Remembering Our Dead

Shannon Elroy Clay

Shannon was stabbed multiple times, allegedly by Robert Surdaca Rice, Gerald Julian Chandler, and Robert Lee Allgood.

A second suspect has been charged with murder in the stabbing death of a [trans woman] in a Greenville hotel room in September.

Eighteen-year-old Gerald Julian "Skeet" Chandler, of 155 Ridge St., was charged with murder and armed robbery Wednesday, according to warrants.

A 14-year-old earlier was arrested in connection with the slaying, and more charges are expected as the investigation continues, police said.

Chandler was being held in the Greenville County Detention Center on an unrelated second-degree lynching charge. He still was in the detention center Thursday awaiting a bond hearing on the new charges.

Blood on the window of a room at the Budget Inn on Pendleton Street Sept. 25 led investigators to the nude body of Shannon Elroy Clay, a 29-year-old convicted [sex worker].

Clay had been stabbed several times in the back, with the knife still embedded in [her] back left shoulder.

Two weeks later, police arrested a 14-year-old Tanglewood Middle School student and charged him with murder.

The case, which might end up being tried before a circuit judge, is pending.

Warrants against Chandler charge that Clay was killed for $700.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-news-murder-of-transgende/79560232/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-news-obituary-for-shannon/143708656/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-news-murder-of-transgende/143708862/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-news-murder-of-transgende/143708998/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-news-murder-of-transgende/72551199/

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greenville-news-murder-of-transgende/72552405/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10_JeZ7LEIRhvewTCoL5mVkH6MQJzf7fSXl4-P6QJ0v0/edit#gid=0

Report added: 17 Feb 2019. Last updated: 7 Mar 2026

Close