Texts from Jesse McFadden’s final night alive have shed light onto what may have been going through the convicted rapist’s mind just before cops found his body and six others—including two missing teens—abandoned on his rural Oklahoma property.
Records show that McFadden, 39, was due in court Monday morning for a hearing on charges of soliciting sexual conduct with a minor and for possessing child pornography, but he never showed.
The woman central to that probe—who reportedly accused McFadden of sexting with her from his jail cell when she was 16—sent screenshots of eerie texts from McFadden to Fox 23. In the messages, he appears to blame her for not dropping the charges levied against him.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I did exactly what I promised I would do when I got out,” McFadden texted the woman Sunday night. “I got a marketing job making great money and was being advanced (sic) been there 2 years now and made a great life like I promised I would do with you.”
McFadden became more pointed in his next messages, telling the unnamed woman, “This is all on you for continuing this.”
In separate messages, he reportedly texted the woman, “Now it’s all gone,” and that “I told you I wouldn’t go back.”
While the cryptic texts shed light into McFadden’s mental state, many questions remain about what happened Sunday night on the outskirts of Henryetta, Oklahoma, a small town roughly an hour south of Tulsa.
Some family members of the victims have accused McFadden of murder, but local cops have yet to make that distinction. When reached by phone, an employee at the Okmulgee County Sheriff's Office told The Daily Beast that updates would be posted to the agency’s Facebook page “soon.”
Cops announced the grisly discovery on Monday, but haven’t released anything beyond the number of people found dead and where they were found—somewhere on McFadden’s sweeping property.
Authorities found the bodies just hours after an Amber Alert was blasted to phones in Oklahoma about a pair of teenage girls going missing, which listed McFadden as a person of interest. The local sheriff confirmed Monday that those girls, 14-year-old Ivy Webster and 16-year-old Brittany Brewer, were among the dead.
The family of McFadden’s wife, Holly Guess, identified the other victims on Tuesday as Rylee Elizabeth Allen, 17; Michael James Mayo, 15; and Tiffany Dore Guess, 13; as well as Guess herself, 35. A GoFundMe page said the mom and her kids were “murdered” by McFadden.
“This is a huge tragedy not just for my family but all of our friends and the community,” Heather Pettigrew wrote. “So much was lost so quickly.”
The Webster and Brewer families created fundraisers of their own, but stopped short of placing blame for their loved ones' deaths on McFadden.
Webster’s mom, Ashleigh Webster, said Monday that her daughter went to McFadden's home to have a sleepover with Tiffany and to swim at a nearby ranch. She was supposed to be back home by 5 p.m. Sunday, but never showed.
Ashleigh Webster said she had no clue about McFadden’s criminal history. The girl’s dad, Justin Webber, told News 2 Oklahoma that he’s mad that McFadden—despite a past rape conviction and pending charges against him—was free on bail for so many years.
“I ask our Congresspeople to get stricter on these pedophiles to keep them locked up, to hold them in jail because no other family should go through what we are going through now,” he said.
Similar questions have been posed to Larry Edwards, the district attorney for nearby Muskogee County, where McFadden was due in court on Tuesday. He told The Daily Beast in a phone call that McFadden’s trial had been repeatedly put on hold for “numerous” reasons—each as bizarre as the next.
Edwards said the trial was put on hold initially because a prosecutor broke their foot and could no longer try the case. At another point, a defense attorney for McFadden died. Then came a slew of delays associated with the pandemic that drug the trial out until this month.
The prosecutor told The Daily Beast he was personally sitting in the courtroom on Monday morning waiting for McFadden to show, but he never made it. Like thousands of others in Oklahoma, his phone had buzzed with the Amber Alert saying two teenage girls were missing, believed to be with him.
Edwards said authorities called the victim involved in the case and alerted her to McFadden’s disappearance. By the time local cops moved into place to protect her, however, word had gotten out that McFadden was dead.
Janette Mayo, the mother of Holly Guess, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that McFadden was very “demure” and lied to her daughter about his past crimes, which Mayo claims she was kept in the dark about entirely until two months ago. The couple had gotten married last May.
The grieving mom, who also lost three of her grandchildren in the tragedy, also insinuated that McFadden was a controlling partner.
“He was very standoffish, generally very quiet, but he kept my daughter and the kids basically under lock and key,” she said. “He had to know where they were at all times, which sent red flags up.”
Brewer’s dad, Nathan Brewer, fought back tears as he spoke at a vigil on Monday night, telling hundreds that he was living every parent's “worst nightmare.” He said his daughter aspired to be a teacher or a veterinarian, and that she was once selected as the winner of a local beauty pageant, Miss Henryetta.
“I am just lost,” he said.
Michael Daly contributed to this report.
