With murder charge dropped, suspect in Renee Eldridge case will be held without bond in Columbus
Renee Eldridge never saw the face of the man who bound and raped her in December 2014 at her home in Columbus, a detective testified Monday.
The intruder kept a pillow over her face during the assault that happened between 1:45 and 7 a.m., and was reported after Eldridge went to the hospital around 9 a.m., said Sgt. Amanda Hogan.
Eldridge, who had been out drinking downtown that night before a friend dropped her off at home, had been texting a soldier she met about a week earlier, and initially police charged him with rape.
All that changed in July 2015, when Eldridge was kidnapped from her home and found dead in a creek in Chambers County, Alabama, her body bound with rope and weighted down with a concrete block.
Investigators said all the evidence in that case pointed to one suspect: Stacey Demar Gray, a family friend who had been dating Eldridge’s mother. They said DNA evidence matched him to the homicide.
When Columbus police checked Gray’s DNA against evidence from Eldridge’s 2014 rape, they found it matched in that case, too, Hogan told Columbus Recorder’s Court Judge Julius Hunter during Gray’s preliminary hearing.
Gray had been set for a murder trial in Chambers County, Alabama, in Eldridge’s death, but those charges were dropped when a judge ruled the DNA evidence inadmissible.
That left Eldridge’s family hoping to find justice elsewhere. Columbus police still had warrants charging Gray with rape and false imprisonment, so he was extradited here.
The testimony
Eldridge’s rape occurred the night of Dec. 20, 2014, after she had been out with friends at a bar then called Lil’ Kim’s Cove at 101 Fourth St., a business she frequented, Hogan said.
She previously had been out with a soldier she’d just met, and was texting him that evening before the assault, the sergeant said.
“She said that was the last person she talked to, the last person she communicated with that whole weekend, so she assumed that he was the one who was at her house that night,” Hogan said.
Her description of what happened was explicit, the investigator said.
“She was very detailed about the assault, to the point where she stated the male covered her face with a pillow, bound her hands and her feet, and then raped her for what she stated felt like forever,” Hogan testified.
When the assault ended, the intruder “cleaned her,” collected the bed sheets and other evidence and left, Hogan said. Eldridge had marks on her wrists and ankles from being bound, she said.
“According to her, she never saw his face, and then she assumed it was a soldier,” the sergeant said. The soldier was arrested and held for months before the DNA evidence cleared him.
The DNA also was compared to a male roommate’s, and did not match, she added.
Police had no other leads in the sexual assault until Eldridge was kidnapped and killed on July 4, 2015, Hogan said. Investigators got Gray’s DNA after his arrest in that case, and found it matched evidence in Eldridge’s earlier rape, Hogan said.
Gray was represented Monday by Columbus attorney Shevon Sutcliffe Thomas, who asked Hogan whether Gray and Eldridge knew each other.
“After the fact, we found out that he did know her,” Hogan replied. “He was dating her mother at the time.... And they all hung out at Lil’ Kim’s Cove constantly.”
Thomas also wanted to know whether investigators had established where Gray was the night Eldridge was attacked.
“I was not in that interview, so I’m not aware,” Hogan answered. She said an officer who’s no longer with the police department worked the 2014 case, on which Hogan only assisted.
Thomas objected that his inquiries went unanswered because Hogan was not the primary investigator in the rape case.
“Your honor, she keeps saying ‘I don’t know because it’s not my case.’ That’s not an answer, judge,” he told Hunter.
Hogan said the investigating officer will be available for questioning when Gray’s case gets to Muscogee Superior Court. “She does not work in the state of Georgia anymore,” she said.
Thomas then argued Gray had a relationship with Renee Eldridge as well as her mother.
“There was a relationship between the mother and him, and also a relationship between the victim and my client, which would explain any DNA testing possibly found,” he said.
Hunter said the DNA evidence was enough to establish probable cause to send the case to Muscogee Superior Court. Gray is being held without bond.
The homicide
Gray was to be tried for murder in Chambers County because that’s where Eldridge’s body was found.
Authorities believe Gray first took Eldridge to Russell County, Alabama, to dispose of some evidence there, before dumping the body in Chambers County.
Much of the evidence against Gray was disclosed in a hearing in Chambers County in September 2015.
A Valley, Alabama, police detective said Eldridge that night had been out with her mother, meeting friends at a Columbus bar. The mother and a friend dropped Eldridge off at her 46th Street home about 3:30 a.m., the officer said.
Investigators checking Gray’s cellphone records saw that the phone was near Eldridge’s home that night, and its signal later hit cell towers on U.S. 80 in Russell County and a tower near Lee Road 379 in Lee County, he said.
Searching a trailer off U.S. 80 in Russell County, where Gray sometimes stayed, investigators saw cinderblocks the same size and form as one used to weight down Eldridge’s body, in the creek where she was found, the detective said.
Among the knots used to bind her was a “running bowline” commonly used by tree-service workers, the officer said. That’s what Gray did for a living, he said.
In a trash barrel outside the trailer, authorities found the remains of burned clothing, and pieces of a purse Eldridge carried the night she disappeared, the officer testified.
Murder case dropped
Gray’s murder case in Chambers County was dismissed after Alabama Circuit Court Judge Steven Perryman ruled the DNA evidence had to be excluded from Gray’s trial because prosecutors failed to provide it to the defense during the discovery process, when attorneys share the information they have.
“The court notes that this is a capital murder case; therefore, all parties are aware that the defendant is entitled to all evidence in the possession of the State of Alabama,” the judge wrote.
The court ordered the prosecution this past Jan. 14 to share the DNA evidence with the defense, warning it could not be used at trial if the district attorney’s office still held it back.
Perryman said prosecutors acknowledged they had not provided the evidence, but claimed it was available the day Gray’s trial was to begin.
Waiting until the case went to trial left the defense no time to have an expert analyze the data, so it had to be excluded, the judge said, adding that prosecutors’ failing to comply with orders to share the evidence was “either willful or due to incompetence.”
This story was originally published June 14, 2021 at 1:11 PM.