Gun tests may solve girls' case
Crime: Weapons fired in slayings investigation
Gun tests may solve Weleetka girls' case

By Matt Dinger

Published: August 19, 2008

OKEMAH — The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation test fired .40-caliber handguns voluntarily submitted by their owners last weekend in an attempt to narrow the search for one of the weapons used in the June slayings of two girls in a rural area near Weleetka.

The agency sent out letters to about 60 registered owners of the handguns, asking them to bring the weapons to the Okfuskee County Courthouse.

More than 40 people complied, and another four or five said they no longer owned the guns but provided identifiers for those who bought the weapons, OSBI spokeswoman Jessica Brown said.

Investigators test-fired the weapons once or twice and returned them to their owners, Brown said. The results were to be taken to the OSBI lab in Edmond and analyzed.

Investigators are looking for one of the guns used to shoot and kill Taylor Paschal-Placker, 13, and Skyla Whitaker, 11, along a gravel road near Weleetka on June 8.

"It's a process of elimination,” Brown said.

The process is strictly voluntary and arrangements will be made for gun owners who can't make the trip to Okfuskee County, Brown said.