Woman arrested in slayings of 4 people in central Michigan

Authorities on Thursday arrested a woman whom they had been seeking in the deaths of four people in central Michigan.Clare County Sheriff John Wilson said Judy Boyer was taken into custody about 1040 a.m. Thursday, the Mount Pleasant Morning Sun reported.Authorities had been looking for Boyer, 54, since Wednesday night.

Authorities on Thursday arrested a woman whom they had been seeking in the deaths of four people in central Michigan.

Clare County Sheriff John Wilson said Judy Boyer was taken into custody about 10:40 a.m. Thursday, the Mount Pleasant Morning Sun reported.

Authorities had been looking for Boyer, 54, since Wednesday night. She had not been charged in the deaths as of Thursday afternoon.

Two men, ages 39 and 36, were found wounded about 4 p.m. Wednesday in Clare after police responded to reports of a shooting. Those men later died, police said.

The bodies of an 85-year-old man and 61-year-old woman were found elsewhere on the same property, Wilson said Thursday. Authorities did not say how they died and did not disclose a possible motive for the killings.

Wilson said police were searching a house in nearby Wexford County when they found Boyer, WNEM-TV reported.

"And they checked it and she was there this morning," Wilson said. "It's a big weight off your shoulders when you get somebody that you believe is involved in something like this." Criminal charges many not be filed until Monday, he added.

Clare is about 160 miles (257 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.

According to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University, only three mass shootings occurred at public places in 2020— the lowest total for that category in a decade — out of 19 total mass shootings.

The database tracks all mass killings including shootings, defined as four or more people dead not including the perpetrator.

According to that definition and assuming the victims in Clare were slain within 24 hours, there have been 27 mass killings, 25 of those shootings, already this year, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University.

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