'Chop a body in half is what drug cartels do': Missing Oklahoma bikers killed to send a message, mom says
OKMULGEE, OKLAHOMA: On October 14, bodies of Mark and Billy Chastain, ages 32 and 30, Mike Sparks, ages 32, and Alex Stevens, ages 29, were discovered in Oklahoma's Deep Fork River. Teresa Stevens, the mother of one of the victims, disclosed fresh information that authorities had given her.
"My son and his friends were first shot multiple times, chopped in half at their waist and then thrown into the Deep Fork River to rot away," Alex Stevens's mother Teresa Stevens told Daily Mail. Police report that all four of the victims had gunshot wounds, and their corpses had been severed. Their official causes of death is still under investigation. They also told Stevens that the murderer "chopped off one of their arms."
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"It's something you read about on the news, about what they did to my son and his friends. To chop a body in half is what the drug cartels do to the dead. Whoever did this clearly wanted to send a message," she added.
Stevens said that she last saw her son on October 9 when he left to spend time with his friends. But the following day, he skipped work. "My son never misses his work shift and he had to work at 11pm that Sunday. He doesn't own a car, so I take him to work.
Teresa Stevens, who works at the same health care centre where her son Alex was a dietary aid, reported her son missing her next day.
"When he didn't show up for me to take him to work on Sunday evening, I became worried. A few hours later I went to the Okmulgee Police department and reported him missing."
Stevens claimed that Alex had his bag and wallet but no mobile phone since he had "run out of minutes."
Prentice said, "From what we've put together so far is that the four men left Billy's house on 6th Street on their bikes around 5:30pm on October 9 and went to an area near a salvage yard on 20 street about one mile away. Joe Kennedy is the owner of the salvage yard."
"While I don't personally know him, I've heard about him around town and from what I've heard he's a person of questionable character," Stevens claimed.
"Even if they were up there at the salvage yard up to no good or drugs were in involved, no one deserved to die. For one person to kill four grown men, chop their bodies up, and dump them in a river...I just can't see one person doing all of that. Whoever did this had to have help. Something no mother should have to do is outlive their child," she said.
The four males are said to have left their residence on October 9 while en route to committing a crime, according to Prentice.
“We believe the men planned to commit some kind of criminal act when they left the resident on West 6th Street,” said Prentice. “That belief is based on information supplied by a witness, who reports they were invited to go with the men to ‘hit a lick’ big enough for all of them. That is common terminology for engaging in some type of criminal behavior, but we do not know what they were planning or where they planned to do it,” the police chief said.
Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice has identified local scrap yard owner Joe Kennedy, 67, as a person of interest even though there have not yet been any arrests in connection with the quadruple crime. Okmulgee, a little community with a population of 11,000, is located 40 miles south of Tulsa. The town is run-down and doesn't boast much except a few eateries and national box stores there.
With a crime rate of 51 per 1,000 persons, Okmulgee has one of the highest crime rates in America when compared to all other municipalities of all sizes.
A victim of either a violent crime or a property crime has a one in twenty probability of happening to them. In the whole state, more than 96% of the municipalities had lower crime rates than Okmulgee. Over the previous few years, there have been on average roughly two homicides each year in the broader Okmulgee region, according to Daily Mail.