'Horrorcore' killing suspect: Quiet, picked on
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, September 21, 2009
(09-21) 14:43 PDT CASTRO VALLEY -- Although he was immersed in a music scene driven by murderous images, the Castro Valley rapper suspected of killing his girlfriend and three others in a Virginia town was a quiet, insecure young man who had no criminal record and didn't seem capable of such violence, his sister said today.
She said Richard "Sammy" McCroskey III, a 20-year-old high school dropout, had been picked on as a boy and spent much of his time in his bedroom.
There, he designed Web sites, recorded "horrorcore" songs that celebrated macabre killings, and chatted online with other fans of the morbid genre, said Sarah McCroskey, 21, who lives with her brother and their father in a modest Castro Valley home.
Richard McCroskey also spent hour after hour on the phone with his teenage girlfriend, whom he met several months ago at a horrorcore concert, his sister said.
She had no idea why her brother may have killed his girlfriend and the other victims, who are believed to include the girl's parents and best friend.
"He wouldn't kill a spider if I asked him to," Sarah McCroskey said. "My brother was always a quiet, nice kid, and he got along with everybody. It's scary - you think you know someone."
She spoke after police raided her home early this morning, hauling away computers and other items.
In Farmville, Va., her brother made his first court appearance to hear charges of murder, grand larceny, robbery and driving without a license.
Appearing on a video feed from jail, McCroskey was given a Jan. 11 preliminary hearing date and assigned an attorney, said Selena Eppes, a deputy court clerk in Prince Edward County.
Police in Farmville, a town of 7,200 located 50 miles southwest of Richmond, said they believe McCroskey flew into Virginia on Sept. 6 and attended a horrorcore festival with his girlfriend, Emma Niederbrock, and others on Sept. 12 in Michigan.
Then, sometime last week, he allegedly killed the girl and three others in her home.
Police said none of the victims had been positively identified, pending autopsies that are also expected to reveal causes of death. But investigators believe the victims include Niederbrock as well as her father, Mark Niederbrock, a pastor at a Presbyterian church in the area.
Friends have said the other two victims are believed to be Emma Niederbrock's mother, Debra Kelley, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice studies at Longwood University in Farmville, and the girl's best friend, Melanie Wells, 18, who had been visiting from West Virginia.
The bodies were found Friday, apparently a few days after the killings. Wells made her last entry on her MySpace page Sept. 13, saying she would be back home three days later.
According to police, McCroskey stole the pastor's car Friday morning but disabled it in a minor collision outside Farmville. Prince Edward County sheriff's deputies reported ticketing McCroskey for driving without a license about 4 a.m. and towing the car, which had not been reported stolen.
McCroskey then got rides to a convenience store and finally Richmond International Airport, police said. He was arrested there Saturday, a day before a scheduled flight home.
Sarah McCroskey said she saw an interview after her brother's arrest in which he told a television reporter, "Jesus told me to do it." But she said it wasn't a sign of a psychotic break.
"He's just a complete sarcastic a-," she said. "That's just his sense of humor."
She said her brother grew up in Hayward and dropped out of Tennyson High School in his sophomore or junior year. In school, she said, he was "always the kid that got picked on. People always played on his insecurities."
In a family of musicians, Sarah McCroskey said, her brother became a horrorcore devotee and then, recently, a rapper nicknamed "Syko Sam" who combined death-themed lyrics with beats he created on his computer. He met Emma Niederbrock at a concert in Southern California, she said.
On Richard McCroskey's MySpace page, the girl - who went by the nickname "Ragdoll" - sent him a stream of affectionate messages in recent weeks, counting down the days until his visit.
"Babyyy you leave TONIGHT!" she wrote Sept. 5. "My time with you is going to be the absolute best everrrr. I love you."
"They were really, really lovey-dovey," said Sarah McCroskey, who said her brother had saved money for months to pay for the trip. "I've never seen him that excited."
Last Tuesday and Thursday, she said, her brother left her messages saying he was calling to check in.
"He said, 'I love you,' " she said. "In this family we swear and burp - that was just really weird that he said that."
She said she doesn't believe her brother had been influenced to kill by the music he listened to or wrote.
"In horrorcore they sing about stuff that's unimaginable," she said. "I play 'Grand Theft Auto,' but I'm not going to have sex with a hooker and take her money."
She said, however, that her brother had been under the strain of their parents' recent separation. A few weeks ago, she said, he talked about joining the Army.
"He's been keeping stuff in. Something must have provoked him to snap," she said.
"I'm really shocked he could actually do something like this. All I want to know is, what was going through his head? I feel like I failed as his big sister. He had a lot of potential, he was smart and he was going places."
E-mail Demian Bulwa at
dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.
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