On the evening of February 21, 1977, emergency services were called to an apartment fire on Chicago's north side.

Firefighters were directed to one of the top floor units where thick black smoke was seeping out from under the door.

The building manager met them there with a key, but the lock wouldn't turn easily.

He kept trying while the smoke got worse, filling the hallway and making it hard to breathe.

When the door finally opened, visibility inside the apartment was almost zero.

Firefighters crawled along the floor towards the windows and managed to break a few panes of glass to let some of the

smoke escape. With a better view of the apartment, they could see that the source of the fire was the

bedroom. A mattress was propped up against the wall and a pile of clothes underneath it was fully

engulfed. When the flames were extinguished, one of the crew poked

through the pile to make sure no embers remained. When he hit something solid, he moved

some of the clothes aside and found a body. The woman was naked and badly burnt, but that wasn't

what stood out. Right in the middle of her chest was a large knife embedded to the hilt.

The fire was a cover for murder.

This is Monsters.

Music The woman found stabbed and burned to death in her own bedroom was the apartment's sole

occupant, Teresita Bassa.

Teresita was born on March 13th, 1929 in Dumagite City and Negros Island in the Philippines.

At the time, Dumagite was about as far from the busy urban

centers of Manila or Cebu as you could get. It was a quiet coastal area surrounded by sugar

cane fields and thick coconut groves and the kind of place where life moved slowly.

Dumagite was only moderately developed. Before the roads were paved, dusty paths and muddy tracks

crisscrossed the town. The main mode of transport, aside from walking or cycling, was horse-drawn

...