Coroner: slain Macon woman was bludgeoned, strangled to death

In the hours before Brenda Gail Faulkner was found brutally slain in the bedroom of a boarding house she bought seven years ago, her room mate said all had been quiet.

Faulkner, 58, had been strangled and bludgeoned to death in the Pleasant Hill home, Macon-Bibb County Chief Coroner Leon Jones told The Telegraph on Friday.

She died from “asphyxiation due to strangulation and blunt-force trauma to the head,” Jones said.

According to a Bibb County deputy sheriff’s report, 58-year-old Charles Barnette, Jr. last saw Faulkner about 9 p.m. Wednesday.

Barnette was at the house on Thursday, cleaning his car in the back yard, when another man, Deandre Gay, came out of the house and told him “she is dead.”

Barnette, who lived with Faulkner in the blue house at 1776 First Avenue, said he immediately called 911, according to the report.

Gay was gone when police arrived about 11 a.m.

Barnette said he suspected Faulkner’s boyfriend, Jessie Gray, is responsible, the report said.

Faulkner’s 2002 white Ford mustang was missing from the house. It was found that afternoon about three miles away, parked in the 4200 block Robinson Circle, just west of the Napier Avenue and Mumford Road intersection.

Investigators are still working to determine who drove the car there, Bibb County Sheriff’s Lt. Linda Howard said Friday.

Details such as ages and addresses, both for Gay and Gray, were not included in the report.

For more on this story, return to Macon.com and read Saturday’s Telegraph.

This story was originally published February 17, 2017 at 4:17 PM with the headline "Coroner: slain Macon woman was bludgeoned, strangled to death."