Cops hunt family friend suspected of killing pastor, grandchildren

Jerod Watson. (Sacramento Police Dept.)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – A family friend is suspected in a weekend triple homicide that killed a pastor and her two grandsons, Sacramento police said Tuesday.

Jerod Michael Watson, 52, was in a relationship with Twanna Lucas, who returned home Saturday to find her mother and adult sons dead in a housing complex in south Sacramento, police spokesman Sgt. Bryce Heinlein said.

The Sacramento County District Attorney's Office issued a felony warrant charging him with homicide. Police said he is armed and considered extremely dangerous, and he may have fled the state.

Heinlein couldn't say how investigators linked him to the slayings of Christine Lucas, 68, Marquise Brown, 23, and James Ferrell, 20.

But he said Watson was in a relationship with the boys' mother, who ran to a nearby fire station to alert authorities when she arrived home to find them dead just before 8 p.m. Saturday. Watson was frequently at the home, he said, though it was not clear if he lived there full time.

"I'm not going to go into specifics as to why we think it happened," Heinlein said. "We don't have a motive to go out with yet."

Watson previously faced two charges of misdemeanor domestic violence, though one was dismissed in 2009, Sacramento County Superior Court online records show.

He was sentenced to jail three times between 2009 and 2011 on the other charge, including for repeatedly violating his probation. He attended a batterer's treatment program required by the court, and that conviction was expunged in 2012 after he completed his probation.

Lucas had multiple stab wounds, and one of her grandsons was fatally slashed, he said, citing coroner's findings. The autopsy hasn't been completed on the other man, he said.

Lucas served as a pastor at Gloryland Revival Center International Ministries with her husband, John Lucas, according to the affiliated Faith Ministries International Network's website.