Welp. Here’s a whole thing I try (not hard) to forget about. A cold case in which I was interviewed as a possible suspect to a murder. Haha. I know. Freaky weird to just come out and say it, huh? But meh, it’s aight. It’s a weird story. And yes, I’m innocent with a rock-solid alibi, but more than that… I’d never do something as horrible as that. I’m seriously not the type that would ever use violence against another person. All the same… Buckle your seatbelts, bishes…
I will begin this story with a short history about the job itself and what kind of person my former boss really was. Following that, the trip that got me fired, the new job I found (including the beginnings of my relationship with The Dementor – my alibi), the day I got a call from my cousin when his body was discovered, and the events that happened after that. I will also give my theory on the “whodunit.” I admit that I’m going to have to rely on my Facebook posts to solidify some of the timeline, because it happened over a decade ago and I’ve slept since then (and not very well).
I also want to note that, as much as I’d like to post a lot of this anonymously, any decent investigating with Google could bring it all up. I don’t have anything to hide, either. So on that note, I will provide all the info I can and include some website links. Names won’t be changed, but some I’ve forgotten and some are only nicknames that I remember. Either way, I’ll provide what I can due to my shit memory. 😅
I don’t recall exactly when I got the job, but I had been working at a tobacco store and applied to have this job as an “apartment manager” of sorts 1 day a week to supplement (it was recently after my separation/divorce). I was told I’d have to move into the apartments to be on site 24/7, and I did (with The Son). I tried to adjust my schedule with the tobacco store and ended up being fired from that job as a result (amongst other shit, but it’s whatever). As such, I became a full-time live-in manager for the Country Aire Apartments (built as a hotel and pretty slum-like, honestly).
My duties were to approve new and evict old tenants (at my bosses whim), manage and pay the maintenance crew that my boss had both for the apartments and his other side gigs, collect rent – in cash only – weekly (yup, he had that in place so he could evict people sooner and most likely evade taxes), deal with whatever issues the tenants had, and really… do my bosses bidding whenever he demanded. Yes. Demanded. As much as some people who know nothing about this man like to say, he wasn’t the great man they portray.
The job was difficult for me as a newly single mother to a special needs toddler. I enjoyed some aspects, of course, but other aspects sucked a lot. Evicting tenants was hard for me, especially because my boss made me do that part on his whim. There were a couple incidents where I didn’t want to do so, given how unfair it was and that said tenants had a WEEK to move out because his rental agreements and collections were designed that way. It was some really shady shit that I didn’t want to be a part of, but… you do what you have to do with the cards you’re dealt or you don’t survive, ya know?
I worked there for several months or so – maybe over a year (again, memory is shit) – and the last couple weeks April of 2013 I started training another tenant (Ashley) to manage my job for me because I’d made plans to take a 2 week solo motorcycle trip to Utah for my 31st birthday. It was also around the time I’d asked Gravity to swap me custody (outside of court) because after my return, I planned to try and get myself fully out of that job and living situation and needed The Son to be taken care of in a better way. I legit almost threw up asking for this, no lie. It went against every fiber of my motherly instincts. As part of the deal, he was to move in with my parents (and he did). So much of that whole ordeal sucked, but I was admitting that I needed the help and The Son needed to be in a MUCH better environment than I could provide at the time.
During that time, I dated one of the tenants named Marcus (Gypsy, his nickname), who was related to Ashley. It was literally only a single month. He was an alcoholic and we spent 2.5 full days having a huge arguing match, but his mistake and my final straw was when he punched his fist into his hand right in my face, physically threatening me. So yeah. There’s that fun shit to deal with, too. Good times.
So, on May 1st of 2013 I packed my ’03 Suzuki (that I’d purchased from my boss) and left for my solo trip to Utah, to visit the town I was born in for my birthday. I won’t go into many deets on that, but suffice it to say that it was a wild adventure for me and I learned a LOT about riding, got to see some really cool shit along the way, had a couple misadventures, but overall… it was a memorable trip that I will (hopefully) never forget.
I returned on May 14th and stayed the night at my parents’ house, having missed my son deeply and needing a night to destress before going back to my job. The following morning, my boss called me and basically yelled at me to get my ass to the office. So, away I went. When I arrived to my office, my entire setup was gone. Like… my personal computer, all the shit I’d had for maintaining the job… just gone. And there sat Mr. Ronnie McCorkle, all business and looking at me like I’d offended him somehow. Now, I don’t handle “authority” figures very well (because cPTSD, lifetime of trauma?), so I was already starting to feel the “Freeze” mode shit kick in and I started to shake a bit as I did what I was told and sat down.
Side Note: This man regularly verbally accosted me for sexual favors in exchange for money (which I would laugh off – uncomfortably – because I wanted to keep my job). He treated his employees like shit and the tenants even worse, unless they sucked up to him. He was a sleazy old man with shit ethics (if that’s even a thing) and a temper when he didn’t get his way. Now, I’m sure he was a different kind of person towards his family or “friends,” but this is the man I got to witness. Just because someone else saw him as a great guy doesn’t make my experience any less true. And? I have no reason to lie about it, nor would I want to. The sexual harassments alone (and my inability to defend myself) are enough to make me harbor some resentment for him.
So, my boss got right down to business and told me that I was fired and he had hired Ashley to take my place, because she did a better job in the two weeks she took my place than I had the entire time I was there. This is bullshit, of course, because I know damn well that I did a good job… the problem was that I wasn’t willing to give in to his sexual harassment, but what can you do? He claimed that Ashley didn’t have any qualms about evicting the people he told her to (together, they’d gotten rid of a couple of them while I was gone). He told me that all my belongings had been moved to my apartment and I had a week to get out. So yeah, suddenly, there I was jobless and on the verge of homelessness. Now I knew what the other tenants felt like, personally (instead of empathetically).
I moved in with a friend and was able to procure another job fairly quickly, having decent connections. I started this job at Parmanos (a pizza joint on the town square) before it opened, helping with maintenance stuff and preparing for the Grand Opening. This is also where I met The Dementor (on my first day) and was instantly hooked. Ugh. Blue eyes are yet another bane of my existence. All the same, that relationship started pretty quickly and I ended up spending a LOT of time at his place when we started dating.
As such, I was at The Dementor’s and his roomies the night of June 5th (immediately after work, mind you) and the following morning, June 6th, 2013 – I got a totally random and disturbing call from my cousin. Her husband was somehow related to the main maintenance guy (don’t remember how) and he had relayed to her that my former boss had been murdered and the main guy had found his body, at like 7am that morning. She told me ALL sorts of details over the phone as my entire body went cold from the shock. Oh, that same main guy is also the husband of The Son’s babysitter I had since before I worked there (the connection to getting the job), just FYI. She is one of the main 2 people that helped me with discovering The Son has autism and all the stuff following that.
Sorry… squirrel moment.
So my cousin is telling me everything that’s happened and when I got off the phone, I relayed that to The Dementor. He joked about the whole alibi thing, but it turned out that I really DID need it, not just from him, but his 2 adult roommates, as well. One of the officers in Flippin, AR (where this happened) was actually someone I’d gone to school with – though much younger. He reached out to me and told me I needed to come in for questioning. I agreed to it, because again – I had nothing to hide, despite being seen as the “jilted former manager” or something. Before I went in, I’d gotten in touch with a few people that still lived there, with the exception of Marcus (my ex). I was told by several sources that he had been dropped off at the city park right near my bosses home THAT NIGHT and hadn’t been heard from or seen since. I was trying to get information about what may have happened or if anyone knew anything, because I sure as hell didn’t.
The interview itself wasn’t too bad. For some weird reason, it wasn’t nearly as scary as most authority type things (even my former boss, tbh). I answered all of their questions easily, gave them the contact info for my 3 alibi’s, provided the information that I’d learned from former tenants, and they let me go. I told the officer to get in touch with me at any point in time if they needed, as well. And that was that.
So now… my theory on what happened:
I’m going to be revealing some pertinent information about the case that wasn’t divulged to the public, but was told to me via the grapevine during that call I previously mentioned I’d had with my cousin. Given that the head maintenance guy was THE guy that found his body, this info was from what he found and was eventually relayed to me…
Apparently, Ronnie was rolled up in a rug on the dining room floor, in what seemed like a sad attempt at moving his body. He had a head wound from what was probably a solid glass ashtray (that I believe they’d found upstairs?!) and his pants/underwear were around his ankles.
According to the info I’d gotten from former tenants (who remained my friends after), Marcus had suddenly asked these same individuals to be dropped off quite late in the night at the park in Flippin (again, right by Ronnie’s house). And remember… his cousin Ashley, whom he had a very close and loyal relationship with, was now the new manager. My guess? She was possibly at Ronnie’s house that night, when shit went sideways. And by sideways, I mean that he’d probably done the same thing to her that he’d done to me – accosted her for sexual favors. To me, this explains his pants/undies situation. I’m not sure where her husband would have been at this time, either. It doesn’t make sense that he was there at the time, but his whereabouts that night are an unknown for me. I’d guess he stayed at the apartments to be her alibi and Marcus came to her rescue. She could have been the one to use the ashtray and panicked. Failing that, Marcus could have snuck in and done the deed in defense of Ashley. After that, who knows. Ashley was supposedly at the apartments the next morning and Marcus… who knows? Maybe he was also there and they were all alibi’s together. I vaguely recall that officer saying they’d interviewed him already. Thing is, he disappeared shortly after all that, moving back in with his father in Horseshoe Bend or somewhere, hours away.
And there you have it. My side of the weird cold case murder of Ronnie McCorkle. It was a bit traumatizing for me, even though during the entire ordeal I was mostly in shock and numb. I wasn’t worried that I’d have a murder pinned on me, because not only was I nowhere near the incident, I never harbored that kind of hatred for the man. Sure, he was a sleaze and shady, but I was able to fend off his advances. He never laid a hand on me or took it past verbal shit.
Whew. Now I’ll provide some other weird shit, provided a decade or better later, because seeing and hearing these random strangers talk so well about him makes me cringe. It’s not that I want to set any records straight or anything, but the idea that these strangers can tout his “good nature” is just… fuckin weird.
Who IS EnchiPants?! 
One response to “A Cold Case”
[…] Dementor) in May of 2013, shortly after I’d been fired from the apartment management job (See Here). A friend of mine had set me up to interview with some dude that was opening a new pizza joint on […]
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