Three Bodies Found at House Where Massachusetts Kidnapping Suspect Lived

The police in Massachusetts said Friday that they were investigating a kidnapping case that started last weekend with a routine traffic stop and has led to the discovery of three bodies in a house.

At about 11:15 p.m. on Sunday in Springfield, a city in western Massachusetts, the police tried to pull over a man driving a vehicle without a taillight, Ryan Walsh, a Springfield Police Department spokesman, said Friday. The driver took off and officers in two cruisers chased him for about 10 minutes until they blocked him. He stopped, backing into one of the cruisers, Walsh said.

Officers discovered an injured woman in the vehicle, and she told the police she had been held captive by the man, identified as Stewart Weldon, 40, for about a month, Walsh said.

“Thank you guys for saving my life,” the woman told officers, according to the police report. “I didn’t think I was ever going to get away.”

According to a partly redacted police report, she told the police that Weldon had been “holding her captive,” raped her and beat her with a hammer and other objects over the past month. She was taken to the hospital with stab wounds to the abdomen, a possible fractured jaw and other injuries, the report said.

Walsh declined to identify the woman or provide further details other than to say that the man and woman knew each other and that she had “injuries consistent with her story.”

Weldon was arrested on armed kidnapping and other charges after a “very violent struggle,” said Anthony Gulluni, the Hampden district attorney, at a news conference Thursday. There were outstanding warrants for assault and traffic violations. Gulluni said Weldon, who pleaded not guilty in Springfield District Court, was being held with bail set at $1 million.

Soon after the arrest, investigators received additional information that led them Wednesday to start to search the house on Page Boulevard, where they believed Weldon lived.

There, they found two bodies “in and around” the residence, Gulluni announced Thursday. A third was discovered later, he said.

The bodies have not yet been identified, Gulluni said Friday. The authorities have not announced any further charges against Weldon.

The woman found in the vehicle was being treated in the hospital Friday, he said.

The same day, investigators continued to comb the residence and its grounds with ground-penetrating imaging that can detect where dirt has been disturbed, Gulluni said. That has given authorities some “preliminary results” in “areas of interest,” he added.

“Some of our search involves some hand digging,” he said. “We are looking for objects underneath the surface.”

Gulluni has said this week that there was no reason for the public to be alarmed. “It is otherwise a fairly quiet neighborhood,” he said. “Sometimes these aberrations occur.”