DNA Links North Carolina Suspects to Tueplo Heist

Wilkerson

Marcellus

Thompson

TUEPLO, Miss. (WCBI) — DNA links men arrested in connection with a North Carolina jewelry heist to a similar theft in June in Tupelo.

On June 23, three men broke into Little’s Jewelers in the Mall at Barnes Cross and used hammers to smash cases and steal more than $180,000 worth of Rolex watches. One of the thieves left behind a piece of skin.

The state Crime Lab ran that evidence through a national data base and it came back to 24-year-old Brandon Wilkerson. He’d been arrested in South Carolina in connection with an October theft of more than $360,000 of watches and jewelry from a jewelry store in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Wilkerson, 21-year-old Darien Thompson and 25-year-old Dajuan Marcellus remain in jail in North Carolina and have not yet been charged in the Tupelo case.