Alabama: Authorities looking for link in separate double murders of teens
Patty
The Associated Press
03/06/00 1:30 PM Eastern
OZARK, Ala. (AP) -- The execution-style shooting deaths of two teen-age
girls at a rural Mississippi site are similar to a double slaying in
Alabama seven months ago, and Ozark police want to know if they are
linked in any way.
The bodies of Amanda Welborn, 19, of Laurel, and Kelsey Bullock, 18, of
Stringer, were left by the side of a rural road in Jones County, Miss.,
on Feb. 26. Authorities said they had been shot in the head.
Seven months ago, the bodies of Tracie Hawlett and J.B. Beasley, both
17 years old and from Dothan, were found shot to death in the trunk of
Beasley's car beside a road in Ozark. Both had been shot in the head.
Like Hawlett and Beasley, the two victims in Mississippi had been
riding around in a car the night they were killed.
"We just want to check out the similarities," Ozark Police Chief Tony
Spivey said. "We want to exchange information with Mississippi
authorities in an effort to see if the two are in any way related."
Last Thursday night two men were arrested in the Mississippi murders.
They were identified as Paul Evans Jr., 19, and Nathan Townsend, 18,
both of Laurel, Miss.
Mississippi authorities responded last week to a nationwide request
from Ozark police for information in cases similar to the murder of
Beasley and Hawlett.
The response arrived the day before an Ozark man was returned from
Jones County, Miss., after being picked up on an old warrant for
possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of cocaine.
Police had been looking for the man for three months, saying he was not
a suspect but they wanted to question him. The man's name has not been
released.
Spivey has said the Dale County man apparently left Ozark shortly after
the murders of Hawlett and Beasley and his name has come up several
times during the investigation.
Police tracked him through several states before locating him in Jones
County. Welborn and Bullock were slain in Jones County the day after
authorities picked the man up.
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