GUILTY VA - Sgt. Crystal Ragin, 32, & three kids found slain, Newport News, 18 Aug 2011

A Virginia man has denied any involvement in the slayings of his wife and her three children, whose bodies were found in their burned apartment, police said Sunday.

John Moses Ragin, 36, professed his innocence during interviews with Newport News police detectives who traveled to South Carolina, where he is being held, department spokesman Harold O. Eley said.

"Mr. Ragin denies any involvement whatsoever in their deaths," Eley said.

Newport News police want Ragin returned to Virginia to face nine charges, including four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Crystal Ragin and her children, Sierra, 15, Rasheed, 10, and Lakwan, 6.

All four were found in their Newport News apartment on Friday. Investigators found evidence of knife wounds and "exposure to fire," police said.

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John Moses Ragin, 39, was convicted of killing his wife, Crystal Ragin, a 32-year-old Army sergeant at Fort Eustis, and three of her children — Sierra, 15; La'Kwan, 11; and Rasheed, 6. The verdict came on the fourth week of the capital murder trial...

The jurors, seven women and five men, were not able to come to a verdict on whether Ragin should receive the death penalty, which forced Circuit Judge Timothy S. Fisher by law to declare a hung jury and impose life in prison.

Blood that matched Ragin's DNA was found in multiple places on the victims, a forensic scientist testified. Ragin's DNA was found under his wife's fingernails, on a detergent bottle filled with gasoline that was used as the accelerant, and mixed in with the victims' blood.

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