The unfolding of a cruel crime in Farmville, and a strange one (2024)

Reed Williams

• VIDEO: Suspect arrested at airport

Mark Niederbrock was on the phone with his 70-year-old mother in Illinois when he got a call on the other line that would lead to his death.

It was Kathleen Wells, calling from West Virginia, and she couldn't get in touch with her daughter, Melanie, who was in Farmville visiting Mark's daughter, Emma.

Niederbrock said goodbye to his mother and told her he was going to his estranged wife's house to check on the two teenagers.

That telephone conversation the afternoon of Sept. 17 was the last time Jan Niederbrock spoke to her only child.

About 24 hours later, police found Mark Niederbrock's body and the bodies of Emma Niederbrock, 16; Wells, 18, of Inwood, W.Va.; and Emma's mother, Longwood University professor Debra S. Kelley. The victims were bludgeoned to death in Kelley's home, but authorities have not said exactly how or when they were killed, nor have they assigned a motive.

The killings and the arrest of Emma Niederbrock's boyfriend, Richard Samuel Alden McCroskey III, 20, of Castro Valley, Calif. -- an aspiring rapper with songs about murder, rotting bodies and voices in his head -- have shaken the Farmville community of 7,300. Residents are alarmed not only at the cruelty of the crime but also its utter strangeness.

As new details emerged last week about McCroskey's macabre music interests and bizarre movements after the killings, the community is bracing itself, knowing the story is likely to become even more disturbing.

. . .

Sam McCroskey lived with his father and 21-year-old sister, Sarah, at their home in Castro Valley.

He always was an average student, and he had friends, according to his mother, Chevelle McCroskey, who separated from her husband a few months ago. He took karate lessons, enjoyed jogging and watching horror movies with his family, and he never got a detention in school, she said.

Chevelle McCroskey was so protective of her son that she worked as a teacher's aide from his kindergarten through third-grade years. In 10th grade, he started an independent study program, working mostly at home, and earned a GED diploma.

Sam McCroskey's father works construction and plays guitar in a band called S&M, and his sister, a drummer, used to play for a heavy-metal band.

McCroskey, whose stage name is Syko Sam, spent a lot of time recording music in his room, which was decorated with a hockey mask like the one worn by the Jason character in the "Friday the 13th" movies.

In one of his songs, McCroskey raps about murdering people, then stealing a car and frantically trying to discard the bodies. In another, he raps about voices urging him on in a murder rampage and refers to the smell of rotting human remains.

McCroskey started talking with Emma Niederbrock, a pretty girl with bright pink hair, about a year ago. The two talked by phone almost daily.

They arranged to meet for the first time in early September.

"I cant waiiiit to see you baby its like 6:17 AM, and ive been up since 4ish filled with uber amounts of excitement I can't wait. i leave to pick you up in five hours. gahh . . . ," Emma wrote on his MySpace page. "My insides feel all squishy. I love you sooo SO much baby; forever and for always."

Emma and her mother picked him up at the airport, and McCroskey later said he was amazed by Emma's smile.

It is not clear how Emma and McCroskey spent the few days between his arrival Sept. 7 and Sept. 10, when they left Farmville for Southgate, Mich., for the Strictly for the Wicked Festival on Sept. 12. Debra Kelley and Mark Niederbrock drove their daughter, McCroskey and Melanie Wells.

When Mark Niederbrock first met McCroskey, he thought he was a nice young man, said Marvin Glover of Walker's Presbyterian Church in Appomattox County, where Niederbrock was pastor. Niederbrock had shared his worries about his daughter's music with his congregation, but he could not bring himself to forbid it.

"It was something she wanted to do," Glover said, "and Mark loved his daughter."

In Michigan, they stayed at a motel -- Kelley, Wells and Emma Niederbrock in one room, Mark Niederbrock in his own room, and McCroskey in a third room.

There, they met up with friends Andres Shrim, a horrorcore rapper who goes by the name SickTanicK, and his girlfriend, a fellow performer he identified only as Razakel.

The night before the festival, McCroskey, Wells and Emma Niederbrock hung out with Shrim and Razakel. Razakel braided Wells' hair. McCroskey was quiet but got along with everyone.

Shrim remembers having a soda with McCroskey on the motel balcony, and he ribbed McCroskey about the hickies on his neck. "He just kind of giggled," Shrim said.

While Emma seemed excited to meet McCroskey in person just days before, the couple apparently had a falling out during his visit, possibly after McCroskey found a text message on her phone from another man and confronted her.

Shrim said McCroskey and Emma weren't clingy at the music festival, but he was unaware of a disagreement.

"As far as I had seen, everything was cool," Shrim said. "You didn't see themselves around each other as you would think if they were together. If there was some sort of disagreement, they kept it private."

Damian "Insane D" Pavlovich, who also performed at the festival, said McCroskey was oddly quiet and gave him a bad vibe. "He was videotaping the show, but he was kind of in his own corner," he said.

Several YouTube videos posted by Shrim show Wells and Emma dancing and singing near the stage as Shrim and Razakel performed. Pavlovich said he later saw the girls without McCroskey at an after-party in a motel room.

"They seemed to be having probably the best time of their life," Pavlovich recalled. "In a world of pain and anger that they go through, it was probably a time of bliss for them."

. . .

The two parents and the three young horrorcore fans returned to Farmville on Sunday, Sept. 13.

On MySpace, Wells wrote that the festival was great, and that she planned to return to West Virginia on Wednesday. Shrim said he believes his girlfriend last talked to Wells and Emma Niederbrock that Tuesday.

But Wells didn't make it home.

Worried, her mother called Mark Niederbrock on Thursday about 2 p.m. and also called Farmville police. A town officer went to the Kelley home at her request just before midnight, and McCroskey answered the door calmly and said Wells was at the movies.

The officer left.

McCroskey also spoke by phone with Wells' mother and told her the same thing.

After the officer's visit, McCroskey called police and said he heard noises in the basem*nt and asked police to come check it. All four victims were dead by then, police say, and it's not clear why McCroskey called police back to the house.

Two officers arrived and entered a different part of the house from where the bodies later were discovered. They checked the basem*nt, which was covered in animal feces, and then left. Authorities later found two dogs and two cats inside the house.

"They're trying to beat themselves up thinking that they could have done something, but it just wasn't anything out of the ordinary," Farmville police Sgt. Andy Ellington said. "There was no reason to think that he didn't belong there."

About 4 a.m., McCroskey got Mark Niederbrock's car stuck while trying to turn around on a narrow, remote stretch of Poor House Road in Prince Edward County. A deputy ticketed him for driving without a license. The car had not been reported stolen.

Tow-truck driver Elton Napier moved the car and gave McCroskey a ride to a nearby Sheetz convenience store. He noticed that McCroskey smelled like a dead animal and said it made him sick even with the windows down in the wrecker.

"I told one of the deputies, 'You ought to take him down and give him a bath,'" Napier recalled.

He also asked McCroskey about his neck, which appeared to be covered with hickies. McCroskey said he got them from his girlfriend.

At 6 a.m., waiter Cody Scott arrived for his shift at the 24-hour Huddle House restaurant about a quarter-mile from Sheetz. He saw McCroskey sitting at the counter and drinking a No Fear energy drink.

McCroskey ordered a BBQ sandwich and put mustard on it, which Scott found odd. He and Scott talked off and on for a couple of hours -- McCroskey said he was a rapper from California and told Scott how to find his music on MySpace.

Scott, who also is from California, asked McCroskey what he was doing in Farmville. "I had to take care of some business," McCroskey replied.

Scott noticed that McCroskey had bags under his eyes and told him he looked exhausted. McCroskey said he hadn't slept in days. Scott asked him why, but he only shrugged and kept eating.

. . .

Charlottesville cab driver Curtis Gibson pulled up to the Huddle House about 8:20 a.m. and tried calling the number McCroskey had left with the dispatcher. It went straight to voice mail, a girl's voice.

Gibson walked inside and asked if someone had ordered a cab. McCroskey stood. After they got into his minivan, McCroskey said he hadn't been able to find a taxi in Farmville and Gibson was the closest he could find.

When Gibson first saw McCroskey, he thought he looked like a punk kid. But he changed his mind during the roughly hourlong drive.

"He looked younger than what he is, and I thought he acted a whole lot older," Gibson said.

McCroskey smelled horrible. Gibson never had smelled anything like it. He cracked two windows in the back, where McCroskey was sitting, and turned up the air conditioning, adjusting the vents to blow to the back.

McCroskey spoke passionately about his interest in underground music.

He said he met a girl online and had come to Farmville to see her for the first time. He said her parents took them to a show in Michigan.

McCroskey's voice remained steady when he mentioned that he found a text message on Emma's phone from a man who was at the festival. He said he had thought she and the man were just friends, but the message said he loved her and wanted to be with her.

McCroskey told Gibson that his girlfriend got angry and accused him of invading her privacy after he confronted her about the text. He didn't want to argue, so he waited until she was asleep early that morning or the night before and then left the Farmville house to head back to the airport and home to California.

He shouldn't have invaded her privacy, he told Gibson.

Gibson asked him if he had a phone. He said he had one, but the battery was dead and he had left a charger and some other things at his girlfriend's home. He said he would try to sweet-talk her into sending them to him in California.

On the way to the airport, a Chesterfield County police officer stopped Gibson's minivan about 9 a.m. for driving 52 mph in a 35-mph zone.

When the officer took Gibson's driver's license and returned to his motorcycle to write a speeding ticket, McCroskey asked Gibson if he had any outstanding warrants. Gibson said no and asked if McCroskey did. McCroskey grinned and said he didn't have a record.

He got out and smoked a cigarette.

They stopped at a cash machine so McCroskey could pay for the ride. He gave Gibson $130 when they got to the airport about 9:30 a.m.

McCroskey had a flight to California set for two days later, Sunday. He tried to change it to an earlier day but didn't have the $150 fee to rebook it. He only had about $50.

Police say he hung around the airport Friday overnight, waiting for the flight.

On Saturday morning, airport police took him into custody after they recognized him from a wanted poster. Surveillance video from the airport shows McCroskey presenting an ID to the officers, then casually walking away with them.

. . .

By Friday morning, Sept. 18, Melanie Wells' mother still hadn't heard from her daughter, so she called Melanie's friend Razakel.

Razakel and Shrim started making calls, and Shrim said he spoke to a friend of McCroskey. That friend had received a disturbing call Friday from McCroskey in which McCroskey said he "killed everyone," Shrim said.

Later Friday, after Wells' mother asked Farmville police to check Kelley's house again, officers found four bodies inside. Within hours, Shrim called Farmville police with information on McCroskey, and police named him as their suspect.

McCroskey is charged with first-degree murder of Mark Niederbrock, but authorities say more homicide charges are likely. He is being held at Piedmont Regional Jail with a preliminary hearing scheduled Jan. 11.

He's not on suicide watch but is segregated from other prisoners because his case is high-profile, jail Superintendent Ernest Tony said.

McCroskey rarely speaks, except when his attorney visits. He spends most of his time asleep.