(UnitedVoice.com) – The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office in Florida announced it was searching for a family of four on June 14. The next day, law enforcement arrested the man who lived with the family. That man is now claiming the parents killed their own children.
According to authorities, 26-year-old Rain Mancini’s mom reported her missing after her daughter stopped responding to daily messages. Rain’s partner, 25-year-old Phillip Zilliot II, and their two children, 5-year-old Phillip Zilliot III and 6-year-old Karma Zilliot, were also missing. Investigators with the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department went to the family’s home in Hudson and spoke to their landlord, 25-year-old Rory Atwood.
The landlord, who lived in the home with the family, told deputies that he had no idea where the family was. Atwood was a friend of the couple since high school and had let them move in with him in May. While investigators were at his home, they noticed a burn pit in his yard was smoldering.
On June 15, a friend of Atwood contacted the sheriff’s department. He claimed Atwood called him the night before and said he’d killed his roommates and their kids. Investigators went back to the home but brought cadaver dogs the second time around.
The dogs alerted near the fire pit, and police found soft tissue, “small skeletal remains,” and two human vertebrae. Atwood told officers that Phillip and Rain arrived at his home the night of the murder with knives. He claimed that the three of them struggled over a gun and knife. He accused Rain of using a knife to “poke” his 4-year-old daughter in the throat and said he snapped.
Atwood told the investigators that Rain and Phillip were shot multiple times in the process. The suspect didn’t tell police where the couple’s children were during the fight but said he thought they killed their own kids.
Investigators haven’t identified the remains found in the fire pit. Atwood is in jail on first-degree murder charges.
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