The person accused of kidnapping and murdering heiress Eliza Fletcher — a yr after allegedly raping one other girl at gunpoint — was due earlier than a decide in Memphis on Monday.
Cleotha Abston-Henderson, 38, was due again in courtroom in Shelby County, Tenn., for a listening to.
Abston-Henderson faces fees of abduction and homicide in Fletcher’s case.
The suspect, who served 20 years for an particularly aggravated kidnaping in 2000 focusing on a lawyer, additionally has been charged with a further rely of aggravated kidnaping and rape in a separate case, in line with police.
The alleged sufferer in that case, who publicly identifed herself as Alicia Franklin, 22, informed the Institute for Public Service Reporting and the Every day Memphian that detectives assigned to her rape case “didn’t care” and failed to gather fingerprints from her cellphone, or present her a latest picture of her attacker for identification functions.
A sexual assault equipment was submitted by Memphis police in Franklin’s case, however they didn’t ask for it to be expedited so it wasn’t analyzed by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for an additional 10 months, in line with WREG.
Franklin stated she believes these steps might have put her alleged rapist, Abston-Henderson, behind bars months earlier than Fletcher’s killing.
She accused cops of failing to make her case a precedence, suggesting that her race could have performed a task in it.
“I used to be simply a median black woman within the metropolis of Memphis,” she stated.
Franklin stated she met Abston-Henderson on the courting app Loads of Fish and agreed to fulfill him in particular person in September 2021.
She claimed that as quickly as she entered his condo, Abston-Henderson pressed a gun to her neck, then coated her head with a T-shirt and raped her, earlier than taking off with a wad of her money.
“I actually thought he was going to shoot me at the back of my head,” she recalled.
Almost a yr later, Fletcher, 34, the granddaughter of a billionaire, and a married mother of two, was jogging round 4:20 a.m. Sept. 2 close to the College of Memphis when police stated Abston-Henderson ambushed her.
Safety footage confirmed the person forcing Fletcher, whom he apparently didn’t know, right into a automotive and rushing away.
Abston-Henderson was arrested the subsequent day after DNA linked him to a pair of sandals left close to the kidnapping scene.
Fletcher’s physique was recovered three days after her disappearance, on Sept. 5, exterior an deserted house in South Memphis, in an space near the place police say Abston-Henderson was seen in surveillance video cleansing his garments and the within of his GMC Terrain.
It stays unclear how or the place Fletcher died.
Supply hyperlink
