The case of the four missing cyclists in Oklahoma has ended tragically. The bodies found dismembered in an Oklahoma river were identified as the missing men.
The owner of a salvage yard, whom police named as a person of interest in the brutal murder of the four friends, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with an unrelated crime.
The police arrested Joe Kennedy, 67, on the shores of Daytona Beach while he was driving a stolen vehicle on Monday. According to Volusia County Inmate records, he faces charges of grand theft of a vehicle and being a fugitive.
The police were in the process of returning Kennedy to Okmulgee County, and they said that the murder investigation was still going on and that detectives were following all leads. Authorities said he was a person of interest because they had found evidence of a violent act on the property next to his business, but they did not identify him as a suspect in the murders.
According to his arrest warrant, Kennedy was reported missing. Upon his arrest, Kennedy told the police that he was not a missing person and was in no danger before moving to the Volusia County jail. The Okmulgee District Court had also issued an arrest warrant for Kennedy over a shooting in 2012. He will face the Volusia County judge on Wednesday.
Kennedy was arrested just a week after the four cyclists were reported missing. Mark Chastain, Billy Chastain, Mike Sparks, and Alex Stevens left Billy Chastain’s house on October 9 at around 9:00 pm, and no one heard from them again.
A few days later, authorities recovered their bodies in a river outside Okmulgee with gunshot wounds. Okmulgee police Chief Joe Prentice said that even though the coroner’s office had not officially identified the cause of their death, all four men suffered gunshot wounds, and their bodies were dismembered before being thrown in the river. It took the police several days to recover all their remains, which is why it took some time before they could identify their bodies.
Authorities are yet to find any of their bicycles, or the guns used to murder them. According to Chief Prentice, even though the circumstances of their deaths are still a mystery, the investigations led the police to believe that the four men left Billy Chastain’s home intending to commit a crime.
The police based their belief on one witness who claimed that the four men had invited him to hit a “big score” that would be enough for all of them, but he declined. Prentice said that the terminology was well known for committing criminal behavior, but they did not know what the men were planning on doing or where the alleged crime would take place.
Two of the men’s cell phones were tracked to different areas, one just five miles from the river and the other about ten miles from the river. Police later found evidence showing a violent act on a property next to one of the locations.
Police named Joe Kennedy as a person of interest but said he had gone missing since Saturday night. Kennedy will be extradited to Oklahoma.
