A business executive killed inside his Bethesda, Md., home last week was shot several times by a fired employee who had planned to burglarize the property, according to police allegations filed in court Tuesday.
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After police announced his arrest Wednesday, Billy J. Phillips, 36, of Rockville, Md., was ordered held without bond on one count of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Geoffrey Biddle, 66.
“Phillips went to the residence to steal checks,” investigators wrote in Montgomery County District Court filings, “and at some point encountered Biddle.”
After shooting Biddle, detectives alleged in charging documents, Phillips tried to cover his tracks by forging and backdating $18,050 worth of checks he would later deposit. Phillips also allegedly sent an email from Biddle’s cellphone to his co-workers at Payment Solutions in Rockville on June 23, stating that a “family emergency” would be keeping him from working that day, police said in court papers.
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In court Wednesday, prosecutor Marybeth Ayres indicated the crime was not brief.
“It appears that it took place over a lengthy period of time and the victim may have been held hostage at gunpoint for some period before ultimately being shot with a .22-caliber firearm,” she said.
Ayres also noted that Phillips has a previous conviction for bank robbery in Virginia.
Paul Batchelor, an attorney who represented Phillips at the hearing, did not address the specific allegations. He had asked that his client to be released on home detention or some form of electronic monitoring, saying Phillips had a stable living arrangement with his girlfriend and their 2？ -week-old child.
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Investigators worked the case for six days, according to court documents, reviewing copies of Biddle’s checks, interviewing his co-workers and reviewing a neighbor’s security camera footage that appeared to place Phillips walking away from the scene of the crime.
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Biddle’s family and friends remained devastated.
“Geoff was an exceedingly kind and thoughtful person,” David Sacramo, president of Payment Solutions, said in a statement. “He truly had other people’s best interests at heart, above his own.”
Jack Biddle said his cousin’s caring, gentle nature was always present despite a series of deep losses — both his parents died before he was 14, and two of his siblings died in their 50s.
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“He just had a whole life of tragedy,” Jack Biddle said. “Life threw everything hard it could at a person, and he didn’t become angry.”
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Biddle’s co-workers grew worried about him Thursday because he did not show up for work, according to court records. They called a close friend of Biddle’s to go check on him at his home along Windsor Lane, several blocks south of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
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The friend arrived to find Biddle’s car in the driveway with a flat tire. The front door was unlocked and he went inside, but he could not find his friend on the first or second floors, police said. He did see, on the kitchen island, Biddle’s cellphone next to his wallet, according to court records. There were credit cards missing and no cash in the wallet. He left and called a Payment Solutions employee, asking him to call the police.
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When officers came to the house, they made their way to the basement, which the friend did not check, thinking it was locked. Officers found Biddle’s body on the floor, surrounded by shell casings. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators discovered the cellphone was unlocked, and two entries from the morning before would become important clues, according to the allegations. A call placed to SunTrust bank at 7:58 a.m. lasted for only a minute, according to investigators. Another was an email sent at 9:07 a.m. to Biddle’s colleagues saying that because of a family emergency, he would not be working that day.
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But family who spoke to detectives said they knew of no emergencies, the documents said. And co-workers said Biddle had already said he was taking the day off, so the unexpected email about him not working struck them as odd, detectives said.
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Investigators began looking for any unusual banking transactions and found three checks ostensibly signed by Biddle but endorsed by someone named Billy Phillips, court document said. Detectives learned that Phillips had been fired from Biddle’s company in May or June 2020 “due to lack of performance,” investigators would later allege in court records.
A close look at scanned copies of the checks revealed that the Biddle signatures did not match his usual signature, and an element of the signature on the front of the check aligned with the signature on the back, detectives said in court documents.
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“The ‘B’ in Billy and the ‘B’ in Biddle are virtually identical,” detectives alleged. Bank surveillance photographs showed Phillips depositing the checks, according to court records.
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Detectives later learned that Phillips had been fired from a subsequent job, where he allegedly had stolen three checks from an executive, court documents said.
Detectives also keyed in on the one-minute call from Biddle’s phone the day before he was discovered dead. Biddle had never called SunTrust going back to at least 2018, according to court records. Detectives concluded “that Phillips either made the call to SunTrust from Biddle’s phone himself or forced Biddle to do it in order to check his SunTrust balance.”
Jack Biddle described his cousin as a gentle giant of a man. “Very kind, very thoughtful. He cared a lot about people,” he said.
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His parents lived in Texas when Geoff was young, and as a teenager he was raised with his siblings in Washington by a grandfather, according to Jack Biddle. He later worked for Chevy Chase Village as village manager before working at Payment Solutions. He married and had one daughter and, later, amicably divorced, his cousin said.
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Outside work, Geoff Biddle poured his heart and hands into his home along Windsor Lane, gardening, laying stones, painting.
“He could control his flowers and his plants and his trees,” his cousin said. “By his bare hands he built up that place.”
Biddle’s tenure at Payment Solutions seemed to mesh with his priorities.
“He was incredibly dedicated to the success of the company and fought as hard for our personal lives as our professional lives,” employee Troy O’Connor said in a statement released by the company.
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As he grew older, his commitment to his daughter only grew, Jack Biddle said.
“While his life was full of hardship, he kept marching,” Biddle said. “His garden and his daughter were his peace.”
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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