As it gets. Scary as it gets. Who was out there and who would be next. Something you would never imagine would happen. The clues would lie here, an abandoned mansion, eerie, haunting, where was the killer hiding. Cold, calculating eyes. Lifeless. He was almost a ghost. Could they catch him . Could they stop him . I get chills all over. Im kind of on the edge of my seat. He truly thought he could outsmart us. Im lester holt and this is dateline. Heres Dennis Murphy with the unusual suspect. Consider for a moment that cozy word home and all it evoke, warmth, family, shelt, security. Got it . And now reflect on what happens when those four walls are breached, when nightmares crawl through the window, kicks in the doors. When a haven becomes a house of horrors. How does that feel . Ask lloyd irving . Im laying on the couch. Two gunmen are holding me down saying youre being robbed, dont move. Many years have passed since that night in 2008 outside the Nations Capital in a nice neighborhood in Prince Georges County, maryland but lloyd and his wife and son, just four years old at the time are still haunted by the image of the gunman. Something you would never imagine would happen. What the robbers didnt count son that lloyd is a nationally renown martial arts expert and when one of the gunmen walked away to scope out the rest of the house, lloyd was suddenly one on one with his accomplice. Gunman is in the corner. I know he doesnt have room to back up. I go, ive got the cartridge out of the gun, it drops so i hit the ground. Wheres the intruder gone . He ran out of the room. He was running a like he has the gun, get out of here, he has the gun. By the time lloyd managed to reload the wrestled away gun and give chase, both Home Invaders had escaped . Im calling 911 and my son is on top of me and hes just shaking, not saying a word, not crying, just shaking and i often think, you know, were they going to kill us that night . The irvin family wouldnt be the first or last to ask that question. Id like to report an armed robbery. 911. Someone broke into my house. In the months that followed, the area was hit with a wave of Home Invasions. Each time two masked men, meticulous about not leaving fingerprints or evidence behind. The Prince Georges County police were baffled. The community understandably on edge and on january 26, 2009, on a quiet street in upper marlborough, the county seat, anxiety turned to full on boltthedoors panic. Prince georges county 911 center what is your emergency . Maam, ive been shot, me and my mother have been shot, im bleeding to death. Where are you . It was a desperate plea for help from a dying girl. On the phone, 16yearold student carissa lawton. Slow down, whats the address . Police rushed to the scene but it was too late. They found carissa and her mom karen in their bedrooms, each killed execution style with a shot straight to the head. Crimes quickly become statistics but this just stands out, doesnt it . It stands out, makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Veteran Prince Georges County homicide detective Bernie Nelson was in charge of the case. The First Arriving officers told him they found the main door locked shut from the inside. The killer, they thought, had likely entered the house through an unlocked side window. This bedroom on the second floor facing us, thats where carissa was found. Detective nelson wondered, did the murders have anything to do with the plague of recent Home Invasion robberies . If so, why was nothing stolen from the house . Her vehicle was stolen in the driveway, nothing appeared disturbed. Investigators didnt find any useful forensic evidence just six spent shell casings from the bullets that killed karen and carissa fired from a bloglock 1 handgun. Two doors down the street someone saw a blue vehicle parked on the right side of the road and right now at this point thats all i have. So detective nelson set out to find more about his victims. Karen lofton turned out to be a devoted mother and nurse with no enemies. She was diversed from carissas father kirkland who lived in atlanta. The daughter carissa was in private school, good grades and very attached to her father. Carissa was a special girl for me because at a young age she had open hearth surgery and she bounced right back from it. Kirkland says he watched carissa blossom into a gregarious teenager. A fashionista and aspiring model with a knack for selfies. I sing this song by bob carlisle called butterfly kisses. Shes daddys little girl sno told a story of him and a daughter. I used to sing it to her and she loved me singing it to her. Butterfly kisses she was my butterfly. Thats what i called her. Now kirklands butterfly was dead and detective nelson recruited some of pg countys finest to help him solve the case, including this detective. A mother, hardworking and her daughter both think that theyre safely inside their home. Here comes the guy out of your worst dreams . Yup. Here comes a monster into your house. And hes got a glock. It shocked us all. As the hunt for brutal killer went into full gear, detectives started as they always do with the usual suspects. Theres no rhyme or reason you can come up with you have to look at Family Members. And one Family Member in particular, carissas 20yearold brother keon. He lived in the house, too, but he wasnt there when cops arrived. Police spotted him near the crime scene several hours after the murders. Could a son, a brother, have done such a monstrous thing . When we come back, the questions begin. 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Maam, ive been shot, me and my mother have been shot, im bleeding to death. That poor little girl, in her bedroom she has the gumption to get on the phone and call you. It hurts to listen to the 911 call because you can feel and hear the fear in her voice. Even though nothing was taken, it seemed clear the killer broke into the house. In fact, the Burglar Alarm had gone off but it was disabled in under a minute. That put karens son keon lofton at the top of the person of interest list. He lived in the house, he knew the code. Police brought him in for questioning. Did your mom set the alarm for the house . Uhhuh. All the time . Everyday, every time. One of the detectives blatantly said everybody in that room thinks its you. Youre the only one that has access to the pin code. Would you have hurt your mom and sister . No, uhhuh. You would havent hurt your mom and sister . Not at all. I was upset, youve not going to say this was me. You can do whatever you need to do, its not going to be me. Keon told investigators hed been spending the night at his fiances house when her mom woke him and told him the news that two women on his street had been murdered. I ran out of the house, many i heart is racing. I got into my car, running lights, calling at the same time, when i got there they asked me for my name and i was like im keon and the Police Officer just kind of looked into his radio and said okay, we got the son here. And i just broke down, you know . Keons alibi checked out. It wasnt him. Investigators also interviewed kirkland, karens exhusband and karissas father. He, too, had an airtight alibi. Hed been in atlanta at the time of the murders. Do you go a lot of places together . Next on detective nelsons list was karens former boyfriend michael lacey. He refused to take a Lie Detector Test so police interviewed him three separate times. Did yall have keys or anything like that. Definitely not. You wouldnt walk over and walk in. I would call. It was someone we had to rule out completely and we did that. So if youre thinking in your line of work the usual suspects the usual suspects werent going to figure in this one. Not as far as immediate family. The detectives realized they had on their hands what homicide cops hate, a true mystery. Ish usually the first 48 hours you get a break. Normally you get something within the first 48 hours. So this was baffling and cruel. It dont make sense. Then six weeks after the laugh on the killings two unsolved murders became four. It began with the report of a stolen Nissan Maxima a couple of blocks from where the loftons had been killed . Whats the nature of your emergency . I just left my housemates an hour ago and came back, my car was missing out of the carport. Detective smarter er iis th shartner was on call. She noticed the car come by her on a fast rate of speed. Thats my car, it just zoomed past me. Wow. She sees it while shes on the phone with dispatch . Here it comes, there it goes . Absolutely. Police swarmed the neighborhood hoping to nab the car thief. He was nowhere to be found but police soon discovered the stolen car. Captured on a cruisers dash camera, it was parked in the driveway of a vacant house, engulfed in flames. Firefighters called to the scene to extinguish the fire made a grisly discovery, two bodies burned beyond recognition. The victims . A mother and her teenage daughter. Dental records confirm the identities of two female bodies found in the trunk of this car. 42yearold Delores Dewitt and daughter 19yearold ebony dewitt. She worked at a nursing home and loved taking care of the elderly population. She loved those people and they loved her. Patricia smith remembers her sister delores as a mother and nurse who worked hard to provide a good life for her two daughters but always saved a little time for herself. She liked to go places every year she treated herself on vacation. She felt like she worked heart, she should play hard. Ebony was the live wire at family get togethers. Just make the party alive and act crazy until the end of the day. She loved life. The last person to have seen ebony alive was her boyfriend. He told detectives the previous night at a late daner she was wearing her favorite blue sweater. Then he watched her go into her house. The killer may have been waiting. And when police made no arrest within 48 hours of the murders, waiting, too, was a devastated patricia. I started going back to my sisters house. Late at night i would go and sit in the yard hoping he would come back. I would sit there with the knife in my hand and i would hold it real tight just in case he came up on me or something because it would be him or me. Either him or me. And i told the detectives what i did. She couldnt sit still and do nothing. She wanted to be involved in the investigation from day one. She would actually go door to door in the neighborhood and talk to neighbors, tried to ask them questions but i had repeatedly explained to her that we cant have her interrupting our case. Shes a thorn in your side . She is, but i understood because if my sister were killed, it would be hard for me to sit still, too. So detective schartner made patricia a promise. We were sitting in the car and i remember just crying and crying and crying and he promised me, he said im going to get him if its the last thing i do. Im going to get him. To do that, detectives schartner and nelson had to confront a terrifying question. So you have two murdered mother daughters within across the fence, virtually. Same neighborhood. So youre thinking are these things related, right . You have to think that and if they are you have a serial murderer on your hands and you dont know when hes going to hit next or who hes going to hit next. Coming up the fear that spread was absolutely amazing. A neighborhood on edge. Police under pressure and the question everyone feared would there be another victim . It was wide open. He we had nothing. Thats when it gets prince georges homicide detectives Bernie Nelson and Tony Schartner hoped their collective experience would help them crack two of the most horrific murder cases they ever encountered. When you back up and look at what youve got, the scary thought is someones killing mother and daughters. Yes and where the dewitts were killed, it was just two blocks away from where the loftons were shot in their house. The detectives suspected they were dealing with the same murderer in both cases, especially when they realized Delores Dewitt was a single mom and a nurse, just like karen lofton. But first they exhausted the usual suspects. Delores had an exhusband and an exgirlfriend, but both had solid alibis. Wed given them polygraph tests, that i passed. We did background checks on them. We found out where they were. There was nothing that would lead us to say they were involved . As in the lofton case, when detectives searched the dewitts home, they found no sign of forced entry, just an unlocked side window and no forensic evidence. But a different pattern. The killer had taken his victims with him. We dont know if they were killed inside the house and transported away or just transported away and killed elsewhere. The burned out Nissan Maxima that carried the mother and daughters bodies didnt yield any significant clues, either. The fire destroyed everything but a tiny piece of jeans on delores body and attached to the jeans, some leaves foliage experts identified as coming from a beech tree. Odd because there were no trees like that in the neighborhood. And the mystery only deepened when the autopsy results came back. Ebony and delores were actually killed 24 hours prior to them being burned in the car. That was another hiccup in the case. Where were these two bodies kept for a full day . It seemed the dewitts killer took immense risk to get rid of the bodies. Youre talking about taking two women out of their house and transporting them to another location and then stealing a car putting those dead bodies in the car, driving past the house that you just stole the car from and then parking it in a driveway of a vacant house and setting that car on fire and walking away. And the autopsy also revealed that delores and ebony were strangled, not shot as the la h loftons had been. It was a puzzle. Were they dealing with a serial killer or not . Did you think one guy was responsible for both these crimes . I would go back and forth. One day i would i was all in this was the same person, the next day i thought it wasnt because both crimes are so different. Then finally the detectives caught a break. They learned that a month before the dewitt murders the owner of the stolen Nissan Maxima had been the victim of a breakin. She reported it but at the time told Police Nothing had been taken. Now she noticed her spare set of car keys was missing. So tony, your detectives logic goes like this. If i can find the person who broke in, who stole the key ill get close to my killer. I would give me a direction whereof that person can direct me to the killer. 200 Police Officers blanketed the area and brought in more than 80 people for questioning. Tuul no avail. For many Prince Georges County residents like Home Invasion victims vicki and lloyd irvin, that meant one thing, panic it was crazy. I couldnt sleep at night. Any sound, i had alarmed put up throughout the entire house and plus we have the dogs. And bars on the windows. Yes. The house was turned into fort knox, a barking crazy dog who claws at the window if she hears the doorbell ring. There was no peace in the house. I was like we have to turn this stuff down, i cant live like this. He was like i dont care, this is going to save our life. Just the fear that spread was absolutely amazing. By july, 2009, four months after the dewitt murders and six months after the lofton murders, detectives were stumped. Kirkland lofton grew increasingly frustrated. When the dewitts got murdered they went to karen and karissas house and started combing for evidence then. So i think the investigation started off bad because they were so sure that the usual suspects was the suspects. We kept calling them and they wasnt giving us no answers so that kind of pissed me off because i felt like we deserved to know something. It was wide open. We had nothing. Youre out of your investigative play book. Thats when it gets scary. The detective had made a promise to patricia that he would take down her sisters killer. Would that turn out now to be an empty promise . At this point, what he needed was luck, and luck was about to come his way from the most unexpected source. Coming up he would only whisper. He would actually whisper in my ear. An unassuming neighbor comes forward with some unbelievable i