Dennis Day (Tarrant County Jail).
A Texas man is behind bars after admittedly killing his roommate and throwing her body off a bridge, according to Lone Star State police.
Dennis William Day, 66, stands accused of one count of murder, according to the Fort Worth Police Department.
The charge arises from the prolonged disappearance of Rana Nofal Soluri, 47, who was only reported missing by a colleague earlier this month after she had not been spotted alive since early March.
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This extended delay was partly due to the victim taking a leave of absence earlier this year, as stated in an arrest affidavit obtained by Dallas-based Fox affiliate KDFW.
The concerned co-worker said Soluri left her job as a flight attendant for a minor surgery and was supposed to return by March 31.
She never did.
A conversation on March 19 seemed to end abruptly – right in the middle, even – the co-worker told investigators.
Police began working the case as a missing person incident and immediately had Day on their radar, according to the affidavit.
This is because the colleague informed law enforcement that the two had lived together for about a year. She also gave investigators a video dated March 19, which allegedly showed Soluri with a handgun visible. In the footage, a man’s voice can be heard shouting off-camera.
Travel receipts for the victim also showed a strange state of affairs. Soluri had not traveled on an airplane for either work or pleasure since October 2024, according to police. A supervisor queried by investigators said that not showing up and not calling was unlike her, having worked as a flight attendant for some five years prior.
In May, officers towed Soluri’s vehicle from Day’s residence on Grantland Circle in eastern Fort Worth, according to the affidavit.
Day, for his part, allegedly said the vehicle had been parked for roughly two months, about as long as he had not seen his roommate. The defendant also said he moved some of her belongings into a storage shed and did not “express knowledge or concern” about her.
As it turned out, the “brand new” car had been purchased about two weeks before it was abandoned, heightening suspicions.
On June 10, during a welfare check, Day described Soluri as a longtime friend, police said. The defendant allegedly confirmed Soluri was living with him but insisted he had not seen or heard from her for three months.
On June 18, police executed a search warrant on Soluri’s cellphone. She last made a phone call on March 21 at 3:43 p.m. Finally, her cellular phone pinged a tower for the last time, at around 3:52 p.m. – she was roughly five miles east of home.
On June 23, police met with the defendant at his residence, where he again disclaimed any knowledge of, or participation in, the woman’s disappearance. He also consented to a search, police claim. As a result of that authorized search, investigators obtained video surveillance footage from the night of March 21 that led to Day’s arrest.
At around 10 p.m. that night, Day can be seen dragging “what appears to be a lifeless body from the home into the backyard,” according to the arrest affidavit. There, the clip cuts off, police say, and does not record for several days thereafter.
Once confronted with the evidence, the man allegedly confessed.
Day said he realized Soluri was recording him and had threatened to call police on him when he “snapped,” according to police. Then, he grabbed her by the neck and went on to choke her until she died, the defendant allegedly said. Day allegedly told police the strangulation happened on the kitchen floor. After that, he dragged the woman’s body outside and disconnected the surveillance system once he realized the tell-tale clue had been recorded, police said.
Later, the defendant said he loaded the woman’s body into a black trash bin. The woman’s remains were then dumped over a bridge in Bowie – a small town located roughly 70 miles northwest of Fort Worth, police said. As for her cellphone, Day allegedly said he tossed it into a river within the city limits. Day also gave investigators the location of Soluri’s gun, which has since been recovered.
Though the defendant traveled with police to a number of bridges near Bowie, Soluri’s remains have yet to be found.
Day is currently being detained in the Tarrant County Jail on $200,000 bond.
