'Horrorcore' singer suspected in Virginia killings

(CNN) -- Elizabeth McCutchen and a friend were walking to book club two weeks ago in quaint Farmville, Virginia, when they strolled by a home on First Avenue. "Something smells dead," her friend said.

They were thinking animal. A dog, a cat, something like that. They never imagined they were smelling the remains of massacred humans. It was Thursday, September 17. But another 24 hours would pass before police made the gruesome discovery.

Richard Samuel McCroskey III -- a 20-year-old rapper in the underground genre of "Horrorcore" who sang of chopping people into pieces -- has been arrested in connection with the slayings. The crime scene was so horrifying police would not even describe it, saying only that the victims died of blunt force trauma.

The victims were Mark Niederbrock, 50, the beloved pastor at Walker's Presbyterian Church; his 16-year-old daughter, Emma Niederbrock; Melanie Wells, Emma's 18-year-old friend from West Virginia; and Niederbrock's estranged wife, Debra Kelley, 53, a professor at Longwood University.

McCroskey has been charged only in the killing of Mark Niederbrock. Police and the prosecutor's office did not return repeated phone calls from CNN. But in late September, authorities said more charges are pending.

Emma was described as a fan of Horrorcore and had met McCroskey through their mutual affection for the little-known music genre. Police said she invited McCroskey to fly from his northern California home, stay with her in Virginia and then attend the Strictly for the Wicked Festival, a Horrorcore fest in Michigan featuring bands with names like Dismembered Fetus and Phrozen Body Boy.

Nobody saw what would come next.

The slayings have been the talk of Farmville, a town of 7,000 that is home to Longwood University and nearby Hampden-Sydney College. Senseless is the word you hear most.

It's not just the macabre nature of the killings that has people talking. It's the grotesque lyrics of the Horrorcore singer; it's that it happened under their noses.

McCroskey is a young man with no criminal record who took delight in the blend of horror hip-hop that celebrated macabre killings. He went by the name Syko Sam. In one YouTube video, he holds a hatchet and sings about killing people and putting their remains in black bags: "Last night I was the murderous rage. Now, I gotta get rid of the bodies before the corpses start to get to rotting."