VAN BUREN, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas judge has dismissed local charges against four carnival workers suspected in the deaths of a retired couple in Kansas.

Investigators said one suspect texted the others posing as a carnival mafia boss and ordered them to kill the couple. The suspects were originally charged in Arkansas with abuse of a corpse and other crimes after the couple's bodies were found in shallow graves in a national forest in Arkansas.

Prosecutors asked that the Arkansas charges be dropped because the suspects had been extradited to Kansas, where capital murder charges were filed ear...