Georgia authorities warned Monday that a killer is on the loose as police investigate why the bodies of five people, two of them teenagers, were found scattered throughout a LaGrange home.
“We have no solid leads at this time on the location of murder suspect Thomas Jesse Lee,” the Troup County Sheriff’s Office posted to its Facebook page. “He is possibly driving an olive green in color Mazda Tribute … with Georgia tag BRN0785.”
Lee, who is believed to be the husband of one of the victims, is described as a 26-year-old white male with blue eyes. He stands 6-foot-3-inches tall and weighs about 190 pounds, the sheriff’s office said.
Anyone with information should call 706-883-1616.
On Sunday afternoon, authorities were calling Lee a person of interest but later labeled him a murder suspect.
Police found the bodies of William Burtron, 69, Sheila Burtron, 68, Christie Lee, 33, Bailey Burtron, 16, and Iiaonna Green, 18, late Saturday night at a home in the Water’s Edge subdivision of LaGrange, about 70 miles southwest of Atlanta near the Alabama border, CNN affiliate WSB reported.
Deputies forced their way into the home after receiving a call that one of the victims hadn’t been to work in days, the station reported.Four of the five victims had been shot, and each of them was found in a different room of the house, WSB reported. No gun was found in the home.
“(Lee) is not here at the home and we understand there may have been a dispute or something between one of the victims here. We have not been able to make contact with him at all,” Sgt. Stewart Smith of the sheriff’s office told the station.
There have been no previous reports of domestic disputes involving Lee, so “we really don’t know what led up to this,” Smith told WSB, adding that investigators searching his phone and internet records are “coming up with a dead end right now.”
Autopsies were scheduled to be completed Monday.
