A split between members of a six-person club called the “Seven Deadly Sins” led to the shooting deaths of seven people this month in an Alabama home that was also set on fire, investigators said Monday.
The seven victims included three members of the group and were targeted by two other members of the group who have been arrested on capital murder charges after a two-week investigation, Marion County Sheriff Ron Puckett said.
The victims were found dead in a burning home in Valhermoso Springs on June 4 by deputies responding to a report of gunfire. Firefighters extinguished the flames.
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John Michael Legg, 20, and Frederic Allen Rogers, 23 were arrested Sunday in Oregon’s Marion County pursuant to arrest warrants, Puckett said.
He said deputies investigating the homicides developed information early on in the case that led them to Legg and Rogers.
They fled Alabama after the murders and drove to Oregon, where Rogers has relatives, the sheriff said.
“We believe based on the investigation that they were doing away with the club,” Puckett told a news conference Monday afternoon.
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“This was probably one of the ways they were going to wipe the slate clean if you will,” he added.
After the news conference deputies told reporters who were in attendance that those belonging to the Seven Deadly Sins were involved in illicit activity, “crimes of some sort, money of some sort, drugs of some sort.”
The victims were Tammy Muzzey, 45, Jeramy Roberts, 31, James Benford, 22, Emily Payne, 21, Roger Jones, Jr., 19, William Hodgin, 18, of Somerville and a 17-year-old juvenile who was not identified.
It was Muzzey’s home where the murders took place.
Puckett said Roberts, Benford and Jones were the ones who belonged to the Seven Deadly Sins with Legg and Rogers and a sixth person.
Themselves sheriff called the killings “horrible and cold-blooded.”
