Suspect mugshot. Credit: Warren County Prosecutor
On Oct. 16, 1985, John Warren was a guest at the Holiday Inn in Middletown, Ohio near I-75 in Warren County. The hotel has long since been torn down. Warren was a traveling salesman for an auto parts company and was in the area for sales meetings.
The next morning, Warren was found deceased in his hotel room. A number of his personal items as well as his 1985 Oldsmobile were taken.
A few days later, police in Dalton, Georgia recovered some of Warren’s property and other relevant items discarded behind a Cracker Barrel restaurant in its jurisdiction. Warren’s vehicle was also located in Redington Beach, Florida.
Although detectives at the time followed up on a number of leads, there was not sufficient evidence to move forward on the case.
In 2019, detectives from the Warren County Sheriff’s Office re-investigated the case. A number of items that were originally recovered from all three crime scenes were submitted to the crime lab for analysis.
Based on this information, detectives identified Randy McAllister, 62, of Columbus, Ohio, and a now-deceased accomplice as potential suspects.
Since 2021, detectives, in coordination with the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office, continued to investigate various aspects of the case before the office ultimately presented it to the grand jury at the end of June of this year. The grand jury indicted McCallister for both aggravated murder and murder.
“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,” said Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell. “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. The grand jury agreed.”
Republished courtesy of Warren County Prosecutor’s Office