"Crazy" Peeping Tom Killed Two Mother-Daughter Pairs in Maryland, Took Videos of People Undressing
A group of men were behind dozens of robberies in Prince George’s County, Maryland. One of them began murdering pairs of mothers and daughters.
On January 26, 2009, 16-year-old Karissa Lofton called 911 from her home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, about 20 miles southeast of Washington D.C. In a chilling recording of the teen speaking to dispatchers, played in "The Unusual Suspect" episode of Dateline: The Smoking Gun, she said someone had shot her and her mother, 45-year-old nurse Karen Lofton.
“Ma’am, I’ve been shot. Me and my mother have been shot,” Karissa calmly stated. “I’m bleeding to death.”
By the time authorities responded to the scene, the mother and daughter had died in the execution-style murders.
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The murders of Karen and Karissa Lofton
Bernie Nelson and Tony Schartner, who were detectives with the Prince George's County Police Department at the time, were on the case.
Initially, there were few clues as to what happened to the Loftons, and with nothing missing from the home, the killings didn’t appear to be linked to a string of robberies that had recently plagued the neighborhood. Six spent shell cases belonging to a Glock 17 handgun were found at the home, but there wasn’t anything to indicate why someone would want to kill the single mom and her daughter.
Investigators hoped a canvass of the area could help.
“We did find out that, just two doors down across the street, someone had seen a blue vehicle parked on the right side of the road,” Nelson told Dateline’s Dennis Murphy while standing outside the home where the Loftons were killed.
Loved ones, including Karissa’s father, Kirkland Lofton of Atlanta, Georgia, were heartbroken. Karissa’s older brother and Karen’s son, Kion Lofton — who was 20 at the time and lived in the house where his sister and mom were killed — was asleep at his fiancée’s residence when the double-homicide took place.
He raced home after hearing what had happened. But soon, he became a person of interest in the case, he told Dateline: The Smoking Gun.
“I was upset, like, ‘You’re not gonna state it’s me, I didn’t have anything to do with it,’” Kion said on the show. “’You can do whatever you need to do. It’s not gonna be me.’”
Police questioned Kion, but his alibi checked out.
Delores and Ebony DeWitt's burned bodies are found
On March 16, 2009 — about seven weeks after the Lofton murders — a woman called police to report that she came home to find her Nissan Maxima missing from the carport where it was parked. As heard in audio obtained by Dateline, the caller then saw someone speeding by with her Maxima while she was still on the line.
“That’s my car,” the woman told dispatchers. “OK, it just zoomed past me... Wow.”
Later, authorities found the stolen car engulfed in flames in the driveway of a vacant home just two blocks from where the Loftons were killed. Inside the trunk were the burned bodies of two females, later identified as Delores DeWitt, 42, and her 19-year-old daughter, Ebony DeWitt.
According to Delores' sister, Patricia Smith, Delores was a mother of two who worked at a nursing home with the elderly, and “they loved her.”
Ebony was described as the life of the party. “She loved life,” Smith said.
Ebony’s boyfriend told authorities that he’d dropped her off at her house the night before her body was found and that she'd worn her favorite blue sweater. As with the Lofton double-homicide, nothing appeared to be taken from the DeWitt home, which was less than a mile from the Lofton household.
A postmortem examination stated that both mother and daughter had been strangled to death and had died one day before their bodies were found.
“We don’t know if they were killed inside the house and transported away, or if they were just transported away and killed elsewhere,” Schartner told Murphy.
The fire had burned most of the evidence. However, investigators were able to recover part of a pair of jeans found on Delores' body, and leaves from to a beech tree inside the fabric, though no beech trees were found in the area.
A break in the case
Few initial leads helped detectives solve either case, which were believed to be connected. Things changed in July of 2009 when agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested Jason Scott and another man on stolen weapons charges. Special Agents John Cooney and David Cheplak were at the helm of the weapons-related investigation. But both Scott and the other man were eventually released.
To the agents, Scott initially came across as a “pipsqueak” with no criminal history who barely spoke above a whisper, a college grad, and a valued UPS employee. However, they'd hoped Scott could lead them to others involved in firearm crimes and agreed to grant him at least some immunity for his cooperation. So Scott provided agents with a three-page list of 40 Prince George’s County homes he’d helped burglarize. In some cases, Scott woke up occupants with a gun pointed at their heads.
“At that point, we realized that we’re not dealing with a guy selling and stealing guns,” Cooney told Dateline: The Smoking Gun. “Our investigation just took a drastic turn.”
Videos emerge, exposing Jason Scott as peeping Tom
A search of Scott’s home turned up a treasure trove of home videos, proving that the meek suspect was one of the more extreme peeping Toms they’d ever seen.
The footage included “video of someone walking through the woods, video-taping people through their homes in various states of dress and undress and getting ready for work or getting ready for bed,” Cooney said.
One of Scott’s alleged co-conspirators called Scott “sensitive” but “crazy.” He said Scott enjoyed stealing car keys from homes and returning at a later time to steal the vehicles. Scott often left them in the driveways of vacant houses.
Cops said that was what happened to the woman who reported her Nissan Maxima missing on the day the DeWitts were found murdered.
“You gotta watch how you talk to him,” the unnamed co-conspirator told authorities of Scott.
One of the videos seized from Scott’s home showed him assaulting a mother and her teenage daughter. According to Cheplak, Scott positioned his camera in such a way as to film himself sexually assaulting the females. The phone fell, briefly catching Scott’s masked face and showing what Cheplak called his “cold, calculating eyes.”
But the most significant piece of the puzzle was found at a place Scott mentioned when he was questioned by agents about the weapons charges: “The Spooky House,” where the suspect said he and his burglarizing co-conspirators would divvy up their gains.
The Spooky House
“The Spooky House” was an empty Georgian mansion on the market, a brick home located in Upper Marlboro. There, investigators found the physical evidence they needed, including charred remains of a blue sweater just like the one Ebony was wearing before she and her mom were killed, and jeans that matched the ones worn by her mother.
The property also served as “the jackpot of beech trees,” according to Schartner.
“Once we saw that, we said, ‘This is it; this is finally something,’” he told Dateline’s Murphy on the scene. “You’re talking about a high-five moment.”
Marcus Hunter, who was not involved with the murders, agreed to cooperate with agents, claiming that about one month before the DeWitt murders, the burglars were running through a few yards after committing a theft. Hunter said that Scott stopped and peered inside the DeWitt home, staring at 19-year-old Ebony.
Hunter also placed Scott near the Lofton home within the hour of the January 2009 murders. Furthermore, he claimed that at some point, Scott had a Glock 17 — the kind of gun used to kill Karen and Karissa.
Homicide investigators looked at gun purchase records and located one gun owner — an individual who lived at an address provided on Scott’s list of burglarized homes — who said someone had stolen his Glock 17. Since Maryland law keeps ballistics evidence on any handguns sold in the state in the event that one is used in the commission of a crime, authorities determined the stolen firearm matched the shell casings found at the Lofton home.
Hunter confirmed the break-in at the gun owner’s residence.
“As far as that handgun goes, I think that was the nail in Jason’s coffin,” Nelson said. “We know that he stole that weapon.”
Jason Scott arrested for murder
On September 2, 2009, Scott was arrested at his home for murder. His case was also covered on Oxygen's One Deadly Mistake.
Delores' sister, Patricia Smith, was grateful that Schartner kept a promise to find the person responsible for her sister and niece’s death, she told Dateline: The Smoking Gun.
“He said, ‘I’m [going to] get him if it’s the last thing I do,’” said Smith. “And he got him.”
Hunter, for his cooperation with investigators, was handed a seven-year sentence in connection with the weapons charges.
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As for Scott, since there was more than enough evidence to convict him in the DeWitt case, prosecutors didn't go after him for the Lofton murders. He was sentenced to 85 years.
“We wanted a trial in this case because we wanted to see him on the stand, admit what he did, and be charged and convicted and sentenced for murder,” said Karissa’s father, Kirkland Lofton.
Investigators say they have no doubt in their minds that Scott was also responsible for the Lofton family double-homicide.
Watch all-new episodes of Dateline: The Smoking Gun, airing Thursdays at 8/7c p.m. on Oxygen.
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