Cleotha Abston-Henderson, 38, is charged with raping a woman one year ago in addition to the abduction and murder of Eliza Fletcher
A rape survivor in Memphis has bravely broken her silence, accusing police of failing to thoroughly investigate before her alleged attacker was charged with kidnapping and murdering jogger Eliza Fletcher last month.
Alicia Franklin, 22, spoke out in an interview published in the Daily Memphian on Monday, volunteering to be publicly identified, and said: ‘I feel that my story could help other women.’
Cleotha Abston-Henderson, 38, is now charged with raping Franklin nearly a year ago — but the charges were not filed until after he was arrested and charged with the September 2 murder of Fletcher, who was abducted while on a morning jog.
Henderson pleaded not guilty to the murder but has not yet answered the rape charges. He had been due to appear in court on Monday, but the hearing was rescheduled for September 28.
While DNA evidence from Fletcher’s abduction was tested within hours, the rape kit in Franklin’s case sat on a shelf for months, and she says police failed to take basic steps such as gathering fingerprints after she was violently assaulted.
‘I just think it wasn’t a priority,’ said Franklin. ‘I was just an average black girl in the city of Memphis, you know.’
A rape survivor in Memphis has bravely broken her silence, saying police failed to follow clear leads for nearly a year, until the suspect Henderson allegedly killed a woman
The accused killer of Eliza Fletcher was arrested just days after the pre-school teacher (above) was abducted. But the rape case against him languished for a year despite strong leads
A spokesperson for the Memphis Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com on Monday afternoon.
Fletcher, who was white, was a pre-school teacher and the granddaughter of a wealthy businessman. Her abduction drew national attention and a massive law enforcement response.
Franklin, who grew up in poverty and is taking college courses online, says the police response to her own violent abduction and rape case was remarkably different.
In September 2021, Franklin says she met a man she only knew as ‘Cleo’ through the online dating app Plenty Of Fish, and agreed to meet him in a large apartment complex in southeast Memphis.
His invitation had originally been to meet for dinner at Olive Garden, but when Franklin said her car was riding on a spare tire and she didn’t want to drive that far, they agreed to meet at what he said was his apartment.
But when she arrived, she says Henderson held a gun to her neck and led her inside one of the apartments, which appeared to be empty and under renovation.
Henderson pleaded not guilty to the murder but has not yet answered the rape charges
There, he blindfolded her with a T shirt and led her to a white Dodge Charger, where he assaulted her, and then took her back into the apartment. It was a terrifying ordeal that she did not expect to survive.
‘I really thought he was going to shoot me in the back of my head,’ she told the Daily Memphian.
‘Can you please let me go? Please let me go,’ she recalled pleading with her attacker.
After the assault, the attacker rummaged through her purse, touching her keys and cell phone, before stealing some cash and leaving her.
But Franklin says police failed to fingerprint her phone, and dropped the ball on a vital clue — the address of the apartment where the attack occurred.
According to a police incident report, the apartment is located at 5783 Waterstone Oak Way, just doors away from where Henderson appears to live, and where he was arrested for Fletcher’s murder a year later.
Franklin also says she gave police her assailant’s phone number.
Franklin was attacked at this apartment complex last year — but cops did not make an arrest, despite the suspect Henderson living doors away from the scene of the crime
Cops did present Franklin with a photo lineup, but she says she wasn’t able to confidently identify Henderson, because the photo of him they included was old, and showed him with a dreadlock hairstyle that he didn’t wear any longer.
‘They never showed me an updated picture. I called like two or three months later, and was like, ‘Hey, you know, (the detective) said that she was going to, you know, try to do another photo lineup with updated pictures and … I haven’t heard from her,” recalled Franklin.
‘And then they were like, ‘Oh, well, she’s actually been promoted since then, so she’s no longer the detective on your case,” the victim said.
A trail of evidence led to Henderson’s arrest in Fletcher’s murder just days after the jogger disappeared on her morning run.
He was rebooked at the Shelby County Jail on September 9 on charges related to the 2021 rape case.
Law enforcement officials have said his indictment on those allegations didn’t occur before the Fletcher killing because of the timing in testing his DNA in the rape case.
In the case of Fletcher’s abduction, Henderson was identified as a suspect in just 18 hours, after a sandal left at the crime scene came back with a match to his DNA.
His DNA was already in police databases due to a prior felony conviction.
Henderson previously served 20 years in prison for a kidnapping he committed at age 16.