Authorities in South Carolina have captured a person who allegedly murdered a hiker in woodlands in Tennessee then tried to disguise the killing as a bear assault.
Nicholas Wayne Hamlett was arrested in Columbia on Sunday evening nearly one month after police discovered the physique of the hiker, Steven Lloyd of Knoxville, Tennessee, near the Cherahola Skyway in Monroe county, 80 miles north-east of Chattanooga.
On 18 October, the Monroe sheriff’s obtained a name from an individual figuring out himself as Brandon Andrade, who claimed to be injured and mendacity partially in water after being chased by a bear and falling over a cliff.
Rescuers discovered a physique carrying Andrade’s identification – however detectives rapidly established the sufferer was Lloyd. Hamlett, they stated, had stolen Andrade’s id and used it a number of occasions in efforts to keep away from arrest for a parole violation in Alabama.
Sunday’s arrest in South Carolina ended a manhunt throughout a number of states to which Hamlett, 45, was recognized to have ties. He was acknowledged at an area hospital and recognized by the FBI by fingerprints after his arrest.
Hamlett now faces extradition to Tennessee to face a first-degree homicide cost after detectives concluded that he befriended – then killed – Lloyd, 34, earlier than inserting the pretend 911 name a couple of bear assault.
He’s additionally needed by authorities for the parole violation in Alabama, the place he was beforehand charged with two counts of tried homicide and numerous different offenses together with kidnapping and forgery.
FBI brokers joined the Tennessee bureau of investigation and native police in efforts to find Hamlett, who was arrested in Florida greater than a decade in the past after allegedly luring a person into the woods in Coosada, Alabama, in response to al.com.
The Alabama information outlet stated Hamlett held the sufferer in that case at gunpoint and tried to strike him with a baseball bat earlier than trying to bury him alive. He was charged with tried homicide and kidnapping – however accepted a plea deal for felony assault in 2012 and a 20-year jail sentence.
That episode, al.com stated, was a confidence trick by which Hamlett used the identify Joshua Jones when he reached out to that sufferer in order that “he might get some insurance coverage”.
Court docket data present Hamlett has 4 earlier felony convictions.
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