Suspect in Murder of Queens Couple Told Police That He Burned Them

A man accused of murdering a Queens couple in their 70s told law enforcement officials that he had killed and molested them before setting a fire that eventually consumed their home, according to prosecutors.

The man, Jamel McGriff, 42, was arraigned in Queens criminal court late Thursday night, one day after he was captured by police officers in Times Square. The arrest ended a dayslong manhunt during which Mr. McGriff traveled through three boroughs and used credit cards stolen from Frank and Maureen Olton, 76 and 77, to purchase clothing at Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street.

Mr. McGriff was charged on Thursday with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, robbery, burglary, arson and a slate of other offenses in connection with the couple’s killing. He was ordered held without bail by Judge Sharifa Nasser-Cuellar.

At Thursday night’s arraignment, Mr. McGriff did not enter a plea. Wearing a jail-issued white jumpsuit, he did not say a word and remained still for most of the half-hour proceeding. He shook his head slightly at one point when a prosecutor noted he was a registered sex offender. The room was silent.

If convicted, he faces up to a life sentence in prison.

The Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said in a news release that “in a brazen act of violence, the defendant forced himself into a Bellerose home, stabbed one of the elderly homeowners to death and then deliberately set the house on fire. This is a horrific double murder that has shocked our entire city.”

Prosecutors say Mr. McGriff, who had a long criminal history, arrived on Monday morning at the home of the Oltons in Bellerose, a residential neighborhood near the border of Nassau County.

Mr. McGriff had been going door to door asking residents if he could come inside to charge his phone, and had attempted to enter another house nearby before approaching Mr. and Mrs. Olton’s home, the police said.

In video footage from the scene, Mr. Olton can be heard yelling for Mr. McGriff to “get out,” prosecutors said. But the defendant forced his way inside, and over the course of five hours, he robbed, attacked and killed the couple and then set the house ablaze, officials said.

The couple’s bodies were discovered inside once the flames were extinguished — Mr. Olton, bound to a pole in the basement with stab wounds across his chest, and Mrs. Olton with severe burns, a fractured larynx and soot in her trachea, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday.

Prosecutors said the stab wounds had killed Mr. Olton, while Mrs. Olton died from a combination of asphyxiation, strangulation and smoke inhalation, according to the medical examiner. Two fires had also been set, in the basement and the living room. There was evidence that one had been started on Mr. Olton’s chest, prosecutors said.

Mr. McGriff left the house at around 3 p.m. with a duffel bag in hand. From there, he traveled to Herald Square and, just before 6 p.m., made two purchases totaling nearly $800 using credit cards he had stolen from Mr. Olton. He then applied a store loyalty number in his own name to the purchases, the complaint says.

Early the next morning, Mr. McGriff was seen on surveillance video depositing two mobile phones into a machine that provides cash in exchange for electronic devices. Those phones belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Olton, according to the complaint. Mr. McGriff then submitted his New York State identification and was captured on camera while completing the exchange.

When he was captured the following day, Mr. McGriff told police officers that he was responsible for Monday’s crimes, prosecutors said.

“I’ll admit it. I killed them,” he said amid a flurry of expletives, according to the complaint. “I molested them.”

On Thursday night, prosecutors described Mr. McGriff as a man with a lengthy history in the criminal justice system, including 11 convictions, four of which were violent felonies.

At the time of the fire, Mr. McGriff was out on parole after serving more than 16 years of a 20-year sentence for a first-degree robbery he committed in 2006. Around that same year, Mr. McGriff also pleaded guilty to charges of committing a criminal sexual act in a separate case, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.

This November, Mr. McGriff was arrested after failing to register a change to his address as a sex offender. He is also wanted in connection with robberies at a GameStop and a Verizon store in Manhattan in July and August.

The New York Department of Corrections said in a statement that it had been notified of Mr. McGriff’s arrest in November, but that he had complied with his parole team and was “engaged in employment and treatment.” According to the department, the parole board had decided after “full consideration of all factors” that Mr. McGriff had “not violated his parole in an important respect.” He was released on his own recognizance, according to the Bronx district attorney’s office.

The Corrections Department said that Mr. McGriff had been identified as a suspect in the Verizon store robbery last Friday, just days before the Queens fire. On Wednesday, it said it had gathered enough evidence to issue a warrant for Mr. McGriff’s arrest for violating parole.

Mr. McGriff’s parole officer helped the police identify him as a suspect in both Monday’s crime and in the Verizon store robbery, the authorities said.

This week, neighbors, friends and colleagues remembered the Oltons as a steady and generous presence.

Efren Galicia, 61, who lives next door to their house in Bellerose, said that Mr. Olton had made his family feel welcome in the neighborhood from the day they arrived two decades ago.

“As we were moving in with the moving truck, he came out here and greeted us,” he said on Wednesday, just paces from the wreckage of the Olton’s two-story home. “He really made us feel so comfortable.”

Mr. Olton had worked at the city’s social services agency in the 1970s and ’80s, according to a former colleague, while Mrs. Olton spent two decades as a teaching assistant for special education classes at Floral Park Memorial High School, not far from the couple’s home, the school district’s superintendent said.

The couple had since retired and had settled into domestic life in the home they had occupied for decades, spending days with children and grandchildren and nights around a firepit in their yard, Mr. Galicia said.

Recently, Mr. Olton had undergone open-heart surgery, and Mr. Galicia said he had been trying to help the couple while Mr. Olton recovered.

On Monday, Mr. Galicia had been at home when Mr. McGriff forced his way into the Oltons’ house, but he hadn’t noticed anything unusual until the firefighters arrived that afternoon.

“I could only hope that they were not home,” he said sadly.

Mr. McGriff had preyed on the Oltons’ kindness, Mr. Galicia said.

“This is something that out of the goodness of their heart — somebody asked for help, they saw no harm in it,” he said. “It’s hard to comprehend.”

Ellen Yan and Camille Baker contributed reporting.