Grieving relatives of the seven people killed in rural Oklahoma, USA, have been working to piece together the horror story that started with two teenagers being reported missing, as law enforcement officials went silent while investigating it.
Since announcing the bodies were found on Monday, authorities have released scanty information on who was dead, how they died and who killed them.
According to family members of the deceased, law enforcement told them all the victims were shot to death in slayings that have stunned the community of Henryetta.
Family members of those slain recalled the domineering nature of one of the dead, who was a registered sex offender.
Janette Mayo was the first to say publicly that her daughter and three teenage grandchildren were among the dead.
Her daughter was married to Jesse McFadden, a sex offender who Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice said Monday had also been killed and linked to two other teenagers reported missing this week.
McFadden had been controlling, Mayo said, which had concerned her. But she said the family didn’t learn about her son-in-law’s criminal history until a few months ago.
“He lied to my daughter, and he convinced her it was all just a huge mistake,” Mayo, of Westville, told The Associated Press. “He was very standoffish, generally very quiet, but he kept my daughter and the kids basically under lock and key. He had to know where they were at all times, which sent red flags up.”
On Monday, Rice said the bodies were found on the property where McFadden lived near Henryetta, a town of about 6,000 about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City. The dead bodies included two teens who had been reported as missing and in danger — Ivy Webster, 14, and Brittany Brewer, 16 — and who were last seen with McFadden. Rice said the state medical examiner would have to confirm the victims’ identities.
Mayo, 59, of Westville, Oklahoma, near the Arkansas border, said the sheriff’s office notified her late Monday that the other four victims were her daughter, Holly Guess, 35, and her grandchildren, Rylee Elizabeth Allen, 17; Michael James Mayo, 15; and Tiffany Dore Guess, 13. Mayo said Tiffany was close friends with Ivy and Brittany, who were spending the weekend with the family.
While Rice declined to provide details of how they died, Mayo said the sheriff’s office told her that her daughter and grandchildren were all found shot to death in various locations on McFadden’s property.
Ivy’s father, Justin Webster, said he filed a missing person report with the local sheriff’s office when she didn’t return home Sunday night after spending the weekend with McFadden, Guess and her children. Justin Webster said he thought the children went with McFadden to spend some time on a ranch where he was working near McAlester.
He said law enforcement officials also told him that all of the victims suffered gunshot wounds, that some had been lined up and were located across the property.
Webster echoed descriptions of McFadden as controlling and unusual, but said he had no idea about McFadden’s criminal background.
“I would say he was weird,” Webster said. “He was always getting into his kids’ phones and reading all their snap messages and all that. It wasn’t in a way of a concerned parent. It was more of keeping tabs on the kids.”
The missing endangered person advisory issued early Monday said Webster and Brewer had been seen traveling with McFadden, who was on the state’s sex offender registry. Oklahoma Department of Corrections prison records show he was convicted of first-degree rape in 2003 and released in October 2020.
McFadden had been scheduled to appear in court Monday for the start of a jury trial on charges of soliciting sexual conduct with a minor and possession of child pornography. Court records show he was communicating with a then-16-year-old girl using a contraband cellphone while he was incarcerated at a state prison near Muskogee.
The teen’s grandfather reported their communications to prison officials, according to an affidavit from a Department of Corrections investigator.
Webster hopes this whole ordeal leads to harsher criminal penalties for sex offenders, especially those who target children.
AFP
