DA will seek death penalty after grand jury indicts man in Renee Eldridge killing
A Muscogee County grand jury on Wednesday indicted Stacey Gray for murder and other charges in Renee Eldridge’s brutal homicide in 2015, and the district attorney there says he will seek the death penalty in the case.
The indictment comes the same week Gray faced a Columbus judge in a rape and false imprisonment case involving Eldridge.
Muscogee District Attorney Mark Jones said the grand jury meeting Wednesday morning indicted Gray on one count of malice or intentional murder, four counts of felony murder for causing Eldridge’s death while committing the felonies of kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment and aggravated assault, plus one count each of kidnapping and rape.
Meanwhile, Russell County District Attorney Kenneth Davis said his office also intends to review evidence from Eldridge’s July 4, 2015, homicide to determine whether Gray should be charged with offenses there, where investigators found blood and burned clothing at a trailer where Gray sometimes stayed.
Gray was to be tried for murder June 1 in Chambers County, Alabama, but charges there abruptly were dismissed when the judge ruled DNA evidence in the case was inadmissible. That left Eldridge’s family desperately seeking justice elsewhere.
He was extradited to Columbus, where police had warrants charging him with rape and false imprisonment related to a Dec. 20, 2014, assault on Eldridge at her Columbus home, where she was bound and repeatedly raped, according to testimony Monday in Columbus Recorder’s Court.
Jones said he was unsure when the charges from Wednesday indictment will go to trial. “The sooner the better, given the age of the case,” he said. “Cases don’t get better with age.”
He said he will seek the death penalty, because of the heinous nature of Eldridge’s homicide.
The evidence
Authorities believe that when Gray kidnapped Eldridge from her 46th Street home in 2015, he first took her to Russell County, Alabama, to dispose of some evidence there, before dumping the body in Chambers County.
At 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 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.
On Wednesday, the Russell County district attorney said he wants to review that evidence.
“There is some physical evidence recovered from that trailer,” Ken Davis said, but he was not sure whether it was sufficient to build a case against Gray. “Whether we have a case or not, I just can’t say at the moment.”
He wanted to see the case file from Chambers County, to review that evidence as well.
Columbus’ district attorney said he got that file as soon as Chambers County dismissed Gray’s murder case there, to use any relevant information in Wednesday grand jury presentation.
“We spent a good little minute on it,” he said of the grand jury’s review.
This story was originally published June 16, 2021 at 2:48 PM.