The two bodies were discovered this year in front of the last house on a dead-end road in Columbus, Georgia. The women — close friends who worked together as billing specialists — had been shot to death.
Two days later, on March 9, a convicted sex offender was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head at his home next door.
In the three months since, there have been no arrests and authorities in the city of roughly 200,000 have offered few details about the unsolved deaths of Juantonja Richmond, 52; Ronisha Anderson, 51; or Solomon Adams, 65.
Interviews and documents first reported by NBC News reveal conflicting accounts of key details from the investigation into the women’s deaths, including where one of the bodies was found and who may be responsible for the fatal shootings.
Their relatives are frustrated at what they described as a lack of progress and little communication from investigators.
“We need some justice,” said Richmond’s sister, Danita Tate, 55. “We need some answers. I have no faith in the Columbus Police Department.”
A spokeswoman for the Columbus Police Department, Brittany Santiago, said in a statement Friday that the department’s violent crimes unit is “working diligently to bring the case to a resolve and, more importantly, bring the victims’ families closure.”
The department is awaiting results from a state law enforcement lab, the statement added.
The department did not respond to a request for additional comment.
For the Richmond family, the killing is especially painful: 14 years ago, Danita’s younger sister, Chiquita Tate, was brutally killed in the family’s hometown of Baton Rouge. The rising criminal defense lawyer’s husband was convicted of manslaughter after she was found stabbed dozens of times inside her law office.
“These girls were making something of themselves,” said another sister, Robin Tate. “We don’t have nobody but us. That’s why it hurts so bad.”
Is neighbor linked to deaths?
A possible motive in the killings remains unclear, as is a potential link between the fatal shootings of the friends and neighbor Solomon Adams. A coroner’s report obtained by NBC News shows that Adams left several notes around his home suggesting that he had been targeted by an “individual and or gang members.”
The deputy coroner who wrote the report, Elizabeth Allison, said it was her belief that his death may have been self-inflicted. It wasn’t clear if he was involved in the fatal shootings of Richmond and Anderson, she wrote.
In a brief phone call Friday, Allison declined to comment on the report, saying the coroner’s office shouldn’t have released it.
In a separate report that was shared with NBC News, an autopsy for Richmond that the coroner’s office gave to a representative for Richmond’s family appears to offer a more definitive conclusion: Richmond and Anderson “were believed to have been shot by an individual who was found dead in his residence after having apparently shot himself.”
The autopsy does not identify Adams by name, but his body was found in his bedroom after his estranged wife called 911 for a welfare check, according to the coroner’s report. He had been shot once in the left side of his head.
In an interview, Adams’ estranged wife, Arimentha Adams, offered another conflicting take: when she spoke to someone from the police department after her husband’s death, she said, she was told “he had nothing to do with the two women.”
She didn’t recall whom from the department she spoke with but said she was given the information during a phone call. The department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Day before his death, man asked ex to call police
Arimentha Adams lives in Alabama but said she was still legally married to Solomon Adams at the time of his death. The two met and married after he was released from a Florida prison on child sex crime charges in 2007, according to the state’s sex offender registry.
They “went their separate ways” after more than a decade, she said, but still talked by phone after his move to Georgia nearly two years ago.
During a phone call on March 8 — the day after Anderson and Richmond were found dead — Solomon Adams told his wife to call the police at 2 p.m. the following day, she said. Arimentha Adams said she didn’t ask why, he didn’t offer a reason and she didn’t do as he asked.
“We were separated,” she said. “I didn’t ask.”
It wasn’t until the next day, when she couldn’t reach him, that she called authorities, she said.
In her interview with NBC News, Arimentha Adams described her husband’s mood during the Wednesday conversation as “good.” But in a phone call with the deputy coroner after Solomon Adams’ body was found, she described his demeanor differently, according to the report.
“He sounded quite nervous,” the report says, describing Arimentha Adams’ account of the phone call.
Arimentha Adams couldn’t be reached for clarification.
Pair killed minutes after starting at unusual hour
The family says another mysterious detail in the killings came in a text message from Anderson to Richmond the night before their bodies were found. Richmond’s relatives gained access to the message after her death and provided it to NBC News.
Danita Tate said Richmond, a former Army sergeant and “bright light who lit up any room she went in,” had moved to Georgia decades ago and became close friends with Anderson, a mother of three known for her chocolate chip cookies and the “open door and full fridge” she offered to “whomever was in need,” her family said in a statement.
Relatives said the pair began working together as billing specialists for Healing Minds Institute, a therapy practice established in 2020 by Anderson’s ex-husband, Xavier McCaskey, according to a filing with the secretary of state’s office.
They usually did billing together at the home where Anderson and McCaskey still lived, Anderson’s family said.
In the text message, Anderson told Richmond they would start working at 11:30 a.m. the next day, a time that was notable, Danita Tate said, because it was more than an hour before they typically went to work.
In the message, Anderson doesn’t say why Richmond needed to work early. According to a brief statement the Columbus Police Department released the day of their deaths, authorities were dispatched to the home at 11:35 a.m. after a report of a shooting.
Authorities offered conflicting accounts of where the bodies were found. According to the police statement, responding officers found them in the front yard. But Richmond’s autopsy says she was found in a car.
Allison, the deputy coroner, referred a question about the discrepancy to the police department, which did not respond to a request for comment Friday night.
The women were pronounced dead at 12:15 p.m., according to the statement. Anderson was shot in the head, according to a death certificate provided to NBC News by her family. Richmond was shot twice — once in the neck and once in the chest, according to the autopsy.
“Why did they have to work early to do billing?” Tate said. “Who knew that Tonja would pull up that time of morning?”
The police department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about the text message.
McCaskey did not respond to interview requests.
Set to move out on her own
McCaskey, who has described himself to local media as a former gang member and has served on a city planning commission, married Anderson in May 2021 after they’d been together for years, according to Anderson’s family.
They separated eight months later and divorced last October over what the family described as “irreconcilable differences.”
Before Anderson was killed, the family said, she had found a new home and was preparing to move from the house she shared with McCaskey.
In a local TV report published last month, McCaskey is seen on camera visibly upset at the scene of the killings. Speaking to a reporter for the station, he discussed Solomon Adams’ criminal history and appeared to accuse him of the fatal shootings.
The report did not provide evidence linking Solomon Adams to the killings and said it could not confirm McCaskey’s claim with the Columbus Police Department.
McCaskey did not respond to requests for comment.
In its statement, Anderson’s family said they were disappointed that there appeared to be few leads into the events of March 7, a day that will forever be “etched into the minds and nightmares of the Anderson family,” the statement said.
The family added that it is hopeful that “shedding some light on this story will help bring those responsible for this heinous crime” to justice.
Then, the statement said, “our family can finally have peace.”
CORRECTION (June 20, 2023. 11:20 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated Chiquita Tate’s relationship to Danita Tate. Chiquita was her younger sister, not older sister.