Assistant Macomb County Prosecutor Steve Fox, in arguing for a $500,000 bond for Booker, said investigators discovered that Deandre Howard Booker fled to Flint, where he conducted internet searches…
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Mother of missing Warren woman believes her daughter is deceased
The mother of a missing Warren woman said her ex-boyfriend had been stalking her in the days and weeks before she went missing and she now believes her daughter is deceased.
Monika Elkins spoke to the media Thursday morning following the arraignment of DeAndre Howard Booker, 32, of Roseville, before Judge Alyia Hakim of 39th District Court on a charge of lying to police in connection with the 30-year-old’s disappearance. Ashley Elkins, the mother of two sons, was last seen leaving her home by her family about 8:30 a.m. Jan. 2 and was known to be at Booker’s apartment complex that afternoon, police said.
Booker, who appeared remotely via video, is being held in the Macomb County Jail in lieu of a $250,000 cash or surety bond and faces a Jan. 22 probable-cause conference in front of 39th District Court Judge Joseph Boedeker.
The couple broke up in September after dating about a year.
“A friend of hers said she felt like somebody was always following her in her car” since then, Monika Elkins said.
When asked why her daughter broke up with him, she said they discovered Booker had created a half-dozen fake commenters who were always responding to his Facebook posts.
“That’s when we started realizing something was not right,” she said. “He was good with computers and doing things on them, making fake documents. We just really don’t know who he was. We thought we knew but we really didn’t.”
She immediately suspected his involvement with her disappearance when she learned he made an online appointment under a different name to have his hair cut by Elkins, who runs a home salon. When he showed up and Elkins realized it was him who made the appointment, she would not answer the door.
While they were together, Ashley Elkins at one point moved her hair-style business to a building on Eight Mile Road because Booker was jealous about men going to her home for appointments, Monika Elkins said.
She is especially saddened because Booker had become part of the family, attended family gatherings and “played ball at the park” with Ashley Elkins’ two sons, ages 7 and 10, and took them to get haircuts.
“We accepted him in our family,” she said. “He was around the whole family. I thought he was the one who was going to marry her.
She said her daughter’s two sons have been asking to see their mom and are devastated she is gone.
She said she would like to ask Booker, “‘You didn’t know how it would affect these boys? … You don’t care about them.’ It’s just really sad he didn’t care about them.”
While she is devastated about the loss of her daughter, she said she hasn’t “broke down” to be strong for her two grandchildren.
“It’s just heartbreaking. She didn’t deserve this,” she said of her daughter, who has two younger sisters.
Fox also revealed that Booker went AWOL – Absent Without Leave – from the Army in 2017 and received a “less than honorable discharge.”
“It wasn’t a dishonorable discharge, but it was by less than honorable means,” he said.
He said Booker lied to police during their investigation of Elkins’ disappearance “underlying obviously a crime of violence, potentially.”
On Wednesday, investigators said evidence seized led them to believe there was a “strong possibility” of foul play being involved in Elkins’ disappearance. Police also confiscated a trash dumpster from the apartment complex.
“The suspect is being held on charges relating to this case,” Roseville Police Chief Mitch Berlin said. “Our information is this was a homicide as all the evidence is indicating there was a violent end.”
