NYPD issues dire warning as manhunt launched for ‘armed’ career criminal accused of torching, killing elderly NYC couple

Police launched a massive manhunt Tuesday for a violent sex offender and career criminal sought in the horrific Queens fire that killed the elderly parents of an FDNY paramedic.

Jamel McGriff, 42, an ex-con on probation with a string of career busts, has been identified as a suspect in the vicious deaths of 78-year-old Maureen Olton and her husband, Frank Thomas Olton, 76, who was found bound to a pole in the basement with multiple stab wounds after their Bellerose home was torched Monday, police and law enforcement sources said.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said McGriff is “armed and dangerous.”

Tisch said the suspected killer entered the 254th Street home through a backdoor around 10:15 a.m. Monday – and was caught on surveillance footage leaving after terrorizing the elderly victims for nearly five hours.

According to ABC Eyewitness News, Frank Olton had been doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire, while both victims were stabbed multiple times.

Just 14 minutes later, fire alarms went off and firefighters responded to the blaze.

Maureen Olton’s body was found on the first floor, and her husband in the basement, where he had been chained and lifeless before the fire was set, the sources said.

McGriff spent nearly 17 years of a 20-year sentence in state prison on a 2006 robbery, sex act and assault conviction — and was still on probation following his release in 2023, state correction records show.

According to the state sex offender registry, McGriff was convicted of molesting a 23-year-old woman he did not know at knifepoint on Nov. 21, 2005.

Sources told The Post he was hit with another sex offence after his release.

According to sources, McGriff is also a suspect in an Aug. 31 gunpoint attempted robbery in Manhattan, when he allegedly entered a store on Avenue of the Americas and attempted to steal cell phones before running off empty handed.

McGriff has not been charged in either incident and was only identified as a person of interest.