On October 15, Iraq War veteran Sgt. Jan Pietrzak of Riverside, California and his wife Quianna Jenkins-Pietrzak were found murdered execution style in their home.

Mrs. Jenkins-Pietzrak was also sexually assaulted.

The suspects, all currently in custody, are four black Marines – two of whom worked under Sgt. Pietrzak, a helicopter airframe pilot who worked at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego.

Why the couple was killed is not clear. The suspects initially said that robbery was the motive, but apparently money wasn’t all they wanted.

Police have charged Lance Cpl. Emrys John, 18, of Maryland, Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, of North Carolina, Private Kevin Cox, 20, of Tennessee, and Lance Cpl. Kesuan Sykes, 21, of California with murder and “rape with an instrument”.

The New York Post reports that John and Miller worked under Pietrzak, and it was Miller who “forced his way into the home by pointing a shotgun at Pietrzak” with the rest of the men presumably in tow.

I would imagine Pietrzak’s familiarity with two of the men may have had a hand in his opening a door to the home.

After entering the home, the men bound and gagged the couple.

Mrs. Jenkins-Pietrzak’s clothes were cut off and she was sexually assaulted with a foreign object. Afterwards the couple were both shot in the back of the head.

Jewelry including Mrs. Pietrzak’s wedding ring and several other items like Mr. Pietrzak’s digital camera were later found in the assailants homes.

Once apprehended, three of the men snitched on Emrys John as the one who fired the shots.

“John is the shooter,” Riverside County prosecutor Daniel Delimon told the New York Daily News. All four are “eligible for the most severe punishment.”

Rumors of this double murder being a hate crime are mounting.

In the same New York Post story, Sgt. Pietrzak’s mother Henryka Pietrzak-Varga was quoted as saying “I don’t know what happened. All I know is I lost my son, and I don’t think that happened because of a robbery.”

An unnamed “friend” of Pietrzak’s mother also told the New York Post that Pietrzak-Varga had mentioned in conversation that “racial bias could have been a motive”.

The Pietrzaks were not wealthy.

They, like many new homeowners of the past year, got a deal on a new home that had been foreclosed. The couple probably would have not been able to purchase the five bedroom home otherwise.

Quianna Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, worked for the Riverside County Public Health Department’s Black Infant Care Center. She was planning on going to medical school.

Sgt. Jan Pietrzak was a Polish immigrant raised in Bensonhurst. He joined the military after 911.

They were just married in August.

What a sad story. The wife’s rape adds a particularly heinous and vengeful aspect to the story…but I’m not so sure right now without more evidence that this murder has a racial element.

There certainly could be a racial motive, but since the two who respectively cleared the way into the home with a firearm and killed the couple both worked under Pietrzak, Pietrzak’s role as an authority figure may have also been a motive.

I am from a military family – a Marine family – and Marine sergeants can ride soldiers pretty hard, especially young ones like the suspects in this case.

But that’s why sergeants exist in the first place. Marines are many things, but undisciplined is not one of them.

Here’s a video on the story on Good Morning America.

In other interracial couple news, in what was definitely a racial incident, Pennsylvania Couple Finds Burnt Cross in Yard.