Columbus police charge 2nd suspect in 2008 cold-case homicide on Marathon Drive
Columbus police have arrested a second suspect in the cold-case slaying of 67-year-old Paul Hill, a longtime car repairman found dead on the floor of his Marathon Drive home on April 2, 2008.
Emanuel Holloway, 46, is charged with murder in Hill’s death, police announced Tuesday night. He will have a preliminary hearing Thursday in Columbus Recorder’s Court.
Last month, detectives charged Shanita Evette Wyatt with murder, and said then that they believed Wyatt had an accomplice with her the night Hill was killed. Police say Hill was killed days before officers conducting a welfare check found his body in the apartment at 3300 Marathon Drive.
Hill was last seen alive on March 25. When detectives found him, he had been stabbed, bludgeoned and shot with a small-caliber handgun, a detective said.
Cold case detective Stuart Carter said last month that Wyatt, also known as Shanita Cannon, who used the street name Cookie, was a sex worker who frequented the Marathon Drive area.
She was with a man in a nearby residence the night Hill likely was killed, and told witnesses there that they were going out to “score some dope,” Carter testified Feb. 19, during Wyatt’s Recorder’s Court hearing.
When they returned to the residence, the man paced outside as Wyatt, obviously upset, went in and told the witnesses that the pair were “doing a lick” that “went bad,” and the man with her had killed their victim, Carter said. “Doing a lick” is slang for committing a robbery.
Wyatt has been charged with prostitution at least twice before, in November 2015 and again in February 2017, according to Ledger-Enquirer archives. She last was jailed May 21, 2020, on charges of trafficking in cocaine and violating the Georgia Controlled Substances Act, and was still being held when Carter got a warrant charging her with murder in Hill’s case.
Other witnesses have told police that Wyatt admitted she was involved in Hill’s slaying. One had shared a room with Wyatt at a Columbus motel, and told investigators Wyatt and the man were known to use a small-caliber handgun to rob her customers.
Longtime mechanic
Hill was a longtime mechanic who over the years owned various repair shops around town, said his daughter Nichole Alred.
“He owned Southside Garage. He owned the Shell station on South Lumpkin Road. He owned quite a few shops,” she said in an interview after Wyatt’s court hearing.
He was known in the neighborhood for helping people out, she said.
Though his home was listed as an apartment, it actually was a small house that sat apart from three or four others similarly numbered, she said.
“He called it his ‘little shack by the railroad track,’” she remembered.
Alred has a Facebook page called “Justice for Paul” devoted to her father’s case, and is working on a documentary titled “Murder on Marathon.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2021 at 8:07 PM.