FDNY paramedic’s dad found chained, killed in Queens house fire with wife — as video shows mystery man entering home
By
Georgett Roberts and
NYPD releases footage of killer connected to double homicide in Queens
The elderly parents of an FDNY paramedic were terrorized for up to five hours and murdered before their Queens home was torched Monday — with police now looking for a career criminal suspected of the gruesome slayings.
The body of 77-year-old Frank Thomas Olton was found tied up in the basement of the Bellerose home, while his wife, Maureen Olton, 78, was stabbed multiple times on the first floor before the house was set on fire, police and sources said Tuesday.
Cops have now launched a manhunt for the suspected killer, 42-year-old Jamel McGriff, an ex-con on parole and registered sex offender with a long list of violent crimes.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said McGriff, who she described as “armed and dangerous,” was caught on surveillance video leaving the Bellerose home shortly after 3 p.m. Monday — almost five hours after he went inside.
Authorities were still investigating the horrors that unfolded inside during that time.
The suspect had earlier knocked on other doors in the neighborhood asking to charge his cell phone but was turned away before Frank Olton was seen on surveillance footage apparently allowing him in his backyard around 10:18 a.m., authorities said. The footage showed the owner apparently letting his killer in the rear door, according to cops.
When the maniac left hours later, he was carrying a paper bag and one dark color bag, cops said.
Firefighters were dispatched to the scene 14 minutes later, according to the officials.
Once the fire was under control, police and firefighters made a grisly discovery.
Frank Olton was found bound with a bungee cord in the basement and stabbed multiple times, while his wife’s body had been set on fire.
Their exact causes of death remained under investigation Tuesday.
The tragedy at the tidy Colonial-style house rattled the quiet, tree-lined neighborhood of two-story homes on the Nassau County border.
“I’m a little scared,” one neighbor told The Post. “We bought this house in this neighborhood thinking that this is gonna be one of those safe neighborhoods. We don’t have to worry, people leave their doors open.
“But after this incident, I’m like, ‘It’s anybody’s game now.”
The suspect, who was still on parole after being released from a 17-year state prison sentence in 2023, had been arresting for a sex attack of a worker at knifepoint inside a store in 2005 and other violent crimes.
He had a criminal history dating back 30 years, including multiple robberies.
The fiend had failed to register as a sex offender in November 2024 and he was wanted by the NYPD as a suspect in two recent robberies. Yet, he was not slapped with a parole violation, according to officials.
McGriff, who the police commissioner said was tied to the crime through facial recognition technology and his parole office was last seen on surveillance footage pawning two cell phones in the Bronx on Tuesday, according to the NYPD.
Meanwhile the couple’s son, an FDNY paramedic who was off duty at the time of the fire, was alerted to the blaze by his parents’ neighbors and rushed to the home, sources said.
The son works on a rescue truck in Manhattan and is a member of the department’s fife and drum squad, sources said.
Authorities were at the charred home sifting through debris and collecting evidence overnight Monday. Several of the home’s first-floor windows were blown out.
Neighbor Michelle Ruiz, a 40-year-old health care worker, said she was grocery shopping when the fire started. She saw one of the couple’s two sons at the scene, and said he appeared to be “devastated.”
She described the family as “nice people.” The slain mother had been having trouble walking in recent years and her husband would help her in and out of the car, she said.
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Ruiz couldn’t understand how something so violent could happen in their “quiet” and “nice neighborhood.”
“I grew up here, my kids are growing up here, so it’s scary,” she said. “If it could happen to them, then it could happen to us. In my 40 years of living here, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Ruiz said her elderly father and the male victim were buddies and would talk baseball. “Now my father has no one to talk to the Yankees about anymore.”
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods, Zoe Hussain and Patrick Reilly
