Mark Howard was the last person to walk into Jeanette Scholten’s motel room before her mother and brother found her dead inside, Chattanooga police said.
Mark Howard
Jeanette Scholten, 34, pictured here in this undated photo, was found strangled to death inside a motel room in The Chatt Inn on E. 23rd Street on Thursday.Surveillance video shows Howard, 52, walking into Scholten’s room at 7:45 p.m. on March 21, carrying two large bags. He left the next day, carrying three large bags.
Then, no one entered or left the room until March 24, when Scholten’s family arrived and found her body. Scholten, 34, had been strangled, according to a preliminary investigation by the Hamilton County medical examiner. The office has not yet finished Scholten’s autopsy.
Howard has been charged with criminal homicide and is being held on a $250,000 bond, according to court records.
The same day Howard left Scholten’s room, he went to a bus stop near the intersection of Fourth Avenue and East 23rd Street, where he spoke with a woman, according to police. The woman, who was not identified by name in police records, told investigators she also lived in the Chatt Inn and rode that bus every day.