Woman helped dispose of strangled Fort Worth flight attendant’s body, police say
A 62-year-old woman in March helped a friend dump the body of a flight attendant whom he had strangled inside a Fort Worth house, police alleged Tuesday as they arrested the woman.
Joni Thomas was booked on suspicion of tampering with evidence, according to a police record.
Detectives in June arrested Dennis Day on a murder charge in the killing of the 47-year-old flight attendant, Rana Soluri, in a neighborhood near Meadowbrook Drive and Loop 820. Day admitted that he applied pressure to Soluri’s throat on the kitchen floor, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Day said that he loaded her body into a black trash bin and drove it to near Bowie, about 65 miles from Fort Worth, and dumped her over a bridge, according to the affidavit. Soluri’s body has not been found.
Precisely in what way police allege that Thomas was involved in the case is not clear.
Day, 66, and Soluri were longtime friends and lived together for about a year. Soluri was employed by Irving-based Envoy Air Inc., an American Airlines regional carrier, for about five years. A relative wrote in a social media post that Soluri had been on medical leave from her job when she went missing.
Soluri had not been in contact with others since mid-March. She was reported missing by a colleague who notified police on June 11.
Ultimately, Day told Tom O’Brien, a Fort Worth police detective, that he snapped on a night in late March and began to strangle Soluri, according to the affidavit.
Day said he dragged her body to the back yard. When Day realized that he was being recorded by his video surveillance camera, he disconnected the equipment, according to the affidavit.
That recording appears to have revealed to police that Day was the assailant.
In their first contact with detectives, Day and another person with whom he also lived denied knowledge of Soluri’s disappearance. Both consented to a search of their home, and police reviewed its video surveillance footage. A clip from March 21 shows Day dragging what appears to be a body from the home into the back yard, according to the affidavit.
This story was originally published August 26, 2025 at 3:20 PM.
