PORT ANGELES — Clallam County sheriff’s investigators are “chasing down a lot of leads” in the beating death of Diane Cunningham, according to Chief Criminal Deputy Ron Cameron.
The body of the 65-year-old woman was found Monday in her small mobile home in Salt Creek RV Park, about 13 miles west of Port Angeles, by her daughter and son-in-law after the King County couple had not heard from her for more than a week.
Cunningham’s missing car was found abandoned Tuesday in a rural area of Malheur County, Ore., near the Oregon-Idaho border.
“How it got there, we don’t know,” Cameron said.
A hunter spotted the car and reported it as suspicious.
An autopsy showed that Cunningham died of blunt force trauma to the head.
Anyone with information about the Cunningham case is asked to phone the Sheriff’s Office tip line at 360-417-230
A man sought only as a “person of interest” in the beating death turned himself in Thursday.
Joel Kevin Brown, 52, — who reported to the Port Angeles office of the state Department of Corrections — is not a suspect, Cameron said.
He was being sought because he had reportedly stayed with Cunningham from time to time.
“He knew her, and we didn’t know where he was, so we needed to find him,” Cameron said.
Cameron said Brown was cooperative in a series of interviews with detectives.
Brown was booked into the Clallam County jail Thursday for a state Department of Corrections warrant related to a 2013 third-degree assault charge in which he pleaded guilty to assaulting a Clallam Transit bus driver.
He is being held without bond and was in the Clallam jail Saturday night.
