DENVER - A man suspected of killing three people and setting fire to a home in southern Colorado has been captured in Oklahoma after a nationwide manhunt, authorities said Sunday.
Harry Carl Mapps, 59, was arrested at a motel in Roland, Okla., on Saturday night, said Kirk Taylor, sheriff of Pueblo County, Colo. Mapps had spent more than a month on the run.
A booking photo showed him with a swollen lip and large red patch on his right cheek, but authorities said there had been no struggle. No other details of his arrest were released.
Taylor said Mapps was found using information developed by the U.S. Marshals Service in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas. Mapps had lived in Texas.
The Marshals Service had issued a fugitive warrant for Mapps and said authorities were searching for him nationwide.
Mapps was wanted on first-degree murder charges. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he had an attorney, and authorities did not yet know whether he would fight extradition to Colorado.
Mapps is accused of fatally shooting Kim Tuttle, 55; her husband, Reggie Tuttle, 51; and their daughter, Dawn Roderick, 33. Their bodies were found in the Tuttles’ home in the small town of Rye, Colo., after the house burned on Nov. 27.
Roderick lived in nearby Pueblo, Colo. Authorities haven’t said why she was at her parents’ house.
The fire was ruled arson, and 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 Reggie Tuttle’s trucking company.
Taylor said money appeared to be the motive for the shootings. Authorities said 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.
Pueblo County sheriff’s investigators arrived in Roland on Sunday morning and were preparing to speak to Mapps, said Lisa Shorter, the sheriff’s spokesman.
Investigators will also search the motel room and his vehicle, she said.
Mapps wasn’t armed when he was arrested, but investigators did not yet know whether there were any weapons in the motel room or Mapps’ vehicle, said Charles Ahmad of the Marshals Service in Denver.
Shorter and Ahmad 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 people.
“Kim and Reggie would help anyone who needed it,” Winnie Owens, a friend and neighbor, told the Pueblo Chieftain. “The hearts of everyone in this valley go out to that family.”
Kim Tuttle worked on the culinary staff at Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 12/30/2013