Muscogee grand jury drops charges in 2008 Columbus cold case killing of man beaten, stabbed, shot
A Muscogee County grand jury has refused to indict two people police charged in the 2008 cold-case murder of a 67-year-old Columbus man found bludgeoned, stabbed and shot in his home, where he’d been dead a week before his body was discovered.
Last year investigators charged Shanita Evette “Cookie” Cannon, also known as Shanita Wyatt, and her associate, Emanuel Andre Holloway Sr., with murder and burglary in the death of Paul Hill Sr., whose body was found about 2 p.m. April 2, 2008, in a home at 3300 Marathon Drive.
Hill was last seen alive the previous March 25. His son called police after he was unable to contact his father, officers said.
In February 2021, police announced that cold-case Detective Stuart Carter had amassed enough evidence to prosecute Cannon, much of it based on witnesses’ accounts of what Cannon told them afterward.
She had told them that she went to a man’s home to rob him, but something went wrong, and Holloway killed the man, Carter said.
Holloway was charged a few weeks after Cannon. Both had preliminary hearings last year in Columbus Recorder’s Court, Cannon on Feb. 19 and Holloway on March 11. Judge Julius Hunter found the evidence sufficient to send each case to Muscogee Superior Court.
No indictment
A grand jury this past May 26 did not find the evidence sufficient to issue an indictment, and instead “no-billed” charges against both defendants, essentially dropping them. They could be revived, however, if investigators uncovered more evidence.
The proposed indictment presented to the grand jury accused Cannon and Holloway of breaking into Hill’s home on March 26, 2008, and killing him with a handgun.
Assistant District Attorney Peter Hoffman handled the case. Asked for comment, he said only, “We respect the grand jury’s decision.”
Grand jury proceedings are confidential, so he could not say what happened when the case was presented, he said.
Now 41, Cannon has been jailed since May 21, 2020, on charges of trafficking in cocaine and violating the Georgia Controlled Substances Act. Those charges still are pending, according to jail records.
Records showed Holloway, 47, no longer is being held in the Muscogee County Jail.
The evidence
Police in 2021 said Cannon sometimes made money as a sex worker, and was known to frequent the Marathon Drive area.
In a news conference and in interviews last year, police identified Cannon as Shanita Wyatt, but in current court and jail records, her name consistently is listed as Shanita Cannon.
Canvassing the Marathon Drive neighborhood in 2008, officers found three witnesses who said Cannon and Holloway had been at a nearby residence the night Hill likely was killed. The witnesses reported that Cannon had said they were going out to “score some dope,” Carter testified during Cannon’s hearing in Recorder’s Court..
When the pair returned, Holloway paced nervously outside as Cannon walked in, visibly upset, and told witnesses the pair were “doing a lick,” slang for a robbery, but it “went bad,” and her cohort should not have killed their victim, Carter said.