He told her to watch over the $40,000 in his motel room. It was a costly mistake.

The sheriff’s report plays out like the plot of a neo-noir thriller. Or at least the beginnings of one. And this one starts at a budget motel off Interstate 475 in west Macon. Sometime in the night on March 7, a 62-year-old Lizella man who had a room there at the Bridgeview Inn and Suites off Eisenhower Parkway asked a female friend to do him a favor. According to a Bibb County sheriff’s report, the man had $40,000 cash in his room and he needed someone to keep an eye on it. He asked the friend, a 32-year-old Macon woman, to, as the report puts it, watch over the cash “while he went out gambling, among other things,” well into the predawn hours of March 8. It wasn’t clear why the guy had so much money in his room, but the report said he had known the woman for about half a decade and “he trusted her a lot.” So he left the woman to watch over his money and went out. Early the next morning, another woman at the motel called the guy and informed him that the woman he had left the cash with was gone — as was the cash. The second woman, 47, said that shortly after midnight the woman who was keeping an eye on the money told her that she was “getting the money and was moving to another hotel.” Then off she went with cash, which the report noted was stashed in a gold suitcase with flowers on it. The woman and the money were nowhere to be found. The man who was out $40,000 signed a statement about the theft and said he “wanted to prosecute.” It isn’t clear whether the cash ever turned up.

This story was originally published March 22, 2017 at 7:30 AM with the headline "He told her to watch over the $40,000 in his motel room. It was a costly mistake.."