Council Bluffs Police said Tuesday 68-year-old Richard Griffin was beaten to death with a baseball bat in his home sometime last Saturday.

Griffin was found dead Monday after 44-year-old Scott Reed walked into the Nemaha County Sheriff's Department in Auburn, Neb. and said he had killed a man and the body was in a home at North 13th Street and Avenue I in Council Bluffs.

When Council Bluffs Police went to check that address, they found the door to the home partially opened and Griffin's body inside.

Griffin's family said the two were roommates periodically. Reed is charged with second-degree murder though the charge may be upgraded to first-degree murder.

Officials say Griffin kicked Reed out of the house two weeks ago after finding out he was using drugs in the home.

"On Saturday, at about 2:00, he decided to show up then and went in through the back door that was already unlocked and confronted our victim in the living room,” said Council Bluffs Police Sgt. Dave Dawson.

That's when investigators say Reed beat Griffin to death, then stayed in the house for several hours trying to cover his tracks.

He took a shower, threw a sheet over Griffin and painted an offensive word used to describe a gay man. Investigators believe Reed was trying to make it look like someone broke into the home and kidnapped someone.

"He was trying to make it as a hate crime and try to throw officers off when they came there to the residence, and he had also taken and destroyed some things of his own outside to make it look like that maybe another person was there and that person was also kidnapped is what we pretty much gathered," Dawson said.

Reed stole Griffin's car and drove to Nemaha County.

Why did he decide to turn himself in? "He said that his conscious was bothering him at that point and decided that he wanted to turn himself in," Dawson said.

"He had taken the victim's vehicle after assaulting him. He ran out of gas and according to our interview he ran out of gas and money."

In addition to confessing, Reed told investigators where he left the murder weapon, a bat he'd thrown in a pond at Big Lake Park in Council Bluffs.

Reed remains jailed in Nemaha County and is expected to be extradited to Pottawattamie County on Wednesday.

Kind, friendly and loving is how family members describe Griffin.

"(He was ) so generous, just an all-around nice guy and wonderful grandfather to my son," said Robin Griffin.

"Richard had just gotten things together and he was just able to purchase this house and he's been working landscaping it and fixing it all up,” said friend John Sherbondy.