WASHINGTON -- More than one person likely was involved in the slayings of four people who were held captive inside a Washington, D.C., mansion until $40,000 was delivered last week, authorities revealed Friday.
Daron Dylon Wint, a welder with a criminal record of assaults who once worked for the mansion's owner, has been charged with murder. But authorities said they believe he did not act alone: A court document made public Friday said they believe the crimes "required the presence and assistance of more than one person."
Savvas Savopoulos, 46; his wife Amy, 47, and their housekeeper Veralicia Figueroa, 57, died from "blunt force and sharp force trauma." The couple's 10-year-old son, Philip, died of "thermal and sharp force injuries." All four bodies were found by firefighters after a flammable liquid was spread around the home and set ablaze.
A fugitive task force arrested Wint late Thursday night, a week after attack on the family. Wint had previously worked for Savopoulos' company, American Iron Works, which is based in Hyattsville, Maryland, and supplies major construction projects in downtown Washington.
Wint's DNA was found on the crust of a partially-eaten pepperoni pizza, one of two that were ordered on the evening of May 13 while the group was "being held against their will," the document said.
A woman believed to be Amy Savopoulos ordered the pizzas and paid for them with a credit card but told the delivery person to leave them on the front porch and ring the bell, because she was "nursing her sick child" and would not come to the door, the document says.
This combination of undated photos provided by the Washington, D.C., police shows Daron Dylon Wint.The pizza boxes were located in a bedroom where the adults were ultimately found.
The document says authorities believe "Wint and others" held the group captive until $40,000 was delivered to the home by an employee of Savopoulos. The family was then killed and the house set on fire, the document says.
The task force took two other men and three women who were with Wint into custody during his arrest, but none were immediately charged with any crime.
U.S. marshals and police had tracked Wint to New York and back before they spotted him in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson Express Inn in College Park, Maryland. Dozens of officers then quietly tailed a car and truck into the nation's capital and then swarmed the vehicles so quickly that the group surrendered without a fight.
"We had overwhelming numbers and force," Robert Fernandez, commander of the U.S. Marshal Service's Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, told The Associated Press on Friday. "They completely submitted immediately."
"I don't think they knew we were tailing them until the moment we swarmed in on them," said Fernandez.
The truck belongs to Amerit Fleet Solutions, and is basically a rolling garage, equipped to service and repair vehicles away from any fixed location. Spokeswoman Karen Vinton said the California-based company is aware that the truck was involved, and is cooperating with authorities.
Fernandez said he noticed a big wad of cash in the truck, but didn't know how much was there. It was not clear whether that money might have been connected to the Savopoulos family. Fernandez said he did not know whether the group was carrying any weapons before local police took them into custody.
Wint has a record of violent offenses.
He was arrested once in 2006 and twice in 2007 for assault in Oswego County, N.Y., Undersheriff Gene Sullivan said. He was released in July 2008 after serving a 10-month sentence, and then convicted again of assaulting a girlfriend in Maryland in 2009. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to malicious destruction of property after he allegedly broke into a woman's apartment, stole a television, vandalized her car and threatened to kill her infant daughter. Also in 2010, Wint was arrested carrying a 2-foot-long machete and a BB pistol outside the American Iron Works headquarters, but weapons charges were dropped after he pleaded guilty to possessing an open container of alcohol.
The Savopouloses lived in a $4.5 million home in Woodley Park, where mansions are protected by fences and security systems and law enforcement is a constant presence, in part because Vice President Joe Biden's official residence is nearby.
The family's two teenage daughters were away at boarding school at the time. On Friday, the family thanked law enforcement and firefighters, and said they wouldn't give interviews. "Our family, and Vera's family, have suffered unimaginable loss, and we ask for the time and space to grieve privately," the statement says.
Messages from the couple in the hours before their slayings confused and frightened another housekeeper and the slain housekeeper's husband, who said later they felt something was amiss inside the mansion. The executive's Porsche was later found in suburban Maryland, also set on fire.