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U.S. Marshals tracked a New Mexico woman to Florida where she allegedly fled to evade charges after her grandfather’s body was found bound and stuffed in a toolbox outside Fort Sumner last month, according to police.
Candy Webb, 27, was arrested in Jacksonville on Thursday, New Mexico State Police spokesman Lt. Mark Soriano said.
He said Webb will be extradited to De Baca County and face an open count of murder and tampering with evidence in the death of 82-year-old A.J. Harden.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Magistrate Court:
State Police on Oct. 15 went to a home on the outskirts of Fort Sumner after residents found human remains in a toolbox on the property. The remains were mostly bones with duct tape still wrapped around the mouth and binding the wrists.
There were dentures, clothing and shoes found with the bones and officers discovered a doctor’s note in the shirt pocket with Harden’s name on it. Police learned Webb – Harden’s granddaughter – had previously lived on the property with her ex-boyfriend before moving in with Harden on Lake Sumner.
In an interview, Webb told officers she checked Harden into a hospice care facility in Texas several months ago but couldn’t remember the facility’s name. Webb later changed her story and said she put Harden in a retirement home called “Shady Oaks” before an aunt, whose name she “does not know,” checked him out.
Officers learned the retirement home doesn’t exist and Harden’s monthly retirement benefits were ongoing and registered to the house on Lake Sumner that Harden had deeded to Webb.
Police spoke to Webb’s boyfriend, who said she told him her grandfather ordered her to kill him and she gave him Xanax and Ambien and “waited for his heart to stop.” The boyfriend told police Webb said she dumped Harden’s body afterward.
The boyfriend told officers he called Webb a liar and said, “you killed him because you wanted his house,” and she responded by breaking down into tears.
