A Florida landlord shot and killed a family of four with young children and burned their bodies in a fire pit in the home they lived in, police said Tuesday.
Suspect Rory Atwood, 25, allegedly admitted to brutally murdering a “homeless” family, including two children aged five and six, after an argument with the parents, who were his high school friends.
“If there was no evil in the world, we wouldn’t have to pray so much, and as we speak today, you’re going to hear about evil,” Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said. He told reporters.
Nocco said Atwood initially denied knowing anything about the whereabouts of the Gilliott family, which includes Rain Mancini, 26, Phillip Gilliott II, 25, and their young children Karma, 6, and Phillip III, 5.
The family was staying at Atwood’s Hudson home. He was reported missing on Thursday. Mancini’s mother denounced the incident as it meant the mother of two was no longer able to maintain regular communication with her.
Atwood, himself a father, gave investigators permission to search the property later that day, but detectives didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary except that a fire pit in the backyard was “heavily smoldering and smoking,” the complaint states.
The next day, Atwood’s friend told police that her landlord had called her the night before and admitted to “murdering her roommate and her children,” documents state.
Investigators returned to the scene with cadaver dogs and reportedly pulled “small bone remains,” soft tissue and two human vertebrae from the fire pit.
The back patio also had a strong chlorine smell.
Atwood initially claimed he was evicting the family for non-payment of rent, but eventually relented and allegedly confessed to killing them.
He explained that Gilliotto II and Mancini broke into his parents’ home Wednesday night armed with a knife.
Gilliott II tried to stab Atwood, a high school friend, with a knife, but the two engaged in a fistfight when Atwood grabbed the weapon, the accused killer claimed.
The homeowner told detectives she became enraged after seeing Mancini “poking” a knife at her 4-year-old daughter’s throat.
According to court documents, they fought over a knife and a firearm that Gilliott II had allegedly brought, and Atwood eventually grabbed it and fired at the two former friends.
Atwood did not say where the victims’ children were during the fight but told police he believed their parents had killed them. Atwood later recanted and said the bodies of young children Karma and Phillip were also in the fire pit but denied killing them.
Atwood then used “adrenaline” to drag the bodies of Gilliotto II and Mancini to the fire pit and throw them into the flames they claimed to have started.
Investigators are continuing to work to determine whether the bodies found at the scene are connected to the family, but based on Atwood’s testimony they have charged him with causing the deaths of his family, Nocco said.
Atwood pleaded not guilty Monday and is being held without bail, according to court records.
