Hey there, DETECTIVES! DETECTIVE WRITER here to tell you all about two dismembered bodies found inside a suitcase that was actually recorded on camera in the 21st century! Yes, you heard it right, on July 19th, 2020, a group of friends in King County, Alki Beach who initially found the suitcase were recording videos at the beach.
Upon making the gruesome discovery, the teens posted the video on TikTok a day after finding the suitcase, a popular social media and video app with over 23.4 million views. In the video, a young woman is holding the suitcase open with a stick which presents a garbage bag inside. However, it was Seattle Police who opened the bag and discovered the bodies. Soon after, the victims were identified as Jessica Lewis, 35, and her boyfriend Austin “Cash” Wenner, 27. According to the King County Medical Office, the victims were presumed to have been shot to death on June 10th, 2020. The victims were also a couple for over eight years and had a family of their own. Seattle Police Det. Mark Jamieson created a GoFundMe page dedicated to finding the murderer(s).
According to the Seattle Times, a few weeks later in July 2020, a 62-year-old man named Michael Lee Dudley was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and held on a $5 million bail. Dudley was reportedly the couple’s landlord and while an exact motive was not revealed, it was believed Dudley murdered the couple over unpaid rent and for potentially bringing the criminal activity into the residence. When police questioned Dudley, he denied any involvement in the murders but he had no absolute explanation for the bullets or the bullet holes found on the victim’s bodies. He was due to be arraigned on September 8th, 2020. Just goes to show the power that is social media, huh, DETECTIVES?!
Please feel free to skip the images below as it is a bit graphic, DETECTIVES.
The victims were found inside the suitcase.
I hope you have enjoyed this storytime as much as I did, DETECTIVES! Please let me know in the comments if you want to have more storytime! Have a great day, night, afternoon, or evening, DETECTIVES! Stay tuned for next week’s post; until then, keep on sleuthing, DETECTIVES!
Detective Writer 