Victims were beaten before being strangled to death.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Savvas Savopoulos and his family’s housekeeper, Veralicia Figueroa, were beaten and strangled on the early morning of May 13, a D.C. homicide detective testified Monday during a D.C. Superior Court hearing.
Savopoulos, 46, and Figueroa, 57, were found dead along with Savopoulos’s wife, Amy, 47, and the couple’s 10-year-old son Philip in the Savopoulos’s home on Woodland Drive in upper Northwest Washington, which had been set ablaze.
The victims were killed after Savvas Savopoulos instructed his assistant, Jordan Wallace, to withdraw $40,000 from his bank account and deliver it to the home, according to authorities. The attacker or attackers held the victims captive overnight, tortured the victims, then took the money, authorities have said.
Search warrants revealed that Wallace lied or “changed his account” about a $40,000 ransom he allegedly delivered to the Savopoulos family’s mansion on the morning of the murders, including “how he received the package, where he left [it] and when he was told to get the package,” according to CBS News.
Further muddying the waters is that at 9 a.m. on May 14, Wallace texted a picture of stacks of cash to a romantic partner, according to the testimony of Jeffrey Owens, lead homicide detective on the case.
Wallace has not been charged and was never told by detectives that he was a suspect, according to court testimony.
The only suspect who has been charged in the case, Daron Dylan Wint, was identified and brought in after his DNA was found on a pizza crust at the home.
Owens also testified Monday that the defendant’s DNA was found on a construction vest that was inside a blue Porsche that was owned by the Savopoulos family and found burned in New Carrollton, Maryland.
According to the Washington Post, Owens stated that Wint’s DNA wasn’t the only evidence found on the vest. Savvas Savopoulos’s DNA along with a third, unknown person’s DNA were also found on the vest, the detective said.
Under cross examination by Wint’s public defender Arthur Ago, Owens testified that a witness told police about seeing a man with a close, “edged” haircut, speeding down New York Avenue Northeast, weaving in and out of traffic in a blue Porsche around 1:30 p.m. on May 14, reported The Post.
Owens acknowledged during testimony that Wint, the defendant, has long braids and does not match the description given by the witness, reported CBS News, implicating another collaborator in the quadruple homicide.