Troup deputies investigating murder mystery after men’s bodies found in popular lake

TROUP COUNTY, Ga. — Investigators are trying to find who killed two men in Troup County then dumped their bodies in a popular lake. They were each discovered over the last two days.

Channel 2′s Steve Gehlbach learned that the men were friends and roommates from Newnan. Both drove motorcycles down to West Point Lake over the weekend, likely Sunday afternoon.

But Monday evening, then again Tuesday morning, each of their bodies were pulled from the lake. Both had been shot and killed somewhere else.

At first, the sheriff’s office and the boater who found the body of Lee Caswell, 46, thought he might have drowned. But they discovered he was dead from a gunshot to the head.

The next day, his missing roommate Travis Lodato, 31, turned up in the same area of West Point Lake, killed the same way.

“Talking to people connected to them, they came down here to the Troup County area sometime Saturday or Sunday, for reasons (unknown), still trying to figure out at this point,” said Sgt. Stewart Smith with the Troup County Sheriff’s Office.

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Speaking over the phone to the father of Lee and mother of Travis on Wednesday, the family told Gehlbach they think the men may have been coming to meet up to buy or sell a motorcycle.

The Troup County Sheriff’s Office is asking anyone who saw either victim, or anything suspicious around the lake to come forward

Investigators told Gehlbach that no lead is too small, as they try to figure out where the murders happened and where they were then dumped into the water.

“We’re trying to figure out where that occurred ... Checking shorelines, checking lake accesses to see if we can find clues out that way,” Smith said.

Both families say they’ve been told the sheriff’s office is working leads but has no suspects.

“I just pray whoever it is, they’ll come forward and anyone with information to come forward so we can get some closure on this,” Smith said.

The sheriff’s office is also looking for the victims’ motorcycles that they rode to Troup County.

Personal items like wallets, cell phones and jewelry they were wearing are also missing.

Anyone with any information should call the sheriff’s office criminal investigations division or call Crime Stoppers at 404-577-8477.

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