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Suspect in murders in Oklahoma and Alabama nabbed in Arkansas

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Morrilton, Ark. — An Alabama man wanted in connection with homicides in Oklahoma and Alabama was apprehended Thursday in Arkansas after a search that spanned multiple Southern states, Arkansas State Police said.

Stacy Lee Drake, 50, was taken into custody around 10 a.m. in a wooded area in Morrilton, state police said. He was apprehended “without incident,” the agency said in a brief statement.

Morrilton Mayor Allen Lipsmeyer told CBS Fort Smith, Arkansas affiliate KFSM-TV, “We were so blessed that … he was able to be apprehended without anybody (else) getting hurt. … He is in custody today and hopefully he will not be let out for a long, long time.”

Drake is wanted in connection with homicides and carjackings in Oklahoma, Arkansas State Police said. They said he’s also wanted on other felony warrants from multiple jurisdictions on charges including aggravated robbery, carjacking and murder.

A man and a woman were found dead inside a business near Gans, Oklahoma, near the Arkansas state line, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said. Both had injuries consistent with homicide, and the agency said Drake is a person of interest.

Arkansas authorities initially said Drake was wanted in three Oklahoma homicides, but OSBI spokesperson Hunter McKee said Thursday that Drake has been connected only to the two in the Gans area.

“We’re still investigating what else the suspect might have been involved in,” McKee said, but he added that Drake was not wanted for any other Oklahoma slayings.

The bodies of the two victims were sent to the state medical examiner for identification and to determine the causes of their deaths, the OSBI said.

Drake’s last known address was in Birmingham, Alabama. He was being held Thursday in the Conway County Detention Center in Arkansas. 

Drake had an extradition hearing scheduled for Friday morning, the jail’s administrator said. It wasn’t immediately clear if Drake had an attorney.

In Alabama, Drake is accused of killing Russell Andrews on May 14, according to the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office. Capt. Jack Kennedy of the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit said there is a warrant for Drake on a murder charge. News outlets reported that Andrews, 62, was found dead inside the Alcoholics Anonymous building.

Tuscaloosa authorities said Andrews’ vehicle was stolen when he was killed and was picked up by cameras hours later as it was being driven on an interstate near the Arkansas-Oklahoma border.



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Moderate Masoud Pezeshkian wins Iran’s presidential runoff election

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Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian won Iran’s runoff presidential election Saturday, besting hard-liner Saeed Jalili by promising to reach out to the West and ease enforcement on the country’s mandatory headscarf law after years of sanctions and protests squeezing the Islamic Republic.

Pezeshkian promised no radical changes to Iran’s Shiite theocracy in his campaign and long has held Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final arbiter of all matters of state in the country. But even Pezeshkian’s modest aims will be challenged by an Iranian government still largely held by hard-liners, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, and Western fears over Tehran enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.

A vote count offered by authorities put Pezeshkian as the winner with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million in Friday’s election.

Iran's presidential election goes to run-off
Iranian reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian speaks at his rally for the presidential elections in Tehran, Iran, on July 3, 2024.

Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images


Supporters of Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, entered the streets of Tehran and other cities before dawn to celebrate as his lead grew over Jalili, a hard-line former nuclear negotiator.

But Pezeshkian’s win still sees Iran at a delicate moment, with tensions high in the Mideast over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Iran’s advancing nuclear program, and a looming U.S. election that could put any chance of a detente between Tehran and Washington at risk.

The first round of voting June 28 saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian officials have long pointed to turnout as a sign of support for the country’s Shiite theocracy, which has been under strain after years of sanctions crushing Iran’s economy, mass demonstrations and intense crackdowns on all dissent.

Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.

However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.

The election came amid heightened regional tensions. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region — such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.

Iran is also enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so. And while Khamenei remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy toward either confrontation or collaboration with the West.

The campaign also repeatedly touched on what would happen if former President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, won the November election. Iran has held indirect talks with President Joe Biden’s administration, though there’s been no clear movement back toward constraining Tehran’s nuclear program for the lifting of economic sanctions.

More than 61 million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18 million of them between 18 and 30. Voting was to end at 6 p.m. but was extended until midnight to boost participation.

The late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a May helicopter crash, was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader.

Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.



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Biden set for pivotal 24 hours with primetime interview

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President Biden is set for a make-or-break weekend for his political future as his reelection campaign tries to hit reset following last week’s disastrous debate. Biden again vowed to stay in the race Friday at a campaign rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin, and will sit down for a primetime interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News. Scott MacFarlane has the latest.

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