Pasco deputies find human remains amid search for missing family

everybody good roll all right good afternoon so uh I want start with prayers and you know praying for the family I know a lot of time people say oh you always sa about praying well if there wasn't evil in this world we wouldn't have to pray as much and uh when I talk about the story today you're going to hear about evil uh you're going to hear a complex investigation and you're going to hear about investigation that's still ongoing so unfortunately there's a lot of things we won't be able to answer but I can tell you um you know it is a difficult case and this will be an ongoing case and there's a lot of things that we still have to run down and a lot of things that we still have to solve so um you know I'm talking about Philip zelot 25 years of age rain Mancini 26 years of age and their two children Philip zelot theii who's 5 years old and Karma zad who's 6 years old and for them and their families we we ask for tons of prayers because this is an ex ex difficult time for all of them uh the preliminary investigation and said it's a complex and this is still a missing person's case uh until the final resolution until the me comes back um it's still a missing person's case but we were able to to find human remains at the crime scene and we believe it may be this family but at the same time as I can't give a definitive until everything is the me gives us that final um confirmation that it is you know I want to thank the members of the Sheriff's Office uh with me numerous members but I want to point out which will be able to speak is Sergeant Roso for Major Crimes uh Deanna Higgins Huggins sorry apologize di Dina um she's the lead instructor for human remain dogs and uh Indie was out there with her and so they were critical and did his investigation and Austin poona he does the anthropology and forensics piece for us and they get called out those two get called out a lot to go to different organizations and this is a case that we need them right here in our own neighborhood to help solve this case um we're working with the state attorney's office right now uh because that partnership with the State Attorney's office we're able to charge Rory Atwood with first degree homicide on John Doe and it's on John Doe because we do not know exactly uh the human remains that we found but because of the statements he made because of the information we've gathered he's being in charge of first-degree homicide you know I want to thank the information that has come in and I'm going to get into it it's pretty complex how this information came in and the great job of our detectives and our deput Deputy Callahan uh their team out there were non-stop with whatever nuggets we got they kept going with it the other part too is you know we still need the Public's assistance call us don't call a friend who calls a friend who calls a friend and that's what I'm going to talk about that's what hinders the investigation what helps us is if you call us directly to get that information so this started on Wednesday evening at approximately 11:30 p.m. rain manini uh her friend picked her up at Rain's house at rain's mother's house house uh drove her to Rory's house which is on ninghan trail in Hudson this was the last time that rain saw her mother and the mother saw her uh which was unusual as we'll find out later on the investigation rain's friend rain's friend rain Philip and Rory uh were all at the house together with rain and Philip's two children who I mentioned and Rory's daughter who is a juvenile as well were all at the house while the adults were drinking uh Phillip and her son Phillip uh zelot and this around midnight on Thursday and her son Philip's mother and her son Phillip spoke on the phone and that was the last time they spoke on the phone uh per rain's friend rain Philip and Rory were all drinking alcohol and they started arguing before leaving rain's friend hears someone say this is the last time this happened you pulled a gun on us referring to Rory we do not have any police reports about that a of Rory this is around 2:00 in the morning got a call from Rory who was really upset and said he shot somebody and was frantic that friend you know then calls another friend who calls another friend and we think possibly a fourth friend none of the information came to us for another 12 hours uh the sheriff's office again any that information and it would have been very helpful for the investigation had we received it uh Rory this is about 3:00 a.m. in the morning Rory Atwood then calls his baby's mother and says hey I want to drop off our daughter and that doesn't happen till about 5:45 in the morning he drops her off this is about Thursday at approximately 2 in the afternoon this is the first time that we the pasc Sheriff's Office get information we received third and possibly fourth party information that the suspect may have killed somebody that's what I go back to it was a person after a person after a person uh this is when we begin our investigation efforts trying track back the real source of the information uh we went around the property the suspect gave us permission to walk around unfortunately we did not find anything that was suspicious at the time on Friday we were able to make contact with rain and Phil's family so it wasn't until yesterday afternoon that we were able to make contact with the family and they said they had not heard from them it was unusual in the fact that he hadn't heard from them wasn't unusual in the fact that this family is a little transient and they go from place to place so around 4:30 in the afternoon our deputies of um observe Rory Atwood we see him out there he gives us he gives us permission to go back on their on their property which we start doing a more extended search we had the human remain Dogs blood hounds Aviation deputies uh because of the search we're able to find human remains uh this along with several admissions is what led to Rory Atwood being charge of first-degree homicides as I go back to it it's an ongoing investigation apologize our job is to work with the medical examiner right now to help identify the remains the missing person case will remain open until everyone has identified we are still tracking down leads and we will provide updates when they're significant at the time I go back to this one thing we need the Public's assistance we do not know who those human remains are at this time it's an active investigation we're going to figure it out but at the same time is talking to our detectives the missing person case is not over that missing person case will not be over until we know where those four individuals are and I go back those two poor little children it's heartbreaking they we we believe they that they may be on the property deceased but we do not know that definitively and we will do everything we can to track them down we pray to God they're alive somewhere but at the same time is for that family we need to find closure and we need to find justice so with that being said anything I can answer so there's one you found one body um so as of right now I can tell you we found human remains we can't identify how many bodies were found out there right now uh we're still trying to uh work with the me and get some forensics to figure out what state were they in when you found them um it's part ofy investigation I can't go into it but I can just tell you there were human remains I see yeah and then could you explain sorry there's a lot of names and I know some of them have the same name so could you explain who reported them missing and when so the first call came in that some he may have shot somebody that was Thursday Friday wasn't really until he got a hold of the family it was Friday when we were able to talk to the family and they said hey look we don't know like we haven't heard from them at that point we were just going okay we were ramping it up since Thursday late afternoon but really when the family said we haven't heard from them then we then we you know said okay there's these pieces aren't fing together the hard part was is as confusing it is for us our detectives and I go back to Deputy Callahan his name keeps coming up for us because he was the one that was like I'm going to keep figuring out I'm going to keep finding out who did this so it sounds like it was unusual that you learned about the suspect before you actually learned about the people who were missing yes okay yep absolutely that was the whole thing was that we found out that the suspect stated to his friends I may have shot somebody or I did and then we're trying to backtrack as to who may can you talk about any idea about what happened here if you know you know why this happened or yeah there was supposedly an argument they had lived together for a little bit there was an argument before as you've heard that somebody said that she had heard Rory said you know they pulled a gun on me last time so it has to do with them living situation we don't know exactly what it was but that's why we're still interviewing investigating and trying to find us all together and then could you say who who owned the property where the where they were found I don't know exactly who owns I believe Rory was the one who was living in primary residency but I don't know exactly who actually owns it do you think there's more people out there who who know more about what happened um I believe there's definitely people have information because it sounded like people were calling people are calling people it sound like a train of like but nobody called law enforcement so that's the frustration on our side is that we're asking anybody who got a phone call or know something please let us know can you tell us anything more about this family and more about their back around at all all I know is that unfortunately their living situations were never the best they were transient going from one place to another and so they had stayed at Roys for a while and so something happened argument came out of this one too all right W are you still searching for possibly more victims I mean you say you know you found human remains but you don't know if you found everybody who's no absolutely we're working with FDLE and we're sending a lot of equipment out there to go search so this is still an active oh this is this is going to be up for a while so all right I just want can you talk about the search and and kind of what's next go ahead you want to get that yes sir good afternoon everyone uh my name is Michael Rosa Rosa I'm a sergeant of the PCO Sheriff's Office homicide unit um to continue property we're we have a lot more investigative things to do looking at the property look at the home itself and it's approximately 10 acres there so a lot of ground to cover we have a lot of resources that we're going to use a lot of agencies are going to assist us as well including the medical examiner's office and we have a lot of Investigations still du to identify um who's there how many people are there that kind ofp type of things and we believe that our suspect Rory Atwood may have spoken to more people about this incident so is anybody out there that he spoke to please contact the sheriff's office will you guys be doing a lot of digging around the property what kind of tools are you using so I'm not going to get into the details of that sir but however we have a lot of equipment a lot of uh um highly trained Personnel to search this property all right we appreciate it thank you all very much thank you

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Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2024