FAYETTEVILLE, TENN. — A suspect was in custody in the slayings of six people, five in southern Tennessee and another about 20 miles away in Huntsville, Ala., authorities said Saturday.
Lincoln County, Tenn., Sheriff Murray Blackwelder said at a news conference that his department is investigating three crime scenes, though he did not elaborate. He did not release the victims’ names or that of the suspect and would not confirm the causes of death.
He did not release a motive.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Kristin Helm said that the five killed in Tennessee were found Saturday morning in two homes in Lincoln County, which includes Fayetteville, and that some of the victims were related.
She says the killings happened Friday night or early Saturday.
Huntsville Police Sgt. Mickey Allen told TV station WAFF that his department has a person in custody who confessed to several homicides in Tennessee and the one in Huntsville. Based on the suspect’s information, police found a body at Huntsville’s Hall Cultured Marble and Granite late Saturday morning, said Allen, who works on the city’s major crimes unit.
He said the information was explicit and led right to the business and victim.
“We have no clue as yet of what unfolded there and how it relates to here,” he said.
Fayetteville is a town of 7,000 people about 90 miles south of Nashville near the Tennessee-Alabama border. Huntsville is the largest city in northern Alabama with more than 170,000 people and is about 20 miles south of Fayetteville.
