New Details In East Ridge Murder | murder, ridge, jail - WTVC NewsChannel 9: Chattanooga News, Weather, Radar, Sports, Lottery

New Details In East Ridge Murder | murder, ridge, jail - WTVC NewsChannel 9: Chattanooga News, Weather, Radar, Sports, Lottery


East Ridge Murder Investigation

Police arrest a man in connection with an elderly woman's death.



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New Details In East Ridge Murder
June 17, 2011 5:12 PM

Karen Zatkulak
One man is in jail in connection with a 70 year old woman's murder, but the case is far from over. We're learning new details about Jane Stokes murder, and we're also taking a closer look at how the case was handled.

While one arrest has been made in the case, investigators are still busy. They say there's evidence who robbed Stokes, but they're still unsure who killed her.

70 year old Jane Stokes died violently. The medical examiner's report says she was killed by suffocation, found bound on her bedroom floor. Police say Randall Reed stole her credit cards, and turned himself in Thursday night. East Ridge Police Spokesperson Erik Hopkins says, "As of right now, Mr. Randall Reed has been charged with theft, but not in connection to the homicide."

Police say there were no signs of forced entry into Stoke's home. Neighbors tell us a tree had fallen on her home during the tornadoes, and several men were working to fix her chimney. Police aren't yet releasing whether Reed was one of those workers, or if he even knew Stokes.

We do know that he rented an apartment nearby in East Ridge with another woman. But, police say they had checked into the Travelodge for 2 nights, the day Stokes body was found.

Plastic wraps covered Stokes face and her hands were tied behind her back, so we wanted to know why police waited 29 hours to tell the public a killer was on the loose. Hopkins says, "Everything was pending because we didn't know it was a murder, we didn't know if there was going to be a murder investigation."

Here's a timeline of the investigation. The affidavit says someone entered Stokes home sometime Wednesday morning, and assaulted her. It says within an hour and fifteen minutes, Reed used Stokes credit cards.

At 11 that morning, police found her body, then released a statement 3 hours later, reporting her death.

An hour and a half later, they sent another release, saying the case was suspicious.

It wasn't until 4 the next afternoon, that police told the public they were looking for a suspect. Hopkins says, "We didn't want to falsely alarm anyone either, we wanted evidence to speak for itself, and that's what we were wanting on."

We've learned that Reed has a lengthy criminal history, including 14 theft and 13 forgery charges, but, he has no prior counts of violent offenses.

Police aren't saying whether there are any other suspects right now in the murder.