Daniel Joseph Triplett, an Oklahoma business owner, has been arrested on charges of murdering his employee, Brent Mack, and burying the 50-year-old man under a septic tank last month.
Search for the missing man began in September when Mack’s daughter, Raychelle Wilson, reportedly reached out to Triplett via Facebook Messenger asking about her father’s whereabouts, court documents revealed.
Triplett claimed he fired Mack, citing alleged “violent demeanor.” In a since-deleted online text, Triplett told Wilson that after giving Mack “$1000 as severance pay,” he dropped him off outside of a local laundromat.
“Lt. Bruning asked Dan about locations where he dropped Mack off and Dan changed the location several times.
Dan was shown a copy of the video footage showing him driving by the Holiday Laundry and not stopping. When confronted with the inconsistencies in the story, Dan became very red faced and appeared to be angry,” the affidavit stated.
However, investigators said additional surveillance footage showed both Triplett and Mack working on a septic tank on Sept. 20 — the same day Mack was said to have gone missing — at a home in Mulhall, Oklahoma, and not in Crescent as Triplett initially told investigators.
Authorities confirmed with the property owner that the job Triplett claimed he did with Mack on the day he went missing was actually done on Sept. 7.
Law enforcement officials said a search warrant was executed at Triplett’s home and officers found a statement book for a client at E. County Road 69, who identified both Triplett, who is white, and Mack, who is Black, showing up to install a septic tank.
Video showed Mack getting into the hole made for the septic tank but never leaving. The client told the cops that only one man left after the job was done. When investigators dug up the tank, they found Mack’s body.
“On October 22, 2021 Agent Woodward was notified that the Medical Examiners officer had located what’s believed to be a projectile in the chest cavity with an entry wound in the upper left back,” authorities said.
Wilson told KFOR her father and the 66-year-old Triplett “had kind of a love-hate situation I would say.” “He just kept feeding my dad these lies about ‘Oh, I’m going to eventually give you this company and you’re going to take over,’” Wilson said. “My dad saw all of Dan’s sides, the good, the bad, the ugly, so everything that Dan was doing that he wasn’t supposed to be doing, my dad was aware.”
Triplett is currently in custody at Logan County Jail and is being held without bond. He was charged with one count of murder in the first degree, and desecration of a human corpse.
