After couple killed, two men saw the bodies - and didn’t report it, sheriff says

Two men face corpse abandonment charges after sheriff’s officials in Dallas County, Missouri say the men saw the dead bodies of husband-and-wife Joe and Brandy Allen after they were murdered on Sept. 30 and didn’t report it.

Officials with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office say the men, both now in custody, visited the corpses three times and told no one, according to a post on the department’s Facebook page.

A man wanted in connection with the double homicide, Billy Sage Medley - said to have ties to western Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma - was still at large as of Sunday, reported KFOR in Oklahoma City, where law enforcement officials have been put on alert. Medley is considered armed and dangerous, authorities said.

Medley and a second suspect - now known to be Jeffrey Dale Lee Stevenson - left the murder scene and “a short time later informed Kody B. Wilson and Cody O. Depriest of the murders of the couple,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook.

“Wilson and Depriest then visited the crime scene at three different times to view the victims without properly reporting the location of the bodies to the proper law enforcement officials.”

The Allens were murdered at their home near Tunas in southwest Missouri. Ron Barclay found the bodies of his daughter and son-in-law, shot to death, outside their home the morning of Sept. 30 when, according to KY3 in Springfield, he went to check on his cattle nearby.

He told the TV station that his daughter, who was 41, and her husband, 42, had just celebrated a wedding anniversary and that’s why their two school-age children were not home at the time. A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise money for their funerals.

The sheriff’s department reported that earlier that morning the Allens “interrupted an attempted robbery/invasion.”

“They went out to confront the people and ended up in a gun battle,” Dallas County Sheriff Scott Rice told KFOR.

The couple’s 2006 silver Silverado turned up missing. Rice told KY3 the truck was found the next morning about 15 miles away from the home, stuck in mud.

Barclay told KY3 he feared that the couple had lain dead outside their home for several hours.

According to a probable cause statement obtained by LakeExpo.com in Osage Beach, Missouri, Barclay “noticed his son-in-law’s 1968 orange Chevy El Camino parked in the driveway with the door ajar.

“That was strange, Barclay thought, because the El Camino was sitting across a large wooden beam in the driveway. Family and neighbors later said the El Camino was a show car and was always kept locked in the detached garage.”

When he went to investigate, Barclay found the two dead bodies near the front porch, according to the probable cause statement.

Video surveillance footage from a nearby business showed Stevenson’s vehicle “speeding through the intersection of State Road PP and Highway 73 just after 4 a.m. on Sept. 30,” LakeExpo reported.

The next day, authorities found out that Stevenson was living in his grandmother’s basement in Macks Creek, Missouri, according to LakeExpo.

“Another witness told authorities he had purchased a .45 caliber pistol and ammunition from Medley and Stevenson on Sunday morning at around 10 a.m.; the pistol was turned over to investigators along with the ammunition,” LakeExpo reported.

“Authorities say that ammunition matched shell casings and a bullet recovered at the crime scene.”

Barclay told KY3 that “two fine people” were murdered for no reason.

“My daughter and my son-in-law had no enemies,” he told the TV station. “They were just trying to protect their property and some ruthless murderers murdered them. Please help us find these people. We’ve got to bring them to justice.”

On Wednesday, authorities from the sheriff’s office and the Lake Area Major Case Squad arrested Stevenson, the sheriff’s office reported on Facebook.

He is charged with two counts of second-degree murder, armed criminal action, second-degree burglary and stealing, the sheriff’s department reported, and he is being held in the Camden County jail with no bond.

The two law enforcement agencies arrested Wilson, 21, and Depriest, 26, on Friday, the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook. Both face charges of corpse abandonment.

Family and friends of the Allens are offering a $6,000 reward for information leading to Medley’s arrest, according to the sheriff’s department.

According to the wanted poster on Facebook, Medley is a white male with brown hair and hazel eyes. He is about 6-feet tall and weighs 190 to 250 pounds.

“Police say he also has a tattoo on the inside of his index finger, a tattoo that stretches onto his left shoulder, and a tattoo on his upper right bicep,” KFOR reported, adding that he might have tried to change his appearance by cutting or shaving off his hair.

This story was originally published October 8, 2018 at 4:57 PM.