Kansas City, Mo. ? Five people face criminal charges after a tipster who came forward in December helped authorities link a double homicide to a slaying nine months later.

State and federal prosecutors said the five defendants knew one another but would not explain the connections.

“An individual came forward and described the interrelationships between the cases,” Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders said Wednesday.

In the double homicide, Anthony Rios, 28, and Olivia Raya, 26, were found dead in their home a few days before Christmas 2002. Police on Wednesday said those killings happened during a robbery.

A federal indictment unsealed Wednesday alleges that Michael L. Dale, 32, and Dyshawn L. Johnson, 31, both of Kansas City, killed Rios and Raya. A third man, Bryant Burton, 37, of Blue Springs, was indicted with Dale and Johnson on drug distribution and firearms charges. Johnson and Burton are brothers.

Authorities said it took the tip to connect the double homicide to the September 2003 death of Torrez E. Rodriguez, 20, who was shot more than 40 times.

On Tuesday, Dale and two other men – Archie L. Mathews, 33, of Independence, and Mitchell C. Powell, 35, of Kansas City – were charged in Jackson County Circuit Court with first-degree murder in Rodriguez’s death. Dale already is awaiting sentencing in a federal drug trafficking case.

The maximum penalty for the killings is death.

U.S. Atty. Todd Graves described the cases as “interlocking ” but wouldn’t elaborate.

Neither Sanders nor Graves had decided whether to seek the death penalty.