David K. DaughteryFriends and family members were searching Elizabeth Carney's trailer, hoping to find the woman who'd been missing for a few days.
Meanwhile, one of the friends was on the phone in the trailer, speaking with David Keith Daugherty, Carney's husband of less than two months.
Then somebody screamed.
"I guess they found her," Daugherty said on the other end of the phone.
They had, according to an affidavit from the Bradley County Sheriff's Office. Her body was found Tuesday evening, wrapped in two blankets and tied down inside a bedroom closet.
Daugherty, the affidavit states, then admitted to the friend on the phone that he killed his 40-year-old wife.
On Thursday, the 41-year-old Daugherty was captured in Cherokee, N.C., and arrested on a charge of first-degree murder. He waived extradition rights and was brought back to Bradley County on Friday by Detective Sgt. John Stone, who drove to Cherokee to question him, said Bob Gault, spokesman for the sheriff's office.
Assistant District Attorney Stephen Hatchett said Daugherty will make his first court appearance Monday morning in General Sessions Court.
Preliminary results of Carney's autopsy showed she died by strangulation, Gault said.
After his wife's body was found, Daugherty fled to North Carolina in his 1995 Mercury Villager van, Gault said.
In Cherokee, he crashed the van into a ravine, then went to a motel, where he approached a woman who was reading outside her room, saying he was a motel employee bringing towels, authorities said. When the woman went into her room, he used a stun gun on her, police in Cherokee said, prompting her 8-year-old daughter to run for help.
Daugherty fled on foot but was found hiding in bushes about 300 yards away, Cherokee police said. He was taken into custody without incident.
When police ran his name through their computer, the Bradley County murder warrant came up.