Eliza Fletcher, the heiress who was savagely abducted during a morning run four days ago, has been identified as a body found discarded near Memphis, Tennessee police announced on Tuesday.
Tuesday morning, the Memphis police tweeted, “The deceased victim who was recovered yesterday in the 1600 block of Victor has been identified as 34-year-old Eliza Fletcher.”
Authorities also announced additional accusations against the suspect, Cleotha Abston, including first-degree murder and first-degree murder in the commission of an abduction.
At 5:07 p.m. on Monday, more than 36 hours after Abston, 38, was charged with exceptionally aggravated kidnapping, police searching for the mother of two discovered the body.
After being apprehended on Saturday, authorities said Abston, who had already served 20 years in prison for a brutal kidnapping, had refused to say where Fletcher was.
The body was discovered not far from where Abston, according to authorities, was allegedly spotted Friday morning during Fletcher’s 4 a.m. run cleaning out the GMC Terrain seen in surveillance footage of her dramatic kidnapping.
The suspect was described as acting “weird” and scrubbing his clothes hours after the kidnapping, according to the affidavit, which was signed by his brother, who was accused separately with drug and weapons violations.
Fletcher, the granddaughter of a late Memphis tycoon, was captured on camera by police on Friday morning as she raced near the University of Memphis.
An affidavit later revealed that the GMC she was forced into had been stalking the same spot for at least 24 minutes before she ran through.
The SUV pulled up in front of her, and surveillance video showed a man getting out and approaching Fletcher “aggressively,” shoving her into the passenger seat.
“During this abduction, there appeared to be a struggle,” the affidavit said — warning then that Fletcher likely “suffered serious injury.”
Richard Fletcher, Fletcher’s husband, set the alarm for seven in the morning.
Following DNA analysis on two Champion slides left at the scene, Abston was identified as the main suspect very quickly.
After putting an attorney into the trunk of a car at gunpoint to collect him cash from multiple ATMs, he had previously served 20 years for very aggravated abduction, the same charge he was given for Fletcher.
If he hadn’t been able to notify an armed security officer who scared off his gun-toting abductor, his victim, late prosecutor Kemper Durand, claimed it was “very likely that I would have been killed.”
