by A convicted rapist on trial on child pornography charges is believed to have fatally shot six people, five of them teenagers, before taking his own life on the rural Oklahoma property where the boys stayed the night last weekend, the authorities said. authorities on Wednesday.
All of the victims were shot in the head, said Joe Prentice, chief of the Okmulgee Police Department and spokesman for a violent crime task force overseeing the investigation into the slayings outside the small town of Henryetta.
The suspected shooter, Jesse McFadden, 39, also died of a gunshot wound to the head, Prentice said.
Prentice identified the victims as 14-year-old Ivy Webster; Britain Brewer, 15; Michael Mayo, 15; Tiffany Guess, 13; Rylee Allen, 17; and Holly McFadden, 35.
Holly McFadden’s mother, Janette Mayo, identified her daughter Tuesday as Holly Guess. She married Jesse McFadden last year, Okmulgee County records show.
Their bodies were found in two groups on the large property where the McFaddens rented a home, Prentice said.
A group that included Ivy, Brittany and Riley was found about a quarter mile from the home, he said. The bodies were approximately 100 to 150 yards apart in a scene that Prentice described as “staged.” She declined to elaborate.
The other four were found in a wooded part of the lot, Prentice said.
A possible motive remained unclear, he said.
“Part of the problem when the community suffers with something like this is that everyone wants to understand why,” Prentice said. “Normal people can’t understand why. People who commit crimes like this are bad.”
Jesse McFadden served nearly 17 years in prison for first degree rape. In 2017, while behind bars, he was accused of sending sexually explicit photos to a 16-year-old girl and acting in a manner that prosecutors described in court documents as “manipulative and controlling of the victim.”
Jesse McFadden was charged with child pornography and soliciting sexual conduct/communication with a minor. A jury trial in the case was scheduled for Monday, the same day the bodies were found after Ivy and Brittany’s parents reported them missing.
McFadden’s attorney has not responded to requests for comment. Court documents show that McFadden planned to argue that he was not in contact with the 16-year-old, but with her friend, who was 21.
The parents of the teens said they did not know about McFadden’s criminal record or that he was a registered sex offender. In interviews, they described last weekend’s sleepover as routine and said nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
One parent, Nathan Brewer, said Jesse McFadden seemed like a “nice, normal person.”
Holly McFadden’s mother has also said her daughter didn’t know “the truth about Jesse McFadden” and that he “charmed her”.
“Now she and my grandchildren are dead,” Janette Mayo wrote Wednesday on Facebook. “Stop hitting her.”
