The man suspected of shooting his wife and her two children was found dead.
In St. Louis County, Bobby McCulley III killed himself on Friday after he was wanted in a homicide involving his own family, per St. Louis Post Dispatch.
McCulley had filed for a divorce from his wife Roseann Williams McCulley, 34, just five days before he shot and killed her and her two children, Kayden Johnson, 13, and Kaylee Brooks, 6, she had from a previous relationship.
According to the police reports, he held the victims against their will for hours before shooting them at the St. Louis residential address. His wife and her children were living at the residence.
McCulley then fled with the couple’s 1-year-old daughter Zoe. He dropped the infant off with relatives, safe and unharmed.
Officers had discovered the bodies around 11:30 p.m. on Thursday after neighbors reported hearing gunshots. The Missouri Highway Patrol issued an AMBER Alert for the baby once they discovered she was missing.
On Friday, McCulley’s mother, Michelle Clayton, 55, was arrested for misleading investigators while trying to find her son. She is being held on a $25,000 cash-only bond.
About a week before McCulley filed for divorce, his wife began writing cryptic messages on Facebook.
“Soooo … what y’all doing on this good Saturday??? Anyone wanna come help me move his (expletive) out of my house into a storage unit so he has no reason to come back here or continue contacting me?” she wrote.
The couple wed on July 29, 2018, and separated by February 20, 2021. By February 28, the groom had filed for divorce. Mrs. McCulley had reported to officers that her husband had abused her earlier in February.
After the shooting, officers located him on Friday at around 7 a.m. on Clinton Street. He had succumbed to a self-inflicted gun wound and was discovered wearing body armor.
Prior to him shooting himself, he was charged with “first-degree murder, three counts of kidnapping, one count of burglary, and seven counts of armed criminal action.”
St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell said back in 2017, someone else had filed domestic abuse charges against McCulley but signed an affidavit that he not be prosecuted.
“Most of what happens is upstream of law enforcement. When an individual already has body armor and these types of weapons and is inclined to do this, there’s not much law enforcement can do, and they did everything that they could,” said Bell.
“It’s on all of us for those individuals to get the help they need,” Bell added. “It cannot just be a victim-oriented solution. We all have to be in this fight against this type of violence.”
“McCulley didn’t have a long history,” said Bell. “This is a call to action for everyone.”
This was the second brutal domestic violence killing in the St. Louis area this month.
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