A white Texas man is under arrest for the brutal slaying of his Black fiancée after he allegedly stayed with her body for at least three days because he “wanted to lay with” her.
William Joseph Oddo III, 52, was arrested on June 2 by the Denton County police on charges of murder and tampering with evidence after confessing to shooting LaVera Wardell in the head. He is being held on $160,000 bail.
Investigators believe the suspect and his 39-year-old fiancée got into a fight on May 6, but Wardell’s body was not found until nearly two weeks later, when neighbors called 911 to report a “very foul smell” emanating from the apartment they shared, with flies buzzing around the front door.
“It’s honestly heartbreaking. I don’t know how it was right above the office. It’s the penthouse above the office and right next to the gym,” a neighbor from the Timberlinks Golf Club complex told the Denton-Record Chronicle. The sprawling apartment community is situated next to one of Texas’s top-ranked golf courses.
The body stayed in the apartment until May 19 when police made the gruesome discovery. They were surprised to find the walls and floor were strangely clean, with no blood splatter or blood evidence anywhere in the apartment, reported the outlet. Police located a shotgun in the home along with other unnamed items that could be used to mask smells, but Oddo had disappeared.
Soon investigators turned up surveillance videos showing Oddo in several stores purchasing cleaning supplies on May 13, a full week after Wardell’s murder.
Oddo claimed he shot her in the head in self-defense after she ran toward him with a knife during an argument, according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by Fox 4. He allegedly left the apartment after a week due to the terrible smell, leaving her body behind, and holed up in a motel in Mount Pleasant, about two-and-half hours away, according to the documents.
A judge initially granted an arrest warrant on May 28 for tampering with evidence. When police eventually traced Oddo to the motel, they obtained search warrants to his motel room and vehicle after he gave a damning interview on June 2, according to arrest documents.
Police claim Oddo waived his Miranda rights and confessed to the killing, telling investigators that he scrubbed the murder scene because he “wanted to lay with” his deceased fiancée, and that he laid with her body “for approximately three days,” according to the Denton Record-Chronicle. He also confirmed that he used the shotgun found in the apartment to kill her, per the arrest affidavit.
Denton police say there were red flags before the heinous slaying. There had been a history of domestic violence calls related to the couple.
