A man has been charged in connection with the 1985 cold case death in Warren County.
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Randy McAllister, 62, of Columbus, has been charged with the murder of John Warren, according to Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell.
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Warren was staying at the Holiday Inn in Middletown near I-75 on Oct. 16, 1985.
He was a traveling salesman for an auto parts company and was staying in Warren County for sales meetings.
Warren was found dead in his hotel room and several items, including his 1985 Oldsmobile, were taken, Fornshell said.
Authorities in Dalton, Georgia, found some of Warren’s property and other items behind a Cracker Barrel restaurant a few days later.
Warren’s car was also found in Redington Beach, Florida, Fornshell said.
Detectives followed several leads at the time, but there wasn’t sufficient evidence to move forward with the case.
In 2019, Warren County Sheriff’s Office detectives started investigating the case.
“A number of items that were originally recovered from all three crime scenes were submitted to the crime lab for analysis,” Fornshell said.
Detectives used the new information to identify McAlliser and a now-deceased accomplice as potential suspects.
The Warren County Prosecutor’s Office and detectives have continued to investigate the case since 2021, Fornshell said.
Fornshell said his office presented the case to a grand jury at the end of June 2026.
As a result, a Warren County Grand Jury indicted McCallister for both aggravated murder and murder.
“‘Cold case’ investigations are ‘cold’ for a reason. Many times there is some evidence that points to a suspect, but just not enough evidence to move forward. And leads diminish over time. But particularly over the past five years, Warren County Sheriff’s Office detectives have been tenacious in their investigation of this case to get it to a point that our office believed we had sufficient evidence to charge McCallister for the murder of John Warren. And the grand jury agreed,” Fornshell said.
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