On the evening of October 23, 2014, Douglas and Deborah London of York County, South Carolina—just across the border from North Carolina—were watching television in their home when the doorbell rang. When they opened the door, she was immediately shot in the head by a man standing outside, and her husband was shot multiple times. Their adult son, who was also present, made a frantic call to 911, but the couple died next to each other on the floor of their home.

As the York County Sheriff’s Office began to investigate the double homicide, they asked the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office for help.

In the coming months, the investigative team of FBI special agents and task force officers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department uncovered a web of violence that stretched across state lines and beyond local prison cells.

Turned out that the Londons had been specifically targeted—they were the owners of a mattress store in Pineville, North Carolina that had been robbed at gunpoint by three men five months earlier. Jamell Cureton, the leader of the Valentine Bloods—a hood, or set, of the national and exceedingly violent United Blood Nation (UBN) gang—had gone into the store and pulled his gun on Douglas London, who had his own gun. The two exchanged gunfire, and Cureton was hit. Also at the scene that day were Nana Adoma, the lookout who was just inside the door; and David Fudge, the getaway driver in the car outside.