Memphis, Tennessee — Police in Tennessee stated Sunday that an arrest has been made in connection with the abduction of Eliza Fletcher, a jogger from Memphis who went lacking final week.
The Memphis Police Department said 38-year-old Cleotha Abston has been charged with particularly aggravated kidnapping and tampering with proof in Fletcher’s disappearance. A second individual was additionally arrested, however police stated that suspect was “currently not believed to be connected” to Fletcher’s abduction early Friday.
“This remains to be an active and ongoing investigation,” police said on Twitter.
In an affidavit detailing the costs in opposition to Abston, an investigator wrote that Fletcher’s husband reported her lacking on Friday morning after she went for her common early morning jog and by no means returned house. A witness discovered her cellphone and a close-by pair of sandals that morning, and turned them over to a member of the Fletcher household, who gave them to police.
Police discovered surveillance video exhibiting a black SUV with harm to the again proper tail mild ready in the realm the place the cellphone and sandals have been discovered. In the video, a person exited the SUV, ran towards Fletcher and compelled her into the passenger facet of the car, the affidavit stated. It then sat for 4 minutes earlier than driving off.
DNA testing on the sandals returned a match for Abston, and investigators decided he was staying at an handle belonging to a lady who owned the identical kind of SUV that was a seen in the surveillance footage. They then traced a cellphone quantity linked to Abston to the scene of the crime, in accordance to the affidavit.
U.S. Marshals situated the SUV, which had the identical harm because the one seen on video, and took Abston into custody on Saturday following a short chase. Police interviewed the girl with whom Abston was staying, and she or he stated she noticed him cleansing the ground of the SUV the earlier morning, after Fletcher was kidnapped, the affidavit stated. The lady and one other witnesses stated additionally they noticed Abston washing his garments in a sink, and that he was “acting very strangely.”
“[Abston] declined to provide investigators with the location of the victim,” the affidavit stated.Â
Fletcher is the granddaughter of the late Joseph “Joe” Orgill III, a Memphis {hardware} businessman and philanthropist, in accordance to news shops.
Police stated Fletcher remains to be lacking. “MPD Investigators and officers, along with our local and federal partners, continue searching for Mrs. Fletcher,” the division stated.
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