Valley Police Captain Chris Daniel has been investigating the murder of Renee Eldridge since the very beginning in early July of 2015. Captain Daniel testified in the trial of Stacey Gray and has made the trek back from Valley, AL to Columbus every day since to sit in the gallery and watch the court proceedings.
The detective was one of the first investigators on scene on July 7, 2015, when Eldridge’s body was discovered bound and tied to a cinderblock, face down in Valley Creek, three days after going missing from her Columbus home. “It’s just something I want to see through to the end because I believe that Mr. Gray is guilty and I want to see him pay for what he did to her,” Captain Daniel told Now Network News.
Stacey Gray was initially charged with capital murder in the state of Alabama until a Chambers County judge ruled the state failed to provide lawyers for Stacey Gray with DNA evidence. The murder charge was dropped in Alabama, and Gray was extradited back to Columbus in June of 2021. He was then indicted for malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping, rape and aggravated assault in Muscogee County.
“This case has been on my mind for the last ten years, so I would revisit it, go through the case file from time to time, and discuss it with our Assistant District Attorney, Ms. Taylor Lee Stokes, who also wants this case to end with a guilty verdict. We believe it would have in Alabama if it had been able to go in front of a jury. I do think that the district attorney, Mr. Kelly here has done an excellent job; him and his team have done an excellent job of presenting the case. Now it’s just up to the jury,” Captain Daniel said.
The Valley detective has now sat through two days of deliberations and multiple jury requests to review surveillance video introduced at trial. The jury was unable to reach a verdict before the Thanksgiving break. “You never can tell how a jury is gonna go. You can think you’ve presented the best case that you can possibly present and all it takes is just one person to disagree,” he said.
If convicted of the charges, Stacey Gray faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
