3 Held in Stabbing Deaths of 2 Antelope Valley Youths : Crime: The victims vanished in May. Investigators found belongings of theirs at one suspect’s Littlerock home.

Three young men were being held in the slayings of two Antelope Valley teen-agers who disappeared in May and whose bodies were found last week in the desert near Littlerock, authorities said.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said Jose Orona, 20, of Palmdale, and Joe Orcasitas, 19, and Durwood Bland, 18, both of Littlerock, were arrested Thursday morning in the stabbing deaths of Daniel Kufeldt, 15, of Palmdale, and David Scott, 14, of Llano.

Bland’s father, also named Durwood Bland, has twice run unsuccessfully in recent years for the Palmdale City Council, often calling on the city to create its own police department to combat rising crime. He said Friday that his son was innocent of the crime.

“I talked to him and he said, ‘Daddy, I didn’t do it,’ ” the father said. “I think he is a scapegoat. He isn’t that kind of person. They needed someone to blame, and it’s him.”

The older Bland said the three suspects and two victims were all friends from schools in the area. He said his son, who last month moved to Littlerock, had spoken in recent weeks of the two boys’ disappearance and said he believed the pair had run away to Las Vegas.

Homicide investigators and members of the Special Enforcement Bureau searched the homes of the suspects Thursday and found property belonging to the victims at the younger Bland’s house, said Deputy Gabe Ramirez, a department spokesman.

Ramirez declined to describe the property or say whether robbery is believed to have been a motive for the slayings.

The parents of the two boys reported them missing with the Scott family van May 29, Ramirez said. Two days later, the van was found on 127th Street East near Palmdale. The van had front-end damage and a large amount of blood inside it, Ramirez said.

A hiker walking through a desert area near 92nd Street East and Avenue V in Littlerock discovered the two uncovered bodies June 22, Ramirez said. The bodies were partly decomposed but were identified as the missing boys, and autopsies concluded that both had been stabbed to death.

Orona, Orcasitas and Bland were being held without bail at the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Station. Investigators are expected to ask prosecutors to file murder charges against them on Monday.

Investigators in the case could not be reached for comment, and Ramirez said the department would not reveal what evidence links the three to the slayings or what led detectives to suspect them.

The elder Bland said his son spent six months last year in a California Youth Authority facility for repeatedly being a school truant. Afterward, he returned to school but quit again in February. He was not working at the time of his arrest.

“If he’s involved in this, it’s because they changed him,” Bland’s father said. “Holding him for six months like that changed him. He wasn’t the same after that.”