Nearly 10 months after two close friends and a neighbor were fatally shot days apart in Georgia, authorities have offered the public few answers about their deaths. But a relative of one of the victims said police have identified the possible killer and are planning to close the case in a decision that has left her “heartbroken” and “frustrated.”
Therasa Johnson’s younger sister Ronisha “Nikki” Anderson was one of the friends gunned down on March 7 outside the home office where the victims worked in Columbus, Georgia. Johnson said the lead detective investigating the killings told her earlier this month that police were planning to close the case.
According to Johnson, 54, the detective said the evidence pointed to the neighbor, Solomon Adams, who appears to have “snapped” and killed Anderson, 51, and Juantonja Richmond, 52.
The detective, Anthony Locey, of the Columbus Police Department, declined to comment on his conversation with Johnson. He said the department plans to release information on the case in the new year.
Another sister of Anderson’s, Joyce Casey, said Locey also told her in a separate phone call in November that the department is planning to close the case. Neither sister has spoken to the detective in recent weeks, and it’s possible police have changed their plans and their view of the investigation.
A police spokeswoman declined to comment, but previously said that the department’s violent crimes unit was “working diligently to bring the case to a resolve and, more importantly, bring the victims’ families closure.”
Anderson, a mother of three who did billing for her ex-husband’s counseling practice, was shot once in the head, her death certificate shows.
Richmond, a former Army sergeant who worked with Anderson, was hit with two bullets — one in the neck and one in the chest, according to her autopsy.
Two days after the women were killed, Adams, 65, a convicted sex offender who served more than a decade in a Florida prison before his release in 2007, was found dead in his bedroom, a coroner’s death report shows.
Adams’ house — the second to last on a dead-end residential street southeast of downtown Columbus — was next to the home where Anderson lived and worked.
Johnson said the detective told her a witness who heard the gunfire looked out her window and saw Adams in the home’s front yard at the time of the killings. His hands were up, as if he were in shock or panicking, the detective said, according to Johnson.
Ballistics testing showed that the same gun was used in all three deaths, Johnson said the detective told her.
Another link hinges on Adams’ estranged wife: Shortly after the killings, he told her to have police summoned to his home the following day. Adams said he’d done “something bad,” Johnson recalled the detective saying, citing the estranged wife.
Johnson and other relatives said they’re furious with how the department has handled the investigation and its plan to close the case. That view was echoed by Richmond’s relatives.
Andrionna Williams, a spokeswoman for Richmond’s family, said they learned of the apparent decision not from authorities, but from Anderson’s family.
“They’re hurting,” Williams said. “That hurt is now anger.”
Locey, the detective, declined to comment.
‘It doesn’t make sense’
Johnson said her frustration is partly based on her family’s acrimonious relationship with the Columbus Police Department and what she views as its poor communication with her and her relatives.
Earlier this year, after Johnson said she hadn’t heard anything from investigators for months, she tried reaching out to Columbus’ police chief. Johnson’s daughter, Brittany Anderson, was listening to the call and said it was answered by an investigator who cut off her mother and responded rudely to the request for information.
Brittany said that when she interrupted and asked the investigator to calm down, the investigator appeared to threaten her. Brittany filed a complaint with the department in July that authorities later dismissed because the allegations couldn’t be substantiated, according to a copy of the dismissal provided to NBC News.
The family also questioned the lead detective’s description of a possible motive, saying it didn’t add up.
According to Brittany, as far as her family knows, Adams and Anderson had a good neighborly relationship: If a delivery driver left a package outside the fence, Adams would place it on the steps of Anderson’s home.
Brittany recalled seeing cellphone video showing her aunt handing Adams a plate of food over the fence during a celebratory barbecue — and Adams thanking her.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Johnson said. “Why all of a sudden does this man snap?”
Relatives also questioned certain aspects of the investigation and some of the evidence that Johnson said the detective cited. Reporting earlier this year by NBC News found conflicting accounts of key details from that investigation, including where one of the women’s bodies was found.
For months, Brittany said, investigators said there were no witnesses to the killings. But now they’ve told the family someone heard gunfire and saw Adams in an apparent panic but did not call 911, she said.
That call was made by a delivery driver who discovered the women’s bodies, Brittany said, citing a conversation she had with a detective after her aunt’s death. NBC News’ efforts to reach neighbors in the area were unsuccessful.
A recent divorce
When Joyce Casey, Nikki Anderson’s younger sister, called the lead detective, Locey, last month, she said he referred to a man who had been routinely calling the investigator and seeking information about the case as Anderson’s spouse — not as her ex-husband.
“He seems to be a good guy,” Casey recalled the detective saying of Anderson’s ex-husband, Xavier McCaskey. “He calls up here all the time trying to figure out what’s going on with her.”
“I said, ‘You didn’t find that suspicious that he’s calling all the time?’” Casey recalled saying.
Locey declined to comment.
After a lengthy relationship and a brief marriage — Anderson and McCaskey were married in May 2021 — Anderson filed for divorce a little over a year later, divorce records show.
When Anderson and Richmond were killed, they were working as billing specialists for McCaskey’s counseling practice, Healing Minds Institute. McCaskey has also identified himself to local media as a former gang member and has served on a city planning commission.
Anderson was in the process of moving out of their home when she was gunned down, relatives have said.
McCaskey referred a detailed list of questions to his lawyer, who did not respond to requests for comment. McCaskey has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the three deaths.
Relatives of Anderson’s described the former couple’s relationship as turbulent. In a text message to Brittany that was reviewed by NBC News, Nikki Anderson said he talked about cheating “all the time.”
A few months before she filed for divorce, that turbulence spilled into public view during a celebration for Anderson’s birthday. They were separated at the time, according to divorce records, though Casey said she believes her sister was still trying to make the relationship work.
They were at a club when she saw McCaskey dancing with another woman, Casey said. Upset, Anderson walked out of her own party, Casey said.
When Anderson filed for divorce three months later, McCaskey promised monthly alimony payments of at least $3,500, a lifetime position with his counseling practice and either a new home or the financial means to buy one, according to an agreement filed in Muscogee County Superior Court. But according to Brittany, who represented her aunt in the divorce, when the separation was finalized that October, Anderson had withdrawn her alimony claim.
Brittany wasn’t sure why — Anderson didn’t tell her when she dropped it — and Brittany didn’t know whether she and McCaskey had come up with a different arrangement. The divorce judgment, which notes the withdrawal, does not provide additional details.
A financial affidavit filed in the divorce shows that McCaskey was making more than $3,000 in monthly debt payments to banks, credit cards and a technical school in Colorado.
IRS records show his nonprofit counseling practice had gross receipts of less than $50,000 annually for 2021 and 2022, though his income in the affidavit is listed as $28,000 per month, or $336,000 annually. The affidavit does not list his income sources and it’s unclear where else he may have worked besides Healing Minds.
But McCaskey was still supposed to provide Anderson with a new home, Brittany said, and in the weeks before she was killed, she’d finally found one. In a phone call to Anderson’s older sister, Therasa Johnson, McCaskey said the process was nearly done.
In the call, which McCaskey made shortly after Anderson’s death and which Johnson recorded and provided to NBC News, he said: “She was going to sign on her house next week and then close.”
‘I’ve completely lost hope’
McCaskey dialed Johnson immediately after the shooting, while he was still at the scene of the killings.
In the recording, McCaskey described what was unfolding around him: An ambulance was pulling up. So was an official from the coroner’s office.
“It’s real,” he said, according to the recording.
During the roughly three-minute clip, McCaskey said he would never hurt his ex-wife. And he described her as his best friend.
“Even after the divorce, we got closer,” he said.
In a local TV report this spring, McCaskey appeared visibly upset at the scene. He discussed Solomon Adams’ criminal history and appeared to accuse him of the fatal shootings during an interview with a reporter for the station.
But Anderson’s relatives questioned other things McCaskey did in the aftermath of the shooting. In a phone call to Johnson, he said that on March 8 — one day after Anderson and Richmond were killed — he and a relative forced their way into Adams’ home after he refused to let them in, Johnson said.
They “just wanted to talk to him,” Johnson recalled McCaskey saying. When they entered, McCaskey said Adams shot at them, according to Johnson.
After Johnson’s phone call with McCaskey, she said he sent her a picture of what he described as evidence of the shooting: a close-up of three bullet holes in a window. Johnson provided a screenshot of the text to NBC News.
On March 9, Adams was found dead in his bedroom after his estranged wife, who lives in Alabama, requested a welfare check, according to a coroner’s report. The report listed his cause of death as a single gunshot wound to the head.
The deputy coroner who wrote the report said the gunshot may have been self-inflicted. Scattered around his home, the official wrote, were notes suggesting he had been targeted by “an individual and or gang members.” Authorities have not provided additional details about Adams’ death and it isn’t clear if it was ruled a suicide.
Adams’ estranged wife, Arimentha Adams, told NBC News earlier this year that he had called her after Anderson and Richmond were fatally shot and asked her to summon authorities to his home the next day.
She told NBC News that she did not ask him why — “We were separated; I didn’t ask.” — and she said someone from the Columbus Police Department later told her Adams had nothing to do with his neighbors’ deaths.
According to the detective, Johnson said, Solomon Adams told his estranged wife that he had done something bad. But in the previous interview with NBC News, Arimentha Adams did not indicate that was part of her conversation with her husband.
She did not respond to a recent phone call seeking clarification.
To Johnson, the department’s apparent decision to close the case makes little sense. The family is now planning to hire a private detective to conduct what they hope will be a proper investigation.
“I’m numb,” Johnson said. “I’m frustrated with the police department. I’m heartbroken by the police department. The way they handled this whole thing — I’ve completely lost hope.”