Suspect in Colo. slayings awaits return from Okla.
Dec 30, 2013, 9:56 PM
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – A fugitive arrested in Oklahoma after a monthlong search awaited his return to Colorado on Monday to face charges of killing three people and setting fire to their house to cover it up.
Harry Carl Mapps earlier in the day waived his right to an extradition hearing before a judge in eastern Oklahoma’s Sequoyah County, about 700 miles from the small southern Colorado town where the crimes occurred.
Sequoyah County officials said they could not disclose when Mapps would be transported. Officials in Pueblo County, Colo., said they did not yet know when it would happen.
Mapps, 59, faces charges of first-degree murder and arson in the shooting deaths of Kim and Reggie Tuttle and their adult daughter, Dawn Roderick. Their bodies were found in the Tuttles’ home in the small Colorado town of Rye after it was damaged by fire on Nov. 27.
Sequoyah County Assistant District Attorney Stacey Slaughter said Mapps did not yet have an attorney.
He was arrested Saturday night at a motel in Roland, Okla. A booking photo showed Mapps with a swollen lip and large red patch on his right cheek, but authorities said there had been no struggle during his capture. No other details of his arrest have been released.
The fire at the Tuttles’ house was ruled arson. Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor said it was meant to cover up the shootings.
Three days after the fire, deputies said Mapps was their primary suspect. Authorities said he had been living with the Tuttles and was working for a trucking company owned by Reggie Tuttle, 51.
Taylor said money appeared to be the motive for the shootings. Authorities claimed Mapps stole checks made out to one of the victims and cashed them on the day of the fire. He also faces theft, identity theft and forgery charges.
Mapps wasn’t armed when he was arrested, but investigators did not know as of late Sunday whether there were any weapons in the motel room or Mapps’ vehicle, said Charles Ahmad of the Marshals Service in Denver.
Investigators said they did not yet know where Mapps had been while he was a fugitive. He once worked as a long-distance trucker, and authorities had said he was familiar with little-used back roads.
Friends called the Tuttles generous and caring.
“Kim and Reggie would help anyone who needed it,” Winnie Owens, a friend and neighbor, told the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper. “The hearts of everyone in this valley go out to that family.”
Kim Tuttle, 55, worked on the culinary staff at Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo.
Roderick, 33, lived in nearby Pueblo and had a husband and three children. Authorities haven’t said why she was at her parents’ home.
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Dan Elliott reported from Denver. Follow him at
http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP
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