Man blames girlfriend's threesome for murder 1
Grandpa randomly punches kids at Walmart 2
Inmate seduces 5 female prison workers 3
Sunday, Sep. 27 2009 @ 5:21PM
Richard-McCroskey.jpg
It seems rapper Syko Sam took his alter ego too seriously
​UPDATE: Could jealousy have sparked Richard McCroskey to slaughter four people? See update after the jump...

Police in Farmville, Virginia believe Richard Alden Samuel McCroskey III may have taken his fantasy life as a horrorcore rapper into the real world. He's charged with murdering four people at the home of Professor Debra S. Kelley, who teaches sociology and criminal justice at Longwood University in Virginia.

Police haven't named the dead, nor have they released any details on how they were killed. But they do seem fairly certain McCroskey's their man. He was arrested Saturday night at a Richmond airport, where he was trying to catch a flight back to his home in Castro Valley, California. If he was feeling any remorse or anxiety about the murders, he wasn't showing it. Officers found him asleep in the baggage claim...

Richard-McCroskey-devilhorns.jpg
McCroskey liked to rap about mutilation and murder
​It seems McCroskey's private fantasies as a horrorcore rapper got out of hand. On his MySpace page, where he goes by the stage name Syko Sam, you can hear him rapping about killing, cannibalism, and the other requisite ghoulishness of the genre. And if you ignore the moron lyrics and the fake Satan voice, the music's not half bad.

"You're not the first, just to let you know. I've killed many people and I kill them real slow. It's the best feeling, watching their last breath. Stabbing and stabbing till there's nothing left," he sings in "My Dark Side."

Yet McCroskey was already letting his hobby out in perverse ways before the murders. On his personal MySpace page, he's posted videos and pictures of him desecrating a Marine's grave with his fellow rappers, turning a cross and an American flag upside down.

On his Syko Sam page, he introduces himself by saying "I hate everything and I hate everyone." But he yearns for more commercial attention in describing himself:

"Syko Sam is a new musican in the underground and only been rapping for a few months now. As a new artist I feel that I already have some talent in this scene but will only get better as time will do its job. Syko Sam has been a fan of the Horrorcore/Wicked Shit genre since 1999 so therefor as a huge fan of the music I wanted to contribute to the genre to give to those fans of the genre as well as making it for myself to explore my creative side, thus Syko Sam being born."

See grave video below:


UPDATE I: The Rev. Mark Niederbrock, a pastor at Walker's Presbyterian Church, has been tentatively identified among the dead.

McCroskey has been charged with stealing the car of Niederbrock, who was Professor Kelley's former husband or mate. They were separated at the time of the murders, and speculation says the other people in the home were Kelley, the couple's daughter Emma, and possibly a friend who was visiting Emma. Yet the Farmville police won't be releasing IDs until Monday, after the state medical examiner's office announces its findings.

Police also haven't released the manner of death for the victims.

Detectives first learned of a problem when the friend's West Virginia mom called police, saying it had been days since she heard from her daughter, a teenager who was staying at Kelley's house. A man believed to be McCroskey answered the door and told cops the girls had gone to the movies. When the woman called again the next day, police returned to the home. That's when they found the bodies.

McCroskey was reportedly a friend of Emma's and they both shared a fondness for horrorcore.

UPDATE II: Prior to Richard McCroskey's arrival at the Virginia home of Professor Kelley, her daughter Emma was offering romantic overtures on McCCroskey's MySpace page.

"You are my one and only everything," she wrote days before his visit. The page has since been taken down.

It seems McCroskey was flying to Virginia to meet Emma and her best friend, who hasn't been named. Emma's parents then drove the three to the Strictly for the Wicked horrorcore festival in Michigan on September 12. Why a preacher would be taking his daughter to a celebration of death remains to be seen. But reporters say that when asked why he slaughtered four people in the Kelley home, McCroskey responded that "Jesus told me to do it."

Melanie-Wells.jpg
Emma Niederbrock and Melanie Wells
​UPDATE III: The San Francisco Chronicle has tentatively identified the four people slain in Virginia.


They are pastor Mark Niederbrock, his wife Debra Kelley, their daughter Emma Niederbrock, and her best friend Melanie Wells.

After killing the family, McCroskey is accused of stealing the reverend's car. But he got into an accident at 4 a.m. Friday morning, and the vehicle had to be towed. At the time, police hadn't found the bodies, nor had the car been reported stolen.

But it's pretty clear all the kids involved had pretty depraved views of the world. McCroskey's sister said her brother was insecure and withdrawn, a high school drop out who'd been picked on and largely stayed in his room.

He'd met Emma at a horrorcore concert in Southern California, and the two engaged in lengthy teen love conversations over the phone and internet. In the days before McCroskey arrived in Virginia, Emma posted a note on his MySpace page expressing her excitement: "Babyyy you leave TONIGHT! My time with you is going to be the absolute best everrrr. I love you."

While Emma and McCroskey played lovers of darkness, Melanie Wells had an equally twisted sense of the world. On her MySpace page, she goes by the name Ms. Free Abortions, and and says she's into Green Day and LaVeyan Satanism.

The latter plays out in her poetry, which can be described as angry, bad, and ostentatiously violent. Get a load of this crap:

Remember when we fucked you said you'd always be mine
Now I've come to realize you were full of nothin but lies
Sometimes I wanna slit your fucking throat
Shove my dirty tampon in your mouth and watch you fucking choke
I'll put you back in your place I'll put a gun to your face
I'll kill your fucking whore
You'll be my beautiful disgrace I'll give you a kiss
While I sever your dick
After all you could never do much with it
Go ahead, call me fucking sick
All you ever did was put me through shit
As this blade goes deeper in it's place
I'll tell you, "I love you, you were my biggest mistake."

UPDATE IV: Farmsville police have officially identified the dead, and the names are who we suspected.

They are pastor Mark Niederbrock, his wife Debra Kelley, 53, their daughter Emma Niederbrock, 16, and her best friend Melanie Wells, 18. Police say all four were bludgeoned to death, bot won't reveal if they suffered further injuries.

And we're still awaiting a motive. Though detectives say there's mountains of evidence in the home, McCroskey isn't talking. It isn't clear why he'd want to kill Emma, who'd been gushing love notes to him prior to his visit. And it's especially unclear why a pastor and a professor would let their 16-year-old daughter date a 20-year-old old, particularly one with a fondness for the devil who liked to write songs about murder and maiming.

UPDATE V: Did jealousy spark McCroskey's rampage?

Emma-Niederbrock.jpg
Emma got a text from another man she met at the festival
​It makes a plausible theory if your hear the story of Curtis Gibson. He's the taxi driver who hauled McCroskey to the Richmond airport. McCroskey told the cabbie that his girlfriend became angry when he confronted her over an email she received from another horrorcore fan. Emma apparently met the man at the Michigan festival they attended. The man later sent her a text that was more than platonic.

Emma thought McCroskey was invading her privacy, he told the cabbie. But in McCroskey's version, he claims he didn't want to get into it, so he waited till she went to sleep, then left the house.

We know in retrospect that's not true. So let's look at it in a different way:

McCroskey was a loner who was picked on and turned to horrorcore as a way of building an identity that seemed cool and edgy. It's a time-honored tradition among this personality type going back to goth. Don't fit in normally? Turn to yourself into a playground prince of darkness. While not particularly cool, it at least provides a peer group and a sense of being slightly bad-ass -- or at least unique -- in your own mind.

Then add his inexperience with women. Loners and guys who get picked on don't have a lot of luck with the ladies. Exhibit A: Here's a 20-year-old man with a 16-year-old girlfriend who lives on the other side of the country. He's obviously grabbing for anything that will grab back. And when you're that desperate, there's a tendency to be jealous and suffocating, because you fear it's never gonna come along again.

So you can imagine someone this insecure addressing a perceived threat, only have his more mature girlfriend bust his balls for acting possessive. And given his fetish for death, perhaps this was enough for him to impulsively act out on his fantasies.