Authorities ID New Mexico shooting victims as Chaplain, wife, 3 kids; 15-year-old son arrested

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A 15-year-old boy remained in custody Sunday night as detectives tried to piece together what led to the shooting of his parents and three of their children who were found dead in a New Mexico home.

The teenager was arrested on murder and other charges in connection with the shootings, which happened Saturday night at the home in a rural area southwest of downtown Albuquerque, said Lt.Sid Covington, a Bernalillo County sheriff's spokesman.

Authorities identified the victims late Sunday as Greg Griego, 51, his wife Sara Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2.

Word of the shootings travelled quickly through the law enforcement community, and officials began offering their condolences for Greg Griego, a spiritual leader known for his work with firefighters and the 13 years he spent as a volunteer chaplain at the county jail.

"Chaplin Griego was a dedicated professional that passionately served his fellow man and the firefighters of this community," Fire Chief James Breen said in a statement. "His calming spirit and gentle nature will be greatly missed."

Jail Chief Ramon Rustin said Griego was instrumental in the creation of the Metropolitan Detention Center's chaplain program and worked to get inmates integrated back into the community.

Griego also was a former member of the pastoral staff at Calvary, a Christian church in Albuquerque. As part of his work there, he oversaw the Straight Street program for jail inmates.

Authorities said each victim suffered more than one gunshot wound, and several guns were found at the home, one of which was a semi-automatic military-style rifle. Investigators were trying to determine who owned the guns.

"Right now we're to the meticulous points of processing the scene and collecting physical evidence, and this is a vast scene with a lot of physical evidence," Covington said.

Authorities declined to release details of any conversation that the 15-year-old had with investigators, but they said he was the Griegos' son. The sheriff's office said he is charged with two counts of murder and three counts of child abuse resulting in death.

The Associated Press is withholding the suspect's name during the initial investigation because he is a juvenile.

The sheriff's office said it wouldn't release any further information about the case until Sheriff Dan Houston holds a news conference Tuesday morning.

On Sunday, a police roadblock cut off public access to the narrow dirt road that leads to the home, which is surrounded by trees and an agricultural field on one side.

Neighbours said they saw the first police cars and ambulances arrive at the home Saturday night. The road was blocked and word of the shootings began to make its way through the neighbourhood.

Peter Gomez, a 54-year-old carpenter who lives about 200 yards from the home, said he had seen the family — a husband and wife and their four children — pass by many times but didn't know them personally.

"It's a horrible thing," Gomez said. "You see all this stuff that happens all over the country, the shootings in the schools and theatres, and then it happens right here. It's sad."

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SWAT standoff in Ga. uncovers dismembered body

This Jan. 12, 2013 handout photo provided by the Effingham County Sheriff's Office shows Kevin Lambert, charged with helping hide the body of Charlie Ray of Savannah, Ga., who police say was killed and dismembered by his brother-in-law, Chad Moretz. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the Effingham County Sheriff's Office)

This Jan. 12, 2013 handout photo provided by the Effingham County Sheriff's Office, shows Kimberly Moretz, charged with helping hide the body of Charlie Ray of Savannah, Ga., who police say was killed and dismembered by her husband, Chad Moretz. Police came to Chad Moretz's door to ask questions about a missing person and quickly found themselves in an armed standoff that ended in bloodshed. It was at least the fourth time in 18 months that Effingham County deputies had been dispatched to the house. Neighbors and relatives in southeast Georgia had previously accused Moretz of chasing his wife with a machete, threatening to kill a man with a handgun and of stabbing a dog with a pocket knife after it bit him. None of that could prepare investigators for what they found after the fatal standoff Jan. 11. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the Effingham County Sheriff's Office)

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Police went to Chad Moretz's home to ask him about a friend who had gone missing and quickly found themselves in a tense standoff when a relative answered the door and whispered: "He's got a rifle. He's going to kill y'all."

It was at least the fourth time in 18 months deputies had gone to seeMoretz. Neighbors and relatives had accused him of chasing his wife with a machete, threatening to kill a man with a handgun and stabbing a dog with a pocket knife. But none of that prepared investigators for what they found Jan. 11 after Moretz walked onto his front porch with an assault rifle and was killed by a SWAT team sniper.

Inside the home, amid filth and roaches and foul odors, police found the missing man's severed head and two hands hidden behind a kitchen cabinet inside a hole in the wall. The rest of the body, dismembered by a power saw and wrapped in bags, was discovered in a storage locker a half-hour away in neighboring South Carolina.

"I don't believe there was a motive," said David Ehsanipoor, an investigator for the Effingham County Sheriff's Office. "It wasn't a drug deal gone bad or a love triangle. Chad was just crazy."

Medical examiners confirmed the body belonged to Charlie Ray, 35. Ray had been a friend of Moretz, and his family had been searching for him since New Year's Eve.

An autopsy showed Ray was stabbed more than 40 times and had been dead more than a week before his remains were found. Moretz's wife told investigators her husband and Ray had been drinking and talking, then started arguing. She said Moretz grabbed a knife and started repeatedly stabbing Ray in their kitchen, Ehsanipoor said. Investigators suspect Ray's body was dismembered to make it easier to hide.

Ray's mother, Sandi Ray, said in a brief phone interview her son struggled with Tourette's syndrome.

Megan Edgerly, a friend of Ray's since childhood, said the debilitating brain disorder left him unable to drive or to hold down a job. She said he handled his tics — flailing arms and vocal outbursts — with grace and humor and treasured friends who accepted him in spite of it.

"Charlie never had a frown on his face," Edgerly said. "He was dealt a bad hand, but he always maintained a real positive attitude throughout all of it."

Moretz lived about 20 miles from where Ray lived with his parents. Moretz had moved there from southwest Florida, where violence devastated his own family a year and a half ago.

His father is scheduled to stand trial in April for the slaying of Moretz's mother in Naples, Fla. Police said Jeffrey Moretz, 55, followed his estranged wife, Christine Moretz, to a hospital and fatally shot her while she was visiting a friend on July 5, 2011. He then shot himself, but survived. Court records show Jeffrey Moretz filed for divorce in Collier County, Fla., two weeks before his wife's slaying.

One of Chad Moretz's neighbors, Ross Maruca, said Moretz didn't work and let his grass grow knee-high before Maruca decided to cut it himself. He said Moretz once showed up at his door and asked his wife for food and money. She gave him $20, he said, and Moretz later paid it back.

"You could look at him and tell something was wrong, just the look he had," Maruca said. "He looked like he was dazed all the time."

Deputies jailed Moretz on July 23, 2011 — not quite three weeks after his mother was killed — when his brother-in-law told police he'd received a frantic phone call from his sister saying Moretz was chasing her with a machete. Moretz's wife denied the story. Deputies charged Chad Moretz with trespassing when they found him hiding by a shed in a neighbor's yard.

Last May, neighbors called the sheriff's office when they said Moretz stabbed a dog that had gotten loose after he was bitten several times. In November, a friend told police Moretz asked for a ride, and when he refused, he pointed the gun at him and threatened to kill him and his family.

Deputies arrested Moretz on charges of making terroristic threats on Dec. 22. Jail records show he was released on $3,500 bond the same day.

Almost two weeks later, Maruca called police after seeing a TV news report that Charlie Ray was missing. Maruca knew Ray because he had lived at Moretz's house for two or three months the previous summer. The neighbor said he saw Ray at the house Jan. 2.

Police initially talked to Moretz's wife, who said Ray wasn't there. Days later, they decided to return to the suburban neighborhood of modest brick homes talk to Moretz himself. His brother-in-law, Kevin Lambert, met detectives at the door and whispered a warning.

"He said, 'Chad's in here, he's got a rifle, he's going to kill y'all,'" Ehsanipoor said.

Detectives dragged Lambert out of the house and retreated. Moretz, armed with an assault rifle, refused to come out or to let his wife leave. A hostage negotiator and a SWAT team were brought in.

After more than four hours, Moretz's wife ran outside through the front door and collapsed in the yard. Then Moretz emerged with an AR-15 rifle. Ehsanipoor said he was raising the gun when a sniper shot him.

Though investigators say they believe Moretz alone killed Ray, his wife and brother-in-law have been charged with helping conceal the death. Kimberly Moretz did not immediately return a message left at a phone number listed for her on a police report. Lambert did not have a listed phone number.

Investigators said it was one of the siblings who told authorities during the standoff that Ray's remains were hidden in a storage locker in nearby Jasper, S.C.

"Everybody's still in a state of shock," said Edgerly, Ray's longtime friend. "This isn't supposed to happen."

Al-Qaida flourishes in Sahara, emerges stronger

RABAT, Morocco (AP) — The Islamists are back as a force in Algeria.

The terrorist attack on an Algerian natural gas plant that left dozens of hostages and militants dead has demonstrated how a failing Algerian insurgency transformed itself into a regional threat, partly by exploiting the turmoil unleashed by the Arab Spring revolts.

Al-Qaida's branch in Algeria retreated into a Sahara no man's land between Mali, Algeria and Mauritania after it was largely defeated by the Algerian army in a 10-year war in the 1990s that claimed 200,000 lives. There it grew rich on smuggling and hostage-taking, gained new recruits and re-emerged stronger than ever, armed with looted high-tech weapons from Libya's 2011 civil war.

The audacious assault last Wednesday on Algeria's Ain Amenas gas complex by a multinational band of Islamists shows how long-simmering ethnic tensions in Mali, a civil war in Algeria and a revolution in Libya have combined to create a conflict spanning the deserts and savannahs of both North Africa and West Africa.

Algeria's Islamists were driven south into the desert by the military's brutal counterinsurgency tactics — a take-no-prisoners approach vividly on display in the resolution of the latest hostage crisis.

Factions of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb became rich in the lawless desert by smuggling guns, drugs and cigarettes and by kidnapping foreigners for ransom. Soon they became involved in the longstanding disputes of the desert Tuareg against the government in Mali, whom the tribesmen felt ignored or abused them.

One of their prominent leaders was Moktar Belmoktar, who made millions smuggling and kidnapping and went on to mastermind the attack on the Ain Amenas plant.

While taking up the Tuareg cause in northern Mali, these al-Qaida-allied groups decided to use their new-found strength to settle scores against old opponents like Algeria and the West.

"It seems that Moktar has tasked himself with the internationalization of the Mali conflict," saidWilliam Lawrence, the North African analyst for the International Crisis Group. "There's no question there is struggle between different groups in the Sahel and Sahara to have the upper hand in claiming the jihad mantle in the region."

Belmoktar fell out with the local al-Qaida franchise, the Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and formed his own northern Mali-based group in December called the Masked Brigade. He promised to attack those threatening the radical Islamist mini-state that was emerging in northern Mali.

"We threaten everyone who participated in and planned for the aggression against our Muslim people due to their implementation of Islamic Shariah law on our land," he announced in December on jihadi websites. "You will taste the heat of war in your countries and we will attack your interests."

With the money to be made in smuggling and kidnapping, all that was missing was easy access to heavy weaponry. That changed in 2011, and weapons came cascading across the borders when Libya fell apart and dictator Moammar Gadhafi's vast arsenals of oil-bought weapons were looted.

What began in January 2012 as a secular revolt of disaffected Tuaregs hoping to carve out a homeland in northern Mali was soon hijacked by al-Qaida and allied extremist groups.

With their new weapons, money and men, Algerian militants like Belmoktar could now do what had never been possible before — hit oil-rich Algeria's strategic energy infrastructure in the remote desert.

National borders were no impediment to these heavily armed fighters in four-wheel drive vehicles.

"AQIM and other militant Islamist groups' control over northern Mali and weak security along Libya's borders has provided the organization with greater operational freedom," noted Arun Pillai-Essex, an analyst with Maplecroft, a risk analysis group, who said AQIM has also been able to capture weapons from the Libyan and Malian armies.

The question now is where the Islamists will strike next.

Another attack on an Algerian energy installation is doubtful, analysts say. Already heavily guarded, security will no doubt be vastly increased and there are suggestions that the Ain Amenas attack only succeeded by having some type of inside help.

France and its Western allies fear AQIM could metastasize its terrorism into Europe if left unchecked.

In the last two weeks, France has been taking the fight to AQIM with punishing air strikes against the vast territory the group controls in northern Mali — raising questions about whether the group's fighters will have much time to think about new terror attacks.

"It is one-off episode, they got lucky," said Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa analyst of the Eurasia group. "I would think that the next attacks are going to target other countries. Mauritania could be an easy target, Morocco or any ECOWAS country or possibly in Libya."

The attack has also pushed France and Algeria — two nations with fraught relations due to bloody colonial ties — closer together over the need to combat these groups.

Prior to the attack, Algeria had long publicly opposed France's call for armed intervention to deal with the rise of extremist groups in northern Mali, citing the threat to regional stability and the chances of the crisis spilling over into its own desert regions.

Now, with the fight brought to Algeria's doorstep, al-Qaida-linked groups will be facing their old implacable enemy once more.

Unlike other Western nations, French officials refused to criticize Algeria for its strong-fisted handling of the Ain Amenas hostage ordeal.

"When a country is attacked in this way, and its own sovereignty is jeopardized, it decides on how to respond with its own army," French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Sunday on France-5 TV.

Throwing more military operations at al-Qaida, however, is not going to solve the underlying problem, warned Lawrence, the North Africa analyst.

"This is linked to the Libyan conflict, it's linked to the Mali conflict, it's linked to 50 years of struggle by the Tuareg, it's linked to 20 years of struggle in Algeria," he said.

Ultimately, he says, the countries of North and West Africa, not to mention Europe, will have to address the conditions that allowed al-Qaida to flourish in this impoverished region.

"A security response is at best a partial response. Until a robust political, humanitarian and economic effort is implemented, the security effort won't solve these problems," Lawrence said.

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Dead and missing from siege at Algerian gas plant

At least 81 people have been reported dead, including 32 Islamist militants, after a bloody, four-day hostage situation at Algeria's remote Ain Amenas natural gas plant. Nearly two dozen foreign workers remained unaccounted for late Sunday.

Here's the latest information from Algeria on the dead and missing:

THE DEAD:

— 32 Islamist militants, according to the Algerian government.

— 23 hostages, according to Algeria. Another former hostage from Romania died in hospital after he was flown out of the country. Confirmed dead so far include six from the Philippines, three from Britain, two from Romania and one each from the U.S. and France.

— 25 more bodies found Sunday, unclear yet whether they were hostages or militants, according to an Algerian security official.

THE MISSING HOSTAGES

— JAPAN: 10 Japanese working at the plant are unaccounted for, according to their employer JGC Corp.

— NORWAY: Five Norwegian employees of Statoil are still missing, the energy company said Sunday.

— BRITAIN: Three other Britons still missing and feared dead, the U.K. government said Sunday. Another British resident also feared dead.

— THE PHILIPPINES: Four Filipinos are still missing, a government spokesman said in Manila.

NM teen accused of killings of parents, 3 children

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A horrific scene awaited officers responding to an emergency call at a New Mexico home — five family members dead, all with multiple gunshot wounds. The victims were later identified as parents and their three young children and the suspected attacker as their 15-year-old son.

Investigators trying to piece together what led to the violence late Saturday night found several guns believed used in the shootings, including one assault rifle, Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston said Sunday. The owner of the weapons hasn't been determined.

"There's no other way to say it, except that we have a horrific crime scene down there that we are working on," said Houston.

Nehemiah Griego, 15, was arrested following the shootings at the residence in a rural area southwest of downtown Albuquerque, the sheriff's department said. He was charged with two counts of murder and three counts of child abuse resulting in death.

Authorities identified the victims as Greg Griego, 51, his wife Sara Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2.

"Right now we're to the meticulous points of processing the scene and collecting physical evidence, and this is a vast scene with a lot of physical evidence," Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department spokesman Lt. Sid Covington said Sunday.

Word of the shootings traveled quickly through the law enforcement community, and officials began offering their condolences for Greg Griego, a spiritual leader known for his work with firefighters and the 13 years he spent as a volunteer chaplain at the county jail.

"Chaplain Griego was a dedicated professional that passionately served his fellow man and the firefighters of this community," Fire Chief James Breen said in a statement. "His calming spirit and gentle nature will be greatly missed."

Jail Chief Ramon Rustin said Griego was instrumental in the creation of the Metropolitan Detention Center's chaplain program and worked to get inmates integrated back into the community.

Griego also was a former member of the pastoral staff at Calvary, a Christian church in Albuquerque. As part of his work there, he oversaw the Straight Street program for jail inmates.

On Sunday, a police roadblock cut off public access to the narrow dirt road that leads to the home, which is surrounded by trees and an agricultural field on one side.

Neighbors said they saw the first police cars and ambulances arrive at the home Saturday night. The road was blocked and word of the shootings began to make its way through the neighborhood.

Peter Gomez, a 54-year-old carpenter who lives about 200 yards from the home, said he had seen the family — a husband and wife and their four children — pass by many times but didn't know them personally.

"It's a horrible thing," Gomez said. "You see all this stuff that happens all over the country, the shootings in the schools and theaters, and then it happens right here. It's sad."

Authorities declined to release details of any conversation that the 15-year-old had with investigators, but they said he was the Griegos' son. The sheriff's office said he is charged with two counts of murder and three counts of child abuse resulting in death.

The sheriff's office said it wouldn't release any further information about the case until Sheriff Dan Houston holds a news conference Tuesday morning.

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