On Sunday afternoon, the body of an inmate who escaped from an Ohio jail nearly five days earlier was discovered floating in the Ohio River.
Bradley Gillespie, 50, had been imprisoned for murder since 2016 until he and James Lee, 47, escaped last Tuesday from the Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio.
Lee, who was sentenced to jail in 2021 for burglary and safecracking, was apprehended in Kentucky on Wednesday after a police pursuit of a stolen automobile in which both men were alleged to be.
The truck eventually wrecked, and both convicts fled on foot.
Lee was apprehended on the spot, while Gillespie escaped.
Henderson police reported the discovery of Gillespie’s corpse in the Ohio River during a press conference on Sunday afternoon.
According to Henderson Police Chief Sean McKinney, a boater on the Ohio River called to report seeing what he thought was a corpse in the water.
When police arrived, they determined it was a corpse, and it was discovered near Gillespie’s last known location.
McKinney said he thought the five-day quest for Gillespie was over.
“A preliminary investigation indicates we recovered the body of Bradley Gillespie from the river,” he said.
The chief said that an autopsy would be conducted on the body on Tuesday.
It was unclear how long Gillespie had been in the water or if he had died.
McKinney went on to say that the degree of decay on the body suggested he had been deceased for around four days.