Capital murder arrest made in 15-year-old Geneva slaying

Authorities hope a recent capital murder indictment returned by a Geneva County grand jury will help give some closure to the family of a 68-year-old Geneva man who was killed nearly 15 years ago.

According to an e-mailed statement from the Geneva County District Attorney’s Office, the indictment charged Patrick Cochran with capital murder in the slaying of R.J. McKenzie. The statement said Cochran was 19 years old at the time of the murder on Dec. 23, 1994.

Geneva County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Tony Helms said Cochran has been charged with killing McKenzie during a robbery at his Geneva home. According to the statement, the indictment charges Cochran with brutally beating McKenzie with a fire extinguisher and fatally stabbing him multiple times in his Hart Street home in Geneva.

“Everything at this point and time points directly to him,” Helms said. “I had talked with his nephew, and I had promised him we would open it back up and see if we couldn’t get him some resolution.”

Helms said the slaying was not a random act of violence, but that the two men were acquaintances at the time.

Helms said a ceramic statue was also reportedly used as a weapon during the murder. According to a previous Eagle report, McKenzie was stabbed at least a dozen times, and detectives seized a large kitchen knife and a serrated bread knife as evidence in the case.

According to the statement, the capital murder warrant was recently served on Cochran at a Florida state prison in Graceville, Fla. Florida Department of Corrections records show Cochran is serving a 10-year sentence on a lewd and lascivious battery against a child 12 to 15 years old out of Holmes County, Fla.

Records show Cochran is due to be released on the Florida charge in 2011. Geneva County authorities have a hold placed on Cochran for the capital murder charge.

Charges were not initially filed in the McKenzie homicide after detectives found conflicting statements from witnesses. The case remained inactive until December 2007 when Alabama Bureau of Investigation Agent David McGowan, Geneva Police Department Lt. Investigator Ricky Morgan, Assistant Geneva County District Attorney Stephen Smith and Helms reopened the case.

Morgan, who had been hired as a police officer in Geneva earlier that year, said he very clearly remembered McKenzie’s death.

“The amount of violence that was involved in it. I’ve never seen one that was that brutal, that was definitely a deciding ... in opening the case back up,” Morgan said. “Just the not knowing can be difficult for the family.”