Navy veteran and his wife find body of Kentucky shooting suspect

A Navy veteran and his wife found the body of a man accused of shooting five people along Interstate 75 in southern Kentucky earlier this month.

On Wednesday, Fred McCoy and his wife Shelia found the remains of Joseph Couch, who was wanted by police in connection with the September 7 shooting.

Couch served six years in the Army Reserve as a combat engineer, did not deploy, and left the service as a private. After the shooting, authorities offered a reward for information leading to Couch’s arrest. Police found his truck and a gun they believe he used.

McCoy and his wife have their own YouTube channel, and they livestreamed their six-day search for Couch. The two previously ran a museum in Kentucky dedicated to the feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families.

McCoy and his wife posted a video Wednesday about their discovery of Couch’s body. In the video, McCoy, a former corporal, says Couch’s remains were badly decomposed.

He also says he saw buzzards near where the body was and that his wife was the first to smell the decomposing remains, which led the two to find Couch. He adds, “My wife, her nose found him.”

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There is some disagreement, however, over who found Couch’s remains first. Kentucky State Police issued a press release Wednesday saying that state troopers and the McCoys “discovered the unidentified body.”

McCoy insisted to Task & Purpose that he and his wife should be the first on the scene and then he should alert nearby state police.

He also said they hoped to find Couch alive.

“We actually thought he would find us,” McCoy said. “We were going to go through the woods and call for him. I wanted him to come out and talk. I thought I could talk to him and get him to turn himself in. I thought after being in the woods for so long, he would have calmed down, gotten over his anger phase, that someone would have been able to help him.”

McCoy can be seen in Wednesday’s YouTube video and in subsequent media interviews wearing an eight-point cap, a reference to his time in the Marine Corps.

“The Marine Corps raised me,” McCoy told Task & Purpose on Thursday. “I joined the Marines when I was 17. Some people say I have a bad attitude —– it’s just Marine.”

McCoy gave Task & Purpose his DD-214 form, which shows that he served as an infantry rifleman in the Marines from 1975 to 1978. He said he graduated from recruit school at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, completed infantry training at Camp Pendleton, California, and was stationed at Marine Barracks Cecil Field in Florida.

“Everything the Marine Corps taught me helped me my whole life,” McCoy said. “I was only there for three years, but the Marine Corps shaped me.”

McCoy said he was “treated like a dog” at Parris Island and “loved it” and went to Puerto Rico three more times for temporary stays.

He said he didn’t know much about life when he enlisted in the Marines, but that he learned quickly once he was in the Corps.

“I’ve been a police officer for 40 years,” McCoy said. “Other than being a born-again Christian, the Marine Corps is the best thing that ever happened to me.”