Photograph Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Day by day Beast; Okmulgee Police
The scrapyard proprietor wished for questioning in connection to a quadruple murder in a rural Oklahoma city was arrested Tuesday morning in Daytona Shores, Florida, ending a four-day search after the dismembered our bodies of 4 pals have been present in a river.
Joseph Kennedy, 67, was discovered by Florida deputies with a car that was reported stolen in Oklahoma, police say, and was arrested on fees of grand theft and being a “fugitive of justice.” He’s awaiting extradition again to Oklahoma, the place he additionally faces fees for a 2012 capturing, police stated Tuesday.
Kennedy was the proprietor of a scrapyard in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, the place native cops say 4 pals have been murdered earlier than they have been dumped within the Deep Fork River, about 40 miles south of Tulsa.
Cops didn't say why they consider the boys have been murdered on the scrapyard. Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice stated he doesn’t consider Kennedy knew any of the boys previous to their homicide.
Mark Chastain, 32, Billy Chastain, 30, Mike Sparks, 32, and Alex Stevens, 29, have been final seen alive on bicycles late at night time on Oct. 9, supposedly on their means from Billy Chastain’s home to “hit a lick sufficiently big for all of them,” a witness informed police.
Detectives initially handled the boys’s disappearance as a lacking individual’s case, however it was shortly upgraded to a murder investigation as soon as the our bodies of all 4 males have been discovered within the river, dismembered with gunshot wounds.
The boys’s our bodies have been discovered Friday however have been so deformed that police weren’t sure of their identities. Nonetheless, information obtained out in regards to the discovery of our bodies, and Kennedy—who nonetheless hasn’t been formally labeled as a suspect—disappeared from city the next morning. Cops stated he could have been suicidal.
As legislation enforcement looked for Kennedy, a medical expert confirmed that the found our bodies belonged to the buddy group, shattering the hearts of family members.
Mark Chastain’s spouse, Jessica Chastain, informed The Day by day Beast on Tuesday that that they had two children collectively and had dated since their freshman yr of highschool.
Jessica stated she was nonetheless in “shock” that Mark was gone, and that cops discovering her husband’s physique introduced her no closure.
“There are lots of people affected by this,” she stated, including that three of the 4 males killed have been fathers. She additionally stated she hopes the individual behind the slayings “suffers.”
Jessica stated she reported her husband lacking the night time after he rode away for a late-night bike trip with pals and his brother. Though he stopped answering the cellphone, she briefly held out hope he was simply out too late with the group as a result of his cellphone—geared up with Life360, a household monitoring app—confirmed it had 28 % of battery the next day.
However Jessica stated her husband’s cellphone shortly shot down from 28 % to zero by the night of Oct. 10. That’s when she referred to as 911, and search events have been fashioned.
The households of the victims grew to become targets on Monday, when Prentice stated that the quartet had ridden off the night time of their disappearance to “hit a lick,” which is slang for “to steal.” Chastain stated the boys’s households had obtained messages on-line that they “deserved it.”
Jessica stated these hateful messages aren’t warranted. She stated her husband and their pals sometimes went on bike rides, and so they could have been as much as one thing sneaky, however she’s sure they weren’t doing something that warranted their all being fatally shot.
“Mark labored for the issues that now we have,” she stated, combating again tears. “They might have been on (Kennedy’s) property, however it wasn’t, ‘hey we’re about to rob you blind.’ If (Kennedy) would’ve informed any of the blokes to depart, (Mark) would’ve left.”
Jessica stated she’ll keep in mind Mark as being the most effective accomplice and father somebody might ask for.
“Something we ever wanted, he made positive we obtained it,” she stated. “And if we wanted it immediately, he dropped no matter he was doing and made positive we obtained what we wanted. He was simply a tremendous man.”