Cowpens, SC: Homicide Victim's Ex: They Drilled Me Hard

Man Says He's 'Person Of Interest' In Triple Slayings

POSTED: 11:15 pm EDT April 18, 2010
UPDATED: 7:37 am EDT April 19, 2010
COWPENS, S.C. -- The ex-boyfriend of one of three homicide victims in Cherokee County said he is the "person of interest" who deputies mentioned on Saturday.
Cass Smith said his six-year relationship with Suzanne Elizabeth Bridges, 41, ended last month.
Bridges, along with her daughter, Margaret Matilda Wenner, 15, and Harold Benjamin Lick, 45, were found dead in a home on Emily Lane near Cowpens on Saturday morning.
The coroner said all three died of gunshot wounds Friday night.
Smith said the sheriff's office questioned him for several hours on Saturday before releasing him. "I mean, they drilled me hard," he said. He told News 4 that he believes they will arrest him soon.
The sheriff's office would not comment on whether or not Smith was their person of interest.
Smith said Bridges broke up with him on March 18, and that he saw Lick move in with her two days later.
"You know it just tore out my heart you know that I saw that, you know," he said. "So I grieved a lot. So I was upset."
He said he helped her raise several of her children for six years, and that he did not kill her.
"She was wonderful," he said. "I mean, she showed me respect. I showed her respect. Out of the six years, she never did cuss me, and I never did cuss her."
Smith lived with Bridges at the house where the killings happened until the breakup. Afterward, he said he moved into his mother's house across the street.
He said that on the night of the shootings, he went to his new girlfriend's house in Shelby, N.C., at about 7:30 p.m. He said he came home between 10:30 and 11 p.m. to check on his mother, who has several medical problems.
"I never stay over there the whole night because of my mom," he said.
He said he refilled his car with anti-freeze and filled up at a nearby gas station before returning to his girlfriend's house a second time.
He said that at about 2:30 a.m. he returned home to check on his mother again, and get some sleep. He said he noticed then that the lights were all on in the victims' house.
Smith said he woke up at about 7:30 a.m. and went back to his girlfriend's house a third time. He was at her house when he said he got the call from his mother about the shooting.
"I was just devastated," he said.
He said deputies contacted him and asked him to come in for questioning, which he said lasted for about seven hours. Deputies confiscated several guns from his girlfriend's house, he said.
As of Sunday night, deputies had not made an arrest in the case.