Did accused Ripley County killers target the elderly?

When an elderly couple died in a late-night fire last month, investigators in southeast Missouri’s Ripley County dismissed the deaths as accidental — a gnarly ending to two full lives.

But when the bodies of two more elderly people were found in a burning home last week — and it turned out one had been shot twice before burning up in the house — sheriff’s deputies were faced with a barely conceivable possibility: a pack of young people preying on the elderly.