A Marine veteran and his wife located the body of a man who is accused of shooting five people earlier this month along Interstate 75 in Southern Kentucky.
On Wednesday, Fred McCoy and his wife Shelia located the remains of Joseph Couch, who was wanted by police in connection with the Sept. 7 shootings.
Couch served in the Army Reserve for six years as a combat engineer, did not deploy, and left the service as a private. After the shootings, authorities had offered a reward for information leading to Couch’s arrest. Police found his truck and a weapon they believe he used.
McCoy and his wife have their own YouTube channel, and they live-streamed their six-day search for Couch. The two previously operated a museum in Kentucky dedicated to the feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families.
McCoy and his wife posted a video on Wednesday about their discovery of Couch’s body. In the video, McCoy, a former lance corporal, says that Couch’s remains were badly decayed.
He also says that he saw buzzards near the site of the body and his wife first smelled the decomposing remains, allowing the two to locate Couch, adding, “My wife, her nose found him.”
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However, there is some dispute about who found Couch’s remains first. The Kentucky State Police issued a news release on Wednesday that said state troopers and the McCoys had “stumbled upon the unidentified body.”
But McCoy insisted to Task & Purpose that he and his wife were first to reach the scene, and then he alerted nearby state troopers.
He also said that they had hoped to find Couch alive.
“We were actually thinking that he was going to find us,” McCoy said. “We’d go through the woods and holler 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 this long he’d be out in the woods, be calmed down, over his anger stage a person could have helped him.”
McCoy can be seen in Wednesday’s YouTube video and subsequent media interviews wearing an eight-point utility cap that evokes his Marine Corps service.
“The Marine Corps raised me,” McCoy told Task & Purpose on Thursday. “I went into the Marines at 17 years old. Some people say I’ve got a crappy attitude —– it’s pure Marine.”
McCoy provided Task & Purpose his DD-214 form, which shows he served as a Marine infantry rifleman from 1975 to 1978. He said he graduated from recruit training 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.
“Anything the Marine Corps taught me helped me all through my life,” McCoy said. “I was only in for three years, but the Marine Corps molded me.”
At Parris Island, McCoy said he was “treated like a dog and loved it” and went on to go to Puerto Rico three times on temporary duty.
He said that he didn’t know much about life when he enlisted in the Marines, but he learned quickly once he was in the Corps.
“I’ve spent 40 years as a police officer,” McCoy said, “Other than being a born-again Christian, the Marine Corps is the best thing to ever happen to me.”
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