From left, Miguel Anthony Valentin-Colon, 31; Nicole Marie Merced Plaud, 24; and Dhamyl Mirella Roman-Audiffred, 29, who are from Orlando. (Photos courtesy of the Buffalo Police Department)
Authorities say the men accused of killing three people in a 2019 drug robbery left a 3-year-old boy strapped in his car seat overnight with the bodies of his parents, who were shot to death in front of the toddler.
This newly revealed description of the triple murder and its horrific aftermath comes in a plea agreement filed last month in federal court.
Jariel Cobb, 47, and James Reed, 38, were identified as the suspected killers in a triple homicide that shocked Buffalo.
Several of the defendants have accepted plea deals in the case, including one of the men accused of killing the Florida trio and later burning their bodies.
Jariel Cobb pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to charges of narcotics distribution and setting a fire to destroy evidence, among other counts, but prosecutors dropped the murder charge he was facing, said attorney Donald Thompson of Rochester.
However, Deandre Wilson – identified in court papers as the man who killed the parents and their friend – continues to maintain his innocence and "at this time" is not considering taking a guilty plea, said his attorney, Daniel J. Henry Jr. of Hamburg.
Federal prosecutors believe two men in custody on drug charges are also tied to the deaths of a Florida couple found inside a burned-out minivan on Tonawanda
The case, scheduled to go to trial in September, was death penalty eligible but the Justice Department has removed that option, Henry said.
The investigation began in September 2019 after a 3-year-old boy was found wearing only a diaper and curled up on the porch of a Potomac Avenue house on Buffalo's West Side.
Later, police learned that his parents, Miguel Anthony Valentin-Colon and Nicole Marie Merced-Plaud, and their friend, Dhamyl Roman-Audiffred, who had driven from Florida with the little boy, Noelvin, had been killed.
The parents' bodies had been driven to an open lot behind a warehouse, where they were torched beyond recognition. The friend's body was also set on fire behind a home elsewhere in Buffalo.
Police later released video from a surveillance camera near where the minivan was found that shows two men walking down a driveway. One is leading the little boy, and the other holds what appears to be a gas can. In the corner, the flare of fire can be seen.
A 21-page plea agreement signed by one of the six people charged in the case, James Reed, offers disturbing new details on what authorities say happened.
The document lays out the following scenario:
On Sept. 15, 2019, Reed, Cobb and Wilson went to a Roebling Avenue home to meet Valentin-Colon and Roman-Audiffred, who had driven up from Florida with Valentin-Colon’s wife, Merced-Plaud, and their son to sell the Buffalonians a kilogram of cocaine. It was Cobb who called the Florida group and told them where to go.
Wilson was waiting inside with a gun and, when Roman-Audiffred walked through a rear door into the kitchen, Wilson struck Roman-Audiffred in the head with the butt of the weapon. Roman-Audiffred fell to the floor, fatally injured.
Wilson then walked out of the home and toward the couple’s minivan, parked in the driveway, shooting and killing Valentin-Colon and Merced-Plaud as their son sat in a car seat.
The mysterious case involving a burnt-out car with two bodies inside and a 3-year-old Florida boy found asleep on the porch of a house less than a mile away took another turn Friday as three law enforcement sources revealed that investigators had found the hotel room where the family was staying – and they found two kilos of what’s
Wilson then moved Valentin-Colon’s body to the middle section of the vehicle and drove off, followed by Cobb in another vehicle.
Wilson parked the van behind a building on Scajaquada Street and left it there with the boy and his parents’ bodies still inside.
Cobb returned to the home on Roebling, where Reed helped Cobb move Roman-Audiffred’s body to the basement. There, Cobb used an ax to dismember Roman-Audiffred's body before putting the remains into several garbage bags and, with Reed’s assistance, loading the bags into Cobb’s trunk.
Cobb and Reed took the remains to a home on Box Avenue, where they threw them onto a burn pit in the backyard.
Early the next morning, Cobb and Wilson returned to the minivan, which Wilson moved to a rear yard on Tonawanda Street.
Police said they have not identified two bodies found inside a charred vehicle, but said the rental car was driven from Florida to Buffalo by the missing parents of a 3-year-old
The two men pulled the bodies of Valentin-Colon and Merced-Plaud from the minivan, doused them in gasoline and set them on fire. They unbuckled the boy from his car seat and drove off from Tonawanda Street.
On their way back to Box Avenue, at about 3:15 a.m., the men took off all the boy’s clothes, except for his diaper, and left him on the porch on Potomac.
In September 2020, the U.S. Attorney's Office filed murder charges against Cobb and Wilson; charged Reed, along with Cobb and Wilson, with burning the bodies of the three victims; and charged the three men – along with Jahaan McDuffie, Destenee Bell and Deshema Clark – with a years-long conspiracy to sell illegal drugs in Buffalo.
A number of the victims' family members were in court for Cobb's guilty plea Thursday, Thompson said. Noelvin was in the federal court building, but was not in the courtroom, the attorney said.
Referring to prosecutors, Thompson said, "They did a careful job of parsing out, you know, who's done what, and whose intention was to commit these acts, as opposed to not commit these acts."
A burned-out vehicle with human remains inside. Three people from Florida who are missing. A 3-year-old Florida boy found sleeping alone on a West Side porch. The three incidents all came to the attention of Buffalo police on Monday. Now they are trying to figure out if, and how, they might be linked. Members of a Florida family on
Other defendants have pleaded guilty, or are in the process of pleading guilty, in the case.
Clark, for example, on Thursday pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana, a misdemeanor. Reed pleaded guilty to narcotics conspiracy and other charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan T. Cullinane declined comment on whether the defendants who pleaded guilty have agreed to cooperate with the government in its prosecution of Wilson. But Henry, Wilson's attorney, said he "would assume" this is the case.
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From left, Miguel Anthony Valentin-Colon, 31; Nicole Marie Merced Plaud, 24; and Dhamyl Mirella Roman-Audiffred, 29, who are from Orlando. (Photos courtesy of the Buffalo Police Department)
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