www.ditl.org

By Wayne Drash
CNN

(CNN) -- Elizabeth McCutchen and a friend were walking to book club two weeks ago in quaint Farmville, Virginia, when they strolled by a home on First Avenue. "Something smells dead," her friend said.

They were thinking animal. A dog, a cat, something like that. They never imagined they were smelling the remains of massacred humans. It was Thursday, September 17. But another 24 hours would pass before police made the gruesome discovery.

Richard Samuel McCroskey III -- a 20-year-old rapper in the underground genre of "Horrorcore" who sang of chopping people into pieces -- has been arrested in connection with the slayings. The crime scene was so horrifying police would not even describe it, saying only that the victims died of blunt force trauma.

The victims were Mark Niederbrock, 50, the beloved pastor at Walker's Presbyterian Church; his 16-year-old daughter, Emma Niederbrock; Melanie Wells, Emma's 18-year-old friend from West Virginia; and Niederbrock's estranged wife, Debra Kelley, 53, a professor at Longwood University.

McCroskey has been charged only in the killing of Mark Niederbrock. Police and the prosecutor's office did not return repeated phone calls from CNN. But in late September, authorities said more charges are pending.

Emma was described as a fan of Horrorcore and had met McCroskey through their mutual affection for the little-known music genre. Police said she invited McCroskey to fly from his northern California home, stay with her in Virginia and then attend the Strictly for the Wicked Festival, a Horrorcore fest in Michigan featuring bands with names like Dismembered Fetus and Phrozen Body Boy.

Nobody saw what would come next.