A young Texas woman who won murder charges last year for the shooting death of a disabled twenty-five-year-old woman is now wanted by police after allegedly breaking into the suburban home of Houston of a couple, wet them with a liquid and set them on fire.
Authorities named Emma Presler, 19, on Monday as the prime suspect in the horrific August 6 incident that left Devin Graham, 33, dead and his wife, Karissa Lindros, 26, hospitalized. with burns on 70% of his body. The Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office on Monday filed murder charges against Presler, who continues to flee.
“He is still at large,” Houston Police Department spokeswoman Jodi Silva told The Daily Beast. “There is an order for his arrest.”
Presler was identified by investigators who tracked the eyewitness accounts of a young white woman fleeing the scene in a white four-door sedan, police said. Lindros and Presler knew each other, Lindros’ aunt told reporters, without specifying how they both knew each other. Police have not released any information about a possible motive for the crime. Presler does not have a lawyer listed in the court records and could not be contacted.
Last September, Presler was charged with the murder of a 20-year-old Cypress, Texas, Sierra Rhodd woman while she was sleeping. On September 13, 2020, Rhodd, who suffered from cerebral palsy, was shot dead in a wave of bullets fired at his family’s home. Police said the shooters took off in several vehicles, including a red pickup truck owned by Presler’s boyfriend, Austin McCalla, which Presler was found driving nearby. However, prosecutors were unable to convince a judge that Presler’s presence in the truck personally related her to Rhodd’s death, and that Presler was ordered to release him. The following month, McCalla and three more they were accused of killing Rhodd. At the time, Rhodd’s father told the local Fox subsidiary that he thought the shooters had targeted his teenage son, who had been in a dispute with a band in the Houston area known as “10K.”
Residents in the neighborhood where Presler lives with his grandparents said they were not particularly surprised by the new allegations.
“He never stops,” a neighbor told The Daily Beast, who asked to be identified by her middle name, Aline, for fear of reprisals. “I just said last week, ‘There’s nothing in your house lately,’ and then … that. I shouldn’t have said it.”
Aline, 31, blasted a long list of incidents she said occurred at the house where Presler lives, claiming to have seen signs of prostitution and drug sales.
“I hope the cops end up believing us,” Aline said. “We hope they get out of the neighborhood.”
Another neighbor, Tonya Woods, said she packed her bags and moved to another area of Houston after dropping the murder charges against Presler on Sierra Rhodd’s death.
Woods, 57, said police were a regular presence at the home, where Presler moved in after his parents got into trouble. In addition to the problems mentioned by Aline, Woods described shootings, assaults and at least one suspicious fire in recent years.
“He’s absolutely crazy,” Woods told The Daily Beast. “But it’s also very sad … God only knows what’s going on in this house.”
Presler has previously faced numerous other charges, including theft, drug possession, evasion of detention, and failure to appear in court. He is pending an additional crime order for possession of methamphetamine, in addition to the charge of murder in Graham’s death.
Devin Graham’s grandfather, who said he and his wife “pretty well raised” themselves, are now under police protection, he said.
“The manhunt is underway and it’s very close to home,” Norman Graham told The Daily Beast, adding that investigators told him “not to say anything.”
Graham, 72, said he was trying not to read the news because he said, “There’s more than enough shit written on it.” He didn’t know what the relationship between his grandson and Presler might have been like. But whatever it was, Graham said he still doesn’t understand why he would have wanted to hurt her.
“I don’t understand anything, how someone could be like that,” Graham said. “I don’t know how the devil can come and win things like that, but he did. And I don’t know how anyone can think that this kind of behavior of anyone is right. I will tell you, I would not like to be on the throne of God in the position they are ”.