Theories

Truth Be Told Presents: She Has A Name

American Public Media

True Crime, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Who killed Anita? Did her involvement in the drug game somehow lead to her murder? A serial killer? Or maybe the man her family says used and abused her was somehow involved?

In this episode of She Has A Name, we delve into four theories, parsing out the details from the original fire report and crime scene documents, witness accounts, the family’s knowledge, and interviews with the lead detective.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we get started, you should know in this episode, we reveal the very gruesome details of Anita's murder.
0:08.0	We don't take the sharing of these details lightly and frankly, we talked at length about whether to include them at all.
0:15.3	We decided to share because this podcast is not only about giving Anita a name, it's
0:21.2	also about bringing justice to her name. It's also about bringing justice to her name.
0:24.0	Listen to discretion is advised. We just got the FOIA request back from Detroit Police, which is the Freedom of Information Act that allows us access to the
0:49.1	original police report and the fire report.
0:54.0	A few weeks before Christmas, my research producer Kristen called to warn me that she'd finally gotten a
1:05.3	hold to the original handwritten crime scene in Firefighter Report for Anita from 1987. This was a big deal because we'd been requesting these documents for two
1:17.3	years and every time we'd ask the police would come back and tell us they didn't have anything.
1:24.0	They told me not to even bother putting in a FOIA because they said they would have it.
1:28.0	That didn't exactly sound right because Sergeant Shannon Jones, the lead detective in Anita's
1:34.5	murder investigation, shared with us how she died so we know there's some sort of
1:40.4	paper trail. Kristen tried one more time, and finally, without fanfare warning,
1:47.0	an 8-page police and fire report arrived in her email box.
1:52.0	And when I read it, to be honest with you, my first feeling was,
1:56.0	I'm going to have to tell Panya and Antonio this.
1:59.0	That this was so much more detail that I was expecting. It was so
2:05.0	personal and I mean to be really honest I had to wait a day to let it sink in to call you guys because it just felt like such another
2:16.2	disappointment on such a long line of awful things that happened to Anita. But I'm going to tell you, there was nothing, not even Kristen's warning that could have prepared me for its contents.
2:37.0	On Wednesday, November 11, 1987,
2:41.0	two neighbors who lived near a vacant house on Wanda Street were awakened by barking dogs.
2:48.0	A neighbor who lived next door called 911 after seeing orange flames shooting from the vacant house.
	...

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