John Jefferson
Rory Atwood, left, is facing a murder charge after human remains were found on his Pasco County, Florida, property. They are believed to belong to a missing family of four: Phillip Mancini, right, and Rain Mancini and their children 6-year-old Karma Zilliot and 5-year-old Phillip Zilliot III, middle. (Pasco County Sheriff’s Office)
Florida deputies allegedly discovered human remains, including those believed to belong to two children, in a burn pit at a property of a man now charged with murder.
Rory Atwood, 25, is facing a first-degree murder charge after he allegedly admitted to friends that he killed the victims previously reported missing. The human remains have yet to be identified, but deputies believe they belong to Rain Mancini, 26, and Phillip Zilliot II, 25, and their children Karma Zilliot, 6 and Phillip Zilliot III, 5.
According to a probable cause arrest affidavit released Monday, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office shortly before 2:30 p.m. June 13 conducted a welfare check on the family after a woman told deputies her brother received a FaceTime call from Atwood that appeared to show the bodies of adults and kids. While deputies noticed a smoldering burn pit on Atwood’s 10-acre property in western Pasco County, they did not find anything suspicious during their search and Atwood denied any knowledge of the family’s whereabouts.
He reportedly said he had last seen Mancini and the Zilliots on June 12. Atwood said the family had been living with them for a couple of months but he evicted them on June 1 for failure to pay the rent.
Deputies got ahold of Mancini’s mother who said she didn’t know where her daughter was, last spoke to her on Wednesday and hadn’t heard from her since. The family was reported missing, deputies said.
Then on Friday, Pasco deputies received another call from one of Atwood’s friends who said Atwood admitted to killing Mancini and the Zilliots, the affidavit said. Deputies returned to the property with a cadaver dog. Detectives estimated the pit was 10 feet in diameter and had burned steel threads from tires, suggesting the fire gained intense heat, the affidavit said.
The dog sifted through the burn pit and pulled out what appeared to be “small skeletal remains,” according to the affidavit. Crime scene investigators also pulled out “long bone fragments,” along with two apparent human vertebrae, cops said. They also determined the porch area had been cleaned with chlorine.
Deputies believe the family was at Atwood’s home Wednesday night into Thursday morning. Atwood’s daughter and a friend of Mancini’s were there as well, Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said. The adults were drinking when an argument ensued, Nocco said.
“Those two poor little children,” Nocco said at a Saturday press conference. “We believe that they may be on the property deceased, but we do not know that definitively.”
Detectives also spoke to the mother of Atwood’s daughter who said she received a “panicked” call from him around 2:30 a.m. Thursday. He dropped the daughter off around 5:30 a.m. Atwood was “not acting like himself,” the girl’s mother reportedly told deputies.
In an interview with investigators, Atwood at first denied killing or burning Mancini, her husband and the kids. But Atwood changed his story and claimed that he killed Mancini and Zilliot in self-defense during a fight in which the victims pointed a gun and knife at him, the affidavit said. He allegedly said Zilliot started the fire and after killing him and Mancini he threw them in the already-burning pit. However, Atwood did not have any injuries that suggested he was in a fight, deputies noted.
As for the children, Atwood claimed their parents killed them. Eventually, he admitted all four family members were burned in his fire pit, police said.
Atwood is at the Pasco County Jail without bond. He’s expected to face more charges once the human remains are identified.
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