Ohio police solve 1985 motel murder, charge suspect after DNA review

John Warren was found dead inside a room at a former Holiday Inn in Middletown in October 1985, and Warren County prosecutors indicted Randy McAllister on June 22 before police arrested him July 1. The case was revived after preserved evidence was retested, with items gathered at three separate scenes in Ohio, Georgia and Florida.

John Warren was a traveling salesman for an auto parts company who was staying at a former Holiday Inn in Middletown, near Interstate 75, while in town for sales meetings. He was found dead inside his room in October 1985, and when investigators searched the scene, Warren’s 1985 Oldsmobile and several personal belongings were missing. In the days that followed, police in Dalton, Georgia, recovered some of his property behind a Cracker Barrel restaurant, and his car later turned up in Redington Beach, Florida.

Those clues did not lead to charges at the time. Investigators pursued numerous leads but did not have enough evidence to charge anyone, and the case went cold for decades. The Warren County Sheriff's Office reopened the investigation in 2019 and resubmitted items from all three crime scenes for new lab analysis.

That testing pointed investigators to McAllister, a Columbus man now 62, as a suspect and also identified a potential accomplice who had already died. A Warren County grand jury found enough evidence to bring aggravated murder and murder charges. David Fornshell, the Warren County prosecutor, said detectives had spent the past five years being “tenacious” in the reinvestigation.

Authorities have not publicly detailed the alleged motive. Court filings state Warren was killed during a robbery.