MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee man pleaded guilty Monday to kidnapping a Memphis school teacher while she was on an early morning run and then killing her. Cleotha Abston entered guilty pleas to first-degree murder and especially aggravated kidnapping in the abduction and death of Eliza Fletcher.
Abston, 40, had been set to stand trial in February . Prosecutors had said they would seek the death penalty if Abston were convicted of first-degree murder. Instead, Judge Lee Coffee sentenced Abston to life in prison without parole after he entered the guilty pleas.
Fletcher was grabbed from a street while she was jogging before dawn near the University of Memphis on Sept. 2, 2022, and forced into an SUV. Her body was found days later near a vacant duplex.
The killing of Fletcher, a 34-year-old kindergarten teacher and mother of two, shocked the Memphis community and led to a flood of support for her family. Runners in Memphis and several other cities held early morning running events in her honor a week after she was abducted, a tradition that has continued in the city on the anniversary of her kidnapping. In a statement, Fletcher’s family said they “miss the bright light of Liza’s life every day.
” “Liza meant so much to so many, and her smile radiated happiness, energy, and comfort,” her family said. “Her husband, her children, her parents, her brother, the rest of her family, her friends, her students, her school families, her fellow teachers, her church commu.
