WASHINGTON -- A former Marine and ex-convict accused in the slayings of a wealthy Washington family and its housekeeper was arrested Thursday, a week after authorities said the four were killed in the family mansion and it was set on fire.
Daron Dylon Wint, 34, was arrested in northeast Washington shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday, said David Neumann, a U.S. Marshals Service spokesman. D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier also confirmed that Wint was in custody.
Police have not detailed why Wint would want to kill Savvas Savopoulos, 46, chief executive of American Iron Works; his wife, Amy, 47; their son, Philip, 10; and housekeeper, Veralicia Figueroa. Three of them had been stabbed or bludgeoned before the fire.
Police said Thursday that Wint in the past had worked for American Iron Works, a construction-materials supplier based in Hyattsville, Md.
Wint was convicted of second-degree assault in Maryland in 2009 and sentenced to 30 days in jail, court records showed. He also pleaded guilty in 2010 to malicious destruction of property.
Wint was born and raised in Guyana and moved to the United States in 2000, when he was 19, according to court records filed in Maryland. He joined the Marine Corps that same year and received an honorable discharge for medical reasons, the records show. After his discharge, he worked as a certified welder, the records show.
Lanier didn't discuss any possible motives and repeatedly declined to describe any evidence.
"Right now it does not appear that this was a random crime," Lanier said.
The Washington Post reported that Savopoulos' personal assistant dropped off a package containing $40,000 in cash at the mansion, a $4.5 million house in Woodley Park, the morning of May 14 after a flurry of phone calls between Savopoulos, a bank, an accountant, the personal assistant and his company.
Records show Savopoulos made his last call, to his assistant, at 11:54 a.m, the Post reported, citing police documents and unidentified sources.
Another housekeeper said she believes that the family and its housekeeper were held captive for nearly a day before they were killed, citing an unusual voice mail she got from Savopoulos and a text message sent from the phone of his wife telling her not to go to the house.
Figueroa usually left work around 3 p.m., which led the surviving housekeeper, Nelitza Gutierrez, to suspect that an intruder already had her under control before then on May 13.
She said she and Savopoulos spent May 13 cleaning up a martial-arts studio he was planning to open in northern Virginia before his wife called about 5:30 p.m. She said she could hear his half of the conversation and he later explained that his wife told him to go home to watch their son because she was going out.
Later that night, sounding flustered, he left Gutierrez a voice mail saying Figueroa would stay with his sick wife overnight, that she shouldn't work the next day and that Figueroa's phone was dead.
By 1:30 p.m. the next day, the house was on fire. Firefighters were called and found the bodies, with what authorities said was evidence that they'd been slain before the fire was set.
DNA analysis at a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lab linked Wint to the crime, a law enforcement official involved in the investigation said on condition of anonymity.
During the family's final hours, someone called Domino's from the mansion and ordered pizza. The Post reported that DNA was found on a pizza crust. At a Domino's about 2 miles away, a worker said a pizza was delivered from there to the mansion that day.
Information for this article was contributed by Colleen Long, Alex Brandon and Meredith Somers of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/22/2015