Police Commissioner: Evidence Suggests Both Victims of Double Murder Were Killed Inside the House
The Ladyville community was stunned on Thursday afternoon when reports of a double murder began to surface in the village. Indeed, a man and a woman were found dead inside the woman’s residence that she shared with her common-law-husband, who is the police department’s suspect in the pair of homicides. The woman, fifty-year-old Desiree Gonzalez Rowland and her brother-in-law, twenty-five-year-old George Encalada were found dead inside the house she shared with Encalada’s older sibling, thirty-nine-year-old Miguel Encalada. Rowland’s sister, Cindy Rowland, told News Five that she felt the scene was staged to look as if the two were romantically involved. She said that from her observations, George Encalada was killed outside the house and was dragged back inside. But today, Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams told us that Rowland’s observations are not consistent with what the evidence is showing.
Chester Williams
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
“A crime scene tells a number of stories and as senior investigators experienced investigators, we can go on crime scene and based on what we observe, we can tell basically what may have transpired. And, having read what the sister posted on social media and our discovery of the scene, it is inconsistent. Certainly from what we believe, we believe that both persons were shot – one was shot, which is the brother was shot in the bedroom as the expended shell was found in the bedroom, on the bed, near the bed. The bed also has blood on it, which would indicate that he was shot on the bed. Having been shot on the bed, he may have run out of the room and run outside of the house, and he was pursued and was dragged back into the house by the brother. The female, we believe that she was hit with a blunt object to the face, and that was what caused her death. She was not shot. There was one expended shell found in the house, which indicates one shot was fired, and that one shot is on the brother. So we don’t believe that more than one shot was fired.”
Marion Ali
“That was the cause of his death?”
Chester Williams
“And we believe that maybe the cause of death. It is yet to be confirmed by the post mortem when that is done. So there are several things we’re looking at. We saw that there were surveillance cameras in the place, but we later found out that they were not working. But again, we can also be guided tremendously by the statement or the comments given by two brothers of the accused who visited the house prior to police getting there. And, apparently when they visited on separate occasions, the accused brother told them certain things as to what may have transpired between him and the duo. And so we are relying heavily on what those two persons have to say. It is more consistent with what we find on the crime scene, and let me say that we believe that those persons were killed between two and three a.m., in the morning or a little after three, because when the police got there in the afternoon rigor mortis was already setting in, which would have indicated that they would have been killed several hours prior. So we are pursuing investigation. When police got there, the accused was there sitting by the bodies and he directed the police to where the gun was that he used, which is a firearm licensed to him, and the police retrieved that weapon as well. So there are a number of things that we will be doing, including getting search warrants from the courts to be able to access the forms of the victims as well as the accused to see if there was any prior communications or dispute between them that may have led to this particular incident.”
Marion Ali
“But from your knowledge, was George Encalada really lured from his house at that hour in the morning, or was, as the sister…”
Chester Williams
“They are brothers. I don’t know how he got there, certainly the investigation is going to reveal that.”
