Trial set for man charged with kidnapping, rape and murder of Columbus woman
A man charged with murder and rape in the 2015 death of a Columbus woman will stand trial next week in Muscogee County, according to court documents.
Court documents say Stacey Gray, 55, is charged with malice murder, felony murder, murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping and rape in the 2015 death of Renee Eldridge.
Eldridge’s body was found July 7, 2015, in Osanippa Creek off Hopewell Road in Valley, Alabama. Eldridge’s body was bound with rope and weighed down with a concrete block.
Eldridge died of blunt-force trauma to the head, authorities said.
Investigators said DNA evidence matched Gray to the homicide. He was a family friend who had been dating Eldridge’s mother,
During a Columbus Recorder’s Court hearing in June 2021, Columbus Police Department Sgt. Amanda Hogan testified Gray’s DNA matched a case where Eldridge was reportedly raped in 2014.
Chambers County case dismissed
Gray originally faced murder charges in Chambers County, Alabama, but they were dropped 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 discovery.
Gray was to be tried in Chamber’s County because investigators thought he killed Eldridge there.
During a hearing in Chambers County in September 2015, a Valley police detective testified Eldridge and her mother had met at a Columbus bar. Gray began flirting with Eldridge and stroking her hair, and the encounter was caught on video surveillance, the detective said.
Eldridge’s mother and a friend dropped her off at her home on 46th Street in Columbus around 3:30 a.m., the detective said.
Investigators said cellphone records showed Gray’s phone was near Eldridge’s home that night and hit cell towers in Russell county and Lee County, according to the detective.
Investigators searching a trailer in Russell County, where Gray sometimes stayed, saw cinder blocks the same size and form as the one used to weigh down Eldridge’s body in the creek where she was found, the detective said.
The officer testified authorities found the remains of burned clothing and pieces of a purse Eldridge carried the night she disappeared in a trash barrel outside.
After Gray’s charges were dropped in Chambers County, he was extradited to the Muscogee County Jail because Columbus police had warrants charging him with rape and false imprisonment in Eldridge’s 2014 reported rape.
Gray’s Muscogee County trial is scheduled to begin Monday at 9 a.m., with Judge Carolyn “Tippi” Cain Burch presiding. Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Don Kelly is listed as the lead prosecutor. Gray is being represented by Southwest Georgia Regional Public Defender Angela Dillon.