Chattooga County Sheriff Mark Schrader says that the wife of a man murdered last year has been arrested and charged with his murder.

At around 8:00am Friday (February 9th) Investigators with the Chattooga County Sheriff’s Office and Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agents arrested 52 year old Susan Renee Lanham of Butler Dairy Road for the shooting death of her husband, Eddie Lanham.

Mr. Lanham was shot to death in September of 2017 at his home, in what had been made to look like a burglary.

According to Sheriff Schrader his investigators and Agents of the GBI have been thoroughly examining and collecting evidence and that trail of evidence has led them to Renee Lanham as the person who planned the murder of her husband – and saw to it that those plans were followed through with.

Schrader said that inconsistencies in the story given to investigators led to her arrest.  She’s the one who called Chattooga 9-1-1 on September 18th and when law enforcement arrived they found her 75 year old husband, Edward Earl Lanham, dead from a gunshot wound.  In the subsequent days, investigators were convinced that Lanham’s death was not caused by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and that he had been murdered.

Over the weeks and months that followed the Chattooga County Sheriff’s Office and Georgia Bureau of Investigation continued to investigate and Sheriff Schrader states that there were problems with Susan Lanham’s story about the night of her husband’s death. 

Ms. Lanham had told investigators that she had been “out” and when she returned home, she found her husband dead.  The GBI and Sheriff Schrader were quick to tell the public that they did not suspect the murder to be a random act and that Mr. Lanham had instead been targeted in the shooting.

Susan Renee Lanham has been booked into the Chattooga County Jail and charged with one count each of Murder, Aggravated Assault and Conspiracy to Commit Murder, in addition to Solicitation to Commit Murder.

(AM1180 Chattooga County Radio)