2 found slain in LR home after fire put out

8/28/14
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON
Two people were  found dead in this home in the 2600 block of S. Spring Street Friday morning in Little Rock. The Little Rock Police Department have ruled them as homicides.
8/28/14 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON Two people were found dead in this home in the 2600 block of S. Spring Street Friday morning in Little Rock. The Little Rock Police Department have ruled them as homicides.

An early morning call about a fire in Little Rock led authorities to the bodies of two homicide victims Friday.

David Murphy, 41, and Charity Hall, 29, were dead when they were pulled from a fire-damaged home on South Spring Street about 4 a.m., and by late morning, officials from the medical examiner's office had ruled both deaths homicides.

The manner of their deaths remains under investigation, said Lt. Sidney Allen, spokesman for the Little Rock Police Department.

Murphy and Hall were found shortly after the Fire Department got a call about a blaze at a duplex at 2607 S. Spring St., police said.

Little Rock firefighters entered the squat, single-story structure and found a small fire, which was quickly extinguished, department spokesman Capt. Edwin Woolf said.

The fire was "mostly" contained to one room, Woolf said, and fire authorities contacted homicide investigators after the bodies were found.

Allen said the deaths immediately seemed "suspicious," though, he wouldn't elaborate about what led homicide investigators and crime-scene units to take over the 2600 block of the street for much of the morning.

The bodies were handed over to the Pulaski County coroner's office, Allen said, and the medical examiner's office ruled the deaths homicides.

Allen said investigators know little about the circumstances of the slayings.

Police identified Murphy and Hall late Friday morning, Allen said. However, their relationship was unclear, and it was unknown whether either lived at the South Spring Street duplex.

When asked whether the two were killed and the fire intentionally set, Allen said that is one of the scenarios being considered by detectives.

"They're looking at the timeline to see what happened first and then they'll have a better idea of what to look into," Allen said. "They're trying to figure out the full scope of what their relationship was."

Allen said detectives were still trying to determine if there were signs of a struggle or if there was any forced entry that preceded the killings.

As of Friday afternoon, detectives had no suspects, according to Allen, who said the department hadn't ruled out a "murder-suicide" scenario.

"We're looking at all of the possibilities," Allen said.

The killings of Murphy and Hall raised this month's homicide total to three and marked the 32nd and 33rd homicides in Little Rock this year.

At this point last year, there were 22 killings, with 36 homicides by the end of the year.

Metro on 08/30/2014

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