More than three months have passed since Moorhead police began investigating the killing of Megan Londo and John Cadotte, the two people found dead Feb. 19 in an apartment fire that authorities said was arson.
A department spokesman said while there's little more to publicly divulge about the double homicide, he described the investigation as a wide-reaching probe in which new leads keep developing.
"He is continuing to have new names surface that he has to check out," Lt. Tory Jacobson said of the detective working the case.
Police still aren't saying how they think the fire at a three-unit building at 901 9th Ave. S., east of Eighth Street across from Concordia College, links to the deaths. The initial autopsy results ruled the deaths as homicides, but police have held back the cause of death because they consider it to be evidence in an ongoing investigation.
Though much of the evidence on the scene burned in the early morning fire, Police Chief David Ebinger has said, some results of forensics testing have been returned and new samples have been also been set out to the state lab in recent weeks, Jacobson said.
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The victims didn't know each other well, other than sharing a common friend. Cadotte, 20, was living with his mother in Moorhead. Londo, 25, was from Naytahwaush, Minn., and was in the process of moving to Moorhead.
Jacobson declined to say whether the investigation is narrowing on a specific suspect or suspects, other than to say new people are continually being sought as part of the investigation.
Knowing that detectives want to speak to someone new might spark thoughts of, "Ah, they're on to a hot trail," Jacobson said. "But that's not necessarily the case at all."
Tracy Zornes is the one name police did publicly say they were seeking. Just days after the deaths, they called the 38-year-old from Naytahwaush a "person of interest" but explicitly said he wasn't yet a suspect.
Since his arrest March 4 on some outstanding felony warrants, Zornes has been jailed in Becker County on charges of possessing a gun as a felon and burglary. He is set to be in court next on July 21, and trial is scheduled to begin on Aug. 3.
Now that investigators have questioned Zornes, he is no longer considered a "person of interest," Jacobson said, because that term just meant police wanted to interview him.
"We came out not calling him a suspect on purpose," Jacobson said.
Despite the lack of new public information on the killings, simply the sheer time that's gone into the case does shed some light on its nature, Jacobson said.
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"The longer it goes, the more it's indicative of the complexity there," he said.
The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and the Herald are owned by Forum Communications Co.
