Eliza Fletcher: Police find body in search for missing Memphis teacher

Identity has not yet been established

Police searching for missing Memphis teacher and heiress Eliza Fletcher say they have found a body.

The Memphis Police Department (MPD) said on Monday that officers had found a corpse around 5:07pm local time, though it stressed that “the identity of this person and the cause of death [are] unconfirmed at this time“.

The MPD did not say whether the discovery was related to the Fletcher case, but official sources told local broadcaster WREG Channel 3 that it was made in an area that was part of the search.

Ms Fletcher, a 34-year-old mother of two who is the granddaughter of hardware billionaire Joseph Orgill III, was abducted while out jogging in Memphis at 4am last Friday.

Police said that CCTV footage showed a man running “aggressively” towards her and violently forcing her into an SUV, with witnesses finding her phone and some sandals on the ground early the next morning.

Authorities have charged convicted kidnapper Cleotha “Pookie” Abston, 38, with abducting Ms Fletcher and tampering with evidence, but said in a legal filing that he is refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

After a body was found on Monday, local media reported many officers from multiple government agencies descending on the scene, with a police helicopter circling the area.

According to Fox News, police blocked off an area with a radius of at least one mile as a crime scene, near an abandoned elementary school and less than a mile from where a witness told police they had seen Mr Abston vigorously cleaning an SUV that matched the one seen in surveillance footage.

Mr Abston was only 16 years old when he and another man kidnapped a prosecutor named Kemper Durand at gunpoint, forced him into his car’s trunk, and then tried to make him withdraw money from an ATM at a gas station.

Convicted of kidnapping and aggravated robbery in 2001, Mr Abston served 19 years of his 24 year sentence before being released in November 2020, aged 36.

In a victim impact statement written to oppose Mr Abston’s application to shorten his sentence in 2003, Mr Durand said his captor had charges dating back to the age of 12 including theft, aggravated assault, and rape.

An affidavit filed by the MPD on Sunday said that Mr Abston’s DNA was found on the sandals left at the abduction site, and that Mr Abston was seen wearing them in another CCTV video from some days earlier.

Law enforcement officers traced Mr Abston’s mobile phone to the place and time of the kidnapping, and found the same SUV outside his house when they arrived there on Saturday, the affidavit alleged.

WREG Channel 3 reporter Bria Jones said that Monday’s discovery was “very close” to where authorities seized a dumpster and took bags out as evidence near Mr Abston’s brother’s house.