Sometime Monday, someone entered a Quartz Hill home, killed four people -- including two children and a NASA engineer -- and set the home ablaze.
A day later, authorities were called to another fire, this time at a home in the Antelope Valley town of Rosamond. There, officials found two bodies in what authorities have labeled homicides.
Authorities said Wednesday that the crimes did not appear to be related, but officials could not recall so many homicides in the Antelope Valley during such a short period in nearly two decades.
The spate of violence has caused concerns across the valley, particularly because the killers appear to be at large.
In Quartz Hill, the body of Joseph Ciganik, a NASA Dryden Flight Research Center employee, was found with those of three others in the charred home in the 43200 block of 45th Street West.
Sheriff's homicide detectives on Wednesday continued to try to unravel the mysterious quadruple slaying as friends and family set up a memorial for the four victims outside the partially burned ranch-style home.
Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said the preliminary investigation suggested that Ciganek, 60, suffered trauma wounds sometime soon after he returned home from work Monday.
Winter said Ciganek, a management system analyst, could have been attacked with a knife, a gun or other weapon.
Ciganek lived with his wife, Jocelyn, who was not home at the time of the fire and was returning from her job at a nearby mall when someone started the blaze.
Sheriff's Lt. David Coleman said a relative of the wife, along with her son and daughter, was also living at the home. Friends and relatives identified them as Jenny Park and her children, Jamie, 13, and Justin, who was 8 or 9.
Ciganek's body was found in one bedroom, and the other three victims were found in another bedroom. Winter said that those three victims' bodies were badly burned and that arson investigators would determine whether an incendiary liquid was poured on them or in the surrounding area to ignite the blaze. The home itself was not burned throughout, but bedrooms were severely damaged in the blaze, he said.
Coleman said it was too early to say whether a random intruder was responsible for the crimes or whether the perpetrator was connected to the family.
"We aren't saying there is a maniac on the loose here," he added.
