Detective Follows Lead in 6-Year-Old McClain County Murder Case

A McClain County detective is following up two leads in the 6-year-old strangulation murder of Burney Ray Bounds. 

Friday, May 20th 2011, 7:06 pm

By: News 9


Gan Matthews, News 9

MCCLAIN COUNTY, Oklahoma -- It has been almost five years since a 68-year-old man was found dead--murdered, authorities say--inside his rural home in McClain County.

All this time investigators have been hoping for a break in the case.

Investigators determined that Burney Ray Bounds had died from strangulation.

The investigation produced a drawing of a suspect but little else except frustration among neighbors.

"People have been very confused, very worried that nobody would ever find out who killed him and this is the last place anybody saw him alive," Dibble resident Betty Guiddy said.  "He was getting fuel at our gas station."

This week McClain County detective Dana Guthrie interviewed a man in jail in Champaign County, Illinois about the murder.

"At the time this occurred, the homicide occurred in '06, he could have possibly been back in this area.  We're trying to confirm that at this time," Guthrie said.  "The information I obtained from the person of interest is he was an acquaintance of Mr. Bounds."

Guthrie will not confirm the man he interviewed was James R. Armstrong.

Armstrong, who's in the same Illinois jail, recently confessed to murdering an Oklahoma man in 1986.

Guthrie didn't get a confession in the Bounds' murder, but he may have gotten something just as important.

"We collected samples of his DNA.  We will submit those to the OSBI lab for comparison," he said.

Guthrie said he isn't pinning all his hopes on the man he interviewed in Illinois, whoever he was. He has another person of interest in Pennsylvania he plans to interview about the Bounds murder as soon as he can figure out where he lives.

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