South Carolina authorities have detained a suspect in the case of a missing man whose body was discovered last month.
John Lucas Dale Rice, 21, is accused of murder in the death of Kevin Brookshire, 45, who went missing in 2021. According to Missing People America, Brookshire was last seen on December 15, 2021, in Chesnee, near the Palmetto State’s border with North Carolina. He was meant to drive his 2001 red Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck with an expired Tennessee license plate to Sevier County, Tennessee, about 160 miles northwest, but he never arrived.
The pickup truck was involved in a traffic accident around five months after Brookshire’s disappearance, but police do not believe she was the driver.
Authorities did not locate any clues in the investigation until August. According to Greenville Fox station WHNS, the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office called their counterparts in Cherokee County following a report from someone who said Rice had shown them a decomposing body in a garbage can at a Chesnee property.
Investigators “started talking to different witnesses and found out there were different pieces of body — Mr. Brookshire’s body — had been found in different locations,” Barry Barnette, 7th Circuit Solicitor, told a court at a probable cause hearing attended by WHNS.
In August, police went to the house and recovered the remains. Using x-rays and medical records, the coroner recognized them as Brookshire, according to WHNS. Detectives met with Rice, who allegedly confessed to killing Brookshire. Police have not revealed the cause of death or a possible motivation for the crime.
Rice was detained on Friday and remains in the Cherokee County Detention Center without bond.
