Deandre Booker stands in the jury box of 39th District Court Judge Joseph Boedeker’s courtroom at the start of an exam hearing Wednesday, Aug. 6.
By: Brian Wells | Roseville-Eastpointe Eastsider | Published August 11, 2025 | Updated August 15, 2025 4:18pm
ROSEVILLE — Prosecutors began presenting evidence in the 39th District Court Aug. 6 against the suspect charged with murder in the disappearance of a Warren mother whose body has not been located.
Deandre Booker, the ex-boyfriend of Ashley Elkins, appeared in court for a preliminary exam hearing.
Booker, 32, of Roseville, is facing a first-degree murder charge, as well as several other charges, following the disappearance of Elkins, a mother of two and Warren hairstylist who has been missing since Jan. 2.
The charges came after police investigated Booker’s apartment, located near Frazho Road and Gratiot Avenue in Roseville, and found “what was believed to be a large crime scene with a substantial amount of blood in the bathroom,” Roseville Police Detective Sgt. Anthony Coraci said at Booker’s arraignment in January.
The exam is scheduled to continue Friday, Aug. 22.
Mother, police officer testify
The first witness to take the stand was Monika Elkins, Ashley Elkins’ mother.
While testifying, she said that she and her daughter were “very close.” Shortly after midnight Jan. 1, Ashley Elkins FaceTimed her mother from a Detroit casino. Later that day, she sent her mother a video of her cooking.
When her daughter stopped responding to text messages, Monika Elkins said, she knew something was strange.
“Sometimes she’ll text me right back, sometimes it’s 15 minutes, sometimes a half hour, depending on what she’s doing,” Monika Elkins said. “But she would never not text me a whole day without talking.”
Monika Elkins also described how the family entered Booker’s apartment without his permission in an attempt to search for their daughter. They also set up a tip hotline, which generated a tip that she was being held on Eileen Street in Detroit on Jan. 4.
“I was looking for my daughter,” she said. “I wasn’t getting any help, so I looked for myself.”
Booker stood across the courtroom from Monika Elkins in the jury box while she testified, which Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Carmen DeFranco objected to.
“Judge, I just want to place on the record an objection to the defendant’s posture in this manner,” he said. “(It is) an attempt, in my opinion, to intimidate witnesses that are going to be testifying against him today.”
Following Monika Elkins was Roseville police officer Shane Nabozny. Nabozny responded to Booker’s apartment after the department received a call to investigate.
As he was investigating, Nabozny found several pieces of evidence, including bottles of bleach in the bathroom. Additionally, he noticed the cover of the drain for the bathtub had been removed and was sitting in the middle of the tub, which drew his attention.
“I approached the bathtub to check out why the drain was there. … I did notice on the north end of the tub there were two drips of blood,” he said.
Nabozny also said he found multiple drops of blood or smears at several other locations throughout the apartment. One wall of the bathroom appeared to be “wiped down,” he said, based on what looked like fresh swirl marks on the wall.
Police describe scene, events around disappearance
When the hearing continued Aug. 8, Booker was described as being “very disruptive” by his attorney, Robbie Lang. Additionally, Booker refused to get dressed in the appropriate prison garb used for court hearings.
“Based upon what I’ve been told by the jail officers and what I saw personally when I went back there, it’s my understanding that he was uncooperative in getting dressed into the jail uniform. … The only thing that they have for him covering some of his body looks like some kind of a blanket, so they don’t think he’s in any appropriate state of dress to be in the courtroom,” Lang said.
When the court attempted to connect to Booker in the holding cell via an iPad and Zoom, he refused to show himself and could be heard shouting.
An attempt from 39th District Court Judge Joseph Boedeker to ask if Booker was waiving his appearance was met with obscenities and other indecipherable statements, leading to the judge ruling that the hearing would continue without him present as long as he was able to watch and listen to the hearing from his cell.
The second day of the hearing — which was scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. and continued until after 4 p.m. — consisted of DeFranco and Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Carrie Seward presenting evidence.
Roseville police officer Sal Munafo testified that he accompanied a plumber to Booker’s apartment Jan. 7. The goal was to check for debris or other evidence in the bathtub drain pipe.
The search returned a clump of hair, an earring and what Munafo said appeared to be a bullet fragment from a 9 mm handgun.
Lang questioned the age of the bullet fragment, as it appeared to be corroded.
“If that bullet had been fired from a gun and went into that drain, within a month it wouldn’t look like that,” he said.
Munafo replied that it looked like any other piece of metal that had been sitting in water. Munafo also stated that he couldn’t tell if the hair was from a man, woman, human or animal.
Following Munafo was Roseville Police Detective Chris Moran, who testified that in the days surrounding Ashley Elkins’ disappearance, Booker made several Google searches on his iPhone, including searches for a 9 mm silencer in Roseville, shooting a gun through a pillow, whether or not a phone can be tracked when it is off, what happens to trash, and “telling God I want to kill someone.”
During cross-examination, Lang asked what happened when Moran investigated the search about “telling God.”
Moran said it appeared to be something on a podcast. He contacted the preacher who mentioned it in the podcast, and he was told it was a joke.
“It was not serious,” Moran said.
Searching dumpsters and watching surveillance video
While at the apartment complex, Moran said, he began searching the dumpsters in the area.
“The person was missing. There was reason to believe it could be a result of criminal activity, some kind of violent assault. This person was absolutely unknown at that point where they may be, so we attempted to locate them in a dumpster,” he said.
Moran added that the dumpster could be a “plausible place” to dispose of a body.
While searching the dumpsters in a nearby shopping plaza, Moran said, he was told to stop his investigation and instead search a dumpster seen on security footage that showed a person pushing a shopping cart and disposing of something that appeared to be heavy several days prior.
“There appeared to be something in the cart that was covered with a white sheet and possibly something that may have been an arm,” Moran said.
Moran said security footage showed the individual pushing the cart through the apartment complex and into another complex to the north, where he stopped at a dumpster and there was “a lot of movement,” he said.
“It was clear to me that the person putting whatever it was in that dumpster was struggling, which anyone who has experience with any person, it is difficult when they’re limp to move them around,” he said.
On Jan. 7, when Moran investigated the dumpster, it had already been emptied since the person was seen on the security footage dumping something in it. However, Moran still found what he suspected to be blood in the bottom of the dumpster.
While Roseville Police Detective Patrick Taylor testified, prosecutors showed security footage taken from throughout the apartment complex of an individual believed to be Booker pushing the shopping cart.
One clip shown was taken from a Ring doorbell camera. When Taylor questioned the owner of the camera, she said it’s not uncommon for people to take shopping carts from nearby shopping centers and push them through the complex.
“It’s common,” he said. “I even asked the lady with the Ring camera if that’s common, and she said yes.”
Taylor testified that police later learned trash emptied from that particular dumpster would be taken to a transfer station on Goesbeck Highway in Roseville, where it would then be loaded into another truck and taken to a landfill in Lenox Township.
Taylor also said police learned Booker was staying at a residence in Flint. Police secured a warrant and went to the house. They found Booker there, though he wasn’t arrested at the time.
Police also found clothes that matched the clothes the individual was wearing in the video, including a jacket that had what appeared to be blood on it, Taylor said, in addition to a sales receipt for a 9 mm handgun.
Prosecutors are attempting to convict Booker despite Elkins’ body not being located.
Trash bags, bleach and blood spots
When testimony resumed Aug. 15, Roseville Police Detective Matthew Lesperance testified that, despite what Booker had told him regarding when he left the apartment to go to Flint, detectives disproved it through a search of his phone.
Booker said he was picked up by an Uber driver at approximately 5:17 a.m. Jan. 3, but reportedly his phone showed that he was picked up at 1 or 2 a.m.
Detectives found that Booker ordered heavy-duty trash bags and four bottles of bleach via his phone through DoorDash at 11:46 p.m. Jan. 2, according to the testimony.
Also obtained through the cellphone search was the last-known location of Ashley Elkins’ phone, at a beauty supply store. Booker’s phone pinged the same location at the same time, Lesperance said.
“Ashley’s phone was pinging all the way up to the beauty store,” he said. “Then the phone was either turned off or destroyed in some manner.”
However, after viewing the security footage at the beauty supply store, Lesperance said, police determined Booker had been there with another female, and that Ashley Elkins had never gone to the store.
During cross examination, Lang asked Lesperance how accurate are the location of phone pings. While he agreed they show a general location, he couldn’t speak any more about the accuracy of them.
Booker also told Lesperance over the phone that he had gone to an address in Detroit, according to the testimony. However, security footage obtained from Booker’s apartment reportedly showed he never left.
At this point, on Jan. 8, the day after speaking with Booker in Flint, Lesperance stated they were able to arrest him for lying to a police officer during a violent investigation.
Lesperance said the blood spots found in Booker’s apartment, on the clothing they obtained from him when they confronted him in Flint, and the blood found in the dumpster was sent to Michigan State Police to be tested. DNA was also collected from Booker, Ashley Elkins’ relatives and her toothbrush.
The analysis of each blood spot — including the blood found in the dumpster — concluded that it was much more likely that the blood belonged to Ashley Elkins than another individual.
A lab report also said it was inconclusive as to whether the bullet found in the bathtub drain was fired from the handgun found in Booker’s apartment, Lesperance said.
During cross-examination, Lang asked Lesperance to look at a second report regarding the gun and the bullet, showing whether particles recovered from the pistol could be compared to the bullet.
When a gun is fired, particles shoot out as well, Lang stated. The report he presented stated that the particles found inside the pistol did not originate from the bullet due to being made of different materials.
However, when asked if the report would be stating if the bullet came from Booker’s gun, Lesperance stated he didn’t have any formal training or experience in extracting bullets or fragments or how to identify them.
Lang ended his cross-examination by asking Lesperance, as the lead detective on the case, if there was any definitive evidence Ashley Elkins was dead.
“So you have no proof or evidence of what may have caused her death, if she is dead?” Lang asked.
Lesperance said Lang’s statement was true.
Seward asked what happened after the dumpster was taken and dropped off at the landfill. Lesperance said an extensive search of the landfill did not yield a body.
Seward ended her examination by asking what evidence led them to charge Booker with homicide.
“His multiple inconsistencies while speaking to me on a recorded line just did not add up,” Lesperance said. “His timeline for everything was very inconsistent. The sure fact that something violent happened inside of that apartment, specifically the bathroom, and then him being observed on CCTV footage with the shopping cart.”
Additionally, the blood evidence and the lack of proof that Ashley Elkins had ever left the apartment led to the charges, according to the testimony.