unexpected twist Wednesday when authorities identified a local real estate agent, Pamela Laverne Long, as one of possibly two persons of interest in the case.
Ashley Markham talks about the investigation and the hope for her siblings. Long, reportedly the landlord of Leonard Gonzalez Jr. who police called a “pivotal” player in the double murder of Byrd and Melanie Billings, is sought by police for questioning but was not believed to be on site when the murders occured, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
Police have arrested and charged seven suspects for their role in what Morgan called a “perfectly executed” murder, but suspect at least one more accomplice failed to disable the Billing’s survellience. “Obviously there was supposed to be an eight or ninth person” that was supposed to take care of the survelliance, Morgan said. Earlier Wednesday, the Billing’s oldest daughter said she is shocked at the brutal killings that left her and 16 other siblings parentless. “I just can’t believe that there’s people in the world that are capable of this type of hate,” Ashley Markham, 26, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” today. “This is just unimaginable.”
Markham’s parents, Byrd and Melanie Billings , were shot to death July 9 in what police have called a highly organized, military style operation in which robbery was the primary motive. A safe was among the items taken from the home.
Two of the seven suspects , 35-year-old Leonard Gonzalez Jr., and 28-year-old Donnie Ray Stallworth, had military training, police say. Stallworth worked in the Air Force’s elite Special Operations Command with an aircraft maintenance squadron and Gonzalez was a former soldier in the National Guard.
Several of the suspects, including Gonzalez, have criminal records. Wayne Coldiron, 41, served two years in a Tennessee prison in the early 1990s after killing a man during a fight. Gonzalez stood before a Florida judge Tuesday and defended himself, saying there was “no hard evidence that links to the scene of the crime July 9.” But Gonzalez’s former sister-in-law, Jennifer Herkel, feared his violent side and said he threatened her family over the Internet. “If he would have gotten away with this crime, my family would have been the next one you would be reading about shot in the house,” she said.
The Billings were parents to 17 children, 13 adopted and four biological. Nine of them were at home when police say the murders took place. “We are holding up the best that we possibly know how,” Markham said.
Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan when he announced investigators had taken all the major suspects into custody, including a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old. “We have found them, they are in custody,” Morgan said as he hugged Markham. There were “no direct ties” between the alleged murderers and the slain couple but at least some of the individuals arrested had been on the Billings’ property in the past, said Morgan. One of the suspects, Leonard P. Gonzalez Sr., 56, owned a pressure washing business and had hired three of the suspects as day laborers as he needed them, according to Morgan. Gonzalez Sr. is believed to have been the group’s getaway driver, according to Morgan.
The four other suspects, including the 16-year-old, had worked at an auto detailing business in nearby Okaloosa County. Coldiron had been on the Billings’ property “at least one time,” said Morgan. It was not immediately clear what type of work Coldiron had performed for Byrd, 66, and Melanie, 43, Billings. All seven will likely be charged with an open count of murder, and the juvenile will be treated as an adult, said Florida State Attorney Bill Eddins. Leonard P. Gonzalez Sr., father of Leonard P. Gonzalez Jr., was initially charged with tampering with evidence for allegedly trying to disguise the red van that police believe was used as the getaway vehicle. He is likely to see his charge increased to an open count of murder as well.
