Man to be charged with 2017 murder of woman found dead on White River
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A Greenwood man is scheduled to be formally charged Thursday morning with murdering a woman found dead along the White River in 2017, according to court and jail documents.
Riki Eaton, 33, was listed Wednesday as an inmate in the Marion County Jail on a preliminary charge of murder.
People who were fishing on the White River about 11:30 a.m. Feb. 13, 2017, called Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department to say they’d found a body on the river near the 2700 block of South Harding Street. The coroner’s office a few days later identified the victim as Jenny Boltinghouse, 30.
In 2017, an IMPD investigator learned Boltinghouse had been accused of stealing items from a storage unit and pawning them at a local scrap yard shortly before she was found dead.
Police got their break in the case after Eaton was formally charged May 6 of this year with criminal trespass and resisting law enforcement in Johnson Superior Court 3 in Franklin. In that case, a Greenwood Police Department investigator shared with IMPD that a witness said Eaton had killed Boltinghouse “by shooting her multiple times in the head.”
IMPD interviewed other witnesses this spring and summer, and granted some of them immunity from prosecution to tell what they knew about Eaton, court documents said. Multiple witnesses indicated Eaton had talked to them about shooting and killing Boltinghouse.
A coroner’s report said Boltinghouse was shot in the head three times and once in the right forearm, court documents said.
IMPD has not yet released information about the arrest, but a jail-booking document says Eaton’s next court date is at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
In his most recent interview with an IMPD investigator on Monday, Eaton “denied knowing anything about the murder of Jenny Boltinghouse and had not seen Jenny for a couple weeks prior to her death,” according to court documents.
