4 Marines charged in murder of sgt., wife - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

4 Marines charged in murder of sgt., wife

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Four Marines acknowledged they had roles in the robbery, sexual assault and murder of an Iraq veteran and his wife last month in Riverside County, court records indicated.

The four were charged Wednesday with the execution-style slayings of Marine Sgt. Jan Pawek Pietrzak, 24, and Quiana Faye Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26.

The couple were found gagged, tied and shot in the head on Oct. 15 in the living room of their home in Winchester, authorities said. Sheriff’s deputies were called after the sergeant failed to show up for work.

The couple’s home of four months was ransacked, and jewelry and other items were taken, investigators said. A fire was set, apparently in an effort to destroy evidence.

Pietrzak’s mother, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga, prepared herself “for the possibility that my son could die in Iraq.”

“But to die like this, in their own home?” she told The Daily News of New York on Wednesday. “They were good kids. They didn’t deserve to die like this.”

“Marines are supposed to be brothers,” she told The Riverside Press-Enterprise earlier in the week. “What kind of brothers are these? They killed them in cold blood.”

“They're monsters,” Jenkins-Pietrzak’s mother, Faye Jenkins, told the Daily News. “They’re monsters.”

Murder charges were filed against Lance Cpl. Emrys John, 18, of Maryland; Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, of North Carolina; Pvt. Kevin Cox, 20, of Tennessee, and Lance Cpl. Kesaun Sykes, 21, of California.

John and Miller worked for Pietrzak, who was a helicopter airframe mechanic at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego.

After their arrests, Miller told a sheriff's investigator that he forced his way into the home by pointing a shotgun at Pietrzak, according to an affidavit from a sheriff’s investigator.

Miller said he and the others went to Pietrzak’s home to rob him, said he tied up the couple and discussed with John whether to kill them, according to the court document.

The other two Marines acknowledged they went to the home to rob Pietrzak. All four said his wife was sexually assaulted, although each said it was the other three who committed the attack, the affidavit said.

The document also said shoes found at the barracks where Cox and John lived matched prints left at the crime scene, and property thought stolen from the house was found at Sykes’ home.

The men were each charged with two counts of first-degree murder and special-circumstance allegations of committing multiple murders, committing the crime during a robbery, and rape by instrument, district attorney’s spokesman Ryan Hightower said Thursday.

John, whom prosecutors think shot the couple, also was charged with a special-circumstance allegation of using a firearm to inflict great bodily injury or death.

Prosecutors had not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty.

Sykes, who lives in the Fallbrook area in San Diego County, was arrested on Sunday. The other three Marines lived at the Camp Pendleton base and were held there until they were transferred to a Riverside County jail on Wednesday.

All were being held without bail Thursday.

Pietrzak, who was born in Poland and raised in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn, joined the Marines in 2003 and served in Iraq from July 2005 to February 2006.