A Kentucky couple will be getting the reward for finding the body of Joseph Couch. The dead freeway shooting suspect evaded trained trackers since September 7. After they gave up, Fred and Sheila McCoy led troopers to the body. It wasn’t far from where the shots came from.
Couple to claim reward
Police commissioner Phillip Burnett Jr. officially confirmed a Kentucky couple “would receive a full reward.” The important part, he notes, is that “this brings closure to the search for Joseph Couch.” Community members, he relates, can “rest much easier now that this manhunt has been concluded.”
It seems that after coming up empty for 11 straight days, troopers appeared out of the bushes near the body at the same time as Fred and Sheila McCoy.
Great minds think alike, officials chuckle. Vultures are a lot better at finding bodies than humans or even tracking dogs. The couple decided to go bounty hunting as a whim.
It was date night for the McCoys when they jokingly observed the $35,000 reward for information leading to Couch’s capture would buy a lot of dinners. The idea “unfolded into a multi-day bounty hunt that led them to the body.”
Police are basing the identity of the corpse discovered as Joseph Couch from the weapon found at the scene. Most likely the weapon used to fulfill his texted promise to do himself in, after attempting to kill as many as he could on the I-75 freeway. He killed zero but injured five.
One was “shot in the face and another across the chest.” The couple followed the vultures, and were live-streaming as they went. Troopers swear up and down they weren’t watching the streamcast. They, too, had noticed the vultures.

Live for six days
By the time the couple saw vultures circling, they had been “live-streaming over a period of six days,” through the same dense wilderness as law enforcement. When reporters caught up to Fred, he told them “we’d seen a bunch of vultures. If somebody’s dead, there’s going to be vultures. Follow the vultures.”
It seems that “five or six of the birds were circling the area as they approached.” A pair of Kentucky state police troopers were circling the same area.
As they got closer, the couple “were quickly overpowered by the foul stench of a decomposing body.” That told them they were in the right area. “You won’t believe it,” Sheila gasped. “Oh my goodness gracious.” They didn’t need to go far to alert police.
“At about the same time as the McCoys stumbled upon the body, two Kentucky state police troopers had also been drawn to the site by the smell and the sight of circling scavengers.”
The medical examiner is officially confirming the identity but there were enough clues laying around that everyone’s pretty sure they found Couch. He only recently bought the AR-15 assault rifle and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition. On September 7, he “perched atop a cliff overlooking the Interstate 75.”
As the sun was setting along the horizon, he opened fire on at least a dozen vehicles, then fled into the jungle-like forest. That was all near the highway’s Exit 49. The couple found the remains not far from that same exit. Police could have walked right past him and never noticed because of the thickness of the undergrowth. Vultures don’t miss a scrap.