By David K. Li —
NBC News
Police have arrested a man in Florida whom they link to the deaths of four Oklahoma cyclists, they reported Tuesday.
Investigators in Okmulgee, a small rural town 100 miles east of Oklahoma City, said Monday they wanted to question Joseph Kennedy in the death of 32-year-old Mark Chastain;
Billy Chastain, 30;
Mike Sparks, 32;
and Alex Stevens, 29.
They were reported missing last week before their bodies were found shot and dismembered in the Deep Fork River, according to Okmulgee police.
Clockwise from left: Mike Sparks, Billy Chastain, Mark Chastain, and Alex Stevens. Okmulgee Police Department
Just after naming Kennedy as a "person of interest" Monday afternoon, police said the man's blue Chrysler PT Cruiser was found "abandoned behind a business" in Morris.
Kennedy was stopped in Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, in a car that was reported stolen Monday to the Okmulgee County Sheriff's Office.
Kennedy, 67, is being held without bail.
He was arrested Tuesday morning on a burglary charge, according to Volusia County Department of Corrections records.
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Kennedy was also booked in connection with a 2012 shooting in Okmulgee, Oklahoma police said.
The statement did not name Kennedy as a suspect in the deaths of the four cyclists.
As of Tuesday afternoon, it was unclear whether Kennedy had hired or been assigned an attorney.
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Kennedy came onto investigators' radar after they searched his junkyard and found evidence of a "violent event" at an "adjoining property," Okmulgee Police Chief Joe Prentice said.
Kennedy was initially interviewed by Okmulgee police on Friday, according to Prentice, before he apparently left the state.
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The disappearance of the four men was reported early last week, after they left for a ride on their bicycles.
Prentice later revealed that the men had been planning to carry out an undisclosed crime before their mutilated bodies were found.
Investigators are relying on the word of a witness who had been invited to join them as the men planned "to pull off a hit big enough for all of them," Prentice said, using the slang to refer to a lucrative criminal act.