An Enochville man is suspected of brutally murdering two elderly women Monday in Greenville, S.C., and is being held in the Rowan County Detention Center.

Greenville police provided a description of one of the murder victims’ cars, and Rowan County Sheriff’s deputies spotted the car Tuesday night when they went to the home of Michael James Laney’s mother on Tanglewood Drive off Enochville Avenue.

As Rowan investigators watched around 7:30 Tuesday, Michael James Laney, 33, left the residence in the 1987 gold Buick Regal. Deputies stopped Laney at the intersection of West C Street and Timway Drive to arrest him on fugitive from justice charges, Lt.John Sifford said this morning.

Sifford said, “Apparently, there is blood spatter in the car. Evidence is being collected from it now.”

According to the Greenville News, investigators suspect Laney beat 86-year-old Dorothy “Dot” Hancock to death in her garage, where police found her body.

In an upstairs bedroom of Hancock’s house, investigators found the body of 82-year-old Thelma “Janet” Godfrey. Someone had strapped the elderly woman to a chair, slit her throat and set a fire around the chair.

The friends had spent nearly half their lives working and volunteering in local hospitals, the News reported.

Laney had done yard work for Hancock and other people in the neighborhood, and he already is charged with stealing from some of them.

When Rowan deputies stopped Laney on Tuesday night, they discovered what appeared to be other stolen goods in the car. Since then, they have charged him with throwing a rock through the glass doors early Tuesday at Ron’s Quick Grocery, 418 S. Enochville Ave., near his mother’s home.

The store is within a couple of blocks of an entrance to Tanglewood, the development where Laney’s family lives.

Kelly Milam, manager of the convenience store, said they found the front doors and other doors smashed around 5 a.m. Monday. More than $1,000 in beer, cigarettes and other merchandise was taken. Damage to several doors was extensive.

Milam said she knows Laney and most of his family, who have been customers at the store for years.

Rowan County court records show Laney has been convicted here of felony breaking and entering, felony larceny, probation violation and drug charges, all from 1986. Details about those cases were not immediately available this morning.

Greenville police found the bodies Monday after a neighbor heard a car crash through Hancock’s garage door and saw smoke billowing out of the upstairs window.

Firefighters put out the upstairs fire and then discovered the women’s bodies, the News reported. Neither body had been burned, and a television and jewelry were missing.

One of the women is the mother of Greenville City Fire Marshall Larry Godfrey, who was called to scene of the fire.

Staff writers Jessie Burchette and Sara Pitzer contributed to this article.