By ANN PIERCEALL
Herald-Whig Staff Writer

HANNIBAL, Mo. -- Hours after a chance encounter with a former high school classmate in a Hannibal tavern, Patrick Epley was dead.

His brother, Tyson Hubbard, says it simply was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The bodies of Epley and Amanda Thomas were found by Hannibal police Saturday morning in an apartment rented by Thomas on Starlight Ridge, near Huckleberry Park. Officers said both had been stabbed, probably with a regular kitchen knife.

Manuel Cazares, a 32-year-old Mexico native who has lived in Hannibal illegally for three years and is the father of a child with Thomas, turned himself in to police Saturday morning, prompting the apartment search.

Cazares has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder and armed criminal action. He is being held in the Marion County Jail on $1 million bond. He is scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday morning.

Autopsies on both Epley and Thomas were conducted Monday in Columbia, but the results have not been released. Authorities have not said when the attack probably occurred, nor have they offered a motive.

Hubbard said his 25-year-old brother knew Thomas growing up because both attended Monroe City schools, but they were not close friends.

"It's probably been a year since he talked to Amanda," Hubbard said Tuesday in an interview in his Hannibal home. "He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Epley apparently ran into the 27-year-old Thomas at a Hannibal tavern Friday night. Hubbard said Epley called and asked him to join him at the tavern, but he declined, something Hubbard now regrets.

"My brother needed help, and I wasn't there to help him," he said, wiping his eyes.

Hubbard and Epley were close and spent a lot of time together at Hubbard's house. The brothers regularly hunted together and fished on the Salt River. Hubbard said Epley had a deep love of family, and his friends meant the world to him.

"His main concern was his son," he said.

Epley fathered a son, Logan, now 3, with former girlfriend Nicole Bichsel. Bichsel and Epley were together for more than four years before splitting up, but she said they remained good friends.

"He was an awesome dad," Bichsel said. "He would do anything for us."

Epley, who lived in New London, was recently laid off from a job at a Bowling Green manufacturing plant. He also worked as a chef at the Rustic Oak restaurant near Perry.

Bichsel said Epley didn't spend a lot of time pondering his future. He tended to be a jokester and could be stubborn about some things, she said, but he wanted to travel and he wanted a family.

"He loved life. He just wanted to have his own family and be with his kid and be with the people he enjoyed being with. He was laid back, took one day at a time and just enjoyed life," Bichsel said.

Hubbard and Bichsel said it was late Saturday afternoon before Epley's family was notified he was dead. The stunning news that he had been murdered was delivered at about 4:15 p.m.

Hubbard wonders why Cazares, a waiter at the Gran Rio restaurant in the Steamboat Bend shopping center, was still on the streets despite several brushes with the law, including domestic disputes with Thomas.

"I hope he gets the death penalty," Hubbard said. "Anyone who can do something cold-blooded like that doesn't need to be on the streets, regardless of if it's in Mexico or the United States."

-- apierceall@whig.com/(573) 221-5879