An Oklahoma sex offender vanished for 13 years after allegedly staging his own abduction. Here’s how officials found him

(CNN) — On a Monday in March 2012, detectives with the Moore, Oklahoma, police department were called to a bloody scene at a Super 8 Motel.

They arrived before dawn to find a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase and a path of bloody footprints heading toward an ice maker.

Lying face up underneath the bottom stair rail – almost as if it had skittered away during a struggle – was a Super 8 employee’s name badge.

Police said it belonged to a man named Anthony Lennon.

And that, officers would later tell CNN, made the entire crime scene feel suspicious.

Mere days before he disappeared, prosecutors had charged Lennon with eight counts of possession of child pornography.

But now, he was missing.

Had Lennon been attacked and abducted? Or, as law enforcement would come to suspect, did