A 31-year-old Arizona man was arrested in connection with the murders of two teenagers who had been camping in Tonto National Forest in Arizona in May, the authorities said on Friday.
The man, Thomas Brown, was taken into custody on Thursday, said the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which released a video of Mr. Brown being escorted into jail and booked.
He faces first-degree charges of murder in the killings of the two high school students, Pandora Kjolsrud, 18, and Evan Clark, 17.
“They were, as far as we know, complete strangers” to the man, Capt. David Lee, who led the investigation, said at a news conference on Friday.
The arrest came after an investigation of more than four months that involved examining evidence from the site, following leads from witness interviews, and collecting swabs for DNA for analysis from the outdoor crime scene, which Captain Lee described as “challenging.”
He said that detectives were able to piece together enough information for an arrest, but he declined to provide details ahead of the indictment.
Mr. Brown had an initial appearance in Maricopa County Superior Court on Thursday night. It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.
The killings have been shrouded in mystery since May 27 when sheriff’s deputies discovered the teenagers’ bodies off State Route 87 between Mesa and Payson, Ariz., near Mount Ord in Tonto National Forest.
Ms. Kjolsrud and Mr. Clark, who were friends, had just completed 11th grade at Arcadia High School in Phoenix when they went camping on May 25.
Relatives said that they began to worry after they had not heard from the teenagers, and contacted the authorities. Captain Lee said deputies were dispatched to the area.
One deputy located Mr. Clark’s vehicle and saw what looked like something had been dragged from it. The investigators spoke to other campers who said they had been in the area overnight on May 25 and encountered a person they described as acting “strangely.”
Some of the information collected and evidence from the scene led detectives to Mr. Brown, Captain Lee said.
Mr. Brown told investigators that he had been camping with his wife, starting on May 23. They said he also told them that she had left the area on May 25 while he stayed another day.
He also told investigators that he had flown a drone around the mountain, they said.
Investigators concluded that Mr. Brown provided “false and misleading information,” about the evidence that they had collected, which was grounds for his arrest, Captain Lee said.
The authorities later determined that the teenagers had been fatally shot multiple times on May 26.
Ms. Kjolsrud’s mother, Simone Kjolsrud, said at the news conference that her daughter was a “beautiful, brilliant light in this world.”
“Over the past four months I have prayed every day that her killer would eventually be brought to justice,” she said. “We are all devastated and we miss her every day.”
Mr. Clark’s family could not immediately be reached.
Christine Hauser is a Times reporter who writes breaking news stories, features and explainers.
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