The parolee accused of murdering an elderly couple and setting their Queens home on fire unleashed hours of terror on a quiet couple whose neighbors said wanted no more than to enjoy their retirement and spend time with their grandkids.
The grisly and shocking details of the crime unfolded over the last several days as NYPD cops closed in on the suspect. Jamel McGriff freely confessed to his vicious crimes when he was apprehended, police and prosecutors said Friday as they outlined the horrors he unleashed on his victims, which may have included molesting the couple before killing them.
“I’ll admit it! I killed them! I don’t give a f—,” double murder suspect admitted to cops as five officers surrounded him in Midtown and took him into custody. “I killed them! I burnt the n——. I molested them.”
McGriff, 42, is facing a slew of criminal charges, including murder, kidnapping, burglary, and arson for killing Frank, 76, and Maureen Olton, 77, inside their 254th St. home in the Bellerose on Monday.
He was ordered held without bail following an arraignment proceeding late Thursday.
“This was a brutal push-in home invasion,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said at an unrelated press conference Friday.
“We believe the couple was chosen at random.”
Queens Executive Assistant District Attorney Sean Clark said that autopsies on the retired couple were still ongoing, so it wasn’t clear if McGriff’s statements about molesting them were true.
“The thing we can corroborate is that he did kill them,” Clark said. “That is quite clear from the evidence. With respect to the other things he said, the investigation is ongoing. We’ll know more once the toxicology is completed on the autopsy.”
McGriff, who lived in a Bronx shelter and was on parole for sexual offenses at the time of his alleged crime, also claimed in an odd rant Thursday that the Oltons had molested him when he was younger and had lived in the neighborhood, a statement that cops have found no evidence to corroborate.
“They’re child molesters! Learn your facts!” McGriff shouted to reporters as he was led out of the 107th Precinct stationhouse in a Tyvek suit, his hands cuffed behind his back and his legs shackled on Thursday. “Both of them are child molesters, they molested me when I was a little kid! I used to live on Little Neck Parkway. Get your facts straight!”
The couple’s neighbors completely dismissed the murder suspect’s claims Friday.
“That’s outrageous. That’s obviously not true,” the victims’ longtime neighbor Efren Galicia, 61, told the Daily News Friday. “(McGriff) could say anything he likes. These people, this couple, they were harmless.
“They didn’t interfere with anybody,” Galicia continued. “I lived next to them for 20 years. They lived a quiet, peaceful life. They were already retired. They just wanted to live their retirement and enjoy their grandchildren.”
Random encounter
Prosecutors said that McGriff had tried at least one other door on 254th St. and was denied entry before approaching Frank Olton in his yard at around 10:15 a.m. Monday, Assistant District Attorney John Esposito said at the defendant’s arraignment.
“Mr. Olton allowed (McGriff) to enter the yard,” Esposito said as he recounted McGriff’s crimes. “He’s captured on video surveillance, chatting with him for several minutes.”
After a few minutes, Olton heads back to his home and McGriff follows, prompting an argument, Esposito said.
“(McGriff) enters the home when Mr. Olton can audibly be heard yelling back at him ‘Get the f— out,” the prosecutor said. “(Olton) does not appear again. (The defendant) does not exit at home for another five hours.”
What happened next “is no less than horrific and shocking to the conscience of every person,” Esposito said.
McGriff is accused of forcing Olton to the basement, where he tied him to the pole and stabbed him multiple times in the chest, prosecutors said. He then set the older man’s chest on fire.
He also choked and strangled Maureen Olton, who used a wheelchair, fracturing her larynx, before “setting a larger fire” in the living room, near where she was found.
Esposito described the massive fire an “inferno” that “consumed a large part of the first floor.”
During an autopsy, Maureen Olton “had evidence of soot in her trachea and at least one lung,” Esposito said.
“She was alive for at least part of the time as the fire raged,” the prosecutor said grimly.
Frank Olton was previously the director of the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), a city agency that tracked down deadbeat parents and made sure they paid their child support, a former employee told The News.
McGriff took the couple’s cellphones and credit cards and was recorded leaving the home at about 3 p.m. carrying a light-colored paper bag and a black duffel bag, cops said.
Firefighters responding to the raging blaze discovered the couple dead inside, but, by then, McGriff had fled the area.
Digital breadcrumbs
After the double killing, McGriff headed toward Midtown Manhattan, cops said. Just before 6 p.m. Monday, he was recorded going on a shopping spree at Macy’s on W. 34th St., where he bought nearly $800 in clothing on two of the Olton’s credit cards, officials said.
As he made the purchases, he sealed his fate by using his own Macy’s “Store Loyalty” number with his identifying information to maximize on any store deals — putting the murdered couple’s credit cards in his hands, officials said.
He then returned home to the Bronx, cops said. At about 7:45 a.m. on Tuesday, he was recorded entering a check-cashing store on East Fordham Road near his shelter and putting the Oltons’ cellphones into an EcoATM, a machine that pays people cash for used cellphones.
The machine took a photo of McGriff and his state ID as it paid the suspected killer for the stolen phones, prosecutors said.
But by then, detectives had already flagged the Oltons credit cards, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny explained Friday.
“We have the ability to put out messages to every department cell phone,” Kenny said. “In real time, we were getting information about his credit card usage and then we would dispatch teams to that location.”
Tracking every credit card purchase McGriff made on the Oltons cards, they learned on Wednesday that he had gone back to Midtown, where he bought a ticket for “Light of the World,” an animated religious children’s movie, at Manhattan’s Regal Union Square movie theater about 3:30 p.m., Kenny said.
“(When) he used the credit card to go to the movies, we dispatched detectives immediately to that theater,” Kenny said. “We were able to obtain video images of exactly what he was wearing. We were able to broadcast that to every police officer in New York City a picture of what he was wearing at that time. It was a very distinctive outfit — white hoodie, white pants, with New York City written across the hoodie.”
Cops nabbed him around 5:40 p.m. near Seventh Ave. and W 44th St. in Midtown, officials said. Five cops surrounded the 6-foot-3, 250 pound McGriff, now dressed all in white. He surrendered without incident.
After his confession, which was caught on body-worn camera, McGriff immediately asked for a lawyer, police said. He is currently being represented by the Legal Aid Society.
“Mr. McGriff is entitled to the presumption of innocence,” a Legal Aid spokesman said. “We are in the early stages of our investigation, and we urge the public not to draw any conclusions until all the facts are known.”
McGriff — who had already faced a hearing Sept. 15 for a parole violation for not registering his address — now faces consecutive life sentences if convicted, prosecutors said. Before this week, he already had 19 arrests on his record, nine for felonies and 10 for misdemeanors, police said.
He was conditionally released on parole in April 2023 after being sentenced to 20 years in prison for robbery, attempted assault and committing a criminal sex act.
As the double murder case wends its way through the courts, the scorched façade of the Olton’s home remains a grisly reminder of the staggering violence that occurred there.
“This is a nice, very nice neighborhood. We never had a problem before,” neighbor Animol Pathyil, 57, said. “Thank God they caught the guy.”
“We’re still scared when we open the door and see the house,” she said solemnly. “It’s all burned up.”