Police found three bodies at the home of a man charged with kidnapping a woman in Massachusetts – after investigators were met outside with a…
Police found three bodies at the home of a man charged with kidnapping a woman in Massachusetts – after investigators were met outside with a “miserable stench” emanating from the residence, authorities said.
Stewart Weldon, who was arrested Sunday after getting pulled over for a broken taillight, remained held on $1 million bail Friday on kidnapping and other charges after a woman in his car said he had held her captive for a month and raped her repeatedly in his Springfield home, according to court records obtained by the Boston Globe .
“Thank you guys for saving my life,” the woman hysterically told police. “I didn’t think I was ever going to get away.”
Two bodies were later found inside and near Weldon’s home late Wednesday, three days after his arrest. A third body was found Thursday at the single-family home situated on a “very busy” street in a dense residential section of the city, according to James Leydon, a spokesman for Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni.
The smell radiating from the home was overpowering, Leydon told The Post.
“It was a very noticeable and pungent odor that could be detected from the front of the home,” he said. “It was a miserable stench emanating from the home.”
Leydon declined to comment on where exactly the bodies were found or when investigators believe they had been killed, as well as their manners of death. The medical examiner is now working to determine the cause of their deaths, he said.
Weldon, 40, who pleaded not guilty to the kidnapping charges, has not been charged in connection to the bodies “in the current investigation,” Leydon said, but investigators were continuing to process the scene early Friday. Additional charges could be filed, Leydon added.
The woman in Weldon’s car told police he beat her with a hammer and told her he was going to kill her. She was “crying uncontrollably” when Weldon was taken into custody while armed with two knives, according to court records.
The female victim, whose name was redacted from court records, was later hospitalized with “grotesque and violent” injuries, including a possible fractured jaw, stab wounds and “marks from being hit with a blunt object,” according to a police report.
Shocked neighbors, meanwhile, told the Globe that Weldon was an antisocial member of the neighborhood who moved in about two years ago.
“If they had never stopped him for the taillight, then no one would have known,” Brenda Quinones, 23, told the newspaper. “It’s just too creepy. People would still be walking by his house, and who knows if he would have gone after more women.”
Another neighbor said he spotted Weldon searching his front yard in a panic on Sunday as it rained outside.
“It was odd,” Stefan Davis told the Globe. “He had his front door and windows wide open. And he was searching through the dirt like a madman.”
