According to a former FBI investigator, the abduction suspect for Eliza Fletcher had previously kidnapped the heiress’s uncle’s former coworker.
According to Newsmax, Jennifer Coffindaffer disclosed that Michael Keeney, Fletcher’s uncle, worked at the same legal office as Kemper Durand, Cleotha Abston’s first abduction victim from Memphis.
‘I think this is a very significant clue, and I’m sure certainly that the FBI, the US Marshalls and the TBI is looking closely at this relationship,’ Coffindaffer said.
Abston, 38, was only 16-years-old when he and an accomplice kidnapped Durand and tried to force him to withdraw money at a gas station ATM in 2000.
Abston spent 22 years in jail for the crime, and two years later after his early release in 2020, he is back in custody for the suspected kidnapping and murder of Fletcher.
In his victim impact statement, Durand, who died in 2013, said he feared for his life during his kidnapping, where he was rescued by a nearby Memphis Housing Authority guard who heard his scream for help, the Commercial Appeal reported.
‘It is quite likely that I would have been killed had I not escaped,’ Durand wrote.
According to Durand’s impact statement, the lawyer was alarmed by the teenager’s lengthy rap sheet that began when he was just 12, which included charges of theft, aggravated assault, and rape.
Durand was sentenced to 24 years in prison but was released early in 2020 according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
After Fletcher’s corpse was discovered in an abandoned elementary school, investigators have now accused Abston of first-degree murder and first-degree murder in the abduction of the missing mother-of-two.
The rich heiress’s corpse was discovered seven miles from where she was last seen, however authorities have not yet determined the exact cause of death.