A 52-year-old Texas man has been charged after he allegedly shot and killed his fiancée following an argument and stayed with the victim’s body for three days.
According to FOX 4, the suspect, identified as William Joseph Oddo III, claimed he opened fire on 39-year-old LaVera Wardell after they got into an altercation in their Denton apartment. He claimed that he shot his fiancée after she charged at him with a knife, documents stated.
Authorities ultimately found Wardell’s body almost two weeks after she was killed, and that was after a concerned person notified authorities about a foul smell emanating from the couple’s apartment.
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In the wake of her killing, Oddo stayed with his deceased fiancée for a few days before authorities ultimately found her body in their apartment on May 19.
Authorities claim that Oddo, after killing Wardell, tried to conceal evidence by cleaning bloodstains in the apartment to avoid the discovery of the victim’s body. An arrest affidavit also stated that on May 13, surveillance footage captured Oddo going to several places to buy cleaning materials. That was a week after he allegedly killed his fiancée.
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The arrest affidavit stated that authorities established blood evidence that had spilled on the apartment’s walls and floor had been cleaned, FOX 4 reported. Oddo is said to have confirmed he was the one who cleaned the apartment, and he did so because he “wanted to lay with” his deceased fiancée.
Oddo later left the apartment, and he told police that the smell in the apartment had caused him to do that. Authorities ultimately arrested him at a Mount Pleasant motel on June 2.
Oddo has since been charged with murder and tampering with evidence. He was being held on a $160,000 bond at the time of this report. The Denton Police Department also said the couple had previously been involved in domestic violence incidents, and authorities had been notified about those cases.
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