The Memphis Police Department said Cleotha Abston, 38, has been charged with aggravated kidnapping and tampering with evidence in Fletcher’s disappearance. A second person was also arrested, but police said the suspect is “not currently believed to be connected” to Fletcher’s abduction early Friday. “This remains an active and ongoing investigation,” police said on Twitter. In an affidavit detailing the charges against Abston, an investigator wrote that Fletcher’s husband reported her missing Friday morning after she went for her usual early morning jog and never returned home. A witness found her cell phone and a nearby pair of sandals that morning and turned them over to a member of the Fletcher family, who turned them over to police. Police found surveillance video showing a black SUV with a damaged rear right tail light waiting in the area where the cell phone and sandals were found. In the video, a man got out of the SUV, ran toward Fletcher and pushed her into the passenger side of the vehicle, the affidavit said. He then sat for four minutes before leaving. DNA testing on the sandals produced a match for Abston, and investigators determined he lived at an address owned by a woman who owned the same type of SUV seen in the surveillance video. They then located a phone number linked to Abston at the crime scene, according to the affidavit. U.S. Marshals located the SUV, which had the same damage seen in the video, and arrested Abston on Saturday after a brief chase. Police interviewed the woman Abston lived with, and she said she saw him cleaning the floor of the SUV the morning after Fletcher was kidnapped, the affidavit said. The woman and another witness said they also saw Abston washing his clothes in a sink and that he was “acting very strange.” “[Abston] refused to provide investigators with the location of the victim,” the affidavit said. Fletcher is the granddaughter of the late Joseph “Joe” Orgill III, a Memphis hardware entrepreneur and philanthropist, according to news reports. Police said Fletcher is still missing. “MPD investigators and officers, along with our local and federal partners, continue to search for Ms. Fletcher,” the department said.
