Police have arrested a suspect who they believe abducted and killed a woman in Rhode Island two years ago.
Mark Perkins, 64, was taken into custody on Wednesday by the Warwick Police Department after investigators linked his vehicle’s GPS data to the spot where the skeletal remains of Charlotte Lester, 44, were found on November 17.
Lester was reported missing by her landlord on May 16, 2022, according to WJAR.
Perkins has been on the investigators’ radar since the beginning. Shortly after Lester was reported missing, a witness at a nearby convenience store told police they saw Perkins with “blood on his hands and scratches and bite marks on his arm.”
The witness spoke to Perkins, and claimed he said he and Lester — who he was romantically inolved with at the time— had the “blowout of the century” and said his house was “a blood bath.” Perkins also allegedly said “I think I killed her.”
The final day Lester was seen alive, she drove to another man’s house and was allegedly followed there by Perkins, according to court documents. Perkins is said to have sent her text messages asking her to come back from the other man’s house.
On May 18, the day he was seen bloodied in the convenience store, Perkins was allegedly caught on video leaving his house in a truck with an object in the bed. He returned three hours later and the object was no longer in the truck.
Police caught up with Perkins on May 20 and interviewed him. They noted that his hands were swollen but that his demeanor was “calm and unaffected” by his romantic partner’s disappearance. He allegedly told the investigators that Lester had “stopped texting him” and insisted he had no clue where she was, according to WPRI.
After the interview, Warwick police obtained a search warrant for Perkins’ home. They found the interior of the house spattered with blood, and found a blood-stained shirt on a clothesline in the basement hanging over a bottle of bleach.
Later testing compared a DNA profile from Lester’s mother to the blood found on the shirt, confirming that it was a mix of Lester and Perkins’ blood.
Investigators found Lester’s remains earlier this week, and used the GPS data from Perkins’ truck to confirm that he had visited the same area four times in four months — twice in July 2022, and twice in October 2022 – which finally allowed them to charge him with her murder.
Police previosuly arrested Perkins in August 2022, but not for Lester’s murder. Instead, he was picked up for threatening a local radio host with his lawnmower for confronting him on Lester’s disappearance.
He was arrested again this week and has been charged with first-degree murder. He has not entered a plea and is being held without bail.
