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Nov 30, 2009 5:42 pm US/Eastern
Family In Thanksgiving Massacre Had Violent Past
Gio Benitez
SOUTH MIAMI (CBS4) ―
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Salwa Merrige Abrams was an opera singer on the rise to stardom. But in 1973, she became a killer.
St. Petersburg Times
Salwa Merrige Abrams was an opera singer on the rise to stardom. But in 1973, she became a killer.
"It was one of the saddest events of my law enforcement career, totaling over 40 years," said Lloyd Hough, a retired homicide detective.
Hough was the lead investigator on the case. He says it was in a South Miami home where Merrige-Abrams killed her husband, two young children, and herself. Merriga-Abrams was upset her husband had filed for a divorce.
Back then, Hough was just a cub detective, only on the job for three years.
"I don't care whether you've been in it three years or 30 years. When there's children involved, you never forget it. You just don't forget it," Hough told CBS4's Gio Benitez.
For 36 years, he hasn't forgotten. Just days ago, he saw the face and name of Paul Michael Merhige.
"And I said, oh my gosh, I wonder if that's Mike's family," said Hough.
It is the family he has come to know.
"They weren't drug dealers, they weren't hoodlums, they were true, nice, American people," said Hough.
Salwa Merrige Abrams was Paul Merhige's aunt. Hough says she left the car running in the driveway with her 10-year-old and 14-year-old inside. She brought her husband into the master bedroom and shot him dead. Then brought each one of those kids into the house, one by one, and killed them, leaving one of them dead right in their own bedroom.
Some 36 years after murdering her family, police say her nephew took a gun in the same way, allegedly killing his two sisters, his older aunt, and his six-year-old cousin.
"This has wiped out their family, wiped out their family," said Hough.
While he's not working this case, this is another massacre Lloyd Hough will never forget.
"I have great admiration for that family. They've had more tragedy than anybody deserves," he said.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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