By Steve Huff
 |
| Duffy Home |
MESA, Ariz. (Crime Library, Feb 28, 2006) — The comfortable gated community of Barrington Estates in Mesa, Arizona, (AZ) was forever changed on the night of February 21, 2006. In the early morning hours shots rang out at 2208 S. Barrington. Callers to 911 Emergency Services also reported hearing screams.
The Mesa, AZ Police were remarkably quick in getting to the scene but because the situation was fraught with unknowns, for several hours before dawn that Tuesday, there was a standoff between Mesa authorities and the dark and seemingly silent home.
PICTRUE2
When the Mesa SWAT team finally sent in a robot to reconnoiter, they discovered the horrible truth five people lay dead inside the spacious Cape Cod rental home. All of them were dead from gunfire. Killed were Tammy Lovell, age 32, her daughter Cassandra Lovell, age 15, and her son Jacob, 10. Also among the deceased were Tammy's live-in boyfriend, Steven Duffy II, age 30, and his younger brother Shane Duffy, age 18 Cassandra Lovell's boyfriend.
Statistics indicate that multiple murders like these too often are domestic in nature. Police may expect to find the killer among the bodies in the residence, the weapon still in hand. Initially, that seemed to be the suspicion where these murders were concerned.
By February 23, 2006, autopsies were completed and the truth was out the Lovells and the Duffys had been murdered. The massacre that took place that Tuesday morning inside the usually safe confines of the Barrington Estates was not murder-suicide. It was murder, pure and simple. In spite of the clamor, the gunfire and the screams, the murders had been committed with speed and relative stealth, as well. The Mesa PD had arrived on the scene with such dispatch the shots may have still been echoing among the large and expensive homes lining S. Barrington. But by the time they arrived, the killer was apparently gone.
Day by day new details have since been released about the Lovells and the Duffys, the jobs held by the adults — Tammy, Steven, and Shane — while in Arizona, and the man who once employed them. When the autopsy results declaring all 5 deaths to be homicides were released, it was also revealed that Tammy and Steven had been acting as informants for another police department.
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