Jacqueline Best, a 39-year-old White/Caucasian woman from Montgomery, Alabama, was found dead during the early morning hours of September 24, 2023, after emergency crews responded to a house fire in the 3500 block of Fairground Road. Firefighters were called to the residence at approximately 5:30 a.m. after smoke and flames were reported coming from the home. Once the fire was extinguished, Best's body was discovered inside.
What initially appeared to be a fatal residential fire soon became the focus of a homicide investigation.
Best's body was transported to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for an autopsy. The examination determined that she had not died as a result of the fire but from a gunshot wound. Montgomery police subsequently classified her death as a homicide and began investigating the circumstances surrounding both the shooting and the fire. At the time the homicide determination was announced, authorities released few additional details and did not publicly identify a suspect or disclose what may have happened inside the residence before the fire began.
The investigation continued for more than two months before Montgomery police announced an arrest. On December 6, 2023, authorities identified Darren Price, then 32 and also from Montgomery, as the man accused of killing Best. Police charged Price with murder and first-degree arson, alleging that he shot Best and intentionally set the Fairground Road residence on fire. He was taken into custody and booked into the Montgomery County Detention Facility without bond. Authorities did not publicly disclose a motive for the killing or explain what relationship, if any, existed between Best and Price.
Price's arrest was also connected to two separate armed-robbery investigations. Police identified him as the suspect in robberies committed on December 3 and December 6, 2023, including an alleged robbery at a hotel in the 4000 block of Troy Highway and another at a gas station in the 1000 block of Eastern Boulevard. In addition to the murder and arson charges stemming from Best's death, Price was charged with two counts of first-degree robbery and with being a certain person forbidden from possessing a firearm. Those additional allegations were separate from the September homicide but were announced when police revealed his arrest.
The arrest transformed a case that had begun with firefighters entering a burning Montgomery home into a prosecution alleging that the fire had been deliberately set following a fatal shooting. Police publicly accused Price of responsibility for both Best's death and the fire intended at the residence, but the available published reporting located for the case does not document a subsequent trial, guilty plea, conviction, or sentencing in Best's killing. The publicly reported case therefore establishes an arrest and formal criminal charges against Price, while leaving the ultimate disposition of those charges unclear in the available news coverage.
