25-year-old found fatally beaten with bag on head, Alabama cops say. Boyfriend charged

A 25-year-old woman was found by her family beaten to death in her own apartment, and a man has been charged with killing her, Alabama police say.

Family members first became worried about Madison Shea Pilkington when she didn’t show up for work, the Hoover Police Department said in a news release. One of her relatives went to check on her and found her unresponsive.

The family member entered Pilkington’s apartment a little after 4 a.m. on Jan. 29 and found her ”bruised and unresponsive with a white grocery sack over her head,” AL.com reported. Bed sheets had been stuffed in garbage bags, AL.com said, with blood in different sections of the apartment.

“It appeared that someone tried to clean up the blood,’’ a detective wrote in the court records, according to AL.com.

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Police took Pilkington’s boyfriend into custody after a chase that left one officer injured, the Independent reported.

Officers from Irondale, Hoover and Fultondale police departments were trying to pull over Cortez Lenarde Warren, 32. When Warren pulled over on Interstate 65, a passing driver hit a Fultondale officer’s vehicle, and both involved in the crash were sent to the hospital, according to AL.com and Unica News..

Warren was charged with murder, tampering with physical evidence and unlawful possession of marijuana in the second degree, police said.

Warren was transferred to the Jefferson County Jail and is being held on $262,000 bond.

Pilkington’s family said they were shocked.

“She was beautiful both inside and out,’’ Pilkington’s aunt, Dana Armstrong, told the Independent.

McClatchy News reached out to the Jefferson County district attorney for comment and has not yet received a response.

This story was originally published February 4, 2022 at 11:25 AM with the headline "25-year-old found fatally beaten with bag on head, Alabama cops say. Boyfriend charged."

Alison Cutler

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Alison Cutler is a National Real Time Reporter for the Southeast at McClatchy. She graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and previously worked for The News Leader in Staunton, VA, a branch of USAToday.