The ex-boyfriend of missing Florida mom Cassie Carli has been arrested in Tennessee on a warrant from Santa Rosa County, Florida.
Marcus Spanevelo has been charged with tampering with evidence, giving false information in a missing persons investigation, and destruction of evidence, the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office said Saturday afternoon.
The sheriff’s office said the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Tennessee Highway Patrol took him into custody Friday night in Lebanon, Tennessee, where he’s being held pending extradition.
Spanevelo has previously not been identified in the investigation as he had not been named a person of interest or charged with a crime. Santa Rosa deputies, however, had said they wanted to speak with him again as he was the last person known to see Carli.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Carli was last seen on Sunday evening in Navarre Beach. She was supposed to pick up her 4-year-old daughter from Spanevelo during a custody exchange at about 7 p.m.
Three hours later, Carli’s father received a text from her phone saying she was having car issues and running late. There’s been no communication since, and her vehicle was later found near the spot where the custody exchange was to take place with her purse still inside.
Both Carli and her daughter were reported missing at first. When police first questioned Spanevolo, he told them he had dropped the girl off with a friend of his ex-wife’s. The friend said that wasn’t true. On Wednesday, Santa Rosa County officials said they’d found the little girl — in Birmingham, Alabama, with her father.
On Saturday, the sheriff’s office said the little “is still safe,” that investigators are still looking for Carli, and that they would provide more information at a later time.
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[Featured image: Marcus Spanevelo/Maury County Sheriff’s Department and Cassie Carli/Facebook]