'Monsters living amongst us': How small town in Oklahoma copes with mass murder-suicide
HENRYETTA, Oklahoma — Every weekday morning, children would gather along the sides of Holly Road in Henryetta, Oklahoma, to await the school bus. No one in the area — not children, not parents, not school officials — realized that a convicted sex offender was living close by at a rental property on the same road.
That man, 39-year-old Jesse McFadden, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after killing six people, five of them children, at that rental property on May 1, police said.
Authorities identified the six victims as his wife, Holly Guess, 35, and her children, Rylee Elizabeth Allen, 17; Michael James Mayo, 15; and Tiffany Dore Guess, 13; as well as Tiffany's friends Ivy Webster, 14, and Brittany Brewer, 15.
Ivy and Brittany had gone over to the McFadden house for a sleepover, investigators said.
"We were not aware of McFadden's past history," said Justin Webster, Ivy's father. The Websters lived less than a mile away from the property where her body was found.
"I felt like I trusted (McFadden's wife) Holly, and I felt like I trusted Jesse. But our law enforcement let us down, our judicial system let us down."
Now, Webster, his wife, Ashleigh, and the rural community of fewer than 6,000 people are stricken with grief, and asking questions they demand to be answered.
"Why was he released, after serving 17 years for a rape case and breaking the law with a child while in jail?" Justin Webster asked. "He would have had to have passed a background check to get a rental property in the first place. There's a bus stop in front of their house. How could he be allowed to live there? Why weren't we told?"
The questions, largely left unanswered by a Wednesday night news conference with police officials, point to broader systemic failures in McFadden's case along the way — and an even broader breakdown of what little trust some in the community, already affected by tragedies, have in local law enforcement.
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Henryetta sits at the crossroads of Interstate 40 and U.S. 75.
It began in 1885 as a ranch built by Hugh Henry on Muscogee Nation land. A settlement officially sprung up with the current name in 1900.
Over the past century, Henryetta has been the home of long-lasting coal mines, glass manufacturing plants, car dealerships and oilfield services. The building for G&H Decoys, a cornerstone Henryetta business since the 1930s, still stands tall in the town and employs residents to this day.
Other businesses along Henryetta’s downtown — alternating between brick architecture as old as the state and modern-day infrastructure — have weathered challenges familiar to similar small-town Main Streets throughout the United States, where preservation efforts in recent years were undertaken to revitalize interest inside and outside the communities.
This community in Okmulgee County, a county of fewer than 37,000 people, is close-knit, and hundreds of locals rallied at an evening vigil on May 1 after the seven bodies were discovered.
“It truly is like a Mayberry here,” said Lisa Thomas, who runs Main Street’s Bear Bottom Antiques, alluding to the idyllic, rural community popularized by a 1960s Andy Griffith sitcom. “We are just in shock, absolute shock.”The seven deaths sent shockwaves through the town that rippled across the globe, as nationwide and international media attention thrust the town into the spotlight.
“It’s a crazy situation to be in right now,” said Rafael Palacios, owner of a landscaping business in Henryetta. “It’s chaotic, what just happened. It’s … many words that can’t really explain what went down.”
Henryetta residents grapple with understanding killer's motive
Joyce Boyster, co-owner of the longtime A&J Laundry in Henryetta, said several customers told her they were having difficulty wrapping their heads around the brutality of the slayings.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Boyster said. “I think a lot of people don’t understand ‘why,’ and I don’t think we’ll ever know why it happened.”
Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice, acting as the spokesman for a multi-agency task force investigating the murders, agreed.
“People who perpetrate crimes like this are evil, and normal folks like us can’t understand why they do it,” Prentice said.
Prentice also said he would not speculate on theories behind McFadden’s motives, and no suicide note was found.
But, in a series of ominous messages with the teenager whom he had allegedly been texting while behind bars, McFadden vowed not to return to prison. According to screenshots of the messages, forwarded to a Tulsa news station, McFadden said his “great life” was crumbling and blamed the teenager for the latest set of charges against him that could have put him back in prison for decades.
“Now it’s all gone,” he texted. “I told you I wouldn’t go back.”
“This is all on you for continuing this,” he said.
Court records show McFadden was supposed to appear for a jury trial in Muskogee County Court for the child solicitation and child pornography charges. When he failed to show up in court on May 1, authorities issued a warrant for his arrest, leading to the discovery of the bodies on the property where he lived.
Family members of McFadden by marriage are still baffled by his early release from prison. Janette Mayo — mother of Holly Guess and grandmother of Holly's children — remembered her daughter as a “loving, forgiving person.”
“She gave second chances to (McFadden) and believed what he said, and she shouldn’t have,” Mayo told The Oklahoman.
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Henryetta no stranger to tragedy
The history of Henryetta and greater Okmulgee County, like any community, is not perfect, but residents told The Oklahoman that traumatizing events for the area seem to have increased in recent years.
Before the May 1 discovery of the seven bodies in Henryetta, the most infamous example was the slayings of four men found shot and dismembered in the Deep Fork River last October near the city of Okmulgee, about 15 miles north of Henryetta. The same violent crime task force that investigated the Deep Fork River killings also investigated the Holly Road mass murder-suicide.
“We’ve had our share of troubles and woes, but this one is pretty bad,” said Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice.
Henryetta residents recalled some of those woes, including the brutal 2008 shooting of two Weleetka girls by a Henryetta resident and the 2011 discovery of the man’s fiancee in a burn pile; the 2019 death of a 12-year-old boy in Okmulgee County from a four-wheeler wreck; and the death of a 24-year-old Dewar resident from a car crash in April.
Community urges unity while still wary of 'monsters living amongst us'
Linda Gerster, 74, runs a This and That antiques store in Henryetta. She moved to the city in 1970 to raise her family, and said the Holly Road murders have caused many residents to question if there are more “monsters living amongst us that they don’t know about.”
“I mean, it just seems like the people are saying, ‘What’s next?’” Gerster said. “Our community didn’t use to be this way. It’s really affecting the people. They’re just saying, ‘Who do you trust with your family?’”
Ryan Wells, pastor of neighboring Dewar’s First Baptist Church, helped rally a coalition of local faith leaders to embrace the families of the victims. While he said he thought the unity he’s seen since the murders was encouraging, he admitted “a long road” still lies ahead of them all.“When young people are taken, I think it’s natural to be angry,” Wells said. “I think that for some there’s probably some righteous anger, and with others, it’s just frustration with why innocent lives have been taken like this, and that’s where we’re at. It’s hard to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense.”
Marcus Whitworth Sr., an ordained deacon for Church of the Nazarene, said the community's ministerial alliance had been inactive for several years, but managed to reunite the week before the murders. He said this was God's timing in action, as it allowed the coalition to reactivate in just enough time to be able to provide comprehensive support for the families and the school district.
“It’s just a wonderful display of respect, love,” Whitworth said. “We feel powerless, we feel helpless. We can’t bring these children back. But brother, we can show you some genuine love.”
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Hundreds of residents attended prayer services led by Whitworth, Wells and other faith leaders in early May.
Whitworth said Brittany Brewer, another of McFadden’s victims, was an active supporter of his church, and he attempted to console Brittany’s brother, late Monday after the bodies were discovered.
“I told the brother, ‘This is not going to define who you are, you are going to pull yourself up from this,’” Whitworth said. “And we will be here to help you do that, because it’s a biblical fact that when God’s people come together, that’s when we are strongest. There’s strength in numbers.”
Whitworth also said he believes the town’s unity in the wake of the murders will compel it to overcome the trauma and that the tragedy “is not going to define us as a community.”
But Sherri Crosby, a 55-year-old Henryetta real estate agent, admitted she isn’t as confident. Her 8-year-old niece rode on the same bus as victim Ivy Webster, and Crosby’s conversation with her niece after Ivy’s death was one filled with confusion and uncertainties.
“She asked me, ‘how do I know if it’s a bad man or not?’” Crosby told The Oklahoman. “She just doesn’t understand that he could look perfectly fine, but you don’t know. And she wanted to know, what did (Ivy) do to make that happen? She just doesn’t understand that we can’t even explain it to her. We just have to tell her it’s a bad man.”
“I imagine every kid is going through that, because there were five kids killed, and there’s so many young people that knew them,” Crosby said. “They’re just going to go through it the rest of their lives. This is something that they’ll never understand or probably get over.”
Fundraisers set up for victims
A GoFundMe is set up for Ivy, who leaves behind her parents and three siblings.
A GoFundMe also is set up for Brittany. Her father, Nathan Brewer, said Buffalo Wild Wings in Tulsa and Oklahoma City offered to cover the costs of Brittany's and Ivy's funerals. Brittany's GoFundMe says the funds will be for "other expenses they will undoubtedly incur at this time."
A GoFundMe also is set up for Holly Guess and her children.
Contributing: The Oklahoman's Jana Hayes, Nolan Clay, Josh Dulaney and Molly Young and The Associated Press