A 76-year-old man and 77-year-old woman were found dead after a house fire in Queens. Photo / Dakota Santiago, The New York Times
The man approached the first house with a request: Could he come inside to charge his phone?
Rebuffed, he walked on to the next house, a compact two-storey home on a tree-lined street in Bellerose, Queens, belonging to Frank and Maureen Olton.
There, New York police said, the man was invited into the yard, and then through the house’s back door.
He stayed for five hours and emerged just after 3pm with two bags in his hands.
Fifteen minutes later, the house was ablaze.
Emergency responders rushed over. When the flames were tamped down, officers found two bodies inside.
Frank Olton, 76, was lashed to a pole in the basement with stab wounds on his body, and Maureen Olton, 77, was badly burned and lying on the first floor.
Today, police were searching for a man they said was responsible for setting the fire and for the startling act of violence, Jamel McGriff.
McGriff, 42, has a “lengthy violent, criminal history stretching back 30 years”, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a news briefing.
“For the public, the message is clear,” the commissioner said.
“The suspect’s MO is to go door to door, asking for some kind of assistance until he can gain entry. So do not allow anyone you don’t know or who you are not expecting into your home.”
At the time of the crime, McGriff was out on parole after serving more than 16 years for a first-degree robbery he committed in 2006, according to police.
In November, McGriff was charged with failing to register as a sex offender, and he is wanted for his role in robberies at two stores in Manhattan in July and August, police said.
Police identified McGriff as a suspect after he was seen on video near the crime scene and his parole officer confirmed his identity, Tisch said.
The violence began after a man approached the Oltons’ home on the corner of 254th Street and 87th Drive just after 10am, Tisch said.
Surveillance video from around the house shows the man interacting with Frank Olton and eventually entering the house with him, the commissioner said.
Five hours later, at 3.08pm, the man was seen on video once again, this time leaving the house in a black T-shirt and black hat and walking east on 87th Drive.
By 3.22pm, the property’s fire alarm was ringing and the flames were rising, police said. The couple’s son, an emergency medical technician who was off duty, was alerted to the fire by the home’s alarm system.
He contacted the Fire Department, who responded to the scene and put out the blaze, Tisch said.
Inside, officers discovered the couple’s bodies. Frank Olton had been tied to a basement pole with a bungee cord and wire, according to a law enforcement official who asked to remain anonymous because the investigation was open. Maureen Olton suffered burns, police said.
Emergency medical workers pronounced them dead at the grey, two-storey house where their neighbours said they had lived for decades.
Linda Lee, a city council member representing the area, said that since the fire she had received reports that McGriff had been knocking on doors asking to use a phone charger.
He was recorded on electronic doorbell cameras approaching several houses, she said.
He was last seen on video after the fire, pawning two mobile phones in the Bronx, according to Tisch.
There was no known connection between McGriff and the Oltons, Tisch said. The couple’s exact causes of death are still under investigation, she said.
The Fire Department said that the fire had been deliberately set.
The killings sent a wave of horror through the Queens neighbourhood, where people remembered the couple as a quiet and friendly presence.
Sean Kelly, their nephew, said in a brief phone call that his aunt and uncle had been “amazing people”. He added: “They did not deserve this”.
Sarah Roslonowski, 27, whose house faces the couple’s home, said they had always been benevolent figures when she was growing up, keeping an eye on her and other children when they played soccer and football in the street.
She recalled a recent day in May when she found an injured baby bird and knocked on the couple’s door to ask whether the hatchling had fallen from a nest on their property.
“They went into the backyard to check for a nest,” she said. Although they didn’t find one, Roslonowski said, “they were really kind about it”.
Today, a police officer stood watch outside the remains of the burned-out home with crime-scene tape encircling the lot.
The house, which is tucked on a residential street near the border of Nassau County, was badly charred, with buckled siding exposed on one side. Outside on the lawn, the grass was dotted with household debris, fragments of window frames and a singed armchair.
A pair of votive candles and a small bouquet of flowers lay beside a street sign on the curb nearby.
Jamar Williams, who lives a few doors down, said he had been coming home from a doctor’s appointment when the babysitter watching his child called to say that a nearby house was on fire.
When he learned later that police believed the fire had been deliberately set, he could hardly believe it.
“This is some true-crime horror story type of stuff,” Williams said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Maia Coleman and Sean Piccoli
Photographs by: Dakota Santiago
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