Man accused of strangling south Tulsa woman faced murder charges in 2008

Gregory Epperson is accused of killing 19-year-old Kelsey Tennant in her south Tulsa apartment Monday.

Cops say Tennant walked into her apartment and surprised Epperson as he was burglarizing the place.

Epperson was charged with murder in 2015 over a 2008 incident but those charges were dropped.  Police believe Gregory Epperson was the man who killed Ray Johnson. An affidavit for that case says a witness told police that he met Epperson at his home in early to mid-September 2008.

Epperson was reportedly holding a bleach bucket and spraying down his driveway with a garden hose. The witness allegedly saw blood on the ground and a body on the side of Epperson’s house.

The document says Epperson put a gun to the witness’s head and forced him to help load the body into a car.

Investigators found the car with hair and blood inside. But DNA checks to connect that blood and hair back to Johnson took a while to come back, so charges were dropped in January 2016.

Tulsa County DA Steve Kunzweiler explained why the case was dismissed.

“The prosecution of Gregory Jerome Epperson for the death of Ray Johnson was discontinued due to significant concerns about the lack of corroborating evidence to convict him,” Kunzweiler noted.

Johnson’s body was never found, there were no eye-witnesses to his death.

Kunzweiler said the key and only witness against him, a convicted felon and known associate of both Johnson and Epperson, could not be sufficiently corroborated by independent evidence as to his accusations against Epperson.

Tulsa Police Homicide Sergeant Dave Walker says Epperson was also a suspect in the 2010 murder John Baker.  Walker says Epperson rented a room from Baker and that he was the last person to see Baker alive. But when Baker’s remains were found at Keystone Lake, Walker says there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Epperson.