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Cruel killing of a loving couple who 'did not deserve to die'

America is still reeling from the shock story of how Byrd and Melanie Billings, a couple with 16 children, 12 of whom were adopted and have special needs, were brutally murdered last year. Jacqueline Vaughan reports on the trial

Bud and Melanie Billings with a dozen of their family at home in Pensacola, Florida

Mugshots of six of the men accused of the murders

CCTV grab of one of the suspects on the lawn of the Billings family home

Ashley Markham, the daughter of slain couple Byrd and Melanie Billings, speaks to the media

The Billings' sprawling 10,000sq ft home with a swimming pool became a refuge for special children

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They took care of the children nobody else wanted. By the time their family was complete Byrd and Melanie Billings had 16 children – four by birth between them and 12 children with conditions ranging from autism to Down Syndrome, who they had adopted.

To their community in Pensacola, Florida, the wealthy couple had hearts of gold. Their sprawling 10,000sq ft Escambia County home with a swimming pool became a refuge for their second family of children with special needs, ranging in age from four to 11.

On 9 July last year, Byrd ‘Bud’ (66) and Melanie (45) were getting ready to put the children to bed when seven armed intruders dressed in ninja costumes burst into the house and shot both parents dead in their bedroom. Between them they suffered nine gunshot wounds.

In court last week, Leonard Patrick Gonzalez jr (36), was convicted of the murders and sentenced to death. Gonzalez mistakenly believed the couple kept millions of dollars at their home.

The couple’s daughter Ashley Markham (26) told how one of the children, Jake, who has special needs, could only scream wordlessly into the phone after the shocking attack.

“I had missed a call from my mom. I called back and Jake answered. He wasn’t saying anything, he was just screaming. I kept asking if he could just let me talk to mom and dad,” she said in evidence.

Markham got him to hand the phone to his sister and told her to run to the home of a nurse who lived on the property to get help.

Nurse April Spencer sobbed as she told how she had spent the afternoon with the family and left as Melanie Billings was bathing two of the children and getting dinner ready for the others. At 7.30pm, the couple’s 11-year-old daughter came to her door and told her: “Mom and dad are dead.”

Spencer followed a trail of blood to the couple’s bedroom and said that she could smell gunpowder. “Her son... He’s 10 years old and he’s got Down Syndrome. He was standing in the living room and pointing to his mom and dad’s room. I went into the bedroom. Byrd Billings, ‘Bud’, was laying in front of the dresser, face down. It looked like he had been shot in the head and Melanie was lying in front of the closet face-up,” she said.

The 10-year-old boy later told police that he heard a knock on the door and that “two bad men” said, ‘You’re going to die, one, two, three,’ and then, ‘no way, no way’. Documents lodged in court say investigators struggled to interview the boy because of a speech impediment and other disabilities. The child witness said his father grabbed the neck of one of the gunmen and that his mother “got shot in her shirt”.

The documents also reveal that one of the seven-man gang, who was assigned to turn off the extensive video surveillance system in the couple’s home, did not do so, but the other six did not know this. Police found extensive footage of the masked men from the moment they slipped in the front and back doors of the property, thanks to the CCTV system the couple used to monitor the children in their large home.

The video led investigators to a red van used as a getaway car and eventually to the suspects, a loosely connected group of mostly day labourers who knew each other through a power-washing business and an auto detailing operation. They were in the nine-bedroom house for just four minutes and on the property for 10 minutes, Escambia County sheriff David Morgan said.

But investigators have been pondering what he called a “huge gap” in what was otherwise a precisely executed break-in for which the suspects had spent 30 days training.

“The execution was basically flawless,” Morgan said. “The one gaping hole that would not have made this a perfect operation, if you will, was the fact that the surveillance system was not disabled. I guess the question was, why was it not?”

Gonzalez, a martial arts instructor, was the mastermind of the operation. Police say he was desperate for cash and hatched the plan in the hope of stealing millions from a home safe. Bud Billings had previously donated $5,000 to a karate charity for children that Gonzalez, a father of six, ran with his wife.

One safe stolen from the Billings’ property contained nothing, but a second safe that wasn’t stolen contained $164,000 in cash, the court was told. The couple, who had interests in pawn shops, a used car lot and bars, also kept several guns at their home. One of them was used to kill them.

Since their death their daughter Ashley has moved back into the family home to care for the children. She said it was what her mother Melanie, who was Bud’s third wife, would have wanted.

Melanie Billings’ brother Ed Brock said: “Their lives centered around children, their family and each other. They loved deeply and unconditionally. They embraced the complexity of raising children with special needs and they were their advocates. They gave these children a joyous childhood and a much needed voice. They did not deserve to die.”

The trial of Gonzalez’s alleged accomplices has yet to take place.