WASHINGTON — Two men were arrested Wednesday on murder charges for an execution-style shooting that left three people dead in a D.C. park nearly 25 years ago.
D.C. police announced the arrests for the deaths of Curtis Pixley, 29, of Northeast, Keith Simmons, 24, of Fort Washington, Maryland, and Samantha Gillard, 23, of Southeast, who were marched from a convenience store into Langdon Park where they were ordered to lay on the ground face down and were shot in the head. More than one gun was used and police found 13 shell casings at the scene, court documents said.
The three were found unconscious and suffering from gunshot wounds to the head in the middle of the morning on April 23, 1991. They were face down and had been abandoned overnight in the park near the corner of 18th and Franklin streets NE.
Police made multiple attempts to solve the gruesome killing in the intervening years interviewing new witnesses, re-interviewing witnesses and talking to suspects, according to court documents.
Investigators eventually learned of a potential witness and a cold case detective spoke with that person, providing police with new information and leads to follow, said Assistant Police Chief Peter Newsham.
“It wasn’t any specific forensic evidence,” Newsham said. “Following up with witnesses, they were able to identify a number of witnesses who led us to these suspects.”
As a result, Michael Green, 44, of D.C., and Benito Valdez, 45, of Arlington, Virginia, were arrested on charges of first-degree murder while armed.
According to an affidavit of probable cause for Valdez, Valdez told several witnesses that he had killed three people in Langdon Park over a “rock” of cocaine. Witnesses told police that Valdez and Green were known to sell drugs and controlled the sale of drugs out of the park in 1991.
A few days before he was killed, Pixley had stolen a car with an ounce of crack cocaine inside of it — drugs that were bought in the Brentwood area of the city, the court records said.
A witness told police that Valdez had been looking for Pixley because Pixley had stolen the car and that Valdez was going to “deal with him.”
Valdez was considered a possible suspect soon after the killings. And within a week of the shooting, both he and Green were arrested on gun charges. It was not clear whether the guns police found on them matched ballistic evidence from the killings nor if they were convicted of any charges stemming from the arrest.
In 1991, D.C. was amid the height of the crack epidemic. And the deaths of Pixley, Gillard and Simmons were among 482 homicides reported in D.C. that year — the deadliest year in the nation’s capital in the past thirty years, according to federal crime statistics.
“We hope this provides some hope to the other families who have lost loved ones and who have open cases,” Newsham said. “With these cold cases we do not stop investigating them. When people bring new information to our attention, we’ll follow every lead.”
