The bodies of seven people, including two missing teens and a convicted sex offender, have been found on a property in the small Oklahoma city of Henryetta, the county sheriff says.
Bodies believed to be 14-year-old Ivy Webster and 16-year-old Brittany Brewer were found when officers searched the property where the sex offender, Jesse McFadden, lived, Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice told a news briefing posted online on Monday by television station TOTV in Tulsa.
Other bodies likely included McFadden and members of his family, Sheriff Rice said, cautioning that none of the victims had yet been formally identified by the county medical examiner.
The county issued an amber alert earlier Monday (local time), saying the two teens were missing but the alert was called off after the bodies were found.
“Our hearts go out to the families and friends and schoolmates and everyone else,” Sheriff Rice said.
“It’s just a tragedy.”
Sheriff Rice said officers arrived on Monday afternoon to search the property and found the bodies.
They are no longer looking for the missing teens or for McFadden.
KOTV reported that Brittany Brewer had gone to spend the weekend with the McFadden family, citing her father, Nathan Brewer.
She was supposed to have returned home Sunday night but never arrived.
“Brittany was an outgoing person,” Mr Brewer told the station in a video posted on its website.
“She was actually selected to be Miss Henryetta coming up in July for the National Miss Pageant in Tulsa, and now she ain’t gonna make it because she’s dead. She’s gone.”
McFadden, reported by local media to be 39, had been scheduled to begin a trial on Monday for using a mobile phone while in prison to send sexual messages to a teenage girl, the station reported.
– AAP