A 20-year-old man arrested on suspicion of killing his father following a manhunt near Lake Tahoe confessed to the killing and revealed to detectives the location of his father’s body, authorities said Saturday.
Sean Purdy’s confession late Friday led detectives to search an area in Pioneer, California where they located a body in a shallow grave around 4 a.m., the Amador County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
They were able to identify the body as that 52-year-old Lance Purdy and notified family members, the statement said.
The younger Purdy was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of killing his father at the family residence in Pine Grove, a Sierra Nevada foothill town about five miles southeast of Pioneer, on New Year’s Day.
Authorities launched a search for him after Purdy’s mother told deputies her husband flew home to check on their son but she never heard back from him.
A neighbor witnessed the son leaving the family home quickly in a 2017 blue Subaru Outback and subsequently discovered a large amount of blood in and around the residence, the sheriff’s office said.
A search-and-rescue team is searching another area of Amador County for additional evidence of the homicide.