A Black woman who accused detectives of ignoring her rape case until after heiress Eliza Fletcher was kidnapped and killed by the man accused in both cases has taken legal action against the city of Memphis.
Alicia Franklin filed a lawsuit against the city a year to the date after she allegedly was held at gunpoint and sexually assaulted by Cleotha Abston-Henderson. He was arrested on Sept. 9 after the Memphis Police Department linked his DNA to Franklin’s case days after booking the man for the Fletcher killing.
However, Franklin and her attorneys argued that investigators had Abston-Henderson’s DNA file over a decade before the white granddaughter of a billionaire’s deadly kidnapping last month. Franklin believes the difference between the women’s race and social status played a role in the outcome.
“I was just an average Black girl in the city of Memphis, you know,” Franklin told reporters. “I just think it wasn’t a priority.”
The complaint alleges that Franklin “sustained physical and emotional injuries, which required, and continue to require medical and mental health care attention.” It also alleges that the police department did not honor Franklin’s courage to report her rape, an effort many claim would have preempted the other woman’s subsequent death. Police also failed to “take reasonable steps to apprehend her assailant causing her additional emotional distress,” and now she is seeking compensation.
Franklin gave the details of her rape to Memphis police investigators the same night it occurred on Sept. 21, 2021. She took them to the scene and provided them with the man’s first name, his telephone number, a description of his car and social media information. Franklin had met the man she knew only as “Cleo” on a dating app, PlentyOfFish, she told detectives.
Detectives did not take forensic evidence from the scene, including fingerprints, but she did a medical examination, commonly referred to as a rape kit.
Memphis police officials admitted that they did not run the DNA until after Abston-Henderson was apprehended for Fletcher’s murder just doors away from where Franklin had been raped. The accused rapist had told Franklin that he was the maintenance man at The Lakes at Ridgeway Apartments, the lawsuit obtained by Atlanta Black Star says. They had decided to meet there before heading out to dinner because Franklin was driving on a temporary tire.
They never made it to dinner.
Abston-Henderson instead held a gun to his date, forced her into an empty apartment and put a black T-shirt over her head. Franklin begged the man not to rape her. She told him she was pregnant.
He “responded by saying, ‘All you b-tches say that,’ or similar words, indicating that he had likely raped other women previously,” the lawsuit says.
Abston-Henderson was released in November 2020 after spending 20 years in prison for kidnapping and robbing an attorney. Court documents showed that the man had been suspected of other crimes after he pleaded guilty to the crime against the attorney in 2001. The 38-year-old accused killer and rapist had a criminal history that went back to when he was 11, including another rape when he was 14.
Court documents show Memphis Police detectives submitted the rape kit to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on September 23, 2021, but unlike in Fletcher’s case, they did not request the DNA test be rushed. It took 18 hours for authorities to identify the suspect in Flecther’s case. Abston-Henderson’s DNA profile was in the TBI’s database, the lawsuit says.
Court documents show TBI removed Franklin’s rape kit from storage in late June. An initial analysis report was done on Aug. 29. However, it was not entered into the Combined DNA Index System until Sept. 5, two days after Abston-Henderson is alleged to have killed Fletcher.
Investigators also failed to check Franklin’s purse for DNA evidence even though she told them that the rapist rummaged through it and stole her money. They were supposed to find a newer photo of Abston-Henderson after the victim could not confirm the image of the suspect that they admitted was “10 to 12 years old” and showed him with longer hair.
According to the TBI the average turnaround time for testing on a rape kit through its crime lab “ranged from approximately 33 weeks to 49 weeks.” The lawsuit alleges that the TBI depends on local police agencies to inform them when a rape kit should be rushed. Franklin’s attorney said Abston-Henderson’s long criminal record of rape, aggravated robbery and kidnapping, showed police that he was a danger to the victim and the public and that should have been enough to rush the test.
Officials said Fletcher’s case was rushed because she was a missing person and they weren’t sure if she was dead or alive. Her body was discovered on Sept. 6.
Attorneys also said police could have sought the metadata from the dating app that Franklin had been communicating with the man for months. PlentyOfFish’s parent company has a special portal for law enforcement requests, the lawsuit says.
The complaint accuses the detectives of breaching their duty to investigate and give violent crimes a higher priority. It alleges that they failed to “investigate the rape of Alicia Franklin with the degree of care and caution required by a reasonable and prudent police officer under the circumstances.”
