OkieGranny
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http://www.mccookgazette.com/story/2145764.html
The Nebraska Attorney General's spokeswoman Liz Eberle said Wednesday that John Leahy III had been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Austin Wright.
Wright's body was found in southwest Nebraska's Hitchcock County April 12 -- several weeks after his mother reported him missing from McCook.
http://www.nebraska.tv/story/276097...tigators-to-murder-charge-in-hitchcock-county
Police talked with 22-year-old J.R. Leahy III, who Austin was staying with. Leahy described a bizarre sequence of events the night of March 7th. He said Wright was acting strange, possibly on drugs, talking like he was J.R. Wright picked up an urn full of Leahy's mom's ashes, spilling some. Leahy then said he got angry and beat up Wright. Leahy then called up his friend Nathan Deloach to help drive Wright out of town.
At first the two told police they dropped off Wright in McCook, but on April 11th, Leahy changed his story saying they left Wright on some back country road four miles outside of Palisade. The next day deputies searched the area and found Wright's body stripped of clothes laying under a metal covering of an oil well not far from where Leahy says he dropped Wright off...
The autopsy originally listed the cause of death as 'undetermined' but later ruled it death due to exposure to cold weather. NTV checked out the weather that weekend and the temperature in the area dropped as low as 22 degrees. According to the Mayo Clinic, a side affect of severe hypothermia is confusion and poor decisionmaking, such as trying to remove warm clothes.