Teacher and heiress Eliza Fletcher’s ‘killer’ appears in court for ‘raping and kidnapping another woman’
The man charged in the abduction and killing Memphis teacher Eliza Fletcher has now been accused of abducting and raping another woman at gunpoint a year ago.
Cleotha Abston, 38, was charged with first-degree murder and several other charges related to kidnapping and tampering with evidence in connection to Fletcher’s disappearance.
On Friday, Abston was rebooked on additional charges of aggravated rape, especially aggravated kidnapping and unlawful carrying of a weapon, from an incident over a year before he killed the teacher and billionaire heiress.
He was only identified in 2021 rape after his arrest in Fletcher’s murder because his DNA had not been in the investigator’s system until now.
The Memphis Police Department confirmed that a sexual assault report taken on September 2, 2021 and submitted two days later contained DNA that matched Abston.
‘An official CODIS hit was not received until after the unfortunate event that occurred on September 2, 2022,’ The police department told ABC 24.
‘Probable cause to make a physical arrest of any suspect did not exist until after the CODIS hit had been received.’
CODIS is the DNA Index System that investigators used to determine that the DNA found on sandals left at the crime scene matched Abston’s DNA.
The evidence against Abston was placed in a ‘queue of unknown assailant kits, as no request was made for TBI analysis to be expedited, and no suspect information or DNA standard was included in the submission.’
US Marshals were able to use a pair of slide sandals recovered from the scene where Abston allegedly abducted Fletcher to pinpoint him as the suspect in the case. DNA taken in his arrest connected him to the previous crime.
Investigators say Fletcher’s abduction and murder was ‘isolated’ as she and Abston had never met before the attack.
According to police, Fletcher suffered a ‘serious injury’ after the abduction, though her exact cause of death has not been revealed.
Abston previously pleaded guilty to aggravated kidnapping a prominent Memphis attorney in 2000, when he was 16-years-old. He was sentenced to 24 years, but released early in 2020.
Fletcher, a kindergarten teacher, was the granddaughter of the late Joseph Orgill III, a Memphis hardware businessman and philanthropist. Her family’s business has been described as ‘the world’s largest independent hardlines distributor with annual sales of $3 billion,’ according to the company’s website.
She was also the mum to two young boys, and worked as an elementary school teacher.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.