Caregiver Murders Elderly Woman, Flees In Uber, Police Say

FLORISSANT, MO — Tommie Coffer Jr. stabbed a 94-year-old woman in his care multiple times in the face, police say, then called an uber to flee the scene. Later, Coffer and his mother, both caregivers for the victim, called police, saying they had found the woman dead in her home. Investigators initially believed Geneva Richardson's death to be fall-related, but upon closer examination discovered stab wounds, as well as defensive cuts on her hands — she had died fighting.

Now, Coffer, 54, is being held on a $500,000 bond, charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action. It is unclear exactly how police came to suspect Coffer — something about his story didn't add up, a police spokesman said — but when police began to trace his route home, they found a trash bag containing blood soaked clothes and a latex glove on a burn pile near where the Uber had dropped him off. A search warrant turned up more evidence at Coffer's home.

This is not the first murder in which Coffer has been implicated. The Post-Dispatch reports he was acquitted of the 1995 murder of 30-year-old St. Louis man Gary Griggs, who had been found with his throat slashed, and was accused by the family of Richard Spears, a 61-year-old man found murdered in a Schnucks parking lot, of being complicit in Spears' disappearance and eventual death in 1998.

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