No one has been ruled out as a suspect in last week's quadruple murders, including Brian Tzeo, the father and husband of the victims.
"Everyone is a suspect until we catch the person who did this," said Catawba County Sheriff David Huffman Tuesday.
Huffman would not single out Tzeo as a suspect, but would not rule him out either. Tzeo was at work when his family was killed.
Huffman said investigators are focused "in on two areas" that could garner an arrest. He said investigators are working nonstop to find a suspect in Thursday's killings of Lisa Phan and her three children — 20-year-old Melanie, 18-year-old Pauline and 4-year-old Cody. The four were found stabbed or shot to death inside their home in Conover.
"Right now, we have evidence going in two different directions," Huffman said, declining to elaborate. "But this is something that everybody wants to see taken care of as quickly as possible."
Investigators think the suspect entered the home through an unlocked back door. Having an unlocked door in the community, tucked among rolling hills and farmland, wasn't uncommon in the family's subdivision, Huffman said.
"In that neighborhood, that would be probably a common occurrence," he said. "We'd never had a (major) call to that house, or in that development."
Around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, authorities received a 911 emergency call reporting a teenage girl being pulled into her house, beaten and stabbed by an unidentified male. The call came from a friend of the young girl, according to investigators. In the 911 call the teen's voice is frantic as she struggles to tell officers the address of the home.
Investigators found the family after Pauline's friend called 911, screaming and sobbing as she told the operator Pauline had just been pulled into her home and stabbed by a man.
The friend had picked up Pauline for school that morning, but they went back to the house after the friend she had seen a suspicious man outside the house.
Authorities have pursued more than 100 leads in their search for a suspect, including some after a sketch of a suspect was featured on Saturday night's television broadcast of "America's Most Wanted."
Huffman said he expects to announce a possible motive in the killings by the end of the week.
Tzeo has acknowledged he had an affair but that he and his wife were still living together and trying to work things out. Huffman said both Tzeo and the woman with whom he had the affair told authorities about the past relationship.
Visitation for the family will be held from 2 to 7 p.m. today at Jenkins Funeral Home in Newton. The family will be buried in El Sobrante, Calif.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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