Wichita cops found slain man’s body zipped in bag in basement crawl space: affidavit
A Wichita murder suspect told police he stabbed his wheelchair-bound cousin repeatedly then tucked his dead body in a basement crawl space because he was angry that the cousin “acknowledged to him that he had molested a couple of their relatives in the past,” according to an affidavit released Friday by Sedgwick County District Court.
Jason A. Payne, who is charged with the first-degree premeditated murder of 34-year-old Michael Montgomery, told a Wichita police detective during a Jan. 14 interview that he was so enraged at the alleged admission that “he went to his room and retrieved a ‘throwing knife’” then returned to his living room “and started stabbing Michael repeatedly,” the affidavit says. Prior to the stabbing, Montgomery “had always denied the molestation accusation,” the affidavit says Payne told police.
Payne, 39, told the detective he stuffed his cousin’s body into a bag, “put it in a hole in the basement,” then cleaned the knife and blood from the living room floor, the affidavit says.
Police wrote in the document that Payne told the detective “he continued to drink and do drugs until the time he decided to surrender himself for ‘murdering my cousin.’”
The men lived together in one apartment of a fourplex in the 900 block of North Oliver. Authorities received a 911 call shortly before 6 a.m. Jan. 13 about a man — Payne — who appeared to be disoriented who was running into the intersection at 13th and Oliver and lying down in the street. Officers who checked out the report heard Payne say that “he had ‘killed his cousin’” before he was taken to a Wichita hospital for help, according to the affidavit.
Officers went to the fourplex and talked to a neighbor, who said that Payne and Montgomery were roommates and that Montgomery “was disabled and utilized a wheelchair,” the affidavit says.
The neighbor told the officers that he had seen people moving items into the basement of the fourplex for several days. When the officers went inside, they saw Montgomery’s empty wheelchair. In the basement commons area, they found several plastic or latex gloves and a crawl space opening with an irregularly shaped “large black nylon style zipper bag” tucked inside, according to the affidavit.
One of the officers “unzipped part of the bag and observed a bloody sock and what appeared to be a human body” that emergency medical services personnel later pronounced deceased, the affidavit says.
An autopsy determined Montgomery died from multiple stabs wounds to his head and torso, the affidavit says.
Payne, 39, is being held in the Sedgwick County Jail in lieu of $200,000 bond. His next court date is Feb. 4.
