If authorities in the nation's capital are right, murder suspect Darron Wint held hostage a wealthy family and their housekeeper, butchered them after ordering pizza, set their mansion on fire and made off with $40,000 cash.

There’s no death penalty under local law in the District of Columbia, but it’s still possible Wint could face federal murder charges that carry execution as the maximum penalty.

American Iron Works CEO Savvas Savopoulos, his wife, Amy, and housekeeper Veralicia Figueroa were found on May 14 bludgeoned and stabbed to death in the torched home, near Vice President Joe Biden's official residence. The youngest victim, 10-year-old Philip Savopoulos, was found on a bed in a separate room. He may have been tortured before dying from “thermal and sharp force injuries."

Wint, the only suspect charged in the crime that's made national headlines, was arrested late last month after his DNA was found on a pizza crust. He faces first-degree murder charges that carry a maximum life in prison.

But the decision to seek federal charges could be made with relative ease in the nation's capital, where prosecutors with the local U.S. attorney's office will pursue the case either way.

“The same team of prosecutors would probably just walk out of the Superior Court grand jury over to the federal court grand jury and seek the indictment there,” says Roscoe C. Howard Jr., the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia from 2001 to 2004.

“Handling local and federal crimes out of the same office has its advantages,” he says.

Alleged murderers do sometimes get a death sentence in states that have abolished the practice. In Massachusetts, for example, a jury awarded the sentence last month to convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his role in the 2013 killings.

“The United States has pursued the death penalty in a number of states that don’t have it, including Massachusetts, Vermont, Michigan, North Dakota and Puerto Rico,” says Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham, who worked two decades as a death row defense attorney.

Often, federal murder charges are stacked on top of other federal charges. In Missouri, the home state of nine people on the 62-person federal death row, the qualifying murders involved interstate kidnapping, drug dealer killings and attempted bank robberies.

"The federal death penalty is not intended as a means to simply transfer jurisdiction from a state to the federal government so as to ensure the availability of a death sentence," Dunham says, despite its apparent attraction for certain prosecutors.

It’s unclear if prosecutors in the nation's capital have any intention of bringing federal charges against Wint. The office has done so in past cases, unsuccessfully seeking the death penalty against three people convicted of drug-related killings in the early 2000s. Juries opted for life in prison, an increasingly common choice across the country.

"Because the investigation is ongoing, we have no comment at this time,” says Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office.

Howard says there are a few reasons to doubt federal charges are coming. The office’s homicide unit generally works in local court, and a death penalty case would stretch on for years. "The case seems to lack one element the feds look for," Howard adds, "that would be interstate travel in the crime's commission."

If acting U.S. Attorney Vincent Cohen does seek federal charges, the decision on whether to ask for the death penalty ultimately would rest with new U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Her predecessor, Eric Holder, frequently approved pursuit of federal death sentences.

Unraveling exactly what happened in the Savopoulos mansion has seemingly been difficult for authorities.

Wint is not believed to have acted alone, but four people with him when he was arrested after a high-profile manhunt were released without charges. An assistant to Mr. Savopoulos provided inconsistent stories to investigators, court documents say, but has not been charged.

Howard says the threat of death is unlikely to be used to loosen the lips of Wint and others.