# 4 Dark Cold Cases Mysteries You Need To Know Now

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 26 Mar 2026, 40 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6400621725.mp3

Join me for 4 chilling cold cases you absolutely need to know. Episode 195 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 unsolved mysteries, true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, creepy mysteries, true crime storytelling, crime reconstruction, chilling cases, investigative reporting, modern forensics, victim advocacy, unidentified remains, crime scene forensics, disturbing cases, true crime analysis, hidden clues, infamous crimes, real crime stories, forensic evidence, heists, art theft

## Transcript

[0:00] On the morning of August 22nd, 1988, a 25 year old woman,
[0:05] referred to publicly only as Carol, was running 30 minutes
[0:09] late for work. It was a nothing detail, the
[0:13] kind of minor disruption that happens to everyone, the kind of
[0:17] thing you forget about by lunchtime.
[0:20] But on that particular Monday morning, on a quiet 2 lane Rd.
[0:24] cutting through the Connecticut countryside, those 30 minutes
[0:28] placed Carol directly behind the wrong vehicle.
[0:31] Within moments, a stranger would step out of a pickup truck, walk
[0:35] toward her car and shoot her in the face, leaving a chilling
[0:39] cold case mystery that's unsolved till this day.
[0:44] Carol lived in Vernon, CT, a modest suburban town about
[0:48] halfway between Hartford and the Massachusetts border.
[0:51] She worked as a social worker at Day Kimball Hospital in Putnam,
[0:56] a small Community Hospital serving the rural northeastern
[0:59] corner of the state. Her commute took her along
[1:02] Bremen Hollow Rd. a narrow, winding 2 lane highway that
[1:07] threads through the town of Pomfret.
[1:10] It's the kind of Rd. that barely registers on a map, the kind of
[1:14] place where you might pass a handful of cars on your drive on
[1:17] a good day. That is to say, this wasn't the
[1:21] sort of place where you'd have a lot of witnesses to any crime
[1:24] that took place on that August morning.
[1:28] Carol was driving her usual route when she came up behind a
[1:31] black pickup truck. It was moving slowly, noticeably
[1:35] slowly, and almost immediately she could tell something was
[1:39] off. The truck would speed up for a
[1:42] stretch, then brake abruptly, forcing her to slow down.
[1:47] Then it would drift across the center line, veering into
[1:50] oncoming traffic close enough to nearly clip passing cars before
[1:55] pulling back into its own lane. It was the kind of behaviour
[1:59] that makes you grip your steering wheel a little tighter
[2:02] and debate whether to try to pass, but Carol stayed behind
[2:05] it. At any rate, there wasn't much
[2:09] opportunity to overtake on a road like Bremen Hollow, and
[2:12] perhaps she assumed the driver was impaired or otherwise
[2:15] distracted. People drive like idiots
[2:19] sometimes, and you stay back, you give them space, and
[2:22] eventually you go off in separate directions.
[2:27] At approximately 9:15 in the morning, suddenly and without
[2:31] warning, the driver brought the truck to a complete stop in the
[2:35] middle of the road. He just stopped dead center,
[2:39] blocking the lane, and Carol had no choice but to stop behind it.
[2:44] Then the driver's door opened and a man stepped out.
[2:48] He was white, roughly 5 foot 10, with a medium build and brown
[2:53] curly hair. He didn't say a word.
[2:58] He simply turned and walked back toward Carol's car with what she
[3:02] would later describe to investigators as a silver
[3:05] revolver in his hand. He closed the distance roughly
[3:09] 10 feet, raised the weapon and fired a single shot directly
[3:13] into her face. Then he walked back to his
[3:16] truck, climbed in and drove away, all in what investigators
[3:21] believe was under a minute. Carol was semi conscious and
[3:26] partially paralyzed, sitting in her car on a road with almost no
[3:30] traffic, bleeding from a horrific wound to the face.
[3:34] It was a telephone line repairman working somewhere
[3:37] along the route who found her shortly afterward and called for
[3:41] help saving her life. The bullet had entered her face
[3:45] and travelled through, ultimately lodging itself in the
[3:48] back of her neck, dangerously close to her spine.
[3:52] Surgeons determined that attempting to remove it posed a
[3:55] greater risk than leaving it in place.
[3:58] To this day, that bullet is still there, sitting at the base
[4:02] of Carol's skull, a permanent dark souvenir from a man she
[4:06] wished she'd never met. Her recovery, all things
[4:10] considered, was truly remarkable.
[4:12] Within three months, her condition had improved
[4:15] dramatically, and the surgery on her face was successful enough
[4:19] that her injuries were not immediately obvious.
[4:22] She survived a point blank gunshot to the face and walked
[4:26] away from it. And physically at least, she
[4:29] came through in a good state. The psychological toll is
[4:34] another matter entirely, and one that's harder to quantify.
[4:39] Carol chose to use a pseudonym when the case was later
[4:43] publicized, which tells you something about the shadow this
[4:46] event cast over the rest of her life.
[4:49] The idea that this man might come back to finish the job
[4:53] evidently weighed heavily on her mind, which in my view is a
[4:57] rational fear. Connecticut State Police
[5:01] responded quickly, and several detectives and troopers were
[5:04] dispatched to the exit points of Bremen Hollow Rd.
[5:08] This amounted to setting up a loose checkpoint and questioning
[5:11] anyone attempting to leave the area.
[5:13] But in a rural part of Connecticut in 1988, quickly is
[5:18] a relative term, and by the time officers had the roads exits
[5:22] covered, the black pickup truck was long gone.
[5:26] What investigators did find, however, was that Carol wasn't
[5:30] the only person who'd had an unsettling encounter on that
[5:33] stretch of Rd. Two other motorists came forward
[5:37] independently and told police that in the hours leading up to
[5:40] the shooting, they had encountered a black pickup truck
[5:44] behaving erratically on the road.
[5:47] The truck had been pulling on and off the highway repeatedly,
[5:51] accelerating and braking unpredictably, as if the driver
[5:55] was deliberately taunting other motorists.
[5:58] Detectives believe these incidents were almost certainly
[6:01] connected to the attack on Carol, which suggests the
[6:04] shooter had been out on that road for some time before he
[6:07] finally chose a target. Whether Carol was specifically
[6:11] selected, or simply the unlucky person who happened to be behind
[6:14] him at the moment he decided to act, is one of the central
[6:17] unanswered questions of this case.
[6:21] The first theory investigators pursued was that the attack was
[6:24] personal and that the unstable behavior with the other
[6:27] motorists was a deliberate smokescreen to make the attack
[6:31] look random. Those close to her in her
[6:34] personal life were investigated, but no potential suspects were
[6:38] identified, so they moved on to her work life.
[6:43] Carol worked as a social worker treating patients with mental
[6:46] illness at Day Kimball Hospital, a fact that detectives thought
[6:50] could lead to a major break in the case.
[6:53] It's not an inherently unreasonable line of inquiry,
[6:56] and mental health professionals have been known to deal with
[6:59] volatile individuals. The possibility that a former or
[7:03] current patient had fixated on her and planned an ambush had to
[7:07] be explored, but Carol was sure she didn't recognize the
[7:11] individual. Detectives went through Carol's
[7:15] patient records and professional contacts looking for anyone who
[7:18] might have a grievance. They looked for anyone who
[7:21] matched the physical description of the shooter or anyone who
[7:25] owned or had access to a black pickup truck.
[7:29] They came up empty, and there was no evidence whatsoever
[7:33] linking the attack to Carol's professional life.
[7:37] I suspect that this line of reasoning likely wasted valuable
[7:40] investigative resources, since at the end of the day, she said
[7:44] she had never seen the guy. The other theory is far more
[7:49] unsettling, that it was a truly random attack.
[7:53] Carol may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong
[7:56] time, stuck behind the wrong truck.
[7:59] I think the evidence that we have strongly points in this
[8:02] direction. Assuming the previous acts of
[8:05] the driver weren't a smokescreen for a targeted attack on Carol,
[8:09] the reports from the other two motorists suggest a pattern of
[8:13] escalating aggression over several hours.
[8:16] The evidence suggests that the perp wasn't lying in wait for
[8:19] Carol specifically. He was out there looking for
[8:22] someone, and she happened to be the one who drew the short
[8:25] straw. The investigation hit a wall
[8:29] almost immediately for one devastatingly simple reason.
[8:33] The vehicle, the Shooters truck, was described as a well
[8:37] maintained new model dark colored Ford pickup with running
[8:41] boards. In most contexts that's a
[8:44] reasonably specific description, but in late 1980s Connecticut it
[8:49] was essentially useless. When detectives ran the
[8:53] description against vehicle registration records, they
[8:56] discovered 10s of thousands of trucks that met that
[8:59] description. Unfortunately, Carol wasn't a
[9:03] truck expert and couldn't provide further details as to
[9:06] the model of the vehicle, and none of the other drivers who
[9:09] saw it could either. But that's just the tip of the
[9:12] iceberg in terms of how problematic this evidence was.
[9:16] Since she didn't get a plate number or even notice if they
[9:19] were Connecticut plates, it's possible that the shooter drove
[9:23] in from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, or any number
[9:27] of surrounding states in the region.
[9:30] In fact, if he had deliberately planned to go out and commit
[9:33] this sick act, he may have intentionally drove in from
[9:37] virtually anywhere else in the country, or perhaps even Canada.
[9:42] The case attracted national attention when it was featured
[9:45] on Unsolved Mysteries in 1990, which is where I first learned
[9:49] about this disturbing incident. The show generated a significant
[9:53] response, and according to reports, the investigation
[9:56] office received approximately 500 tips in the wake of the
[9:59] broadcast. But again, here's the problem
[10:03] with a case like this. When you're looking for an
[10:07] unidentified man in a common truck who attacked a stranger
[10:10] for no apparent reason, tips tend to be scattershot.
[10:15] Many of the calls that came in were about unrelated road rage
[10:19] incidents that callers believed might somehow be connected to
[10:22] the shooting. Then, of course, there were
[10:25] likely people phoning in to say they'd once seen an aggressive
[10:28] driver in a dark truck, or that their neighbor owned a dark
[10:32] pickup and seemed like a strange chap.
[10:35] None of it LED anywhere concrete, and while the volume
[10:38] of tips was impressive, the quality wasn't.
[10:43] And that's where things have stood for the better part of
[10:45] four decades. There have been no confirmed
[10:48] sightings of the truck or its driver after the morning of
[10:51] August 22nd, 1988. The case remains officially
[10:56] open. But there's a certain point with
[10:59] investigations like these where saying open is just a polite way
[11:03] of saying we haven't abandoned your case.
[11:07] Unless someone comes forward with new evidence, the Bremen
[11:11] Hollow Rd. attacker is likely to remain as much of an unknown as
[11:15] he was on that August morning in 1988.
[11:23] The blonde man hurt Pat. That's what the old woman said.
[11:28] She had dementia, she could barely look after herself.
[11:32] And she was the closest thing Patricia Shea's case ever had to
[11:36] a witness. 4 words from a woman whose mind was failing her.
[11:40] And more than 4 decades later, those 4 words are still the best
[11:45] lead anyone's got. On the evening of July 25th,
[11:50] 1982, Patricia Shea Pat to the people who knew her, arrived
[11:55] back at her apartment at 107 Shore Front Parkway in Rockaway
[12:00] Park, Queens. Sometime between 10:30 and 11:00
[12:04] that night, Pat received a phone call from an elderly woman named
[12:08] Aggie, who lived in the adjacent building at 106 Shorefront Pkwy.
[12:15] Aggie was frail and suffered from dementia, and Pat had taken
[12:19] it upon herself to check in on her regularly.
[12:22] That night, Aggie asked Pat to come over.
[12:26] Pat's boyfriend saw her at around 11:15, just outside the
[12:30] building heading toward Aggie's apartment.
[12:34] He watched her walk across the parking lot, and that was the
[12:37] last time anyone who loved Patricia Shea is ever confirmed
[12:41] to have seen her alive. The next morning, at roughly
[12:46] 6:00 AM on July 26th, her body was discovered in the bushes
[12:50] just off Center Drive in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.
[12:55] She'd been strangled with a thin piece of nylon cord, and her
[12:58] body had been hog tied. A man's shirt was found lying
[13:02] next to her. And that's where the facts
[13:04] essentially end and the questions begin.
[13:08] Because the distance between Rockaway Park and Prospect Park
[13:13] is roughly 20 miles, someone took Pat from her neighborhood,
[13:18] transported her body across Brooklyn and left her in a park
[13:21] on the other side of the borough.
[13:24] The investigation that followed turned up frustratingly little.
[13:28] The man's shirt, found at the scene was examined but never
[13:31] publicly linked to a suspect. The nylon cord was a common
[13:35] material without any specific identifying characteristics.
[13:40] And the one person who might have seen something Aggie could
[13:44] only offer that single, haunting fragment about a blonde man.
[13:48] Detectives interviewed her, but her condition made it impossible
[13:51] to extract anything more detailed or reliable.
[13:55] Whether Aggie actually witnessed something, or whether her mind
[13:58] had constructed a scene to fit the facts, is something no one
[14:02] has ever been able to determine with certainty.
[14:07] Now here's where things get broader and arguably more
[14:10] unsettling. Pat Shea's slaying wasn't an
[14:14] isolated event. In 1982, New York City saw a
[14:18] disturbing cluster of strangulation deaths involving
[14:22] women. The first victim, 22 year old
[14:25] Cheryl Guida, was found in Coney Island on March 18th.
[14:30] On July 15th, 21 year old Rita Nixon was found behind a school
[14:34] near Chinatown. Pat was discovered 11 days
[14:38] later. 1/4 victim, 32 year old Glenda DeLeon, was found on
[14:43] Water St. in Manhattan. A fifth woman was also found
[14:47] strangled in similar circumstances.
[14:50] Five women, all strangled, spread across Brooklyn and lower
[14:54] Manhattan in the space of a few months.
[14:58] The then Deputy Chief Robert Colangelo told reporters at the
[15:02] time that the only common thread is that 5 women have been
[15:05] strangled in a short period of time in NYC, which from where
[15:10] I'm sitting is a fairly significant common thread.
[15:13] But detectives at the time were unable to establish a definitive
[15:17] link between the cases. The victims didn't know each
[15:21] other, didn't frequent the same places, and didn't fit a single
[15:25] demographic profile. Whether one person was
[15:28] responsible for all 5, or some of them, or none of them in
[15:33] combination, remains an open question.
[15:38] For decades, Pat's case went cold.
[15:41] Her family kept her memory alive, but the NYPD had no new
[15:45] leads and no new evidence to work with.
[15:49] Then in 2014, the department offered a $2000 reward for
[15:54] information, A very modest sum, but a signal that the case
[15:58] hadn't been forgotten entirely. The following year, in 2015,
[16:04] Detective William Simon of the Cold Case Squad in Brooklyn
[16:08] formally reopened the investigation.
[16:11] Simon did solid work. He re examined the original case
[16:15] files, reinterviewed persons of interest and witnesses where
[16:19] possible, and notably, he was able to rule out two significant
[16:24] threads. First, he confirmed that Pat's
[16:27] boyfriend had a solid alibi and was not a suspect, something
[16:31] that the original investigators don't appear to have done.
[16:34] Second, he concluded that the connection to the other 4
[16:37] strangulation victims was unlikely, that Pat's slaying was
[16:42] probably a separate targeted crime, not the work of a serial
[16:46] offender. That's useful information, but
[16:49] it also narrows the field in a way that raises uncomfortable
[16:52] questions. Because if this wasn't random
[16:55] and it wasn't serial, then it was almost certainly personal.
[16:59] Somebody Pat knew did this to her and has remained at large
[17:03] for decades. And then, in 2021, the case took
[17:08] its strangest turn yet. A reporter named Carrie Murtha,
[17:13] writing for The Wave, Rockaway's local newspaper, published an
[17:17] article revisiting Pat's unsolved slaying.
[17:21] It was a solid piece of local journalism, the kind that keeps
[17:25] cold cases in the public consciousness, which, as I
[17:28] always say, is key to getting these cases cracked.
[17:33] About three weeks after the article ran, Murtha received a
[17:37] letter at the newspaper's office.
[17:39] It was addressed to her by name, printed on old fashioned
[17:43] computer paper, and it was anonymous.
[17:46] The letter named a suspect, and if it was to be believed, it
[17:50] indicates something extremely dark was at play.
[17:53] Specifically, it identified the blonde man as a police officer,
[17:58] gave the area where he lived, and claimed that Patricia had
[18:02] been having an affair with him. It also added the detail that
[18:06] she had threatened to tell his wife about the affair.
[18:09] Murtha passed the letter along to Detective Simon, who followed
[18:13] up, and Simon later confirmed that he'd gone out and spoken to
[18:16] the officer and his family. What came of that conversation
[18:20] has not been made public and no arrest has ever been made.
[18:25] And I feel like I should under score here that this was an
[18:29] anonymous source that provided no evidence.
[18:34] This could simply have been a malicious letter sent by someone
[18:37] with a grudge against this specific cop, or it could have
[18:40] been strategic, a way to discredit the officer.
[18:44] Since police officers are often called to give testimony a
[18:47] trial, someone may have had an appeal in progress where their
[18:51] conviction relied upon the credibility of the testimony of
[18:54] this officer. Naturally, if he was convicted
[18:58] of such a crime, any convictions based upon the credibility of
[19:02] his testimony would be in jeopardy.
[19:07] So what do we make of all this? There are, broadly speaking, 2
[19:11] theories that hold any weight. The 1st is the serial predator
[19:15] angle that Pat was one of several women cut down by the
[19:19] same monster operating across New York City in 1982.
[19:24] Under this theory, the perpetrator was never identified
[19:27] because the cases were handled by different precincts and never
[19:30] properly consolidated at the time.
[19:34] Detective Simon, for his part, has largely dismissed this
[19:37] theory, but not everyone agrees with his assessment.
[19:41] The fact remains that five women were strangled in a similar
[19:44] fashion within months of each other keeps this a distinct open
[19:48] possibility in my mind. That said, New York City during
[19:52] this time was remarkably dangerous by the standards of
[19:55] today, so perhaps this apparent pattern is just a sad reflection
[20:00] of that reality. The second theory, bolstered
[20:04] considerably by the 2021 anonymous letter, is that Pat
[20:08] was eliminated by someone she knew.
[20:11] This was someone with a motive rooted in a personal
[20:13] relationship and someone with enough power or connections to
[20:17] avoid suspicion for over 40 years.
[20:23] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here reminding everyone to hit all
[20:26] those buttons like subscribe and of course the all important
[20:30] notification bell. Also, don't forget to leave a
[20:33] comment saying where you're watching from or what you like
[20:36] to do while you listen to my content.
[20:42] A dead woman named her own killer.
[20:45] That's the version of this story you've probably heard, and
[20:49] honestly, it's not even that far from the truth.
[20:53] In February of 1977, a 47 year old respiratory therapist named
[20:59] Teresita Basa was found in her burning Chicago apartment with a
[21:03] butcher knife driven through her chest.
[21:06] The case went cold for six months with no leads and no
[21:09] meaningful suspects. Then a Co worker who barely knew
[21:13] Teresita allegedly began speaking in her voice during a
[21:17] series of trance like episodes. She named the man who had slain
[21:21] her, described what he had stolen, and told police exactly
[21:26] where to find the proof. The detectives followed up on
[21:30] it, and every single detail checked out.
[21:34] Now, whether you believe Teresita Basa actually reached
[21:38] out from beyond the grave is entirely up to you.
[21:42] But the facts of what happened next are a matter of public
[21:45] record, and they are, to put it mildly, difficult to explain
[21:49] away. Teresita Basa was born in the
[21:53] Philippines in 1929 to a prominent and well connected
[21:57] couple. She graduated from the
[21:59] University of the Assumption in Manila in 1960 and eventually
[22:04] made her way to the United States in the early 60s to study
[22:07] music. She earned a master's degree and
[22:10] was reportedly working toward a doctorate.
[22:13] But music alone didn't pay the bills in Chicago, so Teresita
[22:17] trained as a respiratory therapist and took a position at
[22:20] Edgewater Hospital on the city's North Side.
[22:24] She supplemented her income by giving piano lessons out of her
[22:27] apartment in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
[22:30] By all accounts, she was quiet, well liked and deeply devoted to
[22:35] her work and her studies. She was the kind of person who
[22:39] kept to herself, but left a good impression on the people around
[22:43] her. On the evening of February 21st,
[22:47] 1977, neighbors in Teresita's apartment building began
[22:52] smelling smoke. Firefighters were called, and
[22:56] when they forced their way into her unit, they found far more
[22:59] than a kitchen fire. Teresita's body was on the
[23:03] floor, concealed beneath a burning mattress that had been
[23:06] deliberately set alight. When the flames were put out and
[23:10] the scene was examined, investigators discovered a
[23:13] butcher knife had been driven into her chest.
[23:17] The fire had been staged to destroy the evidence of the
[23:20] horrible acts that had been committed against this innocent
[23:23] woman. But there was more evidence of
[23:26] staging as well. And as it turned out, Teresita
[23:30] had her clothing stripped as well.
[23:33] However, upon forensic examination, it appears that
[23:37] despite the obvious crime this suggested, she didn't appear to
[23:40] have suffered from an indecent assault in the course of the
[23:43] crime. This couldn't be confirmed with
[23:46] absolute certainty, but it suggested that the person who
[23:49] did this was trying to throw the police off his true motivation
[23:54] for committing the crime. Chicago Police launched an
[23:58] investigation, but from the outset, the case presented
[24:01] serious problems. The fire had done exactly what
[24:05] it was meant to do. It had consumed most of the
[24:08] physical evidence in the apartment.
[24:11] Detectives pursued several early leads, including questioning a
[24:15] man Teresita had reportedly been arguing with, but nothing panned
[24:19] out. One detail did catch
[24:22] investigators attention, a handwritten memo found in the
[24:25] apartment that read Get theater tickets for AS at the time
[24:31] nobody knew what to make of it. But keep this in mind because it
[24:35] will matter later. Weeks became months and by the
[24:40] summer of 1977 the case was effectively stalled out.
[24:45] There were no suspects, no forensic breakthroughs, and no
[24:49] witnesses stepping forward. The slaying of Teresita Basa was
[24:55] on its way to becoming just another unsolved case in a city
[24:59] that had, and still has, no shortage of them.
[25:03] And then, roughly six months after Teresita's death,
[25:07] something happened that nobody involved in the case could have
[25:10] predicted. Remy Chua was a fellow
[25:14] respiratory therapist who had worked alongside Teresita at
[25:18] Edgewater Hospital. The two women were both Filipino
[25:21] immigrants who worked together, but by most accounts they were
[25:25] just colleagues and nothing more.
[25:29] In August of 1977, Remy Chua reportedly began experiencing
[25:34] vivid unsettling visions. According to her husband, Doctor
[25:39] Jose Chua, Remy would slip into trance like states during which
[25:44] she spoke in a voice that was distinctly not her own.
[25:47] That voice identified itself as none other than Teresita.
[25:51] Basa and Dr. Chua described 3 separate episodes where this
[25:55] occurred. During these trances, the voice
[25:59] claiming to be Teresita delivered a remarkably specific
[26:03] set of accusations. She named a man called Alan
[26:07] Shaury, an orderly who worked in the respiratory department at
[26:11] Edgewater Hospital, as the person who had slain her.
[26:15] The voice stated that Shaury had stolen her jewelry after the
[26:18] attack and that he had given the pieces to his girlfriend.
[26:24] Now I want to be clear about something here.
[26:27] I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the ghost of
[26:29] Teresita Basa literally possessed a Co worker and
[26:32] started naming names. I'm also not going to tell you
[26:36] it didn't happen because I genuinely don't know what
[26:39] happened in the Chua household during those episodes.
[26:43] What I can tell you is what the couple did next.
[26:46] Doctor Jose Chua contacted the Chicago Police Department and
[26:50] relayed his wife's claims to the detectives on the case, and to
[26:54] their credit, the detectives didn't laugh him off the phone,
[26:58] instead taking the claim rather seriously.
[27:03] The detectives looked into Alan Shaury, and what they found
[27:06] wasn't reassuring. Shaury was an orderly in the
[27:09] respiratory department at Edgewater, the exact same
[27:13] department where Teresita had worked, and the two were quite
[27:16] close with one another. He had prior arrests for
[27:19] robbery, burglary and assault, though notably no convictions.
[27:25] Colleagues at the hospital confirmed that Shawery had made
[27:28] plans to visit Teresita's apartment on the evening of the
[27:31] attack, ostensibly to help her fix a broken television set.
[27:36] And here I just need to interject for a moment because
[27:40] this seems like something that ought to have been uncovered in
[27:42] the initial investigation, but for whatever reason, it wasn't.
[27:48] And then there was that memo found in the apartment.
[27:51] Get theater tickets for AS. It soon became clear that this
[27:56] likely referred to Alan Shaury, the same man the disembodied
[28:00] voice allegedly mentioned. But the most damning piece of
[28:04] evidence was exactly where the voice said it would be.
[28:07] Detectives tracked down Shaury's girlfriend and found two pieces
[28:11] of jewelry in her possession, a Pearl ring and a jade pendant.
[28:16] She said Shaury had given them to her as a late Christmas gift.
[28:21] But friends and family of Teresita positively identified
[28:24] both items as belonging to the victim.
[28:28] Confronted with the recovered jewelry and the mounting
[28:31] circumstantial case, Alan Showery did something that saved
[28:35] everyone a lot of time. He confessed to everything.
[28:40] According to his account, he had gone to Teresita's apartment on
[28:43] the evening of February 21st to fix her television.
[28:48] He left, but for reasons that are entirely unknown, he then
[28:52] decided to return to rob her. When she let him back in, he
[28:56] attacked her from behind as she was locking the door.
[29:00] He then disrobed her body to make the crime appear to be a
[29:03] different kind of assault all together, placed a mattress over
[29:06] her and set it on fire. It was a calculated, deliberate
[29:11] attempt to destroy the evidence and misdirect investigators into
[29:15] believing robbery wasn't the motive.
[29:19] Despite the confession, the case went to trial, but a mistrial
[29:24] was declared during proceedings and ultimately he pled guilty in
[29:27] February 1979. In a further bizarre twist, he
[29:32] was sentenced to only 14 years in prison, but was then released
[29:36] on parole in 1983, roughly 4 years into his prison term. 14
[29:43] years reduced to four for a crime of this nature is the kind
[29:47] of detail that tends to sit poorly with people, myself
[29:50] included. It's especially disturbing since
[29:54] while he claimed that his motive was robbery and that her clothes
[29:58] were removed as part of the cover up, there's the potential
[30:01] that this wasn't the case. I find it hard to believe that
[30:05] someone would commit this sort of crime over a couple of pieces
[30:09] of jewelry and a fistful of dollars.
[30:12] I have to think that he may have done things far darker to this
[30:15] innocent woman and the fire was designed to cover up those sick
[30:19] acts rather than a robbery. Now the question that hangs over
[30:24] this entire case is obvious. Did Teresita Basa actually
[30:28] communicate from beyond the grave?
[30:31] Personally, I think the honest answer is that we simply don't
[30:34] know what happened to Remichua during those episodes.
[30:38] The mildly skeptical explanation is that information about
[30:41] Shawery's visit to Teresita's apartment had circulated through
[30:45] the hospital rumor mill in the months following the slaying.
[30:49] Remichua may have absorbed these details without consciously
[30:53] registering them, and during her trance states they surfaced in a
[30:57] way that felt external, like a voice that wasn't hers.
[31:03] The human mind is remarkably good at constructing narratives
[31:06] from half remembered fragments, especially under stress.
[31:11] The hard skeptic position is that the Chuas may have
[31:14] fabricated the entire thing as a way to deliver the evidence to
[31:17] the police. However, I find this extremely
[31:21] hard to accept because the idea of framing it as a ghost story
[31:25] seems far less likely to get traction with investigators than
[31:29] simply reporting the rumors. And once again, I just have to
[31:32] emphasize that I can't understand how Teresita's Co
[31:36] workers weren't properly interviewed.
[31:39] If they had been, there would have been no need for this
[31:42] apparent intervention from beyond the grave because it was
[31:45] apparently a widely circulating fact that Shawry had been with
[31:49] Teresita that night for 27 years.
[31:56] One teenager was known as nothing more than a number, Jane
[31:59] Doe 19. A teenage girl with no name, no
[32:04] family stepping forward, no missing persons report, just
[32:08] five bullet wounds and a shallow resting place in a culvert along
[32:12] Interstate 10 in southern Arizona.
[32:16] It would take nearly 3 decades and a revolution in forensic
[32:19] science before anyone could finally say her name out loud.
[32:23] Deanna Lee Criswell. This is the story of how a 16
[32:27] year old girl from Spokane, WA ended up dead in the Arizona
[32:32] desert, and how the man who likely did it will never be held
[32:36] accountable. Deanna's childhood wasn't easy.
[32:41] Her parents divorced when she was young, fracturing the family
[32:45] in ways that would ripple outward for decades.
[32:48] The split created deep estrangement within the Criswell
[32:51] family. Relatives lost touch with one
[32:54] another, and the normal safety net simply wasn't there.
[32:59] Deanna found herself caught in the wreckage, and by the summer
[33:02] of 1987, at just 16 years old, she developed a pattern of
[33:08] running away from home. In July of that year, she ran
[33:13] again, and this time, unlike the previous ones, she didn't come
[33:18] back. What makes Deanna's case
[33:20] particularly heartbreaking is that nobody filed a missing
[33:24] persons report. Her family, fractured and
[33:28] disconnected as they were, didn't raise the alarm, and she
[33:32] slipped through the cracks completely without anyone ever
[33:35] noticing. While living on the streets,
[33:38] Deanna crossed paths with a man named William Ross Knight.
[33:43] Knight was 36 years old, more than twice her age, with a
[33:47] criminal record that included armed robberies.
[33:51] He'd been known to carry a 22 caliber pistol during those
[33:54] crimes, a fact that will be important.
[33:58] Knight had relocated to Tucson, AZ and in September 1987 he sent
[34:03] Deanna a bus ticket to join him. There she went quote UN quote
[34:07] willingly, or at least as willingly as a 16 year old
[34:11] runaway with no support system can go anywhere with a predator
[34:14] 20 years her senior. On or around November 23rd,
[34:19] 1987, Deanna Criswell was shot five times with a 22 caliber
[34:23] firearm. Four of the rounds struck her
[34:26] torso, one hit her neck. The shooting happened at close
[34:30] range. She was 16 years old, over 1000
[34:34] miles from the place she'd once called home, and completely
[34:38] alone in every way that mattered. 2 days later, on
[34:43] November 25th, her body was discovered in a culvert along
[34:47] the eastbound lanes of Interstate 10 near the town of
[34:51] Marana, just northwest of Tucson.
[34:54] Tire tracks at the scene indicated she hadn't been shot
[34:57] there, that her body had been transported and dumped at the
[35:00] location. Whoever did this had driven her
[35:04] out to this stretch of desert highway and left her in a
[35:07] drainage culvert like she was something to be discarded.
[35:11] Local authorities launched an investigation, but they
[35:14] immediately ran into a wall that would prove insurmountable.
[35:17] For years, they couldn't identify the victim.
[35:21] She had no identification on her, and no one had reported a
[35:25] missing teenager matching her description.
[35:28] Without a name, the investigation had almost nowhere
[35:32] to go, and without a national database, there was little
[35:35] meaningful ability to cross reference cases nationwide.
[35:40] Detectives worked the case as best they could, running what
[35:43] forensic analysis was available in the late 1980s.
[35:47] But without a victim identity to anchor things, the trail went
[35:51] cold quickly. In 1989, Deanna's then
[35:55] unidentified remains were laid to rest in the Pima County
[35:58] Cemetery. She was buried as Jane Doe 19,
[36:03] one anonymous grave among many. William Knight continued his
[36:08] criminal career after Deanna's death, seemingly unbothered by
[36:12] the fact that a teenage girl he'd brought across state lines
[36:15] was now lying in an unmarked grave.
[36:18] His pattern of armed robberies eventually caught up with him,
[36:22] and he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.
[36:25] He sat in a Tucson prison for years, and in 2005 he died of
[36:31] end stage liver disease behind bars.
[36:34] It wasn't until 2011, six years after Knight died, that DNA
[36:39] evidence collected from Deanna's body and clothing was matched to
[36:43] him through samples taken during his prior arrests.
[36:47] The forensic link was strong. The same man who favored 20 twos
[36:52] during his robberies, the same man who'd abducted her, was now
[36:56] tied to her remains through biological evidence.
[37:00] Unfortunately, though, Knight was already dead, and there
[37:04] would be no arrest, no trial, no conviction, no moment where a
[37:09] jury looked him in the eye and told him what he'd done.
[37:14] The justice system, for all its machinery, had been outrun by
[37:18] the hard biological reality of liver failure.
[37:23] The tragedy of Deanna Criswell's case isn't just what happened to
[37:26] her, but the silence that followed.
[37:29] For over a quarter century, no one came looking for her.
[37:33] Her family's estrangement ran so deep that her absence simply
[37:37] wasn't registered as alarming. She existed in a kind of limbo,
[37:42] a girl no one searched for, whose remains no one could
[37:45] identify, someone everyone simply thought was probably
[37:49] somewhere else. The breakthrough came from an
[37:52] unexpected direction and unexpected family reunion that
[37:57] brought together the feuding factions of the family.
[38:00] In 2014, Deanna's paternal aunt and uncle, Ellen and Donald
[38:06] Criswell, reconnected with Deanna's father after years of
[38:10] estrangement. During that reconciliation, they
[38:14] learned that no one had heard from Deanna in decades since
[38:17] everyone just assumed she had been in touch with another
[38:20] branch of the family. Alarmed, Ellen and Donald began
[38:24] searching online databases dedicated to matching
[38:27] unidentified remains with missing persons.
[38:30] They found a facial reconstruction and case details
[38:34] that matched what they knew about Deanna, and they contacted
[38:37] the Marana Police Department. On February 11th, 2015, the
[38:43] Marana Police Department officially announced what Ellen
[38:45] and Donald Criswell had feared and fought to confirm Jane Doe
[38:50] 19 was Deanna Lee Criswell. In the end, for me, what lingers
[38:57] most about Deanna Criswell's case isn't the resolution, but
[39:01] the significant remaining uncertainty.
[39:04] The evidence points strongly in One Direction, enough to form a
[39:08] compelling narrative, enough to convince investigators and
[39:11] observers alike that a likely suspect has already been
[39:15] identified but likely isn't the same as proven.
[39:19] And suspicion, no matter how strong, can't replace the
[39:23] clarity that comes out in a trial.
[39:26] We can't say with absolute certainty what happened in those
[39:29] final moments. We don't know what led up to the
[39:32] violence, whether it was sudden or premeditated, whether there
[39:37] were arguments, coercion, or something else entirely.
[39:43] We don't know if she was alone with him, or if others were
[39:46] present and even potentially involved in the crime itself.
[39:50] What we're left with is a case that feels extremely close to
[39:53] resolution but never quite reaches it.
[39:57] A name was finally restored, a connection made, but the truth
[40:01] in its fullest sense. Remains just out of reach.
[40:06] That's one of the tragedies of a case like this, in my view,
[40:09] because it generally means that there will be no further
[40:12] investigation into the circumstances of what happened.
[40:16] This is especially concerning given the fact that ultimately,
[40:19] we don't know if Knight was the triggerman at all, even if all
[40:23] evidence suggests that he likely was.

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