Taylor Placker, Skyla Whitaker – Suspect Arrested in 3 Year Old Murder
For those of you who don’t remember, I wrote about these two girls and how they were gunned down on a rural road in Oklahoma. Read here. After a long 3 year hunt, for a suspect in the fatal shootings, of the two young girls, in eastern Oklahoma ended Friday when authorities announced murder charges against a man who claimed he fired at two monsters on a rural road.
Kevin Sweat who is 25, was already in custody in connection with another killing, was charged in the June 2008 deaths of Taylor Placker, 13, and Skyla Whitaker, 11. On Friday in an affidavit, filed at the Okfuskee County Courthouse said Sweat told an investigator he saw “‘two monsters’ come at him” and fired at them with .40- and .22-caliber handguns.
Prosecutors are going to seek the death penalty. Other charges Sweat faces are a murder charge in the unrelated death of his girlfriend, Ashley Taylor, and the head of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said her disappearance led them to look at Sweat again in the girls’ deaths. Taylor went missing in July after telling her parents she was eloping with Sweat.
“After the death of Ashley Taylor a lot of things started to come together,” OSBI director Stan Florence said after a news conference on the courthouse lawn. Olympian
Police had spoken to Sweat in July, before Taylor’s death, because he owned a .40-caliber Glock – Glock casings were found near the girls’ bodies, but there was no other reason to link him to the crimes, Florence said. And ballistic tests on five shell casings found at the scene showed they were from the same gun, and matched casings found on Sweat’s father’s property near Weleetka when investigators began looking at Sweat anew.
Teh FBI also traced the gun through its various owners, including the Baltimore Police Department. OSBI said it wasn’t unusual for police departments to buy newer guns and then trade or sell them back to dealers when they got older. In 2006 and 2007, a gun dealer had the gun and sold it to Sweat. It was in a September interview that Sweat said he fired the Glock at monsters.
“Sweat said that on June 8, 2008 during the afternoon, he was driving his black Chevrolet Cavalier car on North 3980 Road in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma,” OSBI agent Kurt Titsworth’s affidavit says. “Sweat pulled over on the side of the road and saw ‘two monsters’ come at him. Sweat then panicked. … Sweat then ‘shot the monsters’ with the Glock handgun. Sweat then grabbed a ‘.22 caliber’ gun from the glove box and ‘shot the monsters’ with the .22 caliber gun.” Olympian
Sweat’s attorney in Taylor’s death is Peter Astor of the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System, didn’t immediately return a message left Friday afternoon seeking comment. In February of 2010 Sweat pled guilty to a misdemeanor drug charge , according to online court records. Officials believe he may have tried to sell the Glock at a gun show in March in Tulsa.
The charges come 3 years after family members discovered the girls along an unpaved road less than a half-mile from Placker’s home. They had been headed for Bad Creek Bridge, where they planned to wade through waist-high weeds to the river bank to collect shells and pebbles. Their deaths were one of a series of tragedies to strike the town of barely 900 people. At the site of the killings, there is a makeshift memorial for the 2 girls.
Wanda Mankin, principal of the Graham School, has marked each day since the girls’ grisly murders in 2008. “It’s been three years, six months and one day, but who’s counting?” Like many teachers and parents in the small town, she worries there could be more than one culprit. “There could be someone out there who could be wanting to hurt somebody else,” Mankin said. Olympian
Florence believes Sweat acted alone – taking advantage of the situation.
Newsdesk International 
I’m so glad this “monster” has been caught. I live in Missouri and Skyla was sister to my grand daughter. These deaths have affected her and has touched so many people’s lives.
Maybe now these grieving parents can begin to find some closure.
My prayers are with them all.