3 bodies found at Massachusetts’ home of ‘ladies man’ and former NJ resident

Three bodies have been found at a home in Massachusetts where a former New Jersey man lives.

Police in Springfield, Massachusetts, arrested Stewart Weldon, 40, Sunday when they found a woman brutally beaten in his car after a police chase that started as a traffic stop for a broken taillight.

A search of Weldon’s home that began Wednesday has so far turned up three bodies. Investigators continue to scour his property on Friday.

Weldon previously lived in Montclair, and was arrested by Montclair police in 1997 after he allegedly refused to let an 18-year-old woman leave his car. He was charged with sexual assault, according to court records. 

Weldon, who was 19 at the time, was with another man when they picked up the Bloomfield woman after a party and allegedly blocked her from leaving their car, according to reports in The Star-Ledger at the time.

Weldon and Dwight Pottinger met the woman and her friends at the Lackawanna Plaza shopping center in Montclair. The two men drove the other teens to their homes before locking the car doors and refusing to let the Bloomfield woman leave, police said.

Pottinger and Weldon drove the woman back to Montclair, police said. Pottinger threatened her with a gun and sexually assaulted her in the car before Weldon drove her to her parents’ house in Bloomfield, the newspaper reported at the time. Pottinger was charged with making terroristic threats, aggravated criminal sexual assault and kidnapping. Weldon was charged with sexual assault. The outcome of the case is unclear.

NJ Advance Media reached Pottinger, who now lives in Jamaica, on Facebook. When asked if he was surprised that three bodies were discovered at Weldon’s Massachusetts’ home, he responded: “Not really.”

Pottinger said the two were good friends when they lived in Montclair, and they used to go out together, and that Weldon’s mother used “to take care of me.” 

“We were young, drinking, smoking,” Pottinger said. “He was a ladies man.”

Weldon, he said, was spoiled by his mother after his father died in 1996.

Weldon again got into trouble in 1997, in East Orange. He pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a weapon and was sentenced to three years of probation. He was also charged with kidnapping in East Orange but the result of the charge is unclear.

Weldon also got into legal trouble in Bergen County. He pleaded guilty to a burglary charge in Maywood Borough and was sentenced in 2006 to 367 days in jail, court records show. 

Masslive.com reported that Weldon was arrested by Springfield police three times in 2017. The most recent offense was for assaulting a woman on a street on Oct. 14 just before 10 p.m., the newspaper said. He also had several charges in Westfield, Massachussetts, Masslive.com reports.

Now, Weldon is accused of kidnapping the Massachussetts woman and then raping, stabbing and beating her with a hammer and other weapons. The arrest report from authorities in Springfield says the woman found in Weldon’s car was “extremely distraught … and crying uncontrollably” and had bruises, scabs and other signs of prolonged physical abuse.

Weldon, who is being held on $1 million bail, has been charged with kidnapping with serious bodily injury, threat to commit a crime (murder), resisting arrest and five related charges.

He has not been charged as of Friday afternoon with the bodies discovered at his home. 

Investigators continued to search the residence on Friday, using ground-penetrating radar to gather evidence. State authorities also took a child found at the home into custody. 

Staff writers Taylor Harris and Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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