Police say 39-year-old Jesse McFadden, a registered sex offender, was among seven people they found dead as they investigated the disappearance of two missing teenage girls in Oklahoma.
Law enforcement discovered the seven bodies on Monday on a rural Oklahoma property, and the bodies of the two missing girls were believed to be among them.
Search teams in Okmulgee County found the bodies on a property in Henryetta, a town of roughly 6,000 people. An endangered/missing advisory had been issued Monday morning for 14-year-old Ivy Webster and 16-year-old Brittany Brewer after the two failed to return home Sunday evening.
Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice told a news conference on Monday police were no longer looking for the two missing teenagers, and that they had found McFadden.
"We are no longer looking, we believe to have found everything we were seeking this morning. Our hearts go out to the family and friends, school mates and everyone else, this is just a tragedy in Okmulgee County," he said.
Answering questions from the media, Rice said: "We believe we have found the persons, we are just waiting for confirmation. This does include McFadden."
"Again we cannot confirm anybody until the medical examiner's office comes back and confirms all of them," he added.
Rice said that in his decades in the role, he had never seen a crime of this magnitude. The other four bodies have not yet been identified.
The missing persons' alert released earlier said authorities suspected that the teenagers were with McFadden.
McFadden's criminal record described him as being a white male, 5 feet 6 inches with blond hair and blue eyes.
McFadden, a registered sex offender who served prison time after being convicted of rape in 2003, was supposed to stand trial Monday in Muskogee County, records show. He was charged in 2017 with using a contraband cell phone in prison to send sexual messages to a teenage girl.
An Okmulgee County Sheriff's Office (OCSO) press release, issued earlier, on the disappearance of Webster and Brewer detailed why authorities believed the two missing teenagers would be with McFadden.
The press release read: "On the morning of 05/01/2023, the Okmulgee County Sheriff's Office took a missing person report on Ivy Webster, a 14-year-old female resident of rural Henryetta, OK.
"Based on information provided by Ivy's parents, deputies learned that Ivy had left on Saturday 04/29/2023 in the evening hours to spend the weekend with a friend, Ivy was to return home on 04/30/2023 by 5 p.m. and did not do so.
"Ivy was reported to be staying with Holly McFadden, her daughter Tiffany, and Jesse McFadden, Originally it was believed the family was en route to the McAlester, OK area to work on a ranch.
"OCSO investigators have now learned that none of the family went to the ranch, and contact with any of these missing persons has not been established since 04/30/2023.
"OCSO investigators have also learned that another juvenile from Henryetta, Brittany Brewer is also with the missing persons and was picked up during the early evening hours of 04/29/2023."
Newsweek has contacted the Okmulgee County Sheriff's Office via email for comment.
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Gerrard Kaonga is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter and is based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on U.S. ... Read more
