolyn Towns, 49, bottom left, was ordered held on $250,000 bond.
AP Photo
Distraught family members search for the graves of relatives at Burr Oak Cemetery. "I don't even know what to tell you about the heartbreaking stories that I've been hearing from people, crying hysterically that they're going through the burial for the second time today," Dart said. "I feel betrayed and violated," said Gregory Mannie, who has four relatives buried there. (Sources: AP, CNN)
AP Photo
Toronto police homicide detectives are trying to piece together the final moments of a 44-year-old teacher and single mother whose body was discovered in the trunk of her car on Thursday, July 9. Consuelo Valencia-Russo was last seen on Tuesday at about 8:30 a.m. She told her mother she was going to get her hair done.
In this file photo provided by the Kenosha Police Department, co-workers, police and firefighters try to help Darmin Garcia, an employee of a Kenosha company that supplies chocolate ingredients, out of a 110 degree vat of dark chocolate at Debelis Corp. in Kenosha, Wis., Friday, Aug. 18, 2006. Darmin Garcia, 21, slipped into the bubbling hot chocolate and was stuck for two hours early Friday morning. On Wednesday, July 8, 2009, authorities say a man died after falling into a vat of melted chocolate in a New Jersey processing plant. The Camden County prosecutor's office identified the victim as 29-year-old Vincent Smith II of Camden. He was a temporary worker at the Cocoa Services Inc. plant.
AP File Photo/Kenosha Police Department via Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Three men have now been charged with assault in an attack on Vancouver Island that appears to have been racially motivated. The accused, aged 19 to 25, were arrested after Jay Phillips, 38, was punched and kicked in the parking lot of a Courtenay fast-food restaurant on Friday, July 3. The men have been released and are scheduled to appear in court at the end of August.
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Phillips, who is black, said the attack was unprovoked. He said a truckload of men drove by and started shouting racial epithets. "We're going to kill you, we're going to lynch you really vile stuff."
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The men's intent was obvious, Phillips said. Beside the racial epithets, they threatened him and his family with violence. "Get the hell out of town, we're going to come back and lynch you," Phillips recalled the men screaming. "I remember the word 'lynch' quite a bit - 'we're going to lynch you and your whole family.'"
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Phillips says the men "got out of the truck, surrounded me, still calling me names, threatening me, threatening my family, saying this is our white town and you're not allowed here - stuff like that. "Then they all came at me and surrounded me."
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Police remove a Burmese python from a bag in order to measure it after removing it from a home in Oxford, Fla. on Wednesday, July 1, 2009. Charles Jason Darnell, the snake's owner and the boyfriend of Shaunnia's mother, discovered the snake missing from its terrarium and went to the girl's room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Caruthers said. Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he was able to pry the child away.
AP Photo/Ocala Star-Banner, Bruce Ackerman
Another day laborer, Gary Lamont Sumner, 31, was arrested on a murder charge in a nearby county Monday after he was pulled over in a traffic stop. Morgan said investigators have placed Sumner at the scene, though he would not provide details.
Three more people were arrested Tuesday — a juvenile whom police did not identify; Frederick Lee Thorton Jr., 19; and Donnie Ray Stallworth, 28, who was arrested in Alabama but lives in Florida.
The break-in was captured by an extensive video surveillance system the Billings used to keep tabs on their children.
Surveillance video showed three armed, masked men arriving in the red van, entering through the front of the house and then returning to the vehicle. Others dressed in what the sheriff called "ninja garb" went in through an unlocked utility door in the back. They were in and out in under 10 minutes.
"I think you'll find this particularly chilling and here's why: We have a team that enters at the rear of the home and another that enters at the front of the home," Morgan said. "It leads me to believe this was a very well-planned and methodical operation."
Morgan said, however, that there was no indication anyone had unlocked the door for the intruders, adding that people in the community felt comfortable leaving their doors unlocked.
The couple owned several local businesses, including a finance company and a used-car dealership. They lived in Beulah, a rural area west of Pensacola, near the Alabama state line, in a house set deep in the woods. They had 17 children in all — 13 of them adopted.
Tips from the public led police to the van on Saturday.
Associated Press writer Tamara Lush in Miami contributed to this report.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
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