Marcelino Leal
Keiven Lee Bundy
NaKayla SullivanThe TBI has arrested two more suspects in addition to one woman already charged in a Bledsoe County, Tennessee, homicide investigation stemming from the discovery of a man's body on Valley View Road in April.
The initial investigation into the death of 30-year-old Thomas Rogers first resulted in the arrest of 25-year-old NaKayla Sullivan, though 12th Judicial District Attorney General Mike Taylor said at the time that two other suspects in the case were in custody on unrelated charges.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on Thursday announced the additional arrests of 22-year-old Marcelino Leal and 30-year-old Keiven Lee Bundy on grand jury indictments handed up Monday in Bledsoe County Circuit Court.
After the grand jury session, Sullivan, originally charged with criminal homicide, is now charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Leal is charged with one count of first-degree murder, one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, one count of employing a firearm with intent to go armed and one count of aggravated assault, the TBI said. Bundy is charged with one count of first-degree murder, one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, one count of employing a firearm with intent to go armed, and one count of possession of weapon by a convicted felon, the TBI said.
All three were booked at the Bledsoe County Jail, where they are being held without bond.
Rogers had been reported missing April 19, Bledsoe County Sheriff Jimmy Morris said when the investigation started. Morris said Rogers' mother hadn't seen her son since a couple of days before the report.
"We started looking," Morris told the Times Free Press in April. "Officer Jack Durham found him on Valley View Road, north of Big Springs Gap Road."
There are few homes on the road where Rogers' body was found in a barrel in a wooded area, the sheriff said. Valley View Road is a narrow dirt and gravel track that weaves north along the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau from Big Springs Gap Road to the Cumberland County line.
Morris said in April that Sullivan, Leal, Bundy and Rogers all knew each other, but he didn't know the details of their relationships. The sheriff said he was unaware of any previous trouble among the victim and the suspects.
An incident that might have led to Rogers' death is believed to have happened late April 17 "at a location on Wheeler Mountain, not where his body was found," Taylor said in April. The suspected crime scene is several miles south of Valley View Road on Cove Hill Road, off of State Highway 30.
Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton or at www.facebook.com/benbenton1.