SAN ANGELO, TX – Court documents detail new information that murdered San Angeloan Eric Talton was beaten, doused in gasoline, and dumped in a field outside of Junction.
According to court documents, on August 24, 2022, San Angelo Police were alerted that Talton, 31, had gone missing. Police spoke with his mother Ramonna Talton.
Ramonna told the police that Eric had been murdered in San Angelo and his body was dumped outside of San Antonio. She alleged that the two involved were Kenneth 'Ace' Harvey, 40, and Brittany Schoonmaker, 27, of San Angelo.
Police then sent out a message to law enforcement in the San Antonio area in hopes of finding the body. Texas Ranger Joel Callaway contacted SAPD and told them that he believed he knew where the body was.
The Ranger confirmed that on August 18, 2022, he had been called to a murder investigation with a body that had been discovered during a grass fire on I-10, 10 miles east of Junction. The body was burned and unidentified.
The body was sent to the Central Texas Autopsy in Lockhart. While there, fingerprints were pulled and matched with the prints SAPD had on file for Eric. The autopsy also revealed that Talton had died from complications from blunt force head and chest trauma with a contributing factor of acute methamphetamine intoxication.
This forced the SAPD to ramp up their investigation. Schoonmaker had been driving a rented car. SAPD confirmed that a 2022 Toyota Cross had been rented from Enterprise on S. Bryant.
Police then obtained a warrant for both Harvey and Schoonmaker's phones. With that, police were able to ping her location to Vick, TX on August 18 at 3:05 a.m. This location is on US Highway 87 on the way to San Antonio and Junction.
The rental car was eventually located in Las Vegas, NV. It is unknown how the car got there. Regardless, the FBI in Las Vegas was alerted, and a fire investigator and ATF Accelerant Detection K-9 were called in for a search. The K-9 alerted that the car had traces of an accelerant in the back seat.
Information from the car's black box was taken. That information showed that on August 18, around 2 a.m., the car was at the Stripes Convenience Store on 19th and Bryant. Then at 6:45 a.m., the car was in San Antonio.
Surveillance footage from the gas station shows that Harvey went inside the store and purchased a pack of Newport cigarettes and 1.5 gallons of gas. Instead of putting the gas in the tank, Harvey could be seen pouring the gas into the back seat of the car.
Three months after the death, on November 16, 2022, a search warrant was issued on Harvey's home on the 700 block of W. 15th St. Investigators were able to get blood samples from the bathtub there. Those blood samples came back as a positive match with Talton.
The case really broke open after an inmate in the Tom Green County Jail told the police what happened. The inmate told the police on April 19, 2023, that she knew the suspects and was there the night she believes Talton was killed.
She said that on August 16, 2022, she was at Harvey's home on 15th St. During her time there, she witnessed Harvey push Talton into the home and beat him unconscious. Once unconscious, Harvey put Talton in the bathroom. The witness told the police that she had left but came back the next morning to find Talton laying in the fetal position in the hallway, deceased.
Another key witness was a friend of Schoonmaker. He told the police that she confided in him that she helped Harvey dispose of the body. She told him that they would tell the police that they were helping a friend move as a cover-up story. She also told the man that they had burned the body.
With this evidence, police were able to obtain arrest warrants for the suspects. They were both arrested in Georgia and brought back to Tom Green County on August 9, 2023. As of now, Harvey is in the jail with a bond of over $1.5 million, and Schoonmaker is in the jail with a $500,000 bond.
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