Arheel's Uncle
Senior Reporter
Man sentenced for bloody hammer murder is linked to another woman's disappearance
A confessed killer has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering a woman in his apartment, but authorities said they've questioned him in the disappearance of another woman several states away.
lawandcrime.com
Man who murdered woman with hammer, then tried to use soda to wash off his fingernails, is linked to another woman’s disappearance
Alberto LuperonSep 18th, 2023, 2:58 pm
Otis Lee Tucker (left) is a person of interest in the disappearance of Keeshae Jacobs (right). (Mug shot of Tucker: Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office; image of Jacobs: Richmond Police Department)
A confessed killer has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering a woman in his apartment, while authorities said they’ve questioned him in the disappearance of another woman several states away.
Keeshae Jacobs was 21 when she went missing from Richmond, Virginia, in September 2016. Cops there treated Otis Lee Tucker, 36, as a person of interest, but no charges were filed.
Jacobs’ case went cold for years with no arrest made.
Then on Nov. 1, 2022, in Jacksonville, Florida, Tucker beat mother-of-three Ashley Denise Fowler, 34, to death using a hammer.
Richmond cops still have their eye on Tucker regarding Jacob’s disappearance and plan on questioning him again.
“We can play on his conscience and he will share what he knows,” Clarence Key, the lead detective in the Jacobs case, said, according to Richmond CBS affiliate WTVR. “One of the things my grandmother used to always say was, ‘Son, what’s done in the dark will come to light.’ And I’m a firm believer of that. We are hoping that one day we will be able to bring closure to this case.”
Jacobs had last texted her mother that she made it safely to her friend’s home near Chimborazo Park in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond.
Sept. 26, 2016, was the last anyone heard from her when she was at the Church Hill home.
Amid the investigation, disturbing details surfaced about Tucker, a man known to be in her life. Jacobs’ mother Toni Jacobs reportedly cast suspicion on Tucker early on in the case.
“His name is Otis Tucker. He went by Omar,” she told WTVR from jail while facing an attempted murder charge. “My most concern at this point is him doing it to somebody else, or buy the time the Commonwealth’s Attorney decides to press charges to do what they need to do, he’s going to run and it’s going to prolong the process. They should have locked them up or kept him in jail when they had him.”
Tucker reportedly had spent time in prison for strangling another woman at that same residence. That woman reached out to the outlet through Facebook, WTVR said.
She said that during the attack, she let him drug her with Remeron, a medication, but she already had a tolerance. When he untied her, she stood up, “got dressed like it was nothing and he let me leave,” she said.
“I would probably say he is a predator,” Richmond Police Det. Anthony Coates reportedly said.
Another woman, Dejanee Gee, had invited Tucker into the Church Hill home to take care of her great-grandmother
She said “not even a week” passed before she called the police on him to kick him out of the home because she did not feel safe with him in the residence.
Gee agreed with Coates’ assessment of Tucker.
“One hundred percent correct,” she said. “It’s crazy. You really don’t know people until they show their true colors.”
Gee spoke from jail, where she was being held for an attempted murder case that was ultimately dropped and is not connected to Jacobs’ disappearance.
Officers described Jacobs as a Black woman, standing 5 feet, three inches tall, and weighing 100 pounds. She has brown hair and brown eyes.
“She was last seen wearing black basketball shorts, pink and black Nike basketball shoes and a pink scarf,” officers said. “She has a tattoo of a leaf on her right calf area, two paw print tattoos on her right thigh, a flower tattoo on her right shoulder, and one tattoo on her right hand.”
Tucker popped up on law enforcement radar again on Nov. 1, 2022, in Duval County, Florida. According to a prosecutor’s press statement and law enforcement arrest affidavit, he beat Fowler to death at his apartment. When his roommate, another woman, showed up at the home from work, he tried to keep her in the dark about what happened, but she confronted him when she saw him and areas of the residence covered in blood.
He took her phone when she attempted to call 911, but she convinced him to call her daughter. When her daughter picked up, she yelled out for her to call 911. Tucker pushed the woman out the front door and fled out the back, authorities said.
Investigators found him later that day with a backpack. Inside, they found the murder weapon, a bloodied hammer.
Tucker poured soda on his hands when detectives told him they were going to collect fingernail samples, they said. Investigators nonetheless found Fowler’s DNA under his nails.
He pleaded guilty on May 11 to a count each of murder in the second degree and tampering with evidence. A judge sentenced him to life in prison on Friday.
“My sister didn’t deserve this,” Fowler’s brother, Taylor Fowler, told Jacksonville-area news outlet WJXT in a 2022 report. “She was a beautiful person.”
