This story was corrected on March 26, 2009.

Lee and Cynthia Dayhoff were asleep in their new home in Georgia when they got an unusual and alarming call shortly after 4 a.m. last Monday.

Their Largo driveway had become a crime scene.

A neighbor, Bernadine Conrad, had called the morning of March 16 to tell the Dayhoffs there had just been an explosion at their house in the 11100 block of Webbwood Court and she had called 911.

"Then [she] said, wait a minute, there was a car on fire in our driveway," Cynthia Dayhoff said.

Later that morning, Conrad called back to tell the couple —still unpacking boxes from their move Feb. 24 as they wait for a settlement on their Largo home — that two burned bodies had been found inside the car.

"The damage is minimal, especially compared to someone's life," Cynthia Dayhoff said.

Police later identified the bodies as Renee Dewitt, 42, who worked as a nurse in Clinton, and her daughter Ebony Dewitt, 19, a Largo High School student.

The Dewitts' deaths made them the second mother and daughter to be found dead in the quiet residential area within two months, following the Jan. 26 homicides of Karen Lofton, 45, and her 16-year-old daughter, Karissa Lofton, less than two miles away.

A week-and-a-half after the second set of homicides, as police investigate the possibility that a serial killer is responsible, leads are still "flowing in" to police, said Maj. Andrew Ellis, the police department's chief spokesman. Police, working in a round-the-clock task force, had already received 30 leads within two days of the Dewitts' death.

The Loftons were found dead in their home in the 10800 block of Southall Drive around 2:50 a.m., after Karissa called 911 and told police she and her mother had been shot. She was able to give dispatchers her address, but by the time responders arrived five minutes later, both were dead.

Delores and Ebony Dewitt, who lived in the 9700 block of Cedarhollow Lane, were found two miles from their home in the back seat and trunk of a Nissan Maxima sedan that had been set on fire in the Webbwood Court driveway. The Nissan was apparently stolen that morning using keys taken from the car owner's house in a break-in several weeks earlier.

Police are exploring similarities in the two mother-daughter homicides. The Dewitts and Loftons were both killed early Monday mornings, and both mothers were single and worked as nurses.

The Dewitts reported their home was broken into in November and a television and video game system stolen, but the break-in doesn't appear to be related to the subsequent homicides, Ellis said Friday.

The Dewitts were last seen alive early the morning of March 15, about 26 hours before they would be found dead, when a neighbor reported seeing Ebony Dewitt come home at 2 a.m. At 10 p.m. that evening, another daughter, Courtney Hicks, 17, went to the house and found no one was home, but didn't report the home was broken into or that anything in the home was disturbed or missing.

Police have said there were no signs of forced entry at the Loftons' home or indication that anything had been stolen, and the Loftons had not reported any burglaries or break-ins in the weeks or months before their deaths.

The only confirmed burglary related to the two homicides is the stolen car used to burn the Dewitts' bodies. Anyone with information about the cases may call the Prince George's County Police Department's Homicide Unit at 301-772-4925. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers at 866-411-8477 or text "PGPD plus your message" to CRIMES (274637),

E-mail Liz Skalski at eskalski@gazette.net.