When the bodies of 30-year-old Alicia Ann Greer and 39-year-old Jacqueline Jeanette Moore were found on Jan. 31 at the Emerald Sands Inn on Highway 90 in Milton, Florida, it seemed like a tragic but isolated mystery.

“It’s just unfortunate whatever was going on in their lives caused this to happen,” the inn’s owner Scott Kaufmann told the Pensacola News Journal. “We go out of our way to make this a safe place.”

Three days later, though, the body of 52-year-old Peggy Broz was found in her yard in Baldwin County, just across Perdido Bay, which separates the Florida panhandle from Alabama. The woman had been shot, and her white 2003 Chrysler Concorde was missing.

William “Billy” Eugene Boyette Jr., a 44-year-old man with a long rap sheet, quickly emerged as a suspect in both cases. He had been in a relationship with Greer and has a history of alleged domestic abuse.

Fear truly stalked the Gulf Coast on Monday, though, when Boyette allegedly struck again – and police say they learned he was not alone.

In Pensacola, back on the other side of Perdido Bay, 28-year-old Kayla Crocker’s mother worried when her daughter didn’t show up from work. She drove to her house to check on her daughter and 2-year-old grandson.

There, she found her daughter bleeding out from a gunshot wound at 6:30 a.m. Her son was also in the house, unharmed. Crocker’s 2006 white Chevrolet Cobalt, adorned with a skull and crossbones sticker, was missing.

The young woman was rushed to the hospital, where she remained in critical condition as of early Tuesday morning.

Authorities said Boyette, accompanied by Mary Craig Rice, broke into Crocker’s home, shot her and left her for dead. Video surveillance showed the pair driving Crocker’s Cobalt to a Shell gas station, then to a nearby Hardee’s fast food restaurant, where they ate breakfast.

Police are considering this to be the latest incident in an unhinged killing spree.

“What we are experiencing is a running nightmare, quite honestly,” ECSO Chief Deputy Chip Simmons said during a Monday news conference. “In short we have a killer, he is in our midst . . . everyone, and I mean everyone, should be aware of this, should be aware of what they look like.”

The nature of Rice and Boyette’s relationship remains unclear, but police have deemed her a suspect rather than a kidnapping victim because she has changed her hair color to orange and has been seen entering stores alone.

“There was sufficient time if you will for her to make an escape. To walk away, seek refuge if you will for safety, but she returned continually to [Boyette],” Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said at a news conference.

Though police didn’t give many details, they released a grainy image showing Boyette and Rice in the woods. In the photograph, Boyette holds a handgun. Police declined to say where they received the photograph, citing only a “surveillance system.”

Monday’s home invasion, and the linking of the three alleged crimes, immediately put on edge the small Gulf community of Escambia County, which includes the beach town Pensacola. The Sheriff’s Office doubled the number of deputies involved in its search for the pair, which has included bloodhounds searching nearby woods.

“When you go to work, when you come home, make sure a friend or family member knows where you are, what is your expected time of arrival,” Morgan said, according to the Pensacola News Journal. “These may seem like measures in the extreme, but we’re dealing with an extreme situation here.”

Schools in both Baldwin and Escambia counties will be open Tuesday, though spokespeople for both have indicated they are in close touch with authorities.

“Due to the incidents that news outlets have released in our area we have secured all students inside our school buildings and locked all doors leading in and out,” Rockwell Elementary Principal Robbie Owen told AL.com on Monday.

Authorities have repeatedly warned that the pair are armed and dangerous, citing Boyette’s 15-year history with the law.

In 2014, for example, he was accused of beating a girlfriend when she came from work smelling of alcohol. The arrest report, obtained by the Pensacola News Journal, stated that he told her if she reported the abuse he would “drag [a trial out] a make her life miserable.” The victim lied to police at first, before telling them he had threatened to kill her several times. Charges were later dropped when she recanted her story.

A year later, a Pensacola woman called police and, in a whisper, told dispatchers that her boyfriend had stabbed her several times in her limbs, strangled her and earlier had taken her phone. Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deputies found her crying and bleeding. In a bedroom, they discovered an unconscious Boyette, hand wrapped around a large kitchen knife. He spent a year in custody before charges were dropped when the alleged victim, who was wanted on separate criminal charges, disappeared.

Fourteen hours later, Boyette was arrested by U.S. Marshals for a parole violation, for which he spent three months in jail.

Boyette also “has been a member for a long time of the drug culture. He’s known be a heavy user of spice,” another name for synthetic marijuana, the effects of which “mirrors a sweaty, angry amphetamine trip,” according to The Washington Post’s Ben Guarino.

Added Morgan, “These people stay awake for four, five, six days at a time.”

As of early Tuesday morning, the search for Boyette and Rice continued.

“He has made this statement to many, many people that he will not be taken alive,” Morgan said. “In law enforcement we take those threats and those admonitions very seriously.”