Murder suspect extradited to Clay

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – A Jacksonville man remains in the Clay County Jail without bond in connection with a November murder at an Orange Park motel.

Joseph Clark Thompson, 23, was arrested Feb. 15 and extradited to Clay County with help from the Glynn County Police Department in Brunswick, Ga., the U.S. Marshall’s Service and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the CCSO booking sheet, Thompson had been in the Glynn County Detention Center.

Thompson faces one count each of first degree murder, home invasion robbery without a weapon and first degree burglary in the death of Andrew Michael Stiekman, who was 49 at the time of his death Nov. 6. A Nov. 8 examination by the Jacksonville Medical Examiner’s Office showed that Stiekman was strangled to death in Room 175 of the Rodeway Inn motel on Park Avenue.

Thompson is the second man charged in Stiekman’s death. On Nov. 9, Orange Park Police arrested and charged John Harold Buskager, 22, of Jacksonville with second degree murder and one count each of grand theft auto, unarmed robbery, grand theft of items valued between $100 and $300.

Buskager had been held in the Clay County Jail without bond, but has since been transferred to an undisclosed county jail in Florida in order to keep him from having contact with Thompson, according to a spokesman for the Public Defender’s office.

Orange Park Police continued investigating the murder based on produced probable cause to believe Thompson and Buskager were both directly involved in the killing of Stiekman, said a prepared statement. Follow-up investigation of the case is still ongoing.

Thompson is scheduled to have a court appearance March 7.