The man who sparked a nationwide search after he allegedly staged a hiker’s murder as a bear attack in the Tennessee woodlands has been found and taken into custody, law enforcement said.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office of Tennessee shared that law enforcement in Columbia, South Carolina, had found Nicholas Wayne Hamlett and took him into custody on Sunday night after he was recognized at a local hospital. The FBI was able to confirm his identity by verifying his fingerprints.
Hamlett is currently facing first-degree murder charges out of Tennessee and a parole violation out of Alabama, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said.
In mid-October, 34-year-old Steven Douglas Lloyd of Knoxville was found dead in a staged bear attack that was allegedly linked to Hamlett.
The murder of Steven Lloyd
Just before 11:35 p.m. on Oct. 18, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office received a transferred call from nearby Polk County about a distressed hiker named “Brandon Andrade” who told dispatchers that he had “fallen off a cliff while running from a bear,” and that he was injured and partially in the water.