A few feet away, officers found Erika.
She lay on the floor in her room, near the closet. Slender and pretty, with long hair and honey-brown skin, she had been struck across the right side of her face, leaving a laceration across her forehead. There was a single gunshot wound on the right top side of her shoulder, just below the neck. She had been shot at point-blank range.
The angle of the shot indicated the gunman had towered above her, according to the autopsy report.
"It's a day we will always remember when the rest of the world forgets," Carol Smith wrote on the first anniversary of the slayings of her daughter, Erika, and Erika's father, Greg Russell.
(Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
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Eight bullets for Greg Russell, one for Erika; the killer had emptied the clip into father and child.
A Tourist's Fatal Course
Two days later, Katie Hill flew into the Washington area.
She was an affable, 36-year-old lawyer for a nonprofit agency in Seattle, attending a convention devoted to her favorite pastime: collecting fountain pens. Hill met a group of women collectors for dinner at a hotel in Tysons Corner the day after her arrival, a Friday. They broke up about 10:30 p.m.
Hill was staying with her in-laws in the Takoma neighborhood of Northwest Washington. Despite the late hour, she turned down the offer of a ride and took Metro. One of the last to see her alive was fellow pen collector Lisa Haines, who saw her walking out the door. Hill was about 5 feet 5 inches tall, maybe 140 pounds, with a round face and glasses. She was wearing a black skirt and a yellow and green blouse over a red T-shirt.
"I remember thinking she had the cutest shoes on, these little black sandals," Haines said. "I asked her if she wanted a ride home. She said no, no, she could make it. . . . I don't think she thought twice about it."
Hill stepped off the train at the Takoma station about 11:30 p.m. She made a U-turn out of the station, walking slightly uphill on Cedar Street, the huge trees casting shadows from the streetlights. She turned into the schoolyard of Takoma Educational Center, an elementary school, using a brightly lighted passageway as a shortcut to the home.
Prosecutors charge that Kelly approached, looking to steal her wallet, camera and other possessions.
"I think he came out shooting from wherever he was hiding," said John Fletcher, Hill's brother-in-law, who was waiting at home for her a block away. "The neighbors heard a shot, a scream, and then shot, shot, shot."
Hill was shot in the torso, wrist, arm and head. She was found sprawled on her back, arms and legs flung out wide.
Married Near the Crime Scene
The killings drew headlines and intense news coverage, and as police searched for clues and fear rippled through the community, Anthony Kelly stayed put.
A few days after Hill's slaying, Kelly married his girlfriend, Tonya Kie, at a church two blocks from the murder site. It was a short ceremony that attracted no attention.
The next week, as police remained stumped, Kelly re-established contact with Barlow, calling the parole officer Aug. 16 and telling him that he had missed the pretrial hearing in Prince George's -- the first Barlow knew about it.
Barlow did not report it, records show.
A few days later, more than 350 frightened neighbors packed the same church where Kelly had gotten married to demand answers from Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and police officials about who Hill's killer might be.
No one knew.
On Aug. 20, Kelly took his wife and her son for pizza. He was driving a stolen Chevrolet Tahoe that police said had been used in a recent robbery and attempted sexual assault. Takoma Park police recognized the truck's license plates and gave chase.
Kelly floored it, leading police in a high-speed pursuit that ended when he crashed into a utility pole. He got out of the truck and fled, leaving behind Kie and her son.
In the resulting search of the truck and Kie's apartment, records show that police found items that for the first time tied Kelly to the three slayings: Hill's camera; an inscribed Bible taken from Russell's house; a costume beard and wig that matched fibers found at Russell's house; and a bullet matching the type used in the killings. Police said they found two guns in the truck that had been stolen in the Kensington burglary. Ballistics tests later showed that the weapon in all three slayings was one of the other guns taken in that break-in, according to a police report.
On Aug. 21, a D.C. police officer called Barlow, telling him police were looking for Kelly. The officer did not tell Barlow why.
Barlow testified that he called Kelly on his cell phone and was stunned when Kelly declared, without being asked, that he didn't "murder" anybody.
But Barlow did not treat the information as an urgent matter. His testimony and a later agency record of the events show that he did not call the police. He did not call the Parole Commission, either. Nor did he send them a fax, which the agency typically uses in urgent matters.
Instead, with a massive police manhunt for Kelly developing across the region, Barlow dropped a request for an arrest warrant in the mail the day after they spoke. It took six days to reach the Parole Commission, which issued a warrant the next day.
