Earlier this month, an Oklahoma convicted child rapist who had received an early release from prison shot his wife, her 3 children, and two of their friends before turning the gun on himself shortly before he was to appear in court for soliciting nude photos from another minor, the Associated Press reported.
Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice said Jesse McFadden, 39, shot each of the six victims in the head between one to three times before dumping the bodies by a creek in a heavily wooded area of rural Oklahoma.
Chief Prentice said it appeared that McFadden “staged” the scene in the woods before killing himself.
The bodies were discovered near McFadden’s Henryetta home about 90 miles east of Oklahoma City on the same day the convicted rapist was scheduled to stand trial for soliciting nude photos from another teenager while he was still in prison.
McFadden began serving a 20-year prison sentence in 2003 for the first-degree rape of a 17-year-old but was freed in 2020, despite facing charges that in 2016 he traded nude photos with a 16-year-old woman using a smuggled cell phone.
While authorities declined to release the motive for the murders, McFadden had recently sent a series of ominous messages to his victim, now 23, vowing that he would not return to prison.
Prosecutors objected to McFadden’s early release, arguing that the convicted rapist had tied a 17-year-old girl to a bedpost and raped her at knifepoint.
Two years after his release, McFadden married Holly Guess who had three children. Guess’ mother Janette Mayo told the Associated Press that she was unaware of McFadden’s criminal history until recently. Mayo blasted the state for releasing McFadden early, arguing that if he had been kept in prison while awaiting trial, her daughter and three grandchildren would still be alive.
In an interview with News Nation’s Ashleigh Banfield last week, former FBI agent Kathlene Canning-Mello suggested that some missing children listed with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children may also be victims of McFadden’s.
