Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more! Bud and Melanie Billings were loved for opening their home to children with special needs, so why would a group of masked men break into their home and fatally shoot them? Florida detectives had plenty of home security footage to help them piece together who killed a beloved Pensacola couple in front of their children.
Watch Final Moments on Peacock and the Oxygen app. He deeply loved her. Both Bud and Melanie each had two children from previous relationships, though they would go on to adopt more, primarily children with special needs. At one point, they had upwards of 13 children in the home, but after the biological children had grown and moved out, they were left with nine adopted children, whose ages ranged from 4 to On July 9, , shortly after p.
Immediately, detectives found someone had kicked in the front door, leaving his boot print behind. Law enforcement also found an extensive security system consisting of 16 cameras inside the home. One of the cameras would capture a red van pulling up to the home moments before the double homicide, when five armed men jumped out, all masked and dressed head-to-toe in black.
Another surveillance camera showed the group entering the living room and catching Bud by surprise as he watched television. Guy told Final Moments. Upon reexamination of the existing video footage, investigators found that one of the children — about 6 or 7 years old — was in the living room when a single gunman shot Bud in the legs and dragged the parents away. Outdoor cameras captured one of the suspects with an item believed to be taken from the home, and detectives wondered if the minute ordeal was a robbery gone wrong.
It was puzzling since, according to Ashley, the safe carried only personal documents, such as birth certificates and adoption records. Ultimately, however, law enforcement placed Tice about an hour and a half outside Pensacola at the time of the murders, ruling him out as a suspect.
