The motel room didn’t look like Jeanette Scholten planned to live there for long.
Her stuff was bundled up, folded into piles, tucked inside an overnight bag.
Even though she’d been staying in a small room at The Chatt Inn on East 23rd Street for at least two or three months, it looked like she wanted the space to be a temporary home.
But it was her last home.
On Thursday, Chattanooga police discovered the 34-year-old strangled to death inside her room after management asked police to check on her because they hadn’t seen her in a couple of days.
Investigators found her body near her bed around noon on Thursday. It’s unclear exactly how long she had been dead, but she was likely killed within the past couple of days, Lt. Glenn Scruggs said.
Jeanette Scholten, 34, was strangled to death in The Chatt Inn on March 24. Police were looking Friday to talk to several people about Scholten’s death but did not have any formal suspects, Scruggs said. Investigators pulled fingerprints and forensic evidence from the room and worked to track down several leads, including surveillance footage from the motel.
“We’re looking at if the suspect was an acquaintance, a stranger, just some chance encounter, someone staying at the hotel – we’re looking at every option,” Scruggs said.
Scholten’s room was locked when police arrived. It didn’t appear to be ransacked, and there were no signs of medications inside, Scruggs said. No one reported any suspicious noises or activity before her body was found, he said. Two employees at The Chatt Inn declined to comment on the case Friday.
Scholten had been arrested twice for public intoxication, once in 2010 and once in 2015, but Scruggs said investigators haven’t found any evidence that she was involved in nefarious activities.
“We haven’t found anything just yet to point to anything she’s done that might have brought this on herself,” he said.
Scholten worked as a cook at two downtown restaurants, Stir and Big River Grille. On Friday, her co-workers remembered her as an upbeat person who was easy to get along with, bubbly and outgoing.
“She was a hard worker,” said Big River coworker Roxanne Brooks. “She could work circles around 95 percent of the people in here.”
Scholten is the seventh person to be killed in Chattanooga so far this year. All of this year’s homicides are so far unsolved. She is the first person to be killed this year who wasn’t shot to death.
The Chatt Inn, an extended-stay motel that advertises rooms for $150 a week, has a long-standing history of problems. In September 2015, one man was shot and another was run over after someone opened fire at a party outside the building, according to police.
According to emergency records, officers responded to the motel 353 times in 2015 – almost once per day.
But a portion of those calls may be routine traffic stops, in which officers pulling drivers over on 23rd Street used the motel’s address for the call because it was nearby. That could falsely drive up the number of reported incidents at the motel, police said.
In the seven days before Scholten’s body was found, police responded to nine calls at the motel.
Contact staff writer Shelly Bradbury at sbradbury@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6525 with tips or story ideas. Follow @ShellyBradbury on Twitter.