LITTLE ROCK — The man who led authorities to the Jacksonville industrial park location where investigators found a decomposed body Wednesday may have killed as many as 15 people in Arkansas and two other states, Faulkner County Sheriff Karl Byrd said Thursday.
Byrd said the oldest of the killings would have been five years ago.
Pulaski County sheriff's office investigators and a searchand-rescue canine team also searched for human remains on a patch of land six miles east of the industrial park, an area identified by the suspect as a second dumped-body location. Officers found no remains there Thursday.
In the industrial park just off South Redmond Road, Jacksonville police criminal investigation division officers worked alongside a forensic anthropologist and Pulaski County Coroner Garland Camper on Thursday to clean, identify and remove the skeletal remains found there. Camper said he removed the last of the remains Thursday afternoon and will send them to the Arkansas Crime Laboratory for further study.
The Arkansas State Police and the FBI are assisting in the investigation.
Byrd declined to identify the suspect or offer any information about him. He would not say whether the man had acted alone, where the man was from or how Faulkner County investigators identified him as a suspect.
Byrd also declined to name the other states where the man may have left bodies, other than to say that the states border Arkansas.
"When you have someone who may have killed as many as 15 people," Byrd said, "you have to build a good case. If we haven't released certain information, there's a reason we haven't released it."
He said the killer chose his victims at random.
Byrd said late Wednesday that the suspect was in custody in Faulkner County. But, at a news conference Thursday afternoon outside the sheriff's office in Conway, Byrd said repeatedly that he would not confirm or deny that the suspect was in his custody.
Faulkner County Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden, however, said the suspect is a man who is facing charges "of a physical and violent nature" locally and was in custody when he initiated contact with county authorities. Vaden would not cite the specific charges.
No charges have been filed in connection with the remains found in Jacksonville.
Faulkner County sheriff 's Maj. Andy Shock said the sheriff's office was being painstakingly careful not to identify the suspect publicly just yet.
"If it comes to light who this individual is," Shock said, "it will greatly hamper our investigation."
Byrd did say that no Arkansas counties other than Faulkner and Pulaski are included in the investigation.
At the second Jacksonville site Thursday afternoon, the Pulaski County sheriff's office suspended its search for remains in dense woods and an open field at the end of Ann Lane, a narrow strip of asphalt running east from J.P. Wright Loop Road not far outside the city limits.
Beginning at 9:40 a.m., sheriff's office investigators and dog handlers from the nonprofit Arkansas Search Dog Association walked carefully through the woods and across the field, taking photographs and leading a golden retriever, a black Labrador, a yellow Labrador and a German shepherd.
After noon, a second team of search dogs joined them. By 3 p.m., they had searched almost every square foot, finding nothing.
If investigators receive new information, sheriff's office spokesman John Rehrauer said, they will go out and search again.
Rehrauer said Wednesday that the suspect told Faulkner County authorities that he had dumped a woman there about a year ago but that she may not have been dead.
Also, Markus McGonigal, who leases the 43 acres where most of the search took place, said coyotes are prevalent in the area and could have destroyed or carried off evidence.
At the site where remains were found - a thick strip of trees at the end of Cory Drive bordering on property owned by Wright's Cabinets - Jacksonville police and the coroner's office worked slowly Thursday to unearth and preserve as much as they could of the body.
Investigators had been working there since Tuesday, theday after the Faulkner County sheriff's office passed along its information that human remains could be there. The same searchdog team scoured the area Tuesday night until one of the dogs alerted handlers to search in a particular spot.
On Wednesday, just a few hours after sunrise, Jacksonville police found some remains and called the coroner's office to confirm their suspicions that the remains were human.
Information for this article was contributed by Jim Brooks and Debra Hale-Shelton of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1, 8 on 09/26/2008