A couple found the Kentucky highway shooter's remains by being bounty hunters for a week, they say

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Days after a shooter attacked an interstate and disappeared, leaving a Kentucky community scared and on guard, Fred and Sheila McCoy decided to lace up their boots for the first time in a long time and spend days in rugged terrain searching until, finally, they found a body.

Kentucky State Police credited Fred and Sheila McCoy, who typically spend their retired days creating YouTube videos about the Hatfield-McCoy feud, with helping investigators find what they believe are the remains of Joseph Couch. Couch, 32, is suspected of firing randomly at vehicles on Interstate 75 on Sept. 7, wounding five people.

The person believed to be Couch died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Kentucky’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. William Ralston. A soft tissue DNA test was inconclusive on the identification of the body, and testing on the bones could take up to two days, Ralston said. A toxicology test is also pending.

Teams of local, state and federal law enforcement had searched tens of thousands of acres of woods since the shooting. Authorities warned residents to be extra vigilant and some schools temporarily shifted to virtual learning.

“For one week we turned into bounty hunters,” Fred McCoy told The Associated Press on Thursday. “The more we was watching the news and saw lockdowns and school closings, the more we were compelled to search for him.”

The discovery of the remains calmed fears in the eastern Kentucky community of London, just a few miles from where the shooter perched above the highway and opened fire with an AR-15. State police said Wednesday night that the McCoys would receive a $25,000 reward for the find.

Once the identification is fully confirmed, it will “bring to a close a pretty scary time in that community and the surrounding communities,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday.

“We have every reason to believe that this is Joseph Couch,” Beshear told reporters at the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort. “But a final and determinative identification has not yet been possible.”

In a 30-minute YouTube livestream Wednesday, the McCoys are filming in dense woods after they see vultures in the air, and Sheila McCoy says she can smell a foul odor.

"Oh, Lord, this is nasty. Oh, my goodness, this is gross,” Sheila says while warning her husband to watch out for snakes.

At the end of the video, they discover the remains. “Hey, guys, you won’t believe it, we found him, oh, my goodness gracious,” Sheila McCoy says in the video.

Police were also searching the area, and the couple identified themselves to officers about 12 minutes before they found the remains. They'd also warned police and friends they'd be there, and were livestreaming on YouTube in case something went wrong, Fred McCoy said.

“We didn’t know we was going to find him like that,” he said. “We could’ve found him with a gun pointed at us.”

The McCoys live a couple of counties away from where the shooter attacked. They hadn't gone on a hike in the woods in a long time — Sheila, 59, had previously had back surgery and her husband, 66, had knee surgery — but they decided after a Friday night date to help in the search, said Fred McCoy, himself a retired police officer.

“We were just a crippled old man and crippled old woman walking in the woods,” he said Thursday. Fred McCoy said he is a descendant of a Hatfield-McCoy marriage and they run a small museum related to the history of the feud.

He estimated the remains were about a mile away from where the shooter opened fire. Nearby, police found Couch's vehicle and an AR-15 last week.

The discovery of the body put nearby residents at ease after more than a week of tension with a gunman on the loose near their homes.

“I feel a huge sense of relief,” said Heather Blankenship, a mother of three who lives near London. She saw the body in the McCoys’ video, which has grown to nearly a half-million views in less than 24 hours, and even though her anxiety is gone and her sense of normalcy has returned, it’s still sad, she said.

“I’m over here relieved that to me this monster is dead,” but meanwhile, the suspect’s family is grieving, Blankenship said.

Authorities said the shooter fired 20 to 30 rounds, creating chaos. The five victims survived, but some suffered serious injuries.

Authorities said Couch purchased the AR-15 weapon and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition at a London gun store hours before the shooting.

Laurel County Judge-Executive David Westerfield sensed a collective sigh of relief among residents.

"They feel like they can go back to their normal lifestyle,” he said.

In this photo made from video provided by Sheila and Fred McCoy shows the couple while searching for the remains of a suspected highway shooter in London, Ky., Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (Sheila and Fred McCoy via AP)

In this photo made from video provided by Sheila and Fred McCoy shows the couple while searching for the remains of a suspected highway shooter in London, Ky., Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (Sheila and Fred McCoy via AP)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The South Carolina Supreme Court has again refused to stop the execution of inmate Freddie Owens who is set to die Friday by lethal injection.

The justices ruled Thursday that a sworn statement from a friend whose testimony helped convict Owens and who now says he lied to save himself from the death chamber wasn't enough to halt prison officials from putting Owens to death.

His execution is set for 6 p.m. Friday at a Columbia prison for the killing of a Greenville convenience store clerk in 1997. It would be South Carolina's first execution in more than a decade.

Owens' lawyers on Wednesday filed the statement from his co-defendant Steven Golden saying Owens wasn’t at the store when Irene Graves was killed during a robbery.

Prosecutors reiterated that several other witnesses testified that Owens told them he pulled the trigger. And just like it did last week when Golden said in a sworn statement he had a a secret deal with prosecutors that he never told the jury about, the state Supreme Court agreed the execution should go on.

The justices wrote on Thursday that there was no evidence Golden had an independent attorney to talk to about his recent statements and they did not name who might have killed Graves if Owens didn't do it.

In his statement, Golden said he blamed Owens because he was high on cocaine and police put pressure on him by claiming they already knew the two were together and that Owens was talking. Golden also said he feared the real killer.

“I thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to police. I am still afraid of that. But Freddie was not there,” Golden wrote in his statement.

Golden testified at Owens' trial, saying prosecutors promised to consider his testimony in his favor but he still faced the death penalty or life in prison. He was eventually sentenced to 28 years in prison after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, according to court records.

"I’m coming forward now because I know Freddie’s execution date is September 20 and I don’t want Freddie to be executed for something he didn’t do. This has weighed heavily on my mind and I want to have a clear conscience," Golden wrote in his statement.

The state's highest court owed t to Owens to at least allow Golden to be fully heard before killing Owens, his lawyers wrote in their final briefs to the justices.

“This Court has the power and the responsibility to ensure that the State of South Carolina does not kill one of its citizens for a crime he did not commit,” they said.

Prosecutors have said Golden wasn't the only evidence linking Owens to the crime since other friends testified that they, along with Owens, had planned to rob the store. Those friends said Owens bragged to them about killing Graves. His former girlfriend also testified that he confessed to the killing.

Prosecutors argued last week that Golden's decision to change his story shouldn't be enough to stop the execution because he has now admitted to lying under oath, thereby showing that he cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

“There is no indication that Golden will testify; there is no reasoning to why Owens would admit the shooting (of) Ms. Graves to officers, his girlfriend, and his mother if he was not the shooter as now claimed,” the state Attorney General's Office wrote in court papers.

Also on Thursday, a group called South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty presented a petition with more than 10,000 signatures to Gov. Henry McMaster's office asking him to reduce Owens' sentence to life in prison.

“Justice works for restoration. You cannot restore someone who you kill,” said the group's executive director, Rev. Hillary Taylor, as she read from one of the comments on the petition.

McMaster, a Republican, has said he will wait to announce his decision on clemency until prison officials call him minutes before the execution begins.

Owens would be the first person executed in South Carolina in 13 years after the state struggled to obtain drugs needed for lethal injections because companies refused to sell them if they could be publicly identified.

The state added a firing squad option and passed a shield law to keep much of the details of executions private. The state Supreme Court then cleared the way for the death chamber to reopen this summer.

Five other inmates are also out of appeals and the state can schedule executions every five weeks.

South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Rev. Hillary Taylor speaks at a news conference before delivering petitions to stop the execution of Freddie Owens at the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)

South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Rev. Hillary Taylor speaks at a news conference before delivering petitions to stop the execution of Freddie Owens at the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)