41-year-old cold case murder solved after suspect linked to evidence hundreds of miles away
A head-scratching murder case that unfolded in Ohio has been figured out more than four decades since it took place.
On October 16, 1985, the body of a man called Josh Warren was discovered in a Holiday Inn room with a number of his belongings missing from the scene.
The auto parts company employee was in the area for sales meetings at the time, and even reportedly had his 1985 Oldsmobile stolen and later dumped in the Floridian town of Redington Beach.
Investigators couldn't nail down any solid leads due to insufficient evidence, until now, with a Cracker Barrel chain playing a significant part in the case's delayed resolution.
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Seven years ago, the mystery was reexamined by detectives, with the recovered items from behind a Cracker Barrel situated 400 miles away from the crime fetching new results after analysis.
Randy McAllister (plus one deceased accomplice) were named as suspects and finally indicted by a grand jury last week, per Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell, after three suspected South Carolina residents passed lie detector tests way back when.
"'Cold case' investigations are 'cold' for a reason," said Fornshell this week. "Many times there is some evidence that points to a suspect, but just not enough evidence to move forward. And leads diminish over time.
"But particularly over the past five years, Warren County Sheriff's Office detectives have been tenacious in their investigation of this case to get it to a point that our office believed we had sufficient evidence to charge McCallister for the murder of John Warren. And the grand jury agreed."
According to jail records obtained by The New York Post, McCallister is expected to be arraigned today under aggravated murder charges in Warren Country Jail.
This comes after Death Row inmate Christa Gail Pike's legal team made a public plea ahead of her historic execution as the first woman to be put to death in Tennessee for two centuries.
Citing the lethal injection cock-up case of triple-murderer Tony Carruthers, they (Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen) argued that the size of Pike's veins will 'make the insertion of a needle difficult, even for the most trained medical professionals'.
Ihnen said: "Tony Carruthers' botched execution sheds light on what we already knew and have warned the State of Tennessee about for more than a year: TDOC lacks the qualified and trained medical personnel required to ensure prisoners do not face unnecessary pain and suffering as they are executed. Tennessee must confront this harsh reality or we will face another torturous execution."
Should they create enough havoc around the situation, maybe Idaho Maximum Security Institution's newly formed firing squad will take on the job...
Dan Seddon