GUILDERLAND — The Guilderland Police have dealt with five homicide cases in the last 27 years.

Unlike the current investigation of murder of a family of four, the earlier Guilderland homicides, each involved one victim and were solved relatively rapidly without so many different police agencies involved.

Two were matricides, one was a mother killing her infant, one was a party-goer who returned to rape and kill his young hostess, and the fifth involved one young man killing another in what police described as a drug deal gone bad.

Two of the victims were shot, two were bludgeoned to death — one with a hammer, the other with a hassock — and one was suffocated.

Police in the earlier cases were more forthcoming about weapons and motives than in the current case.

Here is a summary of the earlier murders, based on Enterprise accounts at the time.

Libby H. Zitelli was found bludgeoned to death in her McKownville Home in 1987. Police were alerted to the crime after receiving two anonymous phone calls stating something terrible had happened at the residence.

The murder weapon, a small masonry hammer, was discovered on a neighbor’s front lawn.

Her son, Anthony Zitelli, who was 25 at the time, was convicted of her murder, and told police he had been trying to spare her the pain and suffering of his leaving home.

In 1990, the Guilderland Police Department collaborated with the Altamont Police Department, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, and the New York State Police in solving the murder of Kimberly Decker, whose body was found in the cellar of her Altamont home.

Stephen Kuber III, who lived at the time in a trailer park on Carman Road, was charged with the murder.

He had been one of a handful of people who attended a party at Decker’s home on Altamont Boulevard, leaving in the early hours of the morning, before returning to rape and kill her.

The Guilderland Police Department had responded to a call about an altercation between Kuber and a friend at a Dunkin’ Donuts shop that same morning, before later learning about Decker’s death, and getting a statement from the friend that led to Kuber’s arrest.

Police reconstructed the scene at Decker’s house, and determined Kuber had raped her, then dragged her to the cellar, where he crushed her skull with a heavy wood hassock, and then slit her throat with a kitchen knife.

In 2000, Melissa Strawbridge, of Altamont, was convicted of killing her newborn daughter in 1997.

Strawbridge, who was living with her parents in 1997, gave birth to a seven-pound, 10-ounce, full-term daughter, in the bathroom of their home.

Two days after the birth, Strawbridge led police to the body of Kaylee Marie, in a dumpster behind the Carpenter’s Commons apartment complex.

A judge ruled that the baby had been born alive, then placed in the toilet, then into a plastic bag, and eventually, into the dumpster.

Also in 2000, Andrew Hernandez, a Guilderland High School student at the time, went to the Guilderland Police Station and said he had done something bad.

When police went to his home, they found the body of his mother, Janice Hernandez, in a closet that served as her home office. She had been shot in the back of the head, and her son pleaded guilty to her murder.

In 2005, Hashim Burnell shot Todd Pianowski to death in what police called a drug-for-money deal.

Pianowski, who was living at the 1700 Designer Apartments on Western Avenue, was shot in the head and torso with a .40 caliber handgun.

Pianowski’s girlfriend discovered his body in the apartment, and told Guilderland Police that Burnell had been in the apartment when she arrived home, held a gun to her head, and then fled.

The Guilderland Police called the New York State Police for help, and the two organizations set up a command post, used a helicopter and trained police dogs, and had 30 to 50 investigators searching the apartment complex and neighborhood.

The police put out an all-points bulletin to area police departments in a search for Burnell, who was eventually collared by the Colonie Police Department.

Pianowski’s murder was the last murder handled by the Guilderland Police Department prior to last week’s quadruple homicide.