Ashley Elkins

Ashley Elkins was a 30 year old hairdresser and mother of two from Warren, Michigan, whose disappearance in January 2025 turned into one of Metro Detroit's most closely followed criminal cases. She worked out of her home styling hair and was known to neighbors and clients in the Warren area. She was the mother of two sons, who were 7 and 10 years old at the time she vanished.

Elkins was last seen leaving her home in Warren at around 8:30 a.m. on January 2, 2025. Her family reported her missing the following day, January 3, after she failed to come home or make contact. Investigators later said that data from her phone placed her last known location at the Roseville apartment of her ex-boyfriend, DeAndre Booker. Her car was later recovered, but Elkins herself was never found.

Within days, Macomb County investigators named Booker, then 32, as a suspect and arrested him on January 9, 2025. He was eventually charged with first-degree murder and related offenses. Prosecutors allege that Booker killed Elkins inside his Roseville apartment and then disposed of her body, a claim he has contested through his defense. In mid-January 2025, police searched a six to seven acre section of the Pine Tree Acres Landfill in Lenox Township for several days looking for her remains. The search was called off without success, and as of the start of his trial in November 2026, Elkins' body had still not been recovered.

The case moved slowly through the Macomb County court system. Booker was bound over for trial in January 2026 following a preliminary examination at which Elkins' family and police testified. His defense later raised questions about his competency to stand trial, and in June 2026 a judge ruled that he was fit to proceed. A pretrial conference was held on October 26, 2026, and jury selection for his trial concluded on November 12, 2026, with opening statements scheduled to begin on November 13, 2026, nearly two years after Elkins disappeared.

Because Ashley Elkins' body has never been found, no official date, place, or medical cause of death has ever been confirmed. She has not been declared dead by a court, and this page describes her as missing and presumed killed based on the criminal charges filed against Booker, rather than as a confirmed death. Her family and the Warren and Roseville communities have continued to publicly ask for her to be found and for justice in her case, and they have closely followed each stage of the legal proceedings against the man accused of killing her.