OKLAHOMA, USA — On June 20, Arkansas and Oklahoma authorities concluded a two-day manhunt for 50-year-old Stacy Lee Drake, the main suspect in at least three killings.
At LaFerry's Propane in Sequoyah Oklahoma, two people were found dead on Tuesday, June 18. The next day, it was announced that the suspect in the double homicide was Drake, who was believed to be in Morrilton, Arkansas.
The Conway County Sheriff's Office confirmed Thursday morning that Drake had been taken into custody, over 36 hours after he is suspected to have killed the two people in Sequoyah County.
Arkansas State Police (ASP) called Drake an armed fugitive and told the public that if anyone saw Drake, not to approach him and call 911 immediately.
An alert was set off on Wednesday morning, warning people in Arkansas of the manhunt.
Morrilton police said Drake had a warrant for a homicide in Alabama, along with a third killing in Oklahoma. ASP confirmed the additional Oklahoma homicide on Wednesday, saying that Drake was "wanted in connection to three homicides in Oklahoma stemming from two separate carjackings."
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has only confirmed that Drake is a suspect in the Sequoyah County double homicide.
"I know that the Arkansas State Police put out a post, and they had talked about other crimes being committed," McKee told 5NEWS on Wednesday. "Right now, we are not connecting this person of interest with any other crime at this point, besides the double homicide in Gans."
With such a widely circulated manhunt, the inevitable Google searches of Stacy Lee Drake began. Quickly, his decades-long criminal history has come to light, revealing numerous felony convictions dating back to 1994.
However, the biggest question mark of all came after it was discovered that in 2010, Drake was sentenced to 22 years in prison by a U.S. District Court in Alabama.
So how has Drake become a wanted fugitive in June 2024 and the prime suspect of at least two, possibly four, recent homicides?
- 1994: Armed robbery in Arizona
- 2003: Aggravated assault in Arizona
- 2010: Carjacking and brandishing a firearm, felon in possession of a firearm in Alabama
In 2010, the carjacking with a firearm conviction caused Drake to be classified as a habitual felon under the Armed Career Criminal Act, which is a federal law requiring repeat felons to receive increased sentences.
Because of Drake's previous convictions, he faced a guideline range of 264 to 327 months in prison. The court sentenced him to 264 months, which is equivalent to 22 years, in prison.
22-year sentence vacated
That changed in 2015 after a Supreme Court decision, Johnson v. United States. That opinion changed how violent offenses were characterized.
In 2016, lawyers on behalf of Drake filed a motion for him to receive a new, unenhanced sentence, arguing that both of his first two convictions in Arizona were no longer characterized as violent crimes or felonies.
In March 2017, the court agreed with Drake's claim and found that one of the Arizona convictions no longer was a "strike" against him and therefore, his enhanced sentence was vacated.
He was resentenced to just over 11 years in prison and was given credit for time served since his arrest in 2010.
In the years following his resentencing, Drake was released and was in and out of custody for violating parole.
In 2022, he was arrested for a robbery that "occurred simultaneously" with the 2010 carjacking incident, according to a court document out of Dale County, Alabama. For that crime, he was sentenced to 36 months of unsupervised probation in a plea deal.
Adam Rose, a local criminal attorney not affiliated with Drake, explains that the resentencing caused him to get out early.
"The reason he got out early was because his prior sentence was too large for the type of crime that he was actually convicted of, and so they had to modify that down to actually reflect the new law and the new range of punishment, which was significantly lower than what he was originally sentenced to," Rose said.
Rose adds that Drake likely should not have been out of prison.
"He got out quite a bit sooner than he probably should have," Rose said. "The legislator in this sense that changed the law, and when they change the law, people slip through the system that necessarily shouldn't."
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