A Roseville man will stand trial in the disappearance and presumed murder of his ex-girlfriend, a mother of two from Warren, just over a year ago.
Deandre Booker, 33, was bound over to Macomb County Circuit Court on Wednesday, Jan. 7, on murder and four other charges in the case involving the Jan. 2, 2025, disappearance of Ashley Elkins.
Judge Joseph Boedeker of 39th District Court in Roseville ruled after oral arguments and written briefs from attorneys on both sides. His ruling came months after the start of a preliminary exam that started in August and spanned four separate days and in the presence of Elkins’ relatives.
County prosecutors had 190 exhibits and the defense a handful more, including many videos, and numerous witnesses who took the stand, including Elkins’ mother and police officers from Roseville and Warren.
Booker was being held in the county jail. He appeared in the courtroom on the first day of the exam, Aug. 6, but because of disruptive behavior, he attended subsequent days of the exam via video from a holding cell in the courthouse. He attended the Wednesday, Jan. 7, hearing via video from inside the county jail.
Elkins, 30, was a mother of two young boys. She was last seen on Jan. 2, 2025, when she told her family that she was running errands but never returned. She was last seen on video walking toward Booker’s apartment complex.
Authorities searched Booker’s apartment complex — including a trash bin — and spent a week searching a landfill in Lenox Township after her disappearance. Elkins’ car was found Jan. 7, 2025, around 13 Mile Road and Little Mack Avenue in Roseville, about 4 miles from Booker’s apartment complex.
Elkins has not been located.
Searches of Booker’s apartment were done Jan. 3, 2025, one day after Elkins’ family looked there for her, and another Jan. 4, 2025, after Booker asked police to check on his apartment as it may have been broken into. During the second search, a Roseville police officer testified he found drops of blood in the apartment.
“That’s the difficulty I really have with this case is the fact that you had seven police officers from two different police departments go into that apartment on Jan. 3 and find nothing,” Booker’s attorney, Robbie Lang, said after the hearing. “Every single one of them writes in their reports or gets on the phone with their immediate supervisor and says there’s no signs of foul play, there’s no signs of a struggle, there’s no odor of bleach, there’s nothing that looks like a homicide took place there.”
The next afternoon, Lang said, police went back in and found droplets of blood. He said the apartment had been open, and that the Elkins family had been there and took Booker’s phone. He said Booker wasn’t there, and Elkins’ family “saw no blood, they saw no evidence.”
The Roseville police sergeant in charge of the case had testified there were multiple inconsistencies in conversations with Booker, surveillance video at Booker’s apartment complex showing someone pushing something heavy in a shopping cart to a trash bin and blood evidence that belonged to Elkins, including in a trash bin near the apartment complex.
The sergeant testified in August that there had been no bank account or cellphone activity for Elkins, and she hadn’t communicated with her family or children. When Lang asked the sergeant whether he had definitive proof that Elkins was dead, he said no. The sergeant also testified that he could not say how Elkins died.
Another Roseville police detective testified in August that Booker was located at a house in Flint, where a coat, pants with tears, a hat and shoes that appeared to be similar to those worn by the person in the surveillance videos, were found. The coat had Elkins’ blood and Booker’s DNA on it.
Boedeker said during his bind-over decision that he believed there was probable cause that not only a homicide occurred but it was premeditated. He pointed to “crucial pieces of evidence” including Google searches that Booker did prior to and after Elkins’ disappearance and the steps Booker took to misrepresent information to the sergeant.
Boedeker said the Google searches included topics such as the quietest gun without a silencer, shooting a gun through a pillow, what happens to trash after it’s picked up and how to cheat a polygraph.
He said it appears “very improbable” that Elkins simply disappeared and more probable that something happened to her against her will. Though her body hasn’t been found, Boedeker said prosecutors presented a “great deal of evidence” regarding what happened to her.
Lang told Boedeker before his ruling that he didn’t think the videos showed anything that anyone could make out as it was too dark and too far away. He argued that there wasn’t enough facts, testimony or evidence to show any crime was committed by Booker and asked for the murder charge to be dismissed.
Assistant Prosecutor Carmen DeFranco argued the evidence included DNA, an earring and bullet fragment found in the bathtub drain and the Google searches, including one just 10 minutes before Elkins arrived at the apartment complex.
County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said in a news release after the hearing that Booker is charged with a “deeply disturbing crime.” He said his office is “committed to ensuring that justice is served through a fair and thorough legal process.”
(This story has been updated with additional information.)
Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on X: @challreporter.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Man to stand trial in disappearance of missing Warren mom
Reporting by Christina Hall, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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