The scrapyard owner wanted for questioning in connection to a quadruple homicide in a rural Oklahoma town was arrested Tuesday morning in Daytona Shores, Florida, ending a four-day search after the dismembered bodies of four friends were found in a river.
Joseph Kennedy, 67, was found by Florida deputies with a vehicle that was reported stolen in Oklahoma, police say, and was arrested on charges of grand theft and being a “fugitive of justice.” He’s awaiting extradition back to Oklahoma, where he also faces charges for a 2012 shooting, police said Tuesday.
Kennedy was the owner of a scrapyard in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, where local cops say four friends were murdered before they were dumped in the Deep Fork River, about 40 miles south of Tulsa.
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Cops did not say why they believe the men were murdered at the scrapyard. Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice said he doesn’t believe Kennedy knew any of the men prior to their murder.
Mark Chastain, 32, Billy Chastain, 30, Mike Sparks, 32, and Alex Stevens, 29, were last seen alive on bicycles late at night on Oct. 9, supposedly on their way from Billy Chastain’s house to “hit a lick big enough for all of them,” a witness told police.
Detectives initially treated the men’s disappearance as a missing person’s case, but it was quickly upgraded to a homicide investigation once the bodies of all four men were found in the river, dismembered with gunshot wounds.
The men’s bodies were found Friday but were so deformed that police weren’t certain of their identities. Still, news got out about the discovery of bodies, and Kennedy—who still hasn’t been officially labeled as a suspect—disappeared from town the following morning. Cops said he may have been suicidal.
As law enforcement searched for Kennedy, a medical examiner confirmed that the discovered bodies belonged to the friend group, shattering the hearts of loved ones.
Mark Chastain’s wife, Jessica Chastain, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that they had two kids together and had dated since their freshman year of high school.
Jessica said she was still in “shock” that Mark was gone, and that cops finding her husband’s body brought her no closure.
“There are a lot of people affected by this,” she said, adding that three of the four men killed were fathers. She also said she hopes the person behind the slayings “suffers.”
Jessica said she reported her husband missing the night after he rode away for a late-night bike ride with friends and his brother. Even though he stopped answering the phone, she briefly held out hope he was just out too late with the group because his phone—equipped with Life360, a family tracking app—showed it had 28 percent of battery the following day.
But Jessica said her husband’s phone quickly shot down from 28 percent to zero by the evening of Oct. 10. That’s when she called 911, and search parties were formed.
The families of the victims became targets on Monday, when Prentice said that the quartet had ridden off the night of their disappearance to “hit a lick,” which is slang for “to steal.” Chastain said the men’s families had received messages online that they “deserved it.”
Jessica said those hateful messages aren’t warranted. She said her husband and their friends occasionally went on bike rides, and they may have been up to something sneaky, but she’s certain they weren’t doing anything that warranted their all being fatally shot.
“Mark worked for the things that we have,” she said, fighting back tears. “They may have been on (Kennedy’s) property, but it wasn’t, ‘hey we’re about to rob you blind.’ If (Kennedy) would’ve told any of the guys to leave, (Mark) would’ve left.”
Jessica said she’ll remember Mark as being the best partner and father someone could ask for.
“Anything we ever needed, he made sure we got it,” she said. “And if we needed it right away, he dropped whatever he was doing and made sure we got what we needed. He was just an amazing man.”
