‘Person of interest’ in Oklahoma bicyclist slayings arrested in Florida
Police arrested a “person of interest” in the slayings of four Oklahoma bicyclists in central Florida — more than 1,200 miles away, authorities said Tuesday.
Joseph Kennedy, 67, was arrested in Daytona Beach Shores, in a car “that was reported stolen to the Okmulgee County Sheriff’s Office” Monday, according to a statement from police in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
Mark Chastain, 32, Billy Chastain, 30, Mike Sparks, 32, and Alex Stevens, 29, were reported missing last week and were found shot and dismembered days later in the Deep Fork River, Okmulgee police said.
Just after naming Kennedy as a “person of interest” on Monday afternoon, police said the man’s blue Chrysler PT Cruiser was found “abandoned behind a business” in Morris.
Kennedy was driving near the 2800 block of South Atlantic Avenue at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday when a police license plate reader detected Kennedy’s vehicle, listed the car as stolen and its driver as “missing,” said Daytona Beach Shores Director of Public Safety Michael Fowler.
Kennedy was arrested without incident and did not make any statement to officers, according to Fowler.
“Upon confirming (with police in Oklahoma) his status as a missing person we were notified that he is a person of interest in a quadruple homicide,” Fowler said.
Kennedy, who has a listed address in Okmulgee, is being held without bail. He was booked into custody at the Volusia County Branch Jail at 10:21 a.m. Tuesday on a single charge of grand theft of a motor vehicle, according to Department of Corrections records.
Kennedy was also booked in connection to a 2012 shooting in Okmulgee, police in Oklahoma said. The statement did not name Kennedy as a suspect in the deaths of the four bicyclists.
It was not immediately clear Tuesday afternoon if Kennedy had hired or been assigned an attorney.
Kennedy got on the radar of investigators after they searched his scrap yard and found evidence of a “violent event” on an “adjoining property,” Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice said.
Kennedy was initially interviewed by Okmulgee police Friday, according to Prentice, before he apparently left the state.
The four men were reported missing early last week after they left on their bicycles.
Prentice later said the men had been planning to pull off an undisclosed crime.
Investigators base the belief on the word of a witness who had been invited to go along as the men planned to “hit a lick big enough for all of them,” Prentice said, using slang for a profitable criminal act.
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
