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Nina Ingram Murder Case Closed For “All Intents And Purposes,” Prosecutor Says

FAYETTEVILLE (KFSM) -With a former suspect’s murder charge being dropped, the case into Nina Ingram’s killing is closed, said Matt Durrett, Washingt...
Rico Cohn

FAYETTEVILLE (KFSM) -With a former suspect’s murder charge being dropped, the case into Nina Ingram’s killing is closed, said Matt Durrett, Washington County prosecutor.

“For all intents and purposed, it’s closed,” Durrett told 5NEWS on Thursday (July 2).

While Durrett considers his case closed, the Fayetteville Police Department’s investigation into the killing remains open, the prosecutor said.

Ingram, a business student at NorthWest Arkansas Community College, was found strangled April 22, 2006, in her apartment at what then was known as the Law Quad Apartments at 701 W. Sycamore St. The complex is now called Club At The Creek.

A former maintenance man at the complex, Rico T. Cohn, was arrested in 2012 and charged with capital murder in the case.  After a key witness recently died during surgery, however, the prosecutor’s office dropped the charge due to a lack of evidence, and Cohn was released this week from the Washington County Detention Center.

Durrett said there was no DNA evidence in the apartment linking a suspect to the killing because the apartment had been cleaned apparently by the killer. Ingram was strangled to death with a ligature that was not recovered, he said.

Cohn’s attorney, Tony Pirani, told 5NEWS on Thursday that Cohn and the defense team’s “hearts go out to Nina Ingram’s mother and the entire family.”

“He wants her to know he is sorry for her loss, but he did not do this,” said Pirani, a former public defender now with the Nolan, Caddell, Reynolds law firm. Pirani drove Cohn on Thursday to connect with the 29-year-old man’s family members from Tennessee.

Durrett said he has a year to refile charges against Cohn if new information or evidence surfaces, but right now he does not expect that to happen.

No one else is considered a suspect in the death, Durrett said.

According to the witness who later died, Cohn was coming on to women at the apartment complex one day and felt that Ingram blew him off as though she were better than him, Durrett said. The witness said that prompted Cohn to kill her, the prosecutor said.

The witness, identified by sources as Randee Applewhite, a woman in her 30s who was an acquaintance of Cohn’s, died of complications during surgery at a local hospital sometime in February or March.

Pirani noted that Cohn had been in jail for 1,121 days after his arrest in 2012.

“We believe an innocent man had been locked up for over three years for something he did not do, and we do not believe that his justice for anybody,” Pirani said.

Nina Ingram’s mother, Judy Ingram, spoke to 5NEWS after she found out Cohn had been released.

“You know, my heart just sunk to the floor because once again, how do I keep going?” she said. “How do I keep doing this? When is Nina going to get justice?”

 

 

 

 

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