An Ohio man has been indicted in the 1985 murder of a traveling salesman, a cold case that has been solved more than four decades later, according to the Warren County Prosecutor's Office.
Randy McAllister was charged last week with aggravated murder and murder in connection with the death of John Warren, who was found dead in his hotel room on Oct. 16, 1985. Warren, 44, was in Middletown, Ohio, for sales meetings at the time of his death. Investigators initially found insufficient evidence to pursue leads, and the case went cold.
Some of Warren's belongings, including his 1985 Oldsmobile, were reported missing from the scene. Days after the murder, some of the stolen items were discovered dumped behind a Cracker Barrel in Dalton, Georgia, approximately 400 miles from where Warren was killed. The victim's car was later located in Redington Beach, Florida.
Early in the investigation, three men from South Carolina were identified as suspects, but charges were dropped after their alibis were confirmed by lie detector tests. The case remained unsolved for decades until detectives reopened it in 2019 and began re-examining existing evidence.
Investigators sent some of the recovered stolen items for analysis. This re-examination led to McAllister and an unidentified deceased accomplice being named as suspects. The Warren County Sheriff's Office detectives worked on the case since 2021 before presenting the evidence to a grand jury.
"‘Cold case’ investigations are ‘cold’ for a reason. Many times there is some evidence that points to a suspect, but just not enough evidence to move forward. And leads diminish over time," Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said. "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."
The exact evidence that linked McAllister and his accomplice to the murder was not disclosed by the prosecutor's office. McAllister is currently being held at the Warren County Jail on aggravated murder and murder charges and is expected to be arraigned this week.