N.C. murder suspect dies in Bensalem standoff
Lloyd Wayne Franklin, wanted in a killing and robbing rampage, took his own life Saturday after police found him holed up in a Bensalem motel room, according to law enforcement authorities.
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Lloyd Wayne Franklin, wanted in a killing and robbing rampage, took his own life Saturday after police found him holed up in a Bensalem motel room, according to law enforcement authorities.
Franklin, 34, was wanted in connection with the slaying of an elderly Davidson County, N.C., couple, who police say were fatally shot during a home-invasion robbery.
Franklin barricaded himself inside Room 142 at the Knights Inn Motel in Bensalem after police went there around 2:30 p.m. looking for another man, James Miller, 53.
Bensalem police said they had a state arrest warrant for Miller. Franklin and his girlfriend, Jennifer Lanning, 38, had picked up Miller, who was hitchhiking. Miller had previously been arrested for auto theft and a parole violation, police say.
On Saturday afternoon, after officers knocked on the motel door, Franklin thought they had come for him and opened fire, authorities said.
The Bucks County South SWAT unit was then called to the scene.
Police say Lanning surrendered and told police there were two men in the room. Miller held police at bay for about 2½ hours but also surrendered. Bensalem police and the SWAT officers were not harmed during the standoff.
Franklin was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Investigators subsequently discovered that Franklin and Lanning both had active arrest warrants out of Davidson County for homicide.
The duo had been on the lam since Oct. 29, when North Carolina police found the bodies of Davie Lee McSwain, 82, and his wife, Joan McSwain, 78, in their Thomasville home and their 2006 minivan missing. Police say Franklin also took a .38-caliber revolver from the home.
Investigators said the McSwains' son found the bodies of his parents. The home had been ransacked in what appeared to be a home-invasion robbery.
Authorities believe Davie McSwain shot Franklin before he died. After Franklin fled with the gun stolen from the home, police say, he picked up Lanning and the two stole prescription painkillers during pharmacy robberies in Aberdeen and Roanoke Rapids, N.C., and in Georgetown, S.C., before apparently heading north to the Philadelphia suburb.
The pharmacy robberies netted Franklin 1,800 tablets of the painkiller Opana and patches of fentanyl, Davidson County Sheriff David Grice said.
Bensalem and Bucks County detectives are working with North Carolina authorities on the case.
Lanning was arraigned Saturday evening and sent to the Bucks County Correctional Facility. Miller was also being sent there.
"This is an active investigation and no more information is being released at this time," said Fred Harran, director of public safety for the Bensalem Township Police Department, in a statement.
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