Suspects charged in Landrum triple murder

Published 4:13 pm Friday, March 9, 2018

SPARTANBURG — The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office has arrest warrants on two suspects in January’s  triple murder in Landrum.

Sheriff Chuck Wright held a press conference Friday afternoon to announce that Christopher Taylor, 30, and Kristina Sluss, 36, were indicted on murder charges for killing three people in a home on Landrum Mill Road, who were found on Jan. 20.

The two have been charged with three counts of murder, possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime and armed robbery.

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Murdered at the residence were Nathan Louis Poffenberger, 23, Francis Delancey Richards, 59, and Fred Richards, 59, all of Landrum.

Kristina Sluss

Christopher Taylor

Taylor and Sluss are currently in jail in Polk County, Florida, on other murder charges, where Taylor accused of beating a homeless man to death with a frying pan.

Sheriff Wright said three people were brutally murdered at the Landrum home.

“These three people were savagely killed,” Wright said.

Wright said that, after a month, the Polk County, Florida Sheriff’s Office contacted Spartanburg County about a murder, where a person was dismembered. Wright said officers kept on interrogating the suspects until they got a confession about the Landrum murders.

Wright would not say how the Landrum people were killed. He also said they interviewed three suspects, and one of them talked about Landrum.

When asked where Taylor and Sluss were from, Wright said the suspects stayed very close to the crime scene, and were from this area.

“I think they did know [the murder victims], but how in depth, I don’t know,” Wright said.

Wright also said there has been talk about the motive, but it did not matter what the victims were doing or had been doing, “they didn’t deserve that.”

“People in Spartanburg County can relax,” Wright said. “We are 100 percent sure we got the right people.”