An Oklahoma sex offender who was released from prison shot his wife, three children and their two friends in the head and then killed himself, authorities confirmed on Wednesday as concerns grew over why. for which he was free in the first place.
Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice said the victims suffered between one and three head injuries when they were found on a rural Oklahoma property Monday. Jesse McFadden, a 39-year-old convicted sex offender, later took his own life, Prentice said in the first major update on the case.
The bodies of the victims were found near a stream and in a heavily wooded area.
“The evidence is that Jesse McFadden murdered six people and then killed himself. Beyond that, I don’t know what his thought process was,” Prentice said. “I’m not going to express a theory because I am the evidence, and I have no evidence on the motive.”
Family members have questioned how a rapist accused of soliciting nude images from another teenager while behind bars was ever allowed to be released.
The shooting came as a series of disturbing text messages – sent by McFadden to his young accuser hours before the start of his trial for the crime of soliciting and possessing child sexual abuse images – suggested that he blamed the woman for ending her ‘great life’. and that he was determined not to return to prison.
According to screenshots of the messages, forwarded to KOKI in Tulsa by the 23-year-old woman McFadden allegedly groomed for release from prison, he said he was successful in a marketing job and “earning a lot of money”.
“Now it’s all gone,” he texted. “I told you I wouldn’t go back.”
“It’s up to you to continue this,” he concluded.
A conviction for solicitation can mean a 10-year sentence; the pornography charge could mean 20 years behind bars.
Prentice, however, declined to speculate on whether that was what led to the shooting.
“Everyone wants to understand why,” he said. “Normal people can’t understand why. People who commit crimes like this are bad and normal people like us can’t understand why they do it.”
Muskogee County District Attorney Larry Edwards said the young woman also shared the text messages with him. “They’re tragic. Let’s just say. He more or less blames her for what he did and that’s the part that really bothers me because she didn’t do anything wrong,” Edwards told KOTV , based in Tulsa.
Authorities began a search after McFadden failed to show up for his long-delayed jury trial Monday in Muskogee County. His body was later discovered with his wife, son and daughters, and two other teenagers who were visiting the family over the weekend.
Now family members of victims are asking why McFadden, sentenced to 20 years in 2003 for first-degree rape in the sexual assault of a 17-year-old, was released three years earlier, in part for good behavior , despite new charges. that he used a contraband cellphone in 2016 to exchange nude photos with the then 16-year-old woman. He was released in 2020 after 16 years and nine months, although the charges could send him back to prison for many years if convicted.
“And they got him out of jail. How?” Janette Mayo asked. She said she was told her daughter, Holly Guess, 35, and her grandchildren, Rylee Elizabeth Allen, 17; Michael James Mayo, 15; and Tiffany Dore Guess, 13, had all been shot.
“Oklahoma has failed to protect families. And because of that, my kids — my daughter and my grandkids — are all gone,” Mayo said. “I lost my daughter and my grandchildren and I will never be able to see them, I will never be able to hold them, and it kills me.”
Justin Webster, who said he allowed his 14-year-old daughter Ivy Webster to join a sleepover at the McFaddens’ home without knowing anything about the man’s past, raised similar concerns about McFadden’s release.
“To get to save other kids, to make a change, that’s what I want to do,” Webster told the AP during a tearful interview Tuesday at Henryetta, expressing his determination to “tell the story of Ivy and our story and to get our government officials and everyone to start speaking out and keep these pedophiles in jail.
“There have to be repercussions and someone has to be held accountable. They let out a monster. They did that,” Webster said.
A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday on why McFadden was released despite new felony charges.
Prosecutors objected to any early release from prison, noting that he tied a 17-year-old girl’s hands and feet to the bedposts, cut her shirt and stabbed her. At one point he threatened to use the knife on her if she “didn’t shut up”, according to the records.
The circumstances alarmed Republican State Rep. Justin Humphrey, who chairs his chamber’s Criminal Judiciary Committee. He told the AP in a text that he was working with another lawmaker on legislation that would “prevent tragedies of this nature from ever happening again.”
He said the effort will also involve trying to determine how someone could commit sex crimes in prison and be released for good behavior, and how McFadden may have come into contact with minors under the supervision of a sex offender. .
Court records show McFadden was charged with the new crimes in 2017 after the young woman’s relative alerted authorities. Released in October 2020, he was arrested the following month and later released on $25,000 bond pending trial, which has been repeatedly delayed, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
McFadden married Holly Guess in May 2022; what she knew of his file is unclear. Mayo said the family only learned of her son-in-law’s criminal history a few months ago.
“He lied to my daughter and he convinced her that it was all a huge mistake,” Mayo, from Westville, said. “He was very aloof, usually very calm, but he kept my daughter and the kids basically locked up. He had to know where they were at all times, which sent up red flags.
According to Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice, the seven bodies were found on the property where McFadden lived near Henryetta, a town of about 6,000 people about 145 miles east of Oklahoma City. The bodies included the two teenagers who had been reported missing and in danger – Webster, 14, and Brittany Brewer, 16.
Brittany Brewer’s father has confirmed his daughter was among the dead. At a vigil on Monday night, Nathan Brewer said, “It’s just a parent’s worst nightmare, and I’m living it.”
The grim discovery could push the number of people killed in massacres to more than 100 for the year, according to a database maintained by the AP and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)
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