The Leighton Avenue Killings (9, 10, Jack, and Queen of Hearts, New York)

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Our cards this week are Michael Adams, Lachelle Powell, Michael Royal, and Jennifer Leisure, the 910 Jack and Queen of Hearts from New York.

In the late hours of a frigid winter night, a fire tore through their Rochester home.

But when the smoke cleared, investigators realized this wasn't a tragic accident.

It was a quadruple homicide, one of the most brutal murder scenes they had ever encountered.

But somehow, nearly 10 years later, it remains unsolved.

But maybe we can help change that.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Sunday, January 10th, 2016, was a freezing cold night in Rochester, New York.

So the streets were quiet when a woman named Mary Royal got back to her home on Layton Avenue just before midnight.

She'd been gone for a couple of days staying at her daughter's place a few miles away to help out with her grandkids.

Everything had been fine when she left.

But as Mary walked toward the house, something immediately put her on edge.

The front door was open.

And that didn't make sense because her son who lived there with her, Michael Royal, was always careful about locking up.

She'd always be like, did you lock the door, mom?

Did she lock the door?

And so I knew something wasn't right.

And it wasn't just that open door that made her uneasy.

Normally their dog Jax would go wild the second anyone came near their enclosed front porch.

But that night, nothing.

The whole place was dark.

and still.

And in a multifamily house that usually bustled with people, that was totally out of the ordinary.

You see, it wasn't just Mary and Michael who lived in the upstairs apartment with Jax.

It was also home to Michael's fiancé, Jennifer Leisure, along with Mary's sister, Kim Herring, and Kim's boyfriend, Michael Adams.

Plus, Michael Royal's friend Lachelle Powell had recently moved in.

And there was a couple renting the separate unit downstairs.

So all told, there were six people and one dog living in the upstairs apartment, which spanned two floors, and two more people in the downstairs apartment.

Quiet was basically unheard of.

And as Mary stepped inside and started up the stairs, she was hit by the smell of smoke.

I mean, so intense that she could hardly breathe.

I was just thinking in my mind, God, don't let them be there.

Let them be gone to the store or something.

I don't care.

Just...

Don't let anybody be in the house.

But when she called out to her family, she didn't get a response.

My eyes kept watering and I kept on trying to attempt to go up the stairs and I couldn't do it.

She went outside, dialed 911, and waited for firefighters to show up.

When they did, they didn't see any flames coming from the house, just smoke.

But inside was a different story.

A fire was blazing on the stairwell between the second floor and the attic.

And it had already done serious damage, burning right through the staircase and leaving it completely destroyed.

As crews worked to get the fire under control, others started searching the house for anyone who might still be inside.

They cleared the first floor, that couple who lived there wasn't home.

Then they cleared the second floor, no one there either.

With the stairs demolished, they had to haul in a ladder just to reach the third floor attic, which was split into two rooms: a bedroom and a living room.

And in the attic living room, that's where they found them.

Four bodies face down, all in a row.

And the second firefighters saw the scene, they called the Rochester Police Department because it was clear that this was not a tragic accident.

It was a massacre.

And the flames couldn't erase the horror of what had happened.

All four victims had their ankles bound with duct tape.

Three of them also had their wrists taped behind their backs with more tape across their mouths.

And there was blood everywhere.

By the time firefighters got the flames under control, Rochester police were on the scene, getting their first real look at what they were dealing with.

And it was unlike anything they had seen before, even in a city that has its own share of violent crime.

And even experienced cops were taken aback, like John Brennan, one of the lead investigators.

When I got the phone call and they told me to come in, it was four people.

I go, what?

Four people?

Unheard of.

All four victims had been shot, some more than once.

And if that wasn't bad enough, their throats had been slit too.

Here's Gary Goletta, another investigator who worked the case.

You know, walking into this, it's a shit show.

You know that it reeks of a home invasion.

Police might have known that, but Mary Royal didn't.

She was still outside huddled in a fire truck for warmth, trying to figure out what happened and where everyone was.

I mean, she knew her sister Kim was at work, so she shouldn't have been home.

But the other four people who lived with her in the upstairs apartment, her 28-year-old son Michael, Michael's fiancé, 29-year-old Jennifer, his friend, 22-year-old Lachelle, and Kim's boyfriend, 45-year-old Michael Adams, they were all unaccounted for.

Over and over, Mary called Michael's cell phone, praying that her son would answer.

and that the house had been empty when the fire started, even though his car was parked in the driveway.

Maybe they just went out somewhere or took Jack's for a walk.

But then she overheard first responders using words like homicide and crime scene.

And soon after, a detective broke the news that everyone in the house, four people and one dog, were dead.

And even then, it was hard for Mary to believe.

I think I just didn't want to believe it.

Like it didn't

sink in.

It was like a nightmare that you can't wake up from.

How can you be sure that that's them in the house?

But based on what they gathered about the living arrangements and who was MIA, detectives were confident that the four victims were Michael Royal, Jennifer, Lachelle, who went by her nickname Peanut, and Michael Adams, who I'm going to call Michael A to avoid confusion.

Everyone in the police unit got pulled in for this, including one of the newest additions to the major crimes unit, Sergeant Sergeant Gus Venosa.

This was his first case with major crimes.

And when he got the call, he actually thought the squad was messing with him, like playing a practical joke on the new guy.

And I go, you know what?

This is what I'd do to the new guy.

I'd call him, coldest night of the year, have him respond, and he's all alone.

So I'm thinking to myself, no way, I'm not going to fall for the banana in the tailpipe.

But his partner assured him this was no trick.

And the moment Sergeant Venosa pulled up to the scene, he realized just how serious it was and how complicated.

The place was packed, cluttered, and tough to navigate.

And the fire had only made it worse, leaving behind layers of debris and destruction.

Police suspected that the fire had a very specific purpose.

You know, you want to hide a body, you want to hide evidence, you burn it.

You know, I've had cases where They have burned the body because they had sex an hour before.

So they intentionally burned the body.

And it just,

it makes everything difficult because, you know, DNA is gone.

There's a whole slew of complications for the technicians at that point.

Investigator Goletta knew it was going to take time and patience to figure out what might be evidence and what was just part of everyday life.

This is one of those scenes that it takes.

days to process.

We do the overall, but then we have to come back and look at the pictures because that's where you start to notice stuff.

You know, it's

it's hard to take all that in while you're standing there.

They collected anything that seemed relevant, mostly from the third floor.

Bloody sections of carpet, pieces of duct tape, and personal items like wallets, keys, and cell phones.

I mean, it was painstaking work.

But even in the midst of the mess, some things stood out.

For instance, as far as they could tell, nothing had been stolen.

I mean, there were valuables still sitting out in plain sight, a laptop, a TV, multiple phones.

There was also drug paraphernalia like plastic baggies, a sifter, and small amounts of pills, powder, and wheat in the attic and Peanuts room on the second floor.

All of it was left untouched.

There were also no signs of forced entry.

Here's investigator Brennan again.

Somebody easily could have been known to the victim and allowed in.

Could have knocked on the door and somebody could have opened it and and they pushed their way in.

Then there were the bindings on everyone's ankles and most everyone's wrists.

Jennifer's wrists were taped up especially tight, meticulously, which Sergeant Vinosa noticed.

Certainly, they took their time to do that one.

Others looked a little hasty the way that they bound them.

So, I mean, did the same person do it?

Did two different people do it?

Who knows?

To be honest, who knows was an accurate answer to almost every question at that point.

But the autopsies confirmed something investigators were sure of.

This wasn't just a murder, it was overkill.

Everyone had been shot in the head execution style.

Peanut had been shot three times.

Michael A.

had been shot once.

Michael R.

and Jennifer had each been shot twice.

Now, all of the shots were fired from the same weapon, a.22 caliber.

And Michael R.

was the only one whose hands weren't tied, though there was some tape found around one wrist.

There wasn't much clarity when it came to the cuts on their necks.

The medical examiner couldn't say exactly what kind of weapon had been used, but the wounds were deep.

That is, except for peanuts injury, which was somewhat superficial.

And in addition to burns on all of their bodies, the medical examiner discovered soot in Michael A.'s and Jennifer's airways, an indication that they had inhaled smoke.

Which means when the fire was set, they were still breathing.

So after having been slit and shot, to have soot in your lungs means you're still alive in some regard.

Jax, the dog, was found behind a couch in the attic living room.

A Rochester police captain with a soft spot for pets actually ordered a necrompsy, which is basically an animal autopsy.

He wanted to see if Jax had been shot or stabbed, but it turns out the dog had died from smoke inhalation.

Now, while the forensics were unfolding in one lane, detectives were chasing leads in another, trying to lock in a timeline.

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Mary's sister Kim told police everyone was fine, just hanging out and watching TV when she left for work at around 10 p.m.

And they knew that Mary got home just before she called 911 at 1149.

That left just under two hours, a pretty tight window, according to investigator Brennan.

If somebody went over there to hang out or to have a discussion, things had to get heated pretty bad pretty quick.

You know, it wasn't time like you're going to put somebody in a chair and torch them for a while.

Still, considering how deliberate the setup seemed, it didn't look like whoever did this this came all that prepared.

I mean, they brought their own gun.

And remember, there's still uncertainty around the weapon used to cut the victim's throat, so we don't know about that.

But most everything else appeared to already be inside the house, like the duct tape and the accelerant, which investigators believed was some sort of cosmetic chemical.

You see, Jennifer had plenty of that.

She was a cosmetologist and sometimes she'd worked from home doing hair and nails for her friends and family.

It could have started out initially something as simple as, hey, we're going to go threaten these guys or this girl, and then it escalated.

Whatever the original intent, the aftermath was devastating and terrifying.

As days passed with no one in custody and no real sense of who was behind it or why, some of the families opted to bury their loved ones privately, afraid that whoever did this might still be out there watching.

Jennifer's sister, Andy Walls, remembers the the confusion of those early days and how little anyone seemed to know.

We didn't know yet

how

like it happened.

We didn't know that they were tied up.

We didn't know that they were shot execution style.

Like we didn't have any of that information.

Like we were just trying to piece stuff together because obviously the police couldn't give us much information because it was an ongoing investigation.

But detectives had limited knowledge themselves and no witnesses to fill in the gaps.

The downstairs tenants weren't home that night, and with the bitter cold, windows were shut and no one was hanging around outside.

Although, one man did report something that stuck with investigator Goleta.

Neighbor told us that he heard loud music from the house.

And

we theorized that they turned the volume up so you wouldn't hear the screams or the hollering.

And while plenty of details were still murky, one thing felt certain.

As Sergeant Bonosa said,

it was a targeted incident.

You know, they didn't just happen to walk into this house and do what they did.

Listen, we're talking about four people here.

Surely they couldn't all be the targets, right?

So who exactly was?

Detectives hoped that learning more about the victims would give them a better understanding of what happened and why.

But things got overwhelming fast.

There are four different people with four different groups of associates, families, friends.

All of the victims had past run-ins with law enforcement.

Take Michael R.'s fiancé, Jennifer.

She had some rocky years.

After high school, she'd started using drugs and gotten into some trouble.

She had some larceny charges, a couple of DWIs, but police didn't find anything that made them especially concerned.

In fact, Jennifer's sister Andy felt like Jennifer was finally back on a solid path.

She was becoming the Jenny that we knew before.

Like she kind of warped into this other person that we didn't recognize.

And then it was like she was coming back.

After leaving an abusive relationship, Jennifer seemed happy with Michael R.

The couple had returned to Rochester the year before after a stint in New York City.

She had just gotten her cosmetology license and she was just starting her first real salon job.

Things were starting to finally get in place for her, and then this happened.

Then there was Michael A.

His rap sheet was longer than Jennifer's, but mostly for traffic violations.

He'd been arrested the year before on drug sale charges, but even with that, nothing in his recent history suggested the kind of bad blood that could lead to something this extreme.

Michael A.

was also a father of five, described by loved ones to Democrat and Chronicle reporter Sean Lehman as a gentle and steady person, a peacemaker.

All things considered, detectives didn't see anything in Michael A.'s or Jennifer's backgrounds to suggest that they were the reason for the attack.

They seemed more like collateral damage.

And when police didn't find anything pointing to Mary or to Kim, that left Michael R.

and Peanut, who had more colorful criminal histories than the others.

Both had been arrested for weapons possession.

Michael R.

had racked up multiple robbery charges, though it had been years since the last.

And Peanut was on probation after a conviction for selling drugs.

Plus, as investigator Brennan told us,

they were the ones that were involved in the drug dealing.

They were confirmed 100% involved in drug dealing.

Brennan says Michael R.

sold weed, heroin, a variety of drugs, and that Peanut also sold heroin.

But it wasn't just about their previous legal issues or even their most recent activities.

The more detectives dug in, the more they realized Michael R.

and Peanut had made some enemies.

And to investigators, the theory that one or both of them had crossed the wrong person, that made more sense than anything tied to the small-time dealing that they were supposedly mixed up in.

They were street-level drug dealers, okay?

Which normally street-level dark dealers don't, you know,

get this kind of stuff happening to them.

There wasn't enough to make me think that Michael Royal stole the kilo of dope from somebody and they came in to slit his throat.

I mean, if they, I just don't see it now.

He did something or Peanut did something to tick somebody off to the point where they want to kill them.

But what could make someone that angry?

Well, detectives heard that Michael R.

and Peanut had stolen drugs and cash from other dealers, that they'd set people up, extorted them.

There were even whispers that Michael R.

had been targeting men in the LGBTQ community to rip them off.

And this wasn't just gossip floating around the streets.

I mean, it was being mentioned in interviews, showing up in digital data like social media posts and phone records.

I mean, really, it was surfacing from all directions.

But when it came to Michael R., all the intel was secondhand.

With Peanut, there were actual documented details.

Investigator Brennan said that Peanut had gotten a bit of a reputation.

She had been stealing people's heroin.

That had already landed her in dangerous situations.

In fact, a few weeks before the murders, she ended up in the hospital getting treated for second-degree burns on the side of her body.

And at the time, Peanut told her probation officer that someone held a knife to her neck and shoved her into a grill.

The thing is, she never said who was responsible, but word on the street, I mean, what police kept hearing over and over again, was that the culprit was a 26-year-old man, and he's never been charged with anything in relation to this case, so we're just gonna call him Ron.

Well, Ron and Peanut both had ties to a local gang, one of the same groups she'd reportedly stolen from.

Rumor had it that Ron had given Peanut some heroin to sell, but she never gave him any money back, which is what led to the whole grill incident.

And then there was the timing of it all.

Michael R.

and his family had lived in the Layton Avenue apartment for about eight months without any issues.

But within a week of Peanut moving in, now all of a sudden four people were dead.

Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe her presence triggered something, Ron or no Ron.

Either way, detectives wanted to talk to him.

And they found him and a friend of his a couple of days after the murders.

Now, I'm not sure if he was formally interviewed, just that he was released after they located him.

So maybe he clammed up, but he was doing plenty of talking to someone else.

There was a wiretap going on in that group at the time.

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The group that Brennan referred to who'd been wired tap was the gang that Peanut and Ron had ties to.

The narcotics team had a wiretap on some of their people for a totally unrelated investigation.

But police knew that there might be overlap on the cases.

And lo and behold,

they intercepted a call with one of the guys we thought possibly could have been involved.

However, instead of moving the investigation forward, it basically slammed the door shut because one of the guys on the phone was Ron.

And investigator Brennan told our reporter Nina that what they heard over the line wasn't guilt.

it was grief and it sounded genuine

him and his partner were crying like babies on the line talking about peanut

like they trying to figure out who did it crying really yeah so that surprise

that took them away as a suspect you know and then when you looked at everything you're like okay these guys were street level dealers

They had issues with peanut stealing.

You know, they all steal from each other.

But here we we have them.

One guy was bawling, bawling.

That pain echoed through the community.

According to Democrat and Chronicle reporter Will Cleveland, people gathered outside the Layton Avenue home in the days after the murders for candlelight vigils.

Some people outside had ties to the victims, but others just lived nearby and were shaken by the violence.

Because the cold hard truth is that none of this, the rumors, the records, the rough edges, means that these lies didn't matter.

It doesn't mean that they deserved what happened to them.

And it doesn't change how deeply they were loved.

The fact is, people are complicated.

Like with Peanut, a friend of hers told WHAM reporter Carlette Claire that beneath her tough exterior, she was generous.

She was a caring person, someone who always put others before herself.

And Michael R., he had a nine-year-old daughter that he adored.

He was preparing to enroll in college classes.

He wanted to become a dental hygienist, and he had been doing some spiritual soul searching.

In fact, he and Jennifer had just gotten baptized the year before.

And to his mom, Mary, reducing him to the worst parts of his story feels both painful and unfair.

I just hate the fact that they're...

They're seeing him in a light, a negative light, like he's a criminal.

He wasn't that.

He took care of his family.

But understanding a victim's world, their choices, their struggles, their relationships, it isn't about shaming them.

At least it shouldn't be.

It's about looking at every detail, even the ones that hurt, because that is how you get to the truth.

And that is how you get justice.

Which in those first crucial weeks is exactly what investigators were trying to do.

They threw everything they had at it.

I mean, old school legwork and newer tech.

They interviewed family and friends, anyone who might have had even the smallest piece of this puzzle.

Not one person we talked to had direct knowledge.

They pulled cell tower data and used geofencing to create a digital map of activity near the house that night.

They analyzed phone logs to tighten the timeline, shrinking the original murder timing window from just under two hours to about 80 minutes.

I can't even begin to tell you the amount of man hours that the investigators put into this one.

There was just, they followed everything and there was just nothing.

Brennan even took the case file home with him while he was on leave recovering after surgery from an ankle injury.

My dining room, my wife will tell you, I had this file all over the place.

It was like a war room.

And I went through everything again and again and again

to see if, just to make sure I didn't miss something.

But they knew that all the dogged police work in the world couldn't put the crime scene back together.

Luckily, though, the fire didn't take everything.

Forensic texts recovered a fingerprint on the duct tape used to bind one of the victims.

But the fingerprint wasn't from the killer.

It was from one of the other four victims.

Like somebody was

made to duct tape the others.

This was a chilling discovery.

I mean, most everyone assumed that more than one person had to be involved.

I mean, how could a single perpetrator hold four people at gunpoint and bind them all at the same time?

Even Jennifer's sister Andy thought this too.

I'm thinking about the fact that my sister's six, three and a half and she didn't put up with shit.

Like my sister was a fighter.

So there's no way she would have allowed any of that to happen.

She would have tackled somebody down if they were by themselves.

And that's part of the issue.

Going in alone would have been incredibly risky.

Even if someone had been watching the house.

Like, how could they be sure what or who they were walking into?

You go to threaten somebody, you're going into an unknown.

You don't know if there's four gangbangers up there that are willing to fight you.

So do you go alone or do you go with a buddy?

Or do you go with a group?

I mean,

we just don't know.

Still, that fingerprint.

It could mean that one person did show up alone and then forced one of the victims to help.

It's not a popular theory, but it could have some merit.

And listen, I could go in circles about this stuff all day.

Detectives have, or reporter Nina has.

It is important to keep an open mind.

But as most cops will tell you, speculation can be helpful, but it doesn't close cases.

It's all about what you can prove.

And as weeks turned into months and then months to years, police kept at it, chasing leads, tracking down witnesses, revisiting old tips, but they couldn't prove anything.

Nothing has surfaced that points clearly to a specific suspect.

It is the only whodunit that investigator Brennan left behind when he retired.

Every case I have that I left that's still open,

this is the only one that I don't know who did it.

Goletta has since retired too.

The guy still spends a lot of his time thinking about the Leighton Avenue's victims.

And Brennan actually developed a new theory over the past couple of years, but he's keeping the details of it top secret.

All he had to say was this.

I would not be surprised, and everybody's like, you're out of your mind, John.

I would not be surprised if one person did this.

Whether it's because of the fingerprint, something else, or a combination of things, he wouldn't share.

As for Sergeant Venosa,

I don't believe it was just one person.

I just absolutely do not believe it.

But do I think there was four people?

Probably not.

So if I had to give you an educated guess based on everything I've seen and heard, I'd say there was two, three at the most.

Hopefully, one day, we'll find out which theory was right.

Because if that day ever comes, it won't just settle a debate.

It will mean we finally know who did this.

And the families will finally have some answers.

And that day couldn't come soon enough for Mary Royal.

So much was taken from her in just one night.

Her son, her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Kim's boyfriend, who was like a brother-in-law, her dog, even her home.

What's kept her going is her faith.

That's the only thing that got me through them.

That's getting me through this, because

some people might think that, you know, once the people are caught, that it's over.

It'll never be over for me.

It'll always be there, but I just have to learn how to try to deal with it somehow.

The Layton Avenue house has since been renovated.

Other people live there now.

But Mary can't even bear to go near it.

I mean, she hates anything to do with fire, and she still has nightmares and flashbacks.

For Jennifer's sister Andy, the grief is like a sucker punch, one that still knocks the wind out of her.

I have a child now, and the thought that my sister won't ever get to know them kills.

It kills me.

I was so angry for such a long time.

And now I just want to give my sister the memory and the honor she deserves and the justice she deserves.

Along with the other three victims, they deserve justice.

Their family deserves peace.

Police declined to comment about any potential DNA evidence that has been tested or could be retested.

But Sergeant Venosa told us that the investigation is still active.

We've re-examined all the evidence and we are following up on potential leads.

This is just a tough case.

It really is.

A lot of work went into this and

we're just hoping and praying that someday something breaks.

Brennan doesn't believe this is the kind of case that ends with a confession.

Somebody is not going to tell you, I killed four people and a dog.

What police need is someone with direct first-hand knowledge of the crime.

Someone who saw something, heard something, or was even told something by the person responsible.

Somebody that has courage

that's going to come forward and tell us the true story, you know, direct knowledge.

That's the only way this case is going to be solved.

Find the courage, find the strength to come forward, help four families get closure.

Because we want to know.

I promised my sister at her funeral I'd find out.

And I'd bring her justice.

And I really want to do that for her.

There's somebody out there that has the information.

I understand they're probably afraid to come forward because who knows who the perpetrators are, but it's just so disheartening

to be like waiting to find out.

And the waiting, it never stops.

The ache of not knowing, the feeling that someone out there could end it, but just hasn't.

And investigators want whoever did this to know something.

Somebody's going to give you up.

You talked, you told somebody, somebody knows.

You know, if I find out who you are,

we're coming for you.

We're coming for you.

There is a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed Michael Adams, Lachelle Peanut Powell, Michael Royal, and Jennifer Leisure.

If you know anything, please contact Rochester PD's Major Crimes Unit at 585-428-7157 or email them at majorcrimes at cityofrochester.gov.

You can also call Crime Stoppers to remain anonymous at 585-423-9300, or you can submit a tip with them online.

The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis.

To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

So what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?

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