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Accidental butt dial exposes friend’s role in covering up Texas flight attendant's murder
A butt dial has helped police make a second arrest in the murder of Texas flight attendant Rana Nofal Soluri.
A Texas woman has been accused of helping her friend cover up a murder, thanks to an accidental butt dial that captured a conversation between the two plotting to dispose of her body. Joni Thomas, 62, is believed to have helped her friend Dennis William Day cover up the murder of flight attendant Rana Nofal Soluri.
What happened to Rana Nofal Soluri?
Soluri, 47, was last seen alive in March, according to an NBC News report. Fort Worth Police arrested her roommate Dennis Day, 66, in June.
Day admitted to the police that he “snapped” during an argument with Soluri and “began to strangle her with his bare hands”.
After killing the Envoy Air flight attendant, he loaded her body “head first, into a large black trash bin and transported” it 70 miles away.
Where does Joni Thomas figure into this murder?
Investigator says that after Day killed Soluri, he called his friend Joni Thomas and asked her to come over to his house in her pickup truck.
The pair allegedly transported Soluri’s body to Bowie, around 70 miles away, and dumped it off a bridge. During the investigation into the murder, detectives found what they believe is a butt-dialed voicemail on Thomas’ phone. The recording appears to capture her and Day struggling to move a heavy object.
A male voice can be heard saying, “Hey … help me,” “Make sure the lid’s on,” and “I’m I got you messed up in this.”
What the warrant says on the murder
Police say that the butt-dial recording confirms Thomas’s role in the cover up.
“This report is consistent with how Dennis Day stated that he moved [Soluri's] body into a trash can and into the bed of a truck at his house,” said a Tarrant County arrest warrant.
"This report also confirms the fact that not only did [Thomas] travel to [Day's] house and allowed [Day] to use her truck to transport [Soluri's] body, but that she actually helped load [Soluri's] body into the truck."
Thomas was booked into custody August 26. She has been charged with tampering with physical evidence.
