MEMPHIS, Tenn. — After two men, two women and two boys were found shot and stabbed to death late Monday, Memphis police conceded Tuesday that they had virtually nothing to go on.
Investigators said they believed the attacker or attackers were not among the dead, ruling out a murder-suicide.
But detectives faced a broad window for the killings: between Saturday night and Monday evening, when the six bodies and three wounded children were found in a small brick home on a dead-end street in a poor neighborhood east of downtown.
Officers went door to door looking for tips that could lead to a suspect or a motive.
“We’re working with a blank sheet of paper,” police spokeswoman Monique Martin said.
Most of the victims had been shot and at least one child had been stabbed, authorities said. The children ranged in age from about 1 to 12 years old, police said.
The surviving children were hospitalized, two in very critical condition and the other in serious condition, according to police. Their families asked that no details of their conditions be released, and it wasn’t clear whether they might be able to help investigators.
Authorities hoped for leads from the rough-edged community called Binghampton, where low-income houses and apartments sit near cheap motels and junkyards.
“We know there are people out there who have heard things, seen things, known things” that might help “put together pieces of the puzzle on what occurred in that home,” police Lt. Joe Scott said.
The street where the killings occurred remained blocked off to bystanders and the news media Tuesday, the home cordoned off by crime-scene tape. A forensics van was parked out front.
It was not immediately clear how the killings could have gone unnoticed — police said five of the six victims were shot — though the neighborhood does experience some drug- and gang-related violence. Early Tuesday, as police investigated the six slayings, two men were shot and wounded in an unrelated home invasion about a mile away.
The weekend attack appeared to be the worst single shooting in Memphis in at least 33 years.
