A jury in DC Superior Court convicted a man of second-degree murder on December 10th in the brutal beating and stabbing deaths of Chevy Chase couple Virginia and Michael Spevak. Twenty-two-year-old Jose Portillo was accused along with two accomplices of forcing his way into the Spevak home in November of 2008, burglarizing the residence, fatally attacking the couple and leaving them to die of their wounds.

The two other defendants in the case, twenty-two-year-old Peiro Fuentes Hernandez and Angela Hernandez, age unavailable, pled guilty last year, also to second-degree murder. The two are not related, and are awaiting sentencing for those convictions. All three are to be sentenced in 2011 by Judge Michael L. Rankin. At Portillo's trial, Fuentes Hernandez testified that the trio targeted the Spevak home because Angela Hernandez was a childhood friend of a foster child of the Spevaks. The couple was known for taking in foster children and as being generous and kind to their Northwest Washington neighbors. US Attorney Ronald Machen commented on community reaction to the killings in a statement on December 10th after Portillo was sentenced...

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