Apparent Suicide Might Be Linked To Double Killing

Two people were found slain yesterday in a bloodstained apartment in the Langley Park area, shortly after the man who was the tenant there apparently plunged to his death in the District, authorities said.

The man and woman found in the apartment on University Boulevard were discovered after firefighters were sent there to deal with what turned out to be a small kitchen fire, Prince George's County police said.

No motive or cause of death had been determined in the killings, said Cpl. Clinton Copeland, a police spokesman, but investigators believed that they were "possibly domestic related."

Copeland said detectives looking for a suspect in the double killing were focusing their attention on the man who apparently killed himself. He was the renter of the apartment in the 2200 block of University Boulevard where the slaying victims were found, and he lived there, Copeland said.

However, he cautioned, police were "not 100 percent certain" that he was involved in the deaths.

None of the three people linked by yesterday's events was identified immediately, and the relationships among them were not clear.

Copeland said the man and woman found in the apartment appeared to be in their 20s. It was not yet clear if they lived there.

The apparent suicide victim was in his mid-50s, Copeland said.

He said authorities were trying to notify relatives of all three.

According to Copeland, firefighters were sent to the apartment about 11 a.m. They found that food on the stove had apparently caught fire, and they extinguished it quickly.

After discovering the bodies, along with a considerable amount of blood, the firefighters called police, Copeland said.

It was not clear exactly when the man and woman had been killed, he said.

According to Copeland, sometime between 9 and 10 a.m., the man who was the apartment's renter apparently plunged to his death from a 10-story building under construction in the 1200 block of First Street NE.

He said county authorities were at the homicide scene in Langley Park when authorities from the District went there to look for the relatives of the apparent suicide victim.

"When they responded there," he said, "they saw all of us."