Mom Discovers Her Son’s Are Wanted Killers

🔪 The Silent House on Brentwood Road

The call registered as a welfare check, a mundane request that echoed through the quiet, upscale neighborhood of Beachwood, Ohio. It was just after 6:00 PM on a seemingly ordinary August evening in 2018. The caller was 60-year-old Jane Warren, returned early from a trip she was supposed to share with her husband, Dr. Richard Warren.

But Jane’s voice, tight with a fear that transcended simple worry, conveyed a message far more sinister than an unattended elderly man. “He can’t feel his toes and he’s a didn’t know if he was a diabetic,” she told the dispatcher, a clinical detail that didn’t fit the chaos that was to follow. She mentioned his strained relationship with his family, noting, “He doesn’t talk to his parents. His brother lives two streets away.” The family dynamic was broken, but was it deadly?

Sergeant Draves was the first to arrive at 2483 Brentwood Road. Jane was already outside with a few neighbors, her composure visibly fraying. She recounted their anniversary trip to London—a trip Richard abandoned due to a sudden, severe migraine during a layover in Newark, New Jersey. Richard, she believed, had driven back to Ohio and was now inside, refusing to answer the door.

“She just she came home from vacation and she can’t get in. Her husband’s not answering the door,” the man next door explained to the Sergeant, adding the chilling observation: “Look like some bullet holes or some kind of holes in the back window.”

🔍 The Telltale Holes

Jane had left her key and phone inside the house before her trip, an accidental absence that now felt like an ominous piece of fate. She circled the house, calling Richard’s name, but it was the holes in the back window screen that seized her attention.

The responding officers’ first inspection confirmed the neighbor’s fear, but also introduced a baffling inconsistency. “You see what I’m saying, John? How this hole in the screen is higher? Mhm. See up there? Do they look like bullet holes, John?”

The trajectory was strange. A hole in the window screen sat higher than the corresponding hole in the glass pane behind it, suggesting a bizarre angle of fire or a staged scene. Yet, the holes looked unmistakably like they were made by bullets.

Sergeant Draves tried to probe Jane for any rational explanation. “Ma’am, does he own any firearms that you know of?”

“No. No. No. No.”

“Has he been talking to anybody or seeking any help for that?”

“No. No. No. I’ve asked. He seemed absolutely 100% Himself,” Jane insisted. Then, the dam of denial broke, and a terrible, primal suspicion surfaced: “But unless someone killed him, he killed him.”

🚗 The Cadillac and the Forced Entry

The fact that Richard’s three cars—two Chevys and the Cadillac—were parked in the driveway initially offered a sliver of hope. But a check of the garage confirmed the worst: the Cadillac was inside. Richard was home.

With the possibility of a medical emergency, an accidental shooting, or a violent intruder now swirling, the police had to get inside. Richard was a podiatrist who worked from his home office, a routine that made his sudden, silent absence inexplicable. They decided to breach the locked back door.

Inside, the scene was not what anyone expected. It wasn’t a medical crisis. It wasn’t a contained accident.

“It didn’t look good. The whole house had been ransacked, like someone had been searching for something,” the officers noted. The interior was a terrifying landscape of chaos. In the kitchen, they found holes in the ceiling above the window—the likely source of the strange bullet holes observed outside—with drywall scattered on the floor. It appeared someone had fired a gun from the floor above, down into the kitchen.

🛏️ The Master Bedroom and the Suspects

The search quickly moved upstairs.

“Police department. Anybody here? Bedroom on the left, Chris. All right, he’s down. Send a squad,” came the grim radio call.

Dr. Richard Warren was found dead on the floor of the master bedroom, the room directly above the kitchen. He was lying face down, dressed only in a t-shirt and underwear, and had been shot multiple times. One of the bullets, an execution-style blow, had hit the back of his head.

Scattered across the room were 14 spent rifle casings. The evidence was overwhelming: Richard Warren was brutally murdered.

The news shattered Jane. “Ma’am, I’m very sorry. Your husband has passed away.” Jane’s reply was a raw, primal scream: “No, he’s passed. Why? No, Richard. Why? Why?”

But even in her shock, she had already planted the seeds of suspicion. To the sergeant, she’d made an “excited utterance” earlier: “I wonder if his two sons got to him.”

Richard had three children from a previous marriage—sons Mark and Michael (who lived together in South Euclid) and a daughter, Danielle (in New Jersey). Richard’s divorce from their Orthodox mother and his subsequent marriage to Jane, who was not Orthodox, had poisoned the family dynamic for years. Mark and Michael had never liked Jane and were estranged from their father, though he still financially supported them.

🕰️ The Timeline and the Quiet Neighborhood

The last confirmed sighting of Richard was two days earlier, taking out the garbage on Tuesday evening. Based on the state of the house and the dogs’ lack of waste, the murder likely happened within the past 24 hours. However, the holes in the house, the ransacked office, and the forced door damage all screamed of a violent intrusion, not a sudden event.

Richard’s next-door neighbor, David, recounted his strange interaction with Jane upon her return. He hadn’t heard any gunshots, despite spending time on his deck both Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

However, as officers canvassed the neighborhood, a crucial piece of information emerged. Another neighbor mentioned that a Rabbi Kiken, who lived behind Richard, had heard a sound that woke him up.

“At 5:00, my wife and I woke both woke woke up. Something sounded like a gunshot,” the neighbor recalled, citing a text from the Rabbi. The time of the loud noise was 5:00 AM on Tuesday morning. This meant the murder could have occurred two days earlier, a time when most neighbors were asleep, explaining the silence in the quiet, upscale neighborhood.

🤫 Howard Lton and the Family Secrets

As the investigation intensified, Richard’s brother-in-law and close friend, Howard Lton, arrived on the scene. Howard was Richard’s lawyer and, seemingly, his confidant. Howard was convinced that Richard had taken his own life.

“Unless somebody killed him, he killed himself,” he insisted to the detectives, citing Richard’s emotional distress over missing the London trip and Jane’s subsequent neglect (“she was not… she went over there and didn’t contact him for about 10 days”). Howard also mentioned Richard’s recent, unusual desire to change the trustee on his trust. Richard had suffered a breakdown after his difficult divorce ten years prior, and his parents had disowned him—a dark history Howard believed could have culminated in suicide.

But Howard’s insistence on suicide only made the detectives more suspicious. Adding to the tension, both Howard’s wife and Richard’s nephew walked over to him and quietly urged him to stop talking.

“Because we don’t want the whole Jewish community, whole Orthodox Jewish community knowing that if he killed himself that he killed himself,” the nephew explained, fearing the social stigma it would bring to Richard’s estranged children.

Despite the pressure, Howard revealed more: the sons had never liked Jane and disappeared after the wedding. Richard was still supporting his sons, despite the estrangement. The more Howard tried to protect the family’s honor, the more the details—the two estranged sons, the money, the recent trust change request—pointed to a personal and violent motive.

📞 Danielle’s Confirmation and the Empty Safe

Richard’s daughter, Danielle, was driving from New Jersey when detectives called her. She didn’t hesitate when asked if anyone would harm her father.

“Um, well, I have two brothers and they didn’t we did not have a very good relationship with them… I would say they both need to seek psychological help.” She recalled an incident where the cops had been called because her brothers tried to break into her father’s house. She also mentioned a week before an earlier incident, Michael had even threatened to chop him up.

When Danielle and her husband, Gilead, arrived at the house, Gilead discovered a critical piece of evidence: the safe in the basement was empty.

“All the documents were supposed to be in there. Yeah. All the documents like everything related to all his properties, his investments, his everything,” Gilead noted. Only three people had access to that safe: Richard, Mark, and Michael. The murder was looking less like a random burglary and more like a calculated act of violence tied to finance and personal revenge.

💥 The Final Siege in South Euclid

The evidence was overwhelming. Detectives obtained a search warrant for the phones and the South Euclid home of Mark and Michael Warren.

On the evening of August 10th, the Edge SWAT team was called in. What followed was not a peaceful surrender, but a desperate, final stand.

The SWAT team, using an armored vehicle equipped with a steel ram, breached the front door. After the first blow, a voice was heard yelling inside, followed by the terrifying sound of gunfire.

“Shot fire. Shot fire. Shot fire.”

The brothers inside opened fire, sending rounds toward the officers. The SWAT team immediately returned fire, and the siege began. For nearly 12 hours, negotiators tried to make contact, but the brothers remained silent.

Finally, at 7:00 AM the next morning, officers were able to enter the house. Upstairs, in a small bedroom, they found Mark and Michael Warren. Both were dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Inside the house, officers located three weapons: a semi-automatic rifle, a Ruger Mini-14, and a pistol. Forensic analysis quickly confirmed that all three weapons were used to kill Richard Warren. The bullet from Richard’s head matched the pistol found under one of the brothers. Casings in both the Beachwood and South Euclid homes matched the firearms.

Two crime scenes, two deaths, and one terrible truth: The estranged sons, fueled by years of resentment, rage, and a desperate desire for control, had killed their father, ransacked his house for his financial documents, and then, cornered and broken, had taken their own lives.

The simple welfare check on Brentwood Road had ended in a family tragedy, a silent war that shattered a family and stained a quiet neighborhood with blood.