Detective reopens cold case, arrest made in Alexis Rhodes killing

A 17-year-old girl was inside her family’s Markham home on Halloween night in 2021 when a single shot tore through the front door and left a murder file cold for years.

Police said Alexis Rhodes feared the person outside and would not let him in. Investigators identified that man as Dominique Jones and allege he fired one round through the door, killing Rhodes on Oct. 31, 2021. Rhodes made a dying declaration naming Jones as the shooter, but detectives still needed stronger evidence before Illinois prosecutors would approve charges.

That break came after Markham Police Detective Joe Crement reopened the case and spent years rechecking photographs, digital evidence and other material tied to the shooting. Crement, who had only recently joined the department, said he kept digging until the file had enough to move forward. The case had looked stalled, but the old evidence never stopped mattering, it just needed a detective willing to work it again from the beginning.

Jones was later in Indiana custody on unrelated armed robbery and aggravated battery charges. CBS Chicago reported that he was sentenced in Indiana in 2024, then brought back into the Rhodes case after Illinois prosecutors approved murder charges. During questioning at the Markham police station, Crement said Jones confessed.

The arrest gave Rhodes’ family a long-delayed step toward justice and showed how a homicide that seemed frozen by time could still turn on persistence, preserved evidence and one detective refusing to let the file go. Rhodes had already named her shooter in her final moments. Years later, the case finally moved on the weight of that statement, the evidence behind it and a confession that closed the gap between suspicion and charge.