A tip led police to Mary Jane Stewart more than 41 years after her roommate was stabbed to death. But the case won't be going to trial.
Mary Jane Stewart was arrested and charged with the 1975 murder of her roommate Cheryl White. By Meagan Flynn Meagan Flynn Morning Mix reporter Email Bio Follow April 23 at 6:50 AM Suspicion would shadow Mary Jane Stewart for years in Warner Robins, Ga., over the brutal stabbing death of her roommate in 1975, right up until the day she was arrested for the crime more than 41 years later. But in the weeks immediately after the killing, Stewart managed to escape scrutiny.
Just months before she was scheduled to go on trial for killing White, she died, Houston County assistant district attorney Eric Edwards told WGXA on Friday. White’s parents wondered in the press if they had done something wrong. They worried their daughter, a cashier at Piggly Wiggly who had her own car, was perhaps too independent for her age, and fell in “with the wrong kind of people” after leaving home, her mother told the newspaper. White lived with Stewart, then known as Mary Jane Staples, in a housing complex so raucous that news accounts called it the “party apartments” ― and on the night she died, plenty were raging.
Armed with nothing more than Stewart’s testimony, police arrested and charged both men with murder. They were released shortly afterward, after a “serious question of credibility” tainted Stewart’s testimony, police later said. Finally, several years ago, a new mayor took office — and he happened to be Cheryl White’s childhood friend. Chuck Shaheen requested that the Warner Robins Police Department reopen the case. It was a promise he had made to White’s family, he told 13WMAZ.
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