HOT SPRINGS, S.D. – A man suspected of killing his father in a five-year-old Montana cold case has been arrested in the southwestern South Dakota city of Hot Springs where he worked at a convenience store.
Officers with the Fall River County Sheriff’s Office and Hot Springs Police Department took Adam Hatfield, 23, into custody on Wednesday, Sheriff Rich Mraz told the Rapid City Journal. An extradition hearing was scheduled Friday morning in Hot Springs. It was not immediately clear if Hatfield has an attorney.
The complaint accusing Hatfield of deliberate homicide in the 2008 death of his 49-year-old father, Matt Hatfield, was filed Monday in Montana’s Butte-Silver Bow County. Authorities said Adam Hatfield has been living in the Smithwick area southeast of Hot Springs for the past two months.
Matt Hatfield was reported missing in December 2008. Officials have not said how he died, if his body was found, or what led to Adam Hatfield’s arrest. Butte-Silver Bow Sheriff Ed Lester issued a statement saying only that “Adam Hatfield is charged with purposely causing the death of his father, Matt Hatfield,” according to The Montana Standard.
Mraz said the arrest was the result of a joint investigation between the South Dakota agencies and Montana authorities who alerted his office to Hatfield’s location.
Shortly after Matt Hatfield’s disappearance, police twice searched the area around his mother’s home south of Butte, as well as Forest Service land surrounding the property where Hatfield liked to hunt. At the time, police said Hatfield had been living in a cabin on the property for several months while he cared for his mother.
A court complaint filed in Butte on Tuesday accuses Adam Hatfield of killing his father and that he “knowingly displayed, brandished, or otherwise used a firearm, destructive device, or other dangerous weapon.”
Adam Hatfield faces punishment of 10 to 100 years in state prison if convicted of deliberate homicide. Silver Bow County Attorney Eileen Joyce asked in the court filing to potentially add another two to 10 years for the use of a weapon.