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Maintenance Worker Charged With Killing Property Manager

REISTERSTOWN, Md. (WJZ) -- It was a crime that rocked a small Reisterstown townhome complex. The leasing manager was brutally murdered inside her office complex back in June. Now police have a suspect in custody--the maintenance man at that same complex.

Meghan McCorkell has details on the arrest.

Rashaan Williams, 27, was taken into custody Tuesday night, more than two months after the murder.

Williams is the man police say is behind the brutal killing of Melinda Maltese Schaefer, 29, at the Townes of Harvest View. Her family is still in shock.

"She cared about everybody. This is what burns me up, that she would never hurt anybody intentionally in her life," said her father, Mike Maltese.

Witnesses say Williams, the maintenance man, was the only one who went inside the rental office during the attack.

"There was evidence of an extremely violent confrontation. The leasing office was a wreck. The chairs, the desk were strewn everywhere and there was blood all over the walls and the blinds," said Elise Armacost, Baltimore County Police.

Williams told investigators he'd left a Dollar General store around 9:20 a.m. He went to the leasing center from 9:30-9:45, the time frame in which investigators believe Schaefer was killed. Williams is then seen on surveillance tape at a Home Depot at 10:33 a.m. But security cameras at the Dollar General show Williams wearing a completely different outfit than he was wearing at the Home Depot an hour later.

"We believe that clothing was discarded after it was soiled at that very violent murder scene," Armacost said.

Williams lived just a block from that scene.

Schaefer's family says they want him to pay for taking away their loved one.

"I don't want to see this guy on the face of this earth anymore, if you want to know the honest to God truth," Maltese said.

Police are not releasing a motive in the killing, but days after the murder, property managers reported keys to several units in the complex had gone missing.

Williams is charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond.

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