UPDATE: California police raid home of Farmville homicide suspect
Updated 8:15 p.m.
FARMVILLE— Police in Castro Valley, Calif., this morning raided the home of a man held in connection with the slayings of four people whose bodies were found in a house here.
Lt. Dave Alvey of the Alameda County Sheriff’s office said the raid was conducted about 1 a.m. California time.
There was no immediate information on what items may have been seized.
In Farmville today, General District Judge Robert G. Woodson Jr. appointed prominent defense attorney Cary Bowen of Richmond to represent Richard Samuel Alden McCroskey III.
A court appearance was set for Jan. 11 at 10 a.m. unless there is a bond hearing before then.
McCroskey appeared for the hearing by a videocast from the Piedmont Regional Jail, where he is being held after his arrest Saturday.
McCroskey was captured at Richmond International Airport following the discovery Friday of four bodies at the Farmville home of a Longwood University professor. Police confirmed the death of Mark Niederbrock, a pastor who was separated from the associate professor, Debra S. Kelley. In addition to Kelley, friends and associates have identified the others killed as their daughter, Emma Niederbrock, and Melanie Wells, a friend of Emma’s visiting from West Virginia.
A court document said McCroskey did not have a criminal record. So far he has been charged only with the killing of Niederbrock, but official identifications of the others have not been released.
On Saturday, police said McCroskey stole Niederbrock’s 2000 Honda and wrecked it before being spotted at a Farmville Sheetz store about 7 a.m. Friday.
Additional details today gave a fuller account of that element of the case.
Prince Edward Sheriff’s Sgt. Stuart Raybold said that shortly after 4 a.m. Friday the sheriff’s office received a call from the 1400 block of Poor House Road to report a suspicious vehicle.
When a deputy arrived, he found that McCroskey had pulled into a driveway, aparently to turn around, backed up across the road and got the vehicle stuck on the other edge of the pavement, Raybold said. The deputy issued him a summons for driving without a license. The vehicle was damaged and had to be towed; the tow truck driver dropped him off at the Sheetz.
Raybold said there was no reason for the deputy to be suspicious. In a college town, he said, it’s not unusual for someone to be driving another person’s car.
“He told deputies he was going back to California in the very near future,“ Raybold said.
The bodies were discovered by police Friday afternoon. McCroskey was seen at the Richmond airport that day but it was unclear what he did between that time and his capture Saturday.
-Media General News Service
Updated 9:41 a.m. Sept. 21
A hearing this morning for the accused killer of four here will be held by video conference.
Richard Samuel Alden McCroskey III will appear by a videocast from the Piedmont Regional Jail that will be shown on the computer screen of General District Judge Robert G. Woodson Jr., a deputy court clerk said.
The suspect will be asked if he wants to hire his own lawyer or for the court to appoint him one. The judge also is expected to set a date for McCroskey’s next court appearance.
-Media General News Service
Earlier:
Investigators are trying to determine whether a suspect’s fascination with violent rap lyrics fueled the killings of four people found dead in a Longwood University professor’s home.
Farmville police said the victims, which include a church pastor, might have been killed on different days, although they still were awaiting completion of autopsies.
Police on Saturday captured the suspect, Richard Samuel Alden McCroskey III, at Richmond International Airport as he was waiting for a flight to California. That was one day after police found the bodies in the Farmville home of professor Debra S. Kelley, and her daughter, Emma Niederbrock.
Today, McCroskey has an initial court hearing set in Prince Edward County General District Court.
The only victim police are identifying is Kelley’s husband, Mark Niederbrock, the pastor at Walker’s Presbyterian Church in Appomattox County. Authorities have identified the three others only as females, and they are not discussing how the victims were killed.
McCroskey, 20, of Castro Valley, Calif., rapped about torturing and killing people, although police say he didn’t act out all of the lyrics.
People who know McCroskey described him as him as a fan and promoter of the horrorcore, which is hip-hop music adapted to violent lyrics, but they said they did not believe he was violent.
Wade Stimpson, acting chief of the Farmville Police Department, said it is possible that the victims died at different times.
Rebecca Stratton, treasurer of Walker’s Presbyterian, said she spoke with Niederbrock by phone Thursday afternoon and he said he was headed to Richmond for a meeting. He and Kelley were separated.
Farmville police say they found the bodies after an officer smelled what he thought was an odor of human decay about 3:10 p.m. on Friday.
At normal room temperature, a body would not start to smell until about 48 hours after death, suggesting that at least one of the victims died Wednesday or earlier, said Dr. Marcella Fierro, the retired former chief state medical examiner.
“The father would not have been dead at the time the others were,” Fierro said.
Stimpson said officers initially discovered only three bodies in the house, then left to get a search warrant before returning and finding the fourth. “It wasn’t in the same place that the other bodies were,” he said, declining to elaborate.
Police say they encountered McCroskey at the home Thursday when they went to check on a visiting West Virginia teenager at the request of her mother. McCroskey told police she was at the movies. They found the bodies when police returned to check on her the next day.
Investigators say McCroskey acted alone in the killings of all four victims. He is charged only with killing Niederbrock. In addition to first-degree murder, police charged McCroskey with robbery of money from Niederbrock’s wallet and grand larceny of his car.
Police said McCroskey wrecked the car sometime early Friday morning, received a ride to Sheetz on South Main Street in Farmville and arrived at Richmond International by taxi. He was captured Saturday sleeping in a baggage-claim area waiting for a flight back to California.
One song attributed to McCroskey on one of his MySpace pages discusses committing murder in a rage, trying to get rid of the remains and driving a stolen vehicle.
“This thing is not playing out exactly like the song was,” Stimpson said. “It’s ironic that he writes lyrics like this. ... The fact that he’s talking about killing people — that’s close enough to make us interested.”
A friend who owns a small, independent record label that specializes in horrorcore confirmed the site and the songs were McCroskey’s. Andres Shrim, who owns Serial Killin Records in New Mexico, said others shouldn’t judge McCroskey by what they see on his Web site or hear in his music.
Describing McCroskey as a “great kid,” Shrim said he has known him for at least two years, and he last saw him Sept. 12 at an all-day music festival in South Gate, Mich.
“You would never, ever imagine that kid even being a suspect,” Shrim said. “If he is found to be guilty, I would be 100 percent shocked.”
Shrim said even though horrorcore focuses on murder and other morbid subjects, performers and fans shouldn’t be labeled violent.
“People get the impression we’re these twisted, sick individuals and we don’t have hearts and we just want to talk about murder and the devil,” said Shrim, who performs himself under the name SickTanicK. “But we just want to express that other side of life.”
One of his MySpace pages lists Mars, a horrorcore artist whose real name is Mario Delgado, as one of his favorite artists. Delgado said yesterday he has seen McCroskey at some of his shows and signed autographs for him.
Delgado, who raps about raping and killing people, said he does not condone murder but also said he believes his lyrics might have influenced McCroskey. Delgado said a Farmville investigator called him yesterday to discuss that angle.
“If the wrong kind of kid gets a hold of this music and takes it the wrong way,” Delgado said. “then it could be a dangerous thing.”
Delgado has been connected with violent events before. Jeff Wiese, a gunman who killed nine students and himself at Red Lake High School in Minnesota in 2005, is said to have listened to Mars.
Amber Edwards, 18, of Indiana described herself as a close online friend of McCroskey and said she also was in touch with Emma Niederbrock.
She said McCroskey, whom she knew as Sam, contacted her earlier this month and wrote that he was leaving Sept. 7 or 8 to fly to Virginia to visit Niederbrock and the teenager who was visiting from West Virginia. The three attended a music festival Sept. 12 in Michigan, Edwards said.
Before he left, McCroskey wrote her that he was afraid the plane would crash on the way to Virginia. “Nobody ever pictured Sam to do anything like this.”
McCroskey’s sister, reached by phone yesterday, said, “I’m not answering any questions,” before the line went dead.
McCroskey had no adult criminal record in Alameda County, Calif., which includes Castro Valley, according to Lt. Dave Alvey of the Alameda Sheriff’s Office.
On Sept. 2, though, someone named Sam McCroskey called police at 1:41 a.m. to report that his sister had friends at the home and they were making too much noise, Alvey said.
Yesterday, McCroskey’s father called the Sheriff’s Office on his way home and requested a police escort because he had heard that reporters were waiting outside, Alvey said. The Sheriff’s Office declined.
The phone number to the home is unlisted, and McCroskey’s parents could not be reached for comment.
