Vennie Keaton
The woman who was found dead Wednesday morning in Centre, Ala., owned a vehicle that authorities found abandoned just south of Dunlap, Tenn., Sequatchie County Sheriff Ronnie Hitchcock said.
Alabama authorities found the body of Melissa Hudgins, 32, in a mechanical room under the bleachers at Gadsden State Community College on Wednesday, hours after Sequatchie County authorities found her vehicle abandoned on state Highway 27.
“We found a car Tuesday night sitting on the side of the road here in Dunlap,” Hitchcock said. “The tag came back to a person who was missing. This morning [Alabama authorities] called and said they had found her body at a college in Alabama and she had been murdered.”
Sequatchie deputies searched the area around the abandoned car and found Hudgins’ purse, credit cards and cellphone, Hitchcock said, as well as the ID badge for a man who was Hudgin’s co-worker.
Authorities are searching for that co-worker, Vennie Keaton, 36. He is a person of interest in Hudgins’ homicide investigation, Hitchcock said, and is wanted on a felony theft charge because of the abandoned car.