Horror on Hatteras Drive: Mike Khan kills his ex-girlfriend, her family and new boyfriend

### What police found at a house in Florida in 2020 is the stuff nightmares are made of. It's a crime that would rip a family apart and lead investigators to one of the most disturbing killers they would ever encounter.

In Kissimmee, Florida, a family hoping to start over again lost their lives in the most violent way imaginable. A beautiful young mom is among those savagely slaughtered by a monster who turns her family's new waterfront home into a house of horrors.

The sole survivor turning out to be her terrified little boy. Now cops just have to get the autistic and traumatized child to tell them who killed his family.

**The Smith family had a simple, good old-fashioned life down on the farm in Florida.** Dad Stephen brought home the bacon as an architectural and engineering executive, while mom Helena took care of the property, their six children and all the animals. Lucy was the Smiths' youngest child and only daughter.

Lucy was the pride of the family: a medal-winning track and field star who would run her way into Florida State University. And she had more than athletic talent and brains going for her.

One her suitors was Mike Khan, an aspiring a Festival staff who Lucy had begun dating when they were both in their early 10s. Lucy wasn't so thrilled to be with Mike.

After giving birth to a beautiful little baby boy they named Tristan, Lucy reunited with Mike for the sake of their child, who needs extra care because he is autistic. And Mike even moved into the Smith family house with Lucy and Tristan, with the family's full blessing, to give the child a good home.

But Mike Matos would soon start to wear out his welcome with Lucy's mom Helena. And Lucy and Mike were continuing to have problems. But even when dad Stephen decided to retire and move the family to Florida, there was still no shaking Mike. And the relationship between Lucy and Mike would only continue to deteriorate.

**Architectural executive Stephen Smith decided to retire, selling the family farm in Pennsylvania and moving to Florida with wife Helena for a new kind of laid-back life.**

The couple was renting a waterfront house in Hudson, about 20 miles north of Tampa while their tropical island dream home was being built. Stephen and Helena also had daughter Lucy, her baby boy Tristan and the baby's father Mike Matos all living with them.

To make ends meet, Helena has to take a job as convenience store cashier. Lucy starts waitressing at a local bar. And Mike Matos briefly works in a restaurant kitchen until reportedly being fired, causing only more conflict between Mike and Lucy, who were already squabbling more than ever and reportedly even sleeping in separate bedrooms.

Lucy had also begun going out with a new group of friends she'd met, leaving the unemployed Mike at home babysitting Tristan, and battling jealousy, wondering what Lucy was doing and who she was doing it with into the early hours of the morning.

And Adam's seething jealousy eventually leads to a violent showdown one morning when Lucy comes walking through the door around dawn after another fun night out in 2014.

*"I just came home and my son's dad put a knife to my throat and he cut my hand, and I'm bleeding everywhere, and my son is freaking out,"* Lucy says in a recorded 911 call.

Lucy is weeping and sounds in fear for her life as she tries to comfort her baby boy Tristan

*"It's OK, baby, I'm sorry. Please have someone come out here as soon as possible. He literally tried to kill me,"* Lucy says in the call.

Police arrive at the house to find Lucy distraught and bleeding from hand wounds she'd suffered struggling to get the knife away from Mike. Mike took off after Lucy called 911, but she tells police she's afraid he might come back even angrier than ever.

But days went by without any further word of trouble between Lucy and Mike. The silence broke when a relative calls police to report that nobody had been able to reach any of the Browns by text or phone.

It had been six days, and when cops show up nobody appears to be home at the Smiths' house. But they detect the foul and all-too familiar odor of death and decaying bodies. And a door was left open. So they entered through the open door, leading to the garage, where the Smith family van is parked.

"They immediately see blankets on the ground behind the van, there is what appears to be blood all over the floor on the blankets," said Pasco County Sheriff's Detective Chet Cougill.

And about the same time, a veteran cop makes another grim discovery just a stone's throw away after also noticing that same smell of death coming from a wooded area he just happened to be driving by.

"So he called me. I showed up just a few minutes later," said Det. Cougill.

Cougill finds something worse than he's ever seen in all his years in law enforcement

"I could smell it, and I could see there was a pile of bodies," said Det. Cougill.

They were decomposed beyond recognition.

"We didn't know exactly who or how many total bodies were in the pile that we saw," said Cougill.

But Det. Cougill could easily deduce that the Smith family was among them.

"It was just common sense. You know, we had a house with several people that are missing, and now we have a pile of bodies less than a mile away right up the street," said Cougill.

As the medical examiner tries to identify the victims, detectives swoop on the Smith house with forensic experts and find a shocking scene: the place turns pink when it's sprayed with Luminol. There's a trail of blood stretching throughout the house, signs that the killer had tried to clean up some of it, and other clues to the horror that had occurred there.

But some of the best evidence is found in the van parked in that blood-soaked garage patrolmen had reported when they earlier visited the house.

"We knew there were people dead and decaying in the back of the van. The van had indications they were in there," said Cougill.

Including blood and maggots.

"We also found a shovel in the back of the van," said Cougill.

Detectives believe the killer had used the shovel to try to bury the bodies in the yard.

"On the side of the house there was a freshly dug area, but in that area you can't dig more than a foot," said Cougill.

So, investigators say, the murderer loaded the bodies into the back of the van and dumped them in that wooded area where they'd just been found left under a tree.

Friends and relatives are devastated by the horrifying news.

**As the medical examiner picks through the mound of flesh and bones to identify exactly which members of the family are dead, detectives try to find their killer.** Their main person of interest is Mike Khan, ex-boyfriend of the Browns' 15-year-old daughter Lucy, and the father of her 4-year-old nephew Joseph.

"We knew that Mike was a person who lived in that house," said Pasco County Sheriff's Det. Cougill.

And they knew that Mike and Lucy had been having serious problems. Mike had fled the house when Lucy made her 911 call less than 36 hours before she and her family are believed to have been murdered.

But for all detectives knew, Matos might even be among that unidentified pile of bodies. So they turn their immediate attention to another possible suspect: William Leonard, a new guy Lucy had met after she moved from Pennsylvania to Florida with mom, dad, Mike and baby Tristan a few months earlier.

Detectives already suspect that Will Leonard's relationship with Lucy may have turned into a love triangle that could have sparked the murders.

Lucy apparently hadn't told her friends and family about Will, a carpenter and landscaper, but he had told his family all about Lucy, saying he was head over heels in love with her. Will told his parents that he and Lucy were keeping their romance quiet until Mike had moved out of the house. He told his parents that Mike had found out he was seeing Lucy and was jealous.

Will and Lucy had continued seeing each other. Detectives learned Will had actually been among the friends Lucy had been out with that night she arrived home near dawn, sending Mike Khan into that jealous rage that led to the 911 call. Then Will Leonard suddenly disappears.

But Will Leonard is discounted as a suspect in the murder of the family when the medical examiner finally identifies those found in that pile of decomposed bodies, and Leonard is identified as one of them.

The medical examiner identified the other victims as Lucy, her dad Stephen and mom Helena Smith, all slaughtered in an unspeakable horror that will haunt friends and family forever.

The one small, yet heart-lifting, mercy is that Smiths' little boy Joseph appears to be still alive. Detectives believe he's probably with his father Mike Khan, who is now the prime suspect in the murders. Police haven't been able to find Matos since he fled the Smith house the night Lucy called 911, saying he'd threatened to kill her. But now they're about to get a few lucky breaks.

**Investigators finally locate Mike Khan a week after the four were slaughtered, tracing him to a hotel where they find him holed up with his little boy Tristan.**

"And sure enough, he checked in under his own name," said Sheriff's Detective Chet Cougill.

Authorities say when they picked up Tristan, the little 4-year-old seemed to be in a state of shock, and not talking to police. Matos was taken into custody.

"He was very calm. He didn't put up a fight or anything," said Det. Cougill.

Detectives don't let on that they've found the bodies of Megan, her parents and her new man Will Leonard, hoping they can trip Matos up. Instead detectives tell Matos he's being arrested on domestic violence charges stemming from that first frantic 911 call from Megan. At the station, detectives cunningly ask Matos who he would like to care for Tristan now that he can't.

**Detective:** "Obviously, you know, we would like him to go back to Lucy. You know if that's going to be possible?"

**Mike Khan:** "I wouldn't know."

**Detective:** "Lucy's parents? Can he stay with them maybe?"

**Mike Khan:** "You can check. You can call and ask."

They ask Matos about his troubled relationship with Megan.

**Detective:** "When did you guys break up?"

**Mike Khan:** "A week ago."

**Detective:** "A week ago, OK. Do you remember what that was about?"

**Mike Khan:** "Just a bunch of drama [----], you know."

Matos denies he attacked Megan in a jealous rage the night she called 911.

**Detective:** "Do you know if she was seeing anybody else?"

**Mike Khan:** "Wouldn't know."

But he admits they got into a loud argument after Megan arrived home near dawn.

**Mike Khan:** "Her mom came out and she told me to leave, and I left."

It isn't until he's locked up on domestic violence charges that Matos learns detectives had fooled him and had actually found the bodies of the Smith family and Will Leonard a week earlier.

In a newspaper interview, Matos denies killing them. And with detectives present, Mike Khan drops a bombshell, pointing the finger of blame at a jealous ex-girlfriend of Lucy's new boyfriend Will Leonard.

**Detectives had been suddenly sidetracked after Mike Khan pointed them to another possible suspect, one of Will Leonard's ex-girlfriends, who had allegedly been jealously stalking Leonard for years and is said to have even threatened Megan Brown after learning she was seeing him.**

Then detectives learn she has an air-tight alibi. And the focus is once again back on Khan.

**Mike Khan faces four counts of murder and the death penalty at trial. He took the stand in his defense.**

Matos shocks a packed courtroom by claiming he killed his son's mother Megan Brown, her parents Greg and Maggie and Megan's new boyfriend Nick Leonard, in self-defense after they attacked him.

But her most moving words are reserved for the littlest and most innocent survivor of this horror: 4-year-old Joseph, who is now being raised by his late grandmother's family.

"He will grow up without a uncle because he will know his brother murdered his sister, murder his parents, and murdered his grandparents," said the judge.

Part of the deal that was made requires that Tristan's adopted mother send a picture of the boy to Adam Matos in prison until Joseph turns 12.