Suspects in bizarre kidnap scheme had long records

The two men suspected of kidnapping a Lafayette woman — two men who drowned while fleeing police — had extensive criminal records in Mississippi, including arrests in a kidnapping case a decade ago, records show.

Authorities identified the pair on Wednesday even as they continued to seek a Lafayette businessman wanted in the Louisiana case – a task investigators say is proving difficult because of the financial resources he has to elude them.

The manhunt for the businessman, Lawrence Michael Handley, stretched into its third day. The identities of two men suspected of barging into the victim’s home and tossing her into a van earlier this week were finally revealed Wednesday. But exactly how Sylvester Bracey and Arsenio
Montreal Haynes, two 27-year-old men from Jackson, Mississippi, are connected to Handley remains a mystery.

Handley is the 49-year-old co-founder and former CEO of the Townsend, a chain of addiction treatment centers. The Lafayette Police Department has been seeking him since Monday on conspiracy to commit second-degree kidnapping, conspiracy to attempted second-degree kidnapping and violation of a protective order.

Lafayette police issued an arrest warrant for Handley a day after a kidnapping was reported at the home Handley once shared with his estranged wife on Founders Street in Lafayette.

Police have said a pair of armed men barged into the home, handcuffed an adult and a juvenile and placed a black bag over the head of a female victim who was forced inside a white van.

The West Baton Rouge coroner on Wednesday identified those two men as Bracey and Haynes. The pair drowned in the Intracoastal Waterway in Port Allen Sunday night while trying to flee from police who stumbled upon the female victim alive and handcuffed in the back of the van they abandoned during the chase.

The pair drew the attention of police as they sped along the shoulder of the east bound lanes of Interstate 10 Sunday afternoon.
as they tried to avoid a traffic snarl. They wound up stuck in the mud behind a business on La. 415, jumped out and ran off into the woods.

West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Mike Cazes said they drowned after jumping into the Instracoastal Waterway as they fled police.