Posted Nov. 6, 2008 – California authorities are holding four U.S. Marines they say tortured and killed a bi-racial couple from Brooklyn, N.Y., in their San Diego-area home.

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The Marines apparently served under the command of Brooklyn-raised  Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak, of  Bensonhurst, who, with his wife, Quiana, were found bound and gagged in the ransacked house, each shot in the head execution-style, reports The New York Daily News.  

Pietrzak was the suspects' sergeant at Camp Pendleton, according to Quiana's mother.
Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak, 26, worked for the county's Black Infant Care Center. Pietrzak's mother, Henryka Pietrzak-Varga, said she had prepared herself "for the possibility that my son could die in Iraq." "But to die like this, in their own home?" she told the News. 

On Oct. 15, deputies were dispatched to the Pietrzak home in Winchester, an exurb of San Diego, when the Marine did not show up for work. When they arrived, the deputies found the Pietrzaks in the living room and evidence that the robbers had tried to cover their tracks by torching the house.

Charged with murder and other crimes are Pvt. Embrys John, 18, of Maryland; Lance Cpl. Tyrone Miller, 20, of North Carolina; Pvt. Kevin Darnell Cox, 20, of Tennessee, and Pvt. Kesuan Sykes, 21, of California. Investigators said the motive for murder was "financial gain.

A spokesman for the Riverside County District Attorney's Office would not comment on reports that Pietrzak was killed by his own men. Detectives also did not say what the accused Marines were looking for, but the suspects were tied to the crime by items found in their homes and on the military base.