[ad_1]
The person accused of kidnapping and murdering heiress Eliza Fletcher — a yr after allegedly raping one other lady at gunpoint — was due earlier than a decide on Monday.
Cleotha Abston-Henderson, 38, was due again in Shelby County courtroom for a listening to.
Abston-Henderson faces expenses 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 depend 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, advised the Institute for Public Service Reporting and The Each day Memphian that detectives assigned to her rape case “didn’t care” and failed to gather fingerprints from her telephone, or present her a current 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 one more 10 months in line with WREG.
Franklin mentioned she believes these steps may 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 might have performed a task in it.
“I used to be simply a mean black lady within the metropolis of Memphis,” she mentioned.
Franklin mentioned she met Abston-Henderson on the courting app Loads of Fish and agreed to fulfill him in particular person in Sept. 2021.
She claimed that as quickly as she entered his house, Abston-Henderson pressed a gun to her neck, then coated her head with a T-shirt her and raped her, earlier than taking off with 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 mom-of-two, was jogging at round 4:20 a.m. on Sept. 2 close to the College of Memphis when police mentioned Abston-Henderson ambushed her.
Safety footage confirmed the person forcing Fletcher, whom he apparently didn’t know, right into a automotive and dashing away.
Abston-Henderson was arrested the following 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, outdoors 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.
[ad_2]
Source link
