A chilling find near a small town in the US state of Oklahoma puzzles the police: Investigators discovered the dismembered bodies of four missing men in a river. They all had gunshot wounds, Okmulgee Community Police Chief Joe Prentice said at a press conference on Monday evening (local time). The previous investigations suggested that the men were planning a crime. The police arrested the owner of a scrap yard in connection with the crime.
The four victims, aged 29 to 32, had been missing since last week. When they disappeared, they were on bicycles, according to the police. The exact background and the official cause of death are still unclear. "I've investigated more than 80 murders in my career. I've worked on multiple-victim homicides. I've dealt with dismemberment. But this case is the deadliest case and it's very violent," said Police Commissioner Prentice.
Junkyard owner as a person of interest
The body parts in the river Deep Fork were discovered by a passer-by. A witness also told the police that he had been invited by the men to take part in a coup that was lucrative for everyone. "We don't know what they have planned," said the police chief. When asked by a journalist if it might have been about drugs, he said: "We have no idea." Neither the murder weapon nor the men's bicycles have been found so far.
During the search, the investigators found traces of a violent crime on a property near a scrap yard. However, the police did not give any details. The owner of the junkyard is a person of interest in the case, but has not yet been classified as a suspect. The 67-year-old had initially cooperated with the investigators and was not "hostile". But then he disappeared, only the man's abandoned car was found in a neighboring town behind a shop.
The victims are said to have been friends
On Tuesday afternoon (local time), Okmulgee police said they had caught the man. He was picked up in a stolen car in a coastal town in the US state of Florida around 2000 kilometers away. There was an arrest warrant against the man for a shooting in 2012, he was arrested. According to the police, the owner of the junkyard had previously denied knowing the victims. "Of course I can't ask the victims, but I have no reason to believe there was a pre-existing relationship," the police chief said.
The four men killed are said to have been close friends, according to investigators. They probably left Okmulgee on the evening of October 9th with their bikes. They were then reported missing by relatives. Attempts to reach her by phone failed - calls on her mobile phones were answered directly by the answering machine. According to the police chief, the bodies were probably thrown into the river a week ago. Okmulgee has around 11,000 inhabitants and is located about 60 kilometers south of Tulsa in the American Midwest.
report CNN
