NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — A New York man has been charged with killing an elderly couple and then setting their home on fire during terrible home invasion They also tried to empty their bank accounts last month before using their credit cards to go shopping, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Jamel McGriff, a paroled serial robbery suspect, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to multiple counts of murder, kidnapping and arson, according to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz's office.
The 42-year-old Bronx man is charged with the Sept. 8 murders of 76-year-old Frank Alton and 77-year-old Maureen Alton at their home in the Queens borough of New York.
Prosecutors say McGriff went door to door asking residents if he could come over and charge his cellphone. They say he spoke to Frank Alton, who offered to help, before McGriff broke into the couple's home, where he remained for nearly five hours.
Firefighters responding to a report of a house fire found the body of Frank Alton in the basement, tied to a pole with multiple stab wounds to his neck and chest. Maureen Alton's badly burned body was found in the living room.
Prosecutors said in court Tuesday that McGriff set the house on fire in an attempt to destroy evidence of the killings, the Daily News reported. reports. They said Maureen Alton appeared to have been tied to a chair and strangled.
Prosecutors said McGriff also tried unsuccessfully to transfer more than $10,000 from the couple's accounts to his own.
They said he also took the couple's credit cards, spending nearly $800 on clothes at a Macy's store in midtown Manhattan just hours after the murders. McGriff was caught the day after he went to a movie in Times Square, prosecutors said in court Tuesday, the Daily News reported.
The convicted felon, who was released on parole after serving 16 years in prison, has been ordered to remain in custody until his next court date on November 12. If convicted, McGriff faces a maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Legal Aid Society, which is representing McGriff, said in a statement Tuesday that it is in the early stages of investigating the case and urged the public “not to draw any conclusions until all the facts are known.”
