In Fort Worth, a murder investigation has been pieced together in part by a modern twist on an old trope: the accidental phone call. Police say a “butt dial” helped them uncover how an American Airlines flight attendant vanished and how her roommate, and later a friend, were drawn into covering it up.
Rana Nofal Soluri, 47, was reported missing on June 11, nearly three months after friends last heard from her. A co-worker told police her text messages stopped abruptly on March 19. Soluri, who worked for Envoy Air, an American Airlines subsidiary, had been living with Dennis William Day, 66, in Fort Worth. For weeks, Day insisted he didn’t know where she was.
By June, that story collapsed. Detectives sifted through surveillance footage from Day’s home. The video showed him dragging what appeared to be a lifeless body through the backyard on March 21. Day eventually admitting to strangling Soluri during an argument before stuffing her body into a trash bin, driving 65 miles north, and discarding her off a bridge near Bowie, Texas. He was charged with murder.
But investigators say Day didn’t act alone. On August 26, police arrested Joni Thomas, 62, accusing her of helping Day move and dispose of the body. The evidence tying her in came not from high-tech forensics but from a recording accidentally captured on her phone.
According to court records, Thomas’s phone contained a nearly two-minute voicemail in which a man and a woman can be heard struggling to move something heavy. The male voice, investigators say, matched Day’s. In the recording, he pleads for help: “Hey … help me.” Then, “Make sure the lid’s on. I’m sorry I got you messed up in this.” Police allege the voices captured were those of Day and Thomas as they loaded Soluri’s body into Thomas’s pickup.
The butt dial, corroborated by the video from Day’s own home cameras, provided prosecutors with a chilling timeline of Soluri’s final hours and the cover-up that followed.
Thomas initially denied knowing anything. Later, she admitted Day used her truck but insisted she’d fallen asleep and had no idea what happened next. Investigators now contend she was not just aware but actively helped to move the body. She has been charged with tampering with evidence and released on bond.
Meanwhile, Soluri’s body has yet to be recovered, despite extensive searches near the bridge where Day said he left her. Family and friends continue to press for answers, even as they absorb the brutal details that have emerged from court documents.
Day is being held in the Tarrant County Jail on $250,000 bail, awaiting trial.
