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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/illixxxit on 2024-01-08 22:37:36+00:00.
Edit: u/invertedjennyanydots found the story. Thank you so much! — link — It’s interesting to compare what a 15-year-old girl, now 64-year-old-woman, semi-remembered, was told, and misremembered, reading the news story and her account. I should probably also add that the way this article is written (by no fault of the incredible user who located the case) is completely disgusting.
I very much hope the crime described here was at some point solved, but I have never encountered better detectives than the people who read/post here and a mystery is still unresolved for my mom. I worry this post violates rule 2 as I have no link. Please let me know if I should move this question elsewhere.
My mom (born in ‘59) called me looking for help with research on something that is bothering her.
She said she was asked to clean up the aftermath of a murder scene on a property owned by her mother, now deceased, who ran a property rental/management firm called “Barcroft Properties” in Lake Barcroft, VA. They owned properties in VA, MD, and DC. This murder would have happened in the DC metro area (Northern VA or nearby Maryland) in 1975 or early 1976, possibly but not likely 1974. I’m fairly certain the crime itself was properly documented and investigated, I’m just looking to help her place what the crime was so she can know whose bloodsplatter she helped lay to rest.
She says the house she and her dad went to clean up (after the cops came through) was in “a simple subdivision like military housing.” Definitely not the city. She recalls, but isn’t sure, “split entry. You’d enter — six or so steps to the right — living room — nothing to the left so might have been a duplex — not sure.”
She knows it was less than 45 minutes, maybe at most one hour from Lake Barcroft in Virginia but has a feeling it might have been on the Maryland side of DC. Could be either state.
What she recalls hearing about the crime is that there was a party, then everybody left, then the killer came back. He killed the hosts of the party, who were parents, but the killer wasn’t their child. She thinks someone involved might have been in the military but isn’t sure. The killer may have left two little girls (2-4 years old) alive. She says she imagined them hiding under the bed but isn’t sure if they were in the house at the time or if she filled that in. They could have been elsewhere and orphaned, or might be a figment, or might have died. She says she remembers hearing that their grandparents took them in.
What she remembers about the scene is that her dad was “cutting up the carpet — massive gold carpet in all the rooms.” Meanwhile she “was washing the blood off the walls … so many walls, he must have chased at least one of them all over the house with the knife.”
This won’t help with your search but she remembers her dad put down the un-bloodied pieces of carpet in their own house. She said she would just stare at the gold rug all freaked out.
Does anyone have any leads on what double homicide this may have been?
I guess the key facts are:
1975 or 1976
DC Metro area (VA or MD, subdivision not city)
Two dead (maybe two children survived)
Home invasion — it definitely occurred in a home.
Thank you so much, archivists and detectives!
It’s not this case
edit to add: if solving this strikes your interest, and the property owner’s name (my mom’s mom, now dead, who would have been renting to the deceased) will help with your search, feel free to DM me.