12/30/2021- 9:28 p.m.
We obtained a police affidavit that provides more information about what happened in the lead-up to the arrest of the suspect, Rhonda Essenpreis, in what investigators say was a murder carried out “in a violent and brutal manner.”
The affidavit says officers responded to a call of a drug overdose to the home on Scarlet Maple Court in Signal Mountain early Wednesday morning.
Dispatchers told officers a woman had called saying her mother told her she had overdosed on pills at that residence.
Arriving officers found the front door locked, with the woman inside refusing to respond to officers. The woman, later identified as Essenpreis, was “acting suspiciously by hiding partially behind a wall located in the front hallway of the residence,” according to the affidavit.
A friend of the woman inside the house arrived a short time later and let officers in.
Those officers found the victim, Randall Paul Otto, seated in a chair in the living room, dead from apparent knife wounds. Signal Mountain Police Chief Mike Williams later told us Otto was from out of town.
The arrest affidavit says Essenpreis then ran into a bedroom and barricaded herself. Officers used fire department breaching tools to get into the bedroom, and found Essenpreis lying on a bed with “blood on her hands, feet and clothing.” Officers also say they found blood on the bedsheets.
An ambulance took Essenpreis to the hospital for a possible narcotics overdose.
Officers evaluated Essenpreis at the hospital, and say they found “no defensive wounds” on her body, except for a cut on her right middle finger that was “consistent with using the knife in an aggressive manner.” Detectives say they took DNA swabs on Essenpreis of what was believed to be the blood of the victim, Otto.
After she was read her Miranda rights, Essenpreis invoked her right to remain silent about what happened.
Back at the Scarlet Maple Court residence, investigators determined Otto had been stabbed three times, in this order: In the back of his head, on his upper left shoulder, and in his upper left chest area – which appeared to penetrate his internal organs and ultimately cause his death. The murder weapon appeared to be a “large butcher knife,” that investigators say was covered in blood.
Detectives found a “large blood stain” in the living room next to a packed suitcase, along with other blood stains on a couch and furniture nearby. The stains indicated to investigators that Otto had tried to crawl away from his attacker.
Investigators later learned that Otto and Essenpreis were in a “romantic or sexual relationship,” and that the deadly incident was consistent with a “domestic violence-type homicide” — one that appears to have been followed by Essenpreis trying to kill herself.
