Four people were charged in the strangulation death of a black man whose body was found burning in a ditch in Iowa, authorities said.
Steven Vogel, 31, of Grinnell, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of strangling to death 44-year-old Michael Williams on Sept. 12, the Iowa Department of Public Safety said.
Williams’ body was then wrapped, bound and dumped four days later in a ditch near Kellogg, where it was set ablaze, police said.
The three other people arrested in the killing were Vogel’s mother, Julia Cox, 55; Roy Garner, 57; and Cody Johnson, 29.
Vogel was charged with first-degree murder, while the others face charges for destruction of evidence and accessory after the fact, authorities said. They are all charged with abuse of a corpse.
No motive has been released in the slaying, though cops noted that Vogel and Williams were well acquainted.
The four charged in the case are all white, but police said there’s no evidence that the crime was racially motivated.
“The investigation has revealed no evidence to show the acts against Michael Williams were motivated by his race nor that his death was the result of a hate crime,” police said.
With Post wires