Husband faces charge after body of missing Connecticut woman found
SOUTH WINDSOR (AP) — The husband of a missing Connecticut woman whose body was found in a heavily wooded area had cooperated with investigators looking into her disappearance — and that helped them build a case against him, police said Saturday.
Tahj Hutchinson, 22, was taken into police custody Friday evening and charged with first-degree manslaughter in connection with the death of Jessica Edwards, 30, whose body was found hours earlier. He was being held on $1 million bond and was expected to be arraigned Monday morning.
It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.
Edwards, the mother of a 7-month-old boy, had been missing since earlier this month in a case that attracted statewide interest.
Hutchison had consistently made himself available to police when they asked, said South Windsor Police Sgt. Mark Cleverdon.
“He essentially provided us with his account of the events that ultimately we were able to kind of break apart," Cleverdon said in an interview Saturday. "As we continued to progress through the investigation, as we obtained more digital evidence, as we obtained more physical evidence, we were able to kind of say, ‘OK, well, you know this isn’t adding up from what he’s telling us.’”
For instance, he told police that Edwards left their home in South Windsor on the morning of May 10. But police were able to establish through other interviews and surveillance video that no one arrived to pick her up in that timeframe, Cleverdon said.
“If he kind of turned a cold shoulder, we might not have been able to open it up as quickly,” Cleverdon said.
Searchers found Edwards' decomposed body Friday morning near a trail in the Hockanum River Linear Park in East Hartford, one town over from South Windsor. Police have said they were able to use “location data” obtained through search warrants from another, unidentified source to narrow where to look for Edwards.
An autopsy was scheduled for Saturday, though Cleverdon said results might not be released for a week or more.
Edwards was a student at Manchester Community College.
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