St. Maarten police arrest man in Mount Pleasant couple’s slayings

PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten — St. Maarten police on Sunday arrested a suspect in the slayings of a Mount Pleasant couple whose stabbed bodies were found in their beachfront condominium on the tiny Dutch Caribbean territory.

Police spokesman Ricardo Henson said the male suspect was arrested before dawn Sunday and has not been charged yet.

Citing the territory’s privacy rules, Henson declined to give further details about the suspect, saying police will issue a statement “as soon as more information can be divulged.”

The bodies of Michael and Thelma King were found Friday in their condominium at the Ocean Club Resort on St. Maarten, a 16-square-mile territory with about 50,000 inhabitants that shares a small island with the French dependency of St. Martin.

Chief Prosecutor Hans Mos said both Americans appeared to have suffered fatal stab wounds. Thelma King was found tied to a chair, and Michael King was lying on the floor, partially over an overturned chair. Both were in their 50s.

Autopsies were expected to be conducted today, according to Mos. Relatives of the slain couple have arrived in the territory.

The Kings were part-time residents of St. Maarten and owned a condominium in Toler’s Cove in Mount Pleasant. Their connections in South Carolina extended throughout East Cooper to Columbia, according to Terry Tamblyn, a business partner and longtime friend who lives on the Isle of Palms.

The Kings’ deaths have been a topic of conversation across the island, he said. Some are saying it’s possible they were killed by a robber who knew them enough for the Kings to open the door to him, Tamblyn said. In that case, their deaths were senseless.

“If anybody needed anything, Mike would have wrote him a check,” he said.

Most people Tamblyn has talked to are speculating the Kings were killed for more personal reasons. King was starting to distribute Puerto Rican rum, and it’s possible he was taken out by a competitor, Tamblyn said.

“Everybody I talk to thinks this was more than just a robbery,” Tamblyn said. “They might have stepped on somebody’s toes with this rum business.”

Local restaurant owner Topper Daboul told The Associated Press that he and Michael King were building a rum factory together on the territory.

Daboul said he last saw King on Wednesday afternoon and “some other friends had drinks with them that night.” He said he wasn’t able to reach the Kings on the phone Thursday, so he drove to their house the next day and banged on the door.

Daboul said he asked a person on the premises to climb over a fence to see if anyone was in the house.

Daboul said the person reported a lifeless man leaning over a chair inside the house.

Shortly after the slayings were announced, the St. Maarten government said “every government resource is being brought into play to investigate and solve this case.” Prime Minister Sarah Wescot-Williams said she was “shocked” by the killings.

Police said roughly 25 officers were part of the investigative team.

Dave Munday of The Post and Courier contributed to this story.