Authorities say license plate alerts helped track a Rusk County suspect north after his wife was found dead.
DOVER, Ark. — Arkansas troopers stopped a black Acura on Highway 7 near Moccasin Gap on the night of March 18 and arrested Scott Raymond Thompson, a Texas man wanted after authorities found his wife dead earlier that day in rural Rusk County.
What turned the roadside stop into a homicide case spanning two states was the pace of the investigation behind it. Texas authorities say Amanda Thompson was found dead during a welfare check near Mount Enterprise, while Arkansas officers say they were alerted that a murder suspect might have crossed into the state. By the time of the stop, local deputies, state troopers and the U.S. Marshals Service were all involved.
Arkansas officials said the stop came at about 8 p.m. after law enforcement received information that Scott Thompson, 47, might have entered the state from Texas. Troopers located the vehicle in Pope County and detained him without incident. In the Arkansas version of events, the case arrived first as a vehicle alert and a wanted-person search, not yet as a detailed public narrative about what had happened inside the family home. That public detail came later from court records and Texas reporting, which tied the arrest to a woman found dead earlier on March 18 in the Brachfield area of Rusk County.
Back in Texas, deputies had gone to the house on County Road 3122 after a relative asked for a welfare check. According to an affidavit cited in later reporting, the relative was Thompson’s uncle, who said Scott Thompson had called him and said he killed his wife with an axe, left her in the hall and wanted the children picked up from school before they returned to the house. Deputies said they could see blood through the back-door window, entered the home and found Amanda Thompson dead near the back door. Sheriff John Wayne Valdez later identified the victim publicly as Amanda Lynn Thompson.
The sequence gives the case two centers of gravity. One is the crime scene in East Texas, where deputies were making forced entry and beginning a death investigation. The other is the moving search outside Texas, where alerts on the suspect’s vehicle and license plate reader hits gave officers a path north. Local reporting said those reader alerts tracked the Acura as it traveled across Texas and into Arkansas. That interstate movement mattered because it changed the response from a county investigation into a wider law enforcement effort involving Arkansas State Police and the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force.
After the arrest, the case moved back to Texas. Thompson was held in Arkansas pending extradition, then returned to Rusk County on April 1. Local reports said he arrived at about 6:30 p.m. and was expected to face arraignment the next day. He was later held in the Rusk County jail, and Justice of the Peace Jana Enloe set bond at $1.5 million. Public records available through news reports identify the charge as murder. Officials have not publicly laid out a detailed account of Thompson’s statements after arrest, whether any weapon was recovered with him in Arkansas or how prosecutors plan to present the interstate flight as part of the case.
The known facts still leave open several unanswered questions. Authorities have not publicly described a motive, the exact time of Amanda Thompson’s death or a fuller account of events inside the home before deputies arrived. They have also not publicly described what the children knew before they were picked up from school. What has been documented instead is the narrow spine of the case: a relative’s call, a woman found dead in a home, a BOLO for a black Acura, reader alerts that followed the car north and a traffic stop that ended the search before midnight.
The case now turns on court proceedings in Texas, where the arrest on Highway 7 has given way to the slower work of prosecution, bond conditions and the release of additional records.
Author note: Last updated April 23, 2026.