FAIRMONT —
Eddie Jack Washington, the Tampa, Fla., resident arrested and charged with the triple Windmill Park homicides in 1974, will be returned to West Virginia to face those charges.
The 59-year-old Alabama native waived his right to extradition Friday in an initial appearance before a magistrate in Hillsborough County Circuit Court Friday morning, according to Fairmont Police Chief Kelley D. Moran. He will appear before a judge Tuesday in Tampa to set terms of extradition and will be returned to Fairmont within two weeks.
He was arrested without incident Thursday morning by U.S. Marshals while on his way to a local grocery.
“Additional charges may be filed,” said Marion County Prosecuting Attorney Patrick Wilson. “There is perhaps a second person. So there may very well be a second arrest.”
Because this is an ongoing investigation, he declined to comment further.
In the early morning hours of Aug. 2, 1974, groundskeepers at Windmill Park made a grisly discovery: Three individuals lay face up in the dewey grass, lifeless, each shot in the back of the head.
They were identified as Guy Lester Phillips, 20, and his wife, Wanda Jane Phillips, 19, and Billy Ray Cobb, 27, all of Fairmont’s Montgomery Avenue area.
Washington remains an inmate in the Hillsborough County Jail in Tampa.
Find the full story in Saturday’s Times West Virginian, available at newsstands or through home delivery by calling 304-367-2525 or 304-367-2527.
Email Debra Minor Wilson at dwilson@timeswv.com.
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