Boyfriend charged with murder had history of violence

Not long after Brenda Gail Faulkner was found strangled and bludgeoned to death in the bedroom of her boarding house Thursday morning, police had a promising suspect.

Faulkner’s boyfriend, 49-year-old Jesse Gray, is charged with murder, the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Friday afternoon.

Faulkner died from “asphyxiation due to strangulation and blunt-force trauma to the head,” Macon-Bibb County Chief Coroner Leon Jones said.

According to a deputy sheriff’s report, Faulkner’s 58-year-old roommate, Charles Barnette Jr., was cleaning his car in the backyard of the Pleasant Hill home when another man, Deandre Gay, came outside and told him, “she is dead.”

Barnette said he immediately called 911.

When police arrived, he told them he believed Gray was the killer.

Gray’s criminal history includes violent crimes ranging from armed robbery in Illinois to family violence in Macon.

On Jan. 31, 2013, a 40-year-old woman fearing for her safety filed a protection order against Gray after he allegedly choked her, Bibb County Superior Court records show.

The woman reported Gray threw a metal plant stand at her, threw her to the ground and began choking her, according to the protection order.

Then, “he told her, ‘I’m going to kill you bitch.’ ”

Gray, of a Mary Drive address, has a tattoo of a reaper holding a gun and jail house walls, court records state.

In December, a Telegraph reporter interviewed Gray on video after a fire at Faulkner’s ocean blue house on First Avenue.

Gray, wearing black glasses at the time, told the reporter he was inside the house when it became smokey, and crawled out of a window.

Gray was still at-large Friday night.

For a few hours after Faulkner’s body was found, her 2002 white Ford mustang was missing. It was found about three miles away from her house, parked in the 4200 block Robinson Circle, just west of the Napier Avenue and Mumford Road intersection.

Barnette told police he last saw Faulkner about 9 p.m. Wednesday, according to the deputy sheriff’s report.

This story was originally published February 17, 2017 at 7:29 PM with the headline "Boyfriend charged with murder had history of violence."