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It's a classic tale of whodunit, but for Rene and Dennis Boni, it's the unknowns that are the scariest part.

After spending the evening of Aug. 15 with friends at their home in the Burning Tree Estates neighborhood off Seven Locks Road, the couple awoke Saturday morning to a knock at the door.

A landscape worker they hired to put mulch around two trees was inquiring where she should place the mulch now that the trees weren't there anymore.

"I said, ‘What do you mean the trees aren't there anymore?'" Rene Boni said.

The trees, which were standing undisturbed when the couple turned their outside light off around midnight, had been cut down and were still lying in the yard, next to their stumps.

"It's just very sad. It feels like a hate crime," Boni said.

One, a Dogwood she estimates was about 30 years old, stood next to the driveway. The other, a Japanese plum, was planted just after the family moved into their home about nine years ago stood on the left boundary of the family's yard.

"We just liked seeing the tree growing and thinking that it was planted when our kids were little," Boni said. The family's children are now 18 and 20. "It was symbolic to us."

The couple believes the culprit must have used a handsaw because they would have heard the sound of a chainsaw. The cuts were also consistent with a blade.

Using a handsaw to cut down each tree — the Dogwood was about 10 inches in diameter and the Japanese Plum about 6 — would have taken some time, according to Orion Taylor, trees and shrubs department manager and horticulturist at Behnke Nurseries in Potomac.

"It could take an hour or so because the handsaw is not going to give you the right kind of cut to cut through a tree that thick," Taylor said. "The weight would push down on the blade as you cut it, so it would be very difficult to cut a vertical tree with a handsaw."

The sawdust from the wood was also very fine, a surefire indicator of a handsaw, Taylor said. With two people, Taylor said, the cutting may have taken a shorter amount of time. A chainsaw would be the typical way to fell trees of that size, and would have taken only a few seconds.

Boni said she and her husband have wondered whether the incident is targeted vandalism, though she can't think of anyone with a vendetta against her family. "It certainly feels personal," she said. "We don't have any idea who would do such a thing, or why."

Whoever cut the trees did not attempt to steal anything or commit other vandalism, Boni said.

"Any kind of vandalism is obviously bad, but to kill a living thing … I can't even wrap my mind around it," said Ann Hill, a neighbor.

Hill said that she's unsure whether the act was a targeted one. "In some ways it doesn't seem random, but then again, they're such nice people it's hard to believe it would be personal," she said.

Taylor said he's heard of neighbors cutting down branches from trees on adjacent lots that were dangling into their yard, but he's never heard of a situation like this.

The family filed a police report.

Montgomery County Police spokesman Steve Pascali said that the culprit, if caught, would be charged with two counts of malicious destruction of property. He said he had never heard of a similar case.

"We take thousands of calls each year and we take quite a lot of vandalism calls, but I personally have not seen someone cutting trees down without any kind of reason," Pascali said.

Hill said since word of the incident spread on the neighborhood's Yahoo group, there has been some discussion about petitioning for a new streetlight to better illuminate the area at night.

"It's just a shame that you feel at all unsafe," Boni said. "I hate to say this, but even planting new trees doesn't mean that whoever did this isn't going to do it again."