Breaking News Alert: Bargain Killing? Shocking Development in Case of Murdered White Battle Creek Couple! Their Killer Has Both Confessed to, and Denied He Murdered Them!

 

Murder victims Joseph Soule, 34, and Jaclyn Lepird, 31  

By Grand Rapids Anonymous
Friday, October 16, 2020 at 7:59:00 A.M. EDT

Landlord Confesses to Killing White Couple (update) Claims Self-Defense on Initial Shooting

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (WOOD) — A landlord is in custody after admitting to killing a Battle Creek couple who’ve been missing for more than a week, investigators say.

Chad Reed, 53, confessed in the double homicide of Joseph Soule, 34, and Jaclyn Lepird, 31. They were last seen on Oct. 7. Their bodies were recovered and identified Thursday.

During a press conference Thursday afternoon, Battle Creek Police Department Sgt. Detective Joel Case said they were notified Oct. 12 by family members that the couple was missing. The following day, detectives found the incident suspicious, which prompted an extensive investigation.

Police in Battle Creek investigating a home of a missing couple. (Oct. 15, 2020) Case said the couple was living in an upstairs apartment on Post Avenue near Marjorie Street. Reed lived below them and was their landlord. Police were investigating at the home Thursday afternoon.

According to Reed, the incident started as an altercation between him and the couple.

Family, friends fear for missing Battle Creek couple

“From everybody that we’ve talked to — friends, family — it sounds like they had an ongoing dispute where they could not get along. They had arguments about money, they had arguments about you name it. So it was relatively common for him to be complaining to people that he was annoyed by them, didn’t get along with them,” Case told reporters Thursday afternoon.

Reed told investigators that he shot Soule after he pulled a knife out on him. He then shot Lepird as she was running away before beating and strangling her in the backyard.

He then admitted to wrapping their bodies in a bag and putting them in the back of his truck. Once family member [sic] started searching for the couple, he moved the truck with their bodies into a garage at an abandoned home in the area.
--GRA
 

By Grand Rapids Anonymous
Friday, October 16, 2020 at 3:16:00 P.M. EDT

Mugshot is of Chad Reed. Looks like an outlier case of a White landlord in constant battle with his tenants, who Reed says pulled a knife on him. The man with the knife was shot, but so was the woman living there.
--GRA
 

 

Mug shot of murderer Chad Allen Reed