In the early morning hours of Mother's Day, May 13, 2018, the life of Patricia Sanders, a 37-year-old Black/African American woman, was tragically cut short in her Topeka, Kansas home. Police were dispatched to her residence in the 1300 block of S.E. Madison around 2:30 a.m. following a report of a shooting. Upon their arrival, they found Sanders deceased at the scene.
The investigation into her death was immediately treated as a homicide.
In the days that followed, Topeka police arrested two men in connection with the killing. Twenty-seven-year-old Rahnel Erik Rayford was taken into custody on May 17, followed by the arrest of 29-year-old Justin Lee McCoy early the next morning. However, their time in custody was brief. A Shawnee County district judge determined that there was not enough evidence to hold either man, and they were subsequently released on May 18, though they remained persons of interest in the ongoing investigation.
The path to justice proved to be a winding one. In a later development, a grand jury indicted both Rayford and McCoy. McCoy faced a charge of first-degree murder, but in February 2019, the charges against him were dropped to allow for further investigation into new information that had surfaced. This was the second time he had been freed in connection with the case. Rayford was scheduled to stand trial on a murder charge. The investigation into the death of Patricia Sanders involved the analysis of DNA evidence and was described by the police chief as being connected to an "intertwined" series of crimes involving multiple individuals.
