The former executive director of Paducah-based Barbecue on the River, who allegedly stole nearly $25,000 from the nonprofit, was arrested in South Carolina after being missing for more than a year and a half.
Paducah Police Chief Brian Laird in a press conference Thursday afternoon said since David Boggs was reported missing in November of 2018, his department has searched the woods nearby the local Greenway Trail, searched the Ohio River riverfront and bank in collaboration with the U.S. Coast Guard, used drones to inspect the rooftops of buildings in downtown Paducah, and issued search warrants and subpoenas for information regarding Boggs’ disappearance.
Laird said detectives got a new lead in April, when a medical bill was sent to Boggs’ former Paducah address. The information from that bill, along with information received from search warrants and subpoenas, led detectives to eventually identify Boggs in a Facebook post. In the post, Boggs was seen receiving items from a homeless outreach organization in Finlay Park, located in Columbia, South Carolina. Paducah detectives then traveled to Columbia, Laird said, and with the help of county police in the state, detectives found Boggs in a trailer park outside Columbia.
“Basically, once we obtained the lead of the medical bill and we obtained several pieces of information that led us to look in a certain area and look at certain people who were posting on social media, and that led to a video that one of the detectives ultimately began watching. And Mr. Boggs was actually caught on that video standing with another group of people,” Laird said. “He appeared as healthy as he could be under the circumstances. He was able to move on his own. He was living in a trailer in a trailer park.”
Boggs in an interview after his arrest reportedly told detectives in 2018, he walked on the local Greenway Trail and slept in the woods the night he left his apartment, leaving a note that said he may commit suicide. He then went to interstate I-24 and began hitchhiking to try to make it to Florida, eventually ending up in South Carolina.
Laird said an investigation found in the summer of 2018, Boggs began sending money to scammers through prepaid cards and wire transfers. Boggs incorrectly thought he sent an inappropriate photo to an underage person through an app, and scammers were threatening the release of that photo to blackmail Boggs. Laird also said his department believes Boggs stole $24,955 from Barbecue on the River through writing checks to himself to pay the scammers, and that Boggs sent nearly twice that amount overall to the scammers.
“It’s never necessarily a good day when someone goes to jail, but I think for the community to have resolution to this, and to know that Mr. Boggs is alive and that he didn’t go off and harm himself, no one else harmed him. Basically he was on the run for what he had done,” Laird said.
Laird said there isn’t a timeline yet for when Boggs will be brought back to Paducah. Boggs was charged with theft by unlawful taking of $10,000 or more, a Class C felony.
