Blood stains still mar the couch. Blue glass glimmers on the stove, beneath a broken timer riddled with bullet holes.

Empty sacks of dog food clutter the back room, next to a stray surfboard, dusty piles of clothes and sundry supplies from an unfinished life.

The lights are off, the windows broken.

This is 7815 Harding Street, three months later.

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“We just need some answers,” said Cliff Tuttle, whose nephew died here on Jan. 28 in a botched drug raid. “You can’t grieve if you don’t know what happened.”

Weeks later, they still don’t. The autopsies still aren’t out. There’s no ballistics report. And police haven’t revealed any details about their investigation into the drug bust-gone-wrong.

With those and other questions still swirling, the families of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas returned on Tuesday to the scene of the gun battle that left their loved ones dead and five officers injured. It was the first time anyone had been inside since authorities scoured the home, and the first time the Tuttle family has spoken since the shootings.

The family and neighbors continue to push back on accusations by police that the couple was dealing drugs. Cliff Tuttle said he wants an apology from those who have maligned them.

“Tell us what went on, give us all the reports,” he said. “Let us sit down as a family and say, ‘This is what really happened. These are the people that did it.’ And we can make a decision and move forward.”

Nicholas’ brother, John Nicholas, emerged quietly after touring the home Tuesday.

“I’ve been way up there (in Louisiana) and now I’m down here, where it happened,” he said. “And it’s tough.”

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The slain 59-year-old Navy veteran was born and raised in Houston, growing up in Denver Harbor and graduating from a nearby high school.

His family loved the outdoors, and Dennis grew into a “macho guy” interested in fishing and surfing, his uncle said.

“He joined the Navy,” Cliff said, “because of his love for the water.”

He received an honorable discharge, his uncle said, and married and had two children.

Dennis Tuttle went on to become a machinist, but eventually stopped working following a series of injuries. One of the worst was a car crash in which he suffered a major head injury after a pipe hit him.

Cliff said his nephew endured chronic pain but did not believe he was a drug dealer.

“I don’t think he was a drug dealer or user,” he said. “He lived in pain most of his adult life, from auto accidents and machine shop accidents.”

The pain took a toll, and eventually Dennis stopped going outside as much.

“He just went from being an outdoor person to an indoor one,” his uncle said.

Neighbors said he kept to himself, but vestiges of his past loves — a boat, a surfboard — still sit on the property, fading and out of use. He hung onto them, in part, in hopes his two children — or their children — might someday use them.

Dennis settled into the house on Harding at least three decades ago. His father, Robert Tuttle — who now lives outside of San Antonio — owned the place when Dennis moved in.

He hasn’t been back since his son’s death.

“Each person handles something like that differently,” Cliff said. “He’s not handling it well at all. That’s why I’m here.”

THE FALLOUT: Houston police officer in drug raid had previous allegations against him

Dennis met Nicholas in Houston about three decades ago when both were at the end of long-term relationships. They fell in love, and got married in a simple courthouse wedding in the late 1990s. For years, they lived quietly in the small Pecan Park home with their dogs.

“He was good to her — they got along good and everything,” her mother, Jo Ann Nicholas, told the Houston Chronicle last month. “I want them to clear her name.”

In early January, police reportedly received a call complaining of drug activity inside the home. Using that tip, narcotics officers decided to set up an undercover buy, allegedly sending a confidential informant into the house to buy heroin.

Officer Gerald Goines — who has since retired under investigation — used that supposed drug deal to justify a raid on the home. When undercover narcotics officers burst in the front door on Jan. 28, they shot dead a pit bull that lunged at them, setting off an exchange of gunfire. Tuttle and Nicholas were killed.

In the days that followed, though, investigators realized they couldn’t find the informant behind the alleged buy and began to suspect Goines may have lied about it all. The 34-year veteran officer and fellow narcotics Officer Steven Bryant were both relieved of duty and later retired under investigation. They could face criminal charges in connection with the failed raid, according to Chief Art Acevedo.

The FBI launched a civil rights investigation. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office announced its own probe into the shooting and is reviewing of more than 2,200 cases handled by Goines and Bryant.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Harris County DA’s office reviewing 1,400 cases in fallout from botched drug raid

As authorities pursue their investigations, attorneys for Tuttle and Nicholas are taking their own steps to learn what happened and explore possible legal action against the Houston Police Department.

Mike Doyle, who is representing Nicholas’ relatives, said he plans to file a motion to investigate — a move that would allow the court to give him the right to depose witnesses and ask for more evidence in the lead-up to a possible lawsuit.

He and Tuttle attorney Boyd Smith are still working to get the autopsies, requests for which the county has thus far stymied.

“Right now we are just trying to help this family get answers,” Smith said. “Their name was dragged through the mud with his.”

The grieving families have also hired independent investigators and forensics experts to perform their own review of the shooting.

On Tuesday, those experts assessed the bullet holes that pockmark the home, the bloodstains and spatters that cover two couches and other areas in the small house, and leftover debris strewn outside the home, the remnants from the raid and its aftermath.

“It’s just hard seeing all the blood and bullet holes,” Doyle said. “It brings it all home. It’s real people and a real house.”

keri.blakinger@chron.com

st.john.smith@chron.com