Drug run to Detroit turns deadly for 2 missing teens

By ED WHITE
Associated Press

DETROIT - The two bodies found in a trash-strewn Detroit field were identified as missing suburban teenagers Saturday, just a few hours after two men were charged with crimes involving the pair's car.

Dental records helped the Wayne County medical examiner's office identify the badly decomposed bodies as Jacob Kudla, 18, and Jourdan Bobbish, 17, both of Westland, said Reba Jacobs, Kudla's cousin.

"We're OK, saddened," Jacobs said. "Kind of ready for it, expected it, but didn't want it to be true."

Dressed only in undergarments and bearing gunshot wounds, the bodies were found Friday in a neglected field of high grass and garbage on Detroit's east side.

Kudla and Bobbish had been missing since last Sunday, and the 2001 Chevy Cavalier they were using was found Monday with the sound system missing.

Casey Green, 39, and Larry Anderson, 40, were charged with larceny, obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence in the car. A judge set bond at $250,000 during a brief arraignment Saturday.

"They were spraying the exterior and interior of the car down with a bleach solution. That's highly unusual behavior," assistant prosecutor Michael Harrison told the magistrate.

Marvin Barnett, an attorney for Anderson, objected to the high bond, saying his client and Green are not charged with killing the teens. The name of Green's attorney wasn't immediately known.

Sgt. Alan Quinn, a Detroit police spokesman, said he didn't know if Green and Anderson were suspected of involvement in the teens' deaths.

"It's an open investigation," he said.

Jacobs hopes the men know something about the killings. Bobbish's father, Mike Bobbish, said his family is holding up, despite "a lot of crying." He said the teens probably were easy targets, young men with new sneakers riding in a car with a souped-up sound system.

"They're in a bad area, naive, tougher than they really are. Something happened," Bobbish said hours after authorities confirmed the identities of the bodies.

Kudla, a Schoolcraft College student known as Jake, and Bobbish, a high school senior, were like brothers and often went to Detroit to visit family members, Jacobs said Friday.