Have you ever heard the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished?” This happened, but times ten worse than it needed to be, to the loving and saintly couple Bud and Melanie Billings, after a group of armed men broke into their home and murdered them both execution style. It’s one of the worst true crime stories Florida has ever seen, so why did they do it?
It’s a savage crime that left investigators scratching their heads, and the general public shocked by the brutality of it all. Like many crimes, things went sideways and the assailants didn’t even get what they were looking for in the end.
Even worse, more than ten of the couple’s disabled foster children were in the house when the break-in happened. One of them witnessed their father get shot. A total of five men broke into the house, with one waiting outside to drive everyone away. When it was all over, Bud and Melanie lay dead, and eventually all the perpetrators involved were captured and given lengthy prison sentences.
No one came out ahead, and a bunch of special needs children lost their wealthy, loving parents. Let’s get to know them a little more.
Who were Bud and Melanie Billings?
Byrd “Bud” Billings was 66 years old when he passed and his wife, Melinda, was 43. He was an entrepreneur who even owned a strip club before settling in as a used car dealer, a job that made him very wealthy.
He divorced his second wife and married Melinda just just four months later. They lived in a very nice $700,000 home in Pensacola, Florida. Melanie loved country music and feeding the homeless. She had a good heart and that rubbed off on Bud, who had more of a checkered past.
They met at Bud’s strip club when he hired Melanie as a waitress. They got married in 1993, and both expressed a desire to have a lot of children. The couple both had two kids from previous marriages. At one point, 13 children lived in their home, but around the time of the murder, they lived with nine children, aged from 4 to 11, with various developmental issues and special needs.
One family friend said they were a “modern-life Brady Bunch.”
What happened on the night Bud and Melanie Billings were murdered?
Melanie’s adult child, Ashley Markham, made a call on July 9, 2009 to check up on her mom and her adopted siblings. It was around 7:30 p.m. and one of the children, Jacob, who was 10 at the time and had Down Syndrome, answered the phone.
He was in shock. He passed the phone to his autistic sister Ashley, and she relayed that her parents were simply laying on the floor. A distraught Ashley called a neighbor to go check on them, and sped over to the house. The neighbor discovered the bodies and called police. When Ashley got there, it was an active crime scene, with police officers everywhere. No one knew exactly what had happened.
Less than an hour earlier, Bud and Melanie were still alive. At around 7 p.m., a red van pulled up to the house and seven men dressed like ninjas rushed into the home from the front and back doors. They had been planning this heist for a month, and were told they were stealing from a drug dealer who kept millions in the house.
It was supposed to come off with military precision. It did not. The Billings had 16 cameras around the house, not for security, but to keep an eye on the children in case something went wrong. Those cameras would prove to be pivotal in the eventual identification of the robbers.
Bud was just in his living room watching TV when the assailants broke in. A surveillance camera caught that moment too. They broke the back door and the front door at the same time, rushed in, and zip-tied Bud.
The assailants carried rifles, and were dressed in all black clothes.
For some reason, Bud was shot in both legs, then dragged into the master bedroom – the one room in the house without cameras. One of the kids, aged around 6 or 7, stood and watched as the man shot his dad in the legs and then dragged him off.
The whole thing took about ten minutes. They were only in the house for four minutes, and in that time, both Melanie and Bud were murdered execution style.
Nine children were home when the burglars broke in. While none of them were physically harmed, the three that witnessed the break-in have had to cope with that mental trauma their whole lives.
So did the robbers make it out with millions? Well, they were on the hunt for a safe that supposedly contained incredible amounts of cash. There were actually two safes in the house. One safe contained $160,000 in cash with some antique jewelry to boot. Did they find that one? The eight person crew (a driver and a woman who helped plan the heist included) would’ve netted about $15k each.
Not really enough to justify what they ended up doing, but definitely better than nothing. Only they never found that safe. They found a different safe, this one full of children’s adoption documents, and some sentimental value.
Imagine planning a heist for months, botching it by killing two people, and then getting away with no money. That had to sting.
How did the Bud and Melanie Billings killers get caught?
The main thing investigators had to go on was the van. The men, even though they didn’t get away with any money, were in gloves and fairly cognizant of leaving clues. There was also a black boot mark on the door from when it was kicked in, but the van showed the most promise.
It showed up pretty clearly in the surveillance footage. The Escambia sheriff’s office talked to local news and sent out an alert for people to be on the lookout for a red van matching that description. Then they got a tip that someone saw behind a shed on someone’s property.
The call came in on July 11, two days after the murders. It was at the home of a man named Leonard Gonzalez, who initially said the van didn’t work. Investigators also found a shoe box for black combat boots similar to the boot mark they found.
When investigators told Leonard he was facing the death penalty, he spilled the beans. He told investigators about the six other men involved, including his son Patrick. He said it was all about cash and never about murder, but things went sideways.
Patrick denied everything but investigators found Walmart footage of Patrick buying black clothes and boots. That led them to more names: Wayne Coldiron, Donnie , and Gary Summer. Then Patrick broke. All left now were two more suspects: Rakeem Florence and Frederick Thornton.
Those two quickly turned on Patrick, saying he was the ringleader and trigger man, and that they were each offered about $3,000 to help. There was just one more piece: Where were the guns, and the safe?
Turns out they needed to talk to a realtor named Pamela Long Wiggins, who would hire Patrick as sort of an enforcer when she needed rent collected. She was captured on her yacht, purportedly trying to flee to Mexico.
Wiggins was the last arrest. She admitted to disposing of the weapons, and the safe was found on her Florida property, after she agreed to a plea deal. In fact, everyone agreed to plea deals except Patrick, who would go to trial, lose, and be sentenced to death. Leonard and Wiggins both died in prison. Patrick is still on death row.