Bradenton murders being investigated for potential connections

BRADENTON (FOX 13) - Two killings in Manatee County, 40 minutes and 10 miles apart, have deputies looking to see if they're connected.

At 12:50 Tuesday afternoon, a man was found dead, hanging out of a car in a residential neighborhood in Bradenton.

Just under an hour later, a woman's body was found on the side of a country road in Palmetto.

"It is hard for me to accept to see that this took place," said Bishop Tyrone Hatcher, whose family lives on 8th St. East, near where the body of Carl Tuxford was found.

Tuxford was found in an SUV, after witnesses saw it out of control, dovetailing through a front yard, smashing a fire hydrant and off of a tree.

Witnesses saw a dark SUV driving away.

At 1:30 p.m., about nine miles up 301 in Palmetto, a driver on Bishop Harbor Road gave detectives a second phone call.

"This is really a pretty stretch of road here, and they were just out for a leisurely drive and they happened to look out and see the body," said Manatee County spokesman David Bristow.

A countywide homicide unit will investigate whether the two are connected, Bristow said.

The victim in Palmetto is 23-year-old Jordan Finlon.

But no one saw anything before or after.

"We have gone door to door," said Bristow. "We have talked to neighbors and we have asked people if they have surveillance video, this that and the other, so far, not getting a whole lot there."

Right now, no connection has been established, but to neighbors, even if they're not eventually matched forensically, this is all too much.

"We just have to come together," said Hatcher, "And pray and ask God to have mercy on them."