Nearly 20 years after Catrina Beatrice Evans was found stabbed to death in her Augusta apartment, an arrest warrant has finally been issued in her murder, thanks to modern forensic technology and the determination of a Richmond County investigator who refused to let the case go cold.
On Wednesday, Sgt. Randall Amos of the Criminal Investigations Division secured an arrest warrant for Juan Renardo Chunn, age 56, in connection with Evans’ 2005 homicide, according to a press release,
Evans was found dead on August 20, 2005, at her apartment. She had been stabbed multiple times. Her one-year-old child was also found inside the apartment — alive.
According to news accounts, a neighbor of the victim contacted authorities about a foul odor coming from the woman’s residence at Mount Zion Apartments, off Barton Chapel Road. Inside Apartment 3-C, officers found the badly-decomposed body of Evans. She was face down in her bedroom, covered in multiple stab wounds. The child, 13-month-old Iyana, was found crawling around her mother’s feet covered in bug bites.
Authorities determined that the child had been in the apartment for seven days with her mother’s decomposing body. She had no food or water and was lucky to be alive.
At the time, investigators collected evidence, including a palm print found near the victim’s body, but no match was made.
That changed this summer. In July 2025, Sgt. Amos and the cold case team reviewed the file again and made the decision to resubmit the palm print to the GBI Crime Lab. This time, technology caught up with the evidence.
The print was matched to Juan Renaldo Tillman, also known as Juan Renardo Chunn, who is currently serving a life sentence for first-degree murder at the Columbus Correctional Institution in Whiteville, N.C.
In that North Carolina case, Chunn was convicted of beating his father to death with an oxygen tank inside the man’s Salisbury home in 2018. Retired mill worker Eugene Chunn, 72, was found in his home. The same year, his son was captured in Augusta.
The breakthrough gives new life to a case that has remained open for two decades. The Richmond County Sheriff’s Office will now pursue a murder charge against Chunn in their jurisdiction.
Sheriff Eugene Brantley praised the persistence of his team, stating: “Our office remains committed to reviewing past and cold cases. Every victim deserves justice, and every family deserves closure.”
The Evans family has been notified of the development.
