A Warren County grand jury has indicted a Columbus man for the 1985 murder of a traveling auto parts salesman at a Middletown hotel.
Randy Lane McAllister, 62, was arrested and booked into the Warren County Jail without bond.
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He is scheduled for arraignment on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, in Warren County Common Pleas Court.
The victim, John Warren, was found dead in his room at the Middletown Holiday Inn near Interstate 75 on October 16, 1985.
He was in the area for sales meetings.
Authorities say Warren's personal belongings and his 1985 Oldsmobile were stolen.
His discarded items were later found behind a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Dalton, Georgia, and his vehicle was recovered in Redington Beach, Florida.
Cold Case Revived
The Warren County Sheriff's Office reopened the case in 2019, sending decades-old evidence from three states to a crime lab for advanced analysis.
Investigators identified McAllister and a now-deceased accomplice as suspects.
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Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said local detectives aggressively pursued leads at the time of the killing but lacked sufficient evidence to file charges.
"Since 2021, detectives, in coordination with the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office, continued to investigate various aspects of the case before our office ultimately presented it to the grand jury at the end of June of this year," Fornshell said.
He noted that cold cases often suffer from diminishing leads over time, but persistent efforts by law enforcement over the last five years brought the investigation to a point where charges could be filed.
"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.
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But 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 McAllister for the murder of John Warren," Fornshell said.
