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Right now, I am listening to The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, and I just cannot get enough of it.
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My Mochi. Hey, weirdos, i'm ash and i'm elena and this right here what you're listening to in your fucking ear meat is morbid it is morbid i'm unhinged ash is on a space level but like i'm not fizzity fizzity fucked up i'm just fizzity fizzity fucked up on life on life on happiness on vibes on vibes honestly on hydration yeah me and elena elena and i um are drinking a lot of water yeah we're trying to hydrate more we're manifesting our health and wellness yeah we drink a lot of coffee so we gotta balance it out Yeah I know I didn't even Fucking finish my coffee today Whoa I didn't either And I
ate a salad That was scary I know I don't know what to say about that It was good I mean I put a lot of dressing on it So it really wasn't even a salad anymore But you know what still got the nutrients in there Ate the greens Whether they were soaked in parmesan peppercorn or not That's the thing If you want to eat a salad But you want a lot of dressing thing i see a lot of girlies on tiktok being like now don't put the dressing on it because that will ruin the purpose of eating set no it doesn't ruin the purpose no greens in your belly yeah exactly and no we're not nutritionists and no we're
not any of those things and i realize that some of you are woo i don't eat whatever you want everybody what you want you'll be fine we're not giving health advice don't worry we're not giving medical advice i'm not giving nutritional advice no i just like my salads with a shit ton of dressing on them and i think if that makes you happy you should do it too my my people i am a life coach i am not i am not i just wanted to make sure like we are not given that's not medical advice that's just like happiness advice on your salad it's great but do it you have to do it if you want to live long it's
friday it's friday it's not when you're listening to this i think it's probably fucking monday oh tuesday wednesday thursday you could it'll be like me four or five weeks in the future if you told me i'm gonna push you off a cliff if you don't answer that correctly when this is coming out i could not answer you can i tell you oh oh oh whoa whoa can i tell you why i thought of you the other day why i saw do you ever see those things on instagram and it's like um like like like, if you invite this person to a party and they're late, you win, like, several million dollars.
Who do you invite? Every single time, it's, like, gun to your head and, like, you have to call this person and they can't answer.
Yeah. Or, like, anything like that.
I'm like, oh, Alayna.
Yeah, me. Absolutely.
You're like, yeah. Yes.
But honestly, I am the answer to that question, too.
Both of us. Like, you're the answer to the first question.
And the second. I don't, you well i feel like you're way better at answering i wouldn't i don't think i would feel comfortable calling you if it was they can't answer i'd be like i don't know she might answer i'm like a me you'd be like she will absolutely not answer no way she screens her motherfucking calls when you do answer my phone call it's jarring yeah i think it's jarring for everybody involved but i don't like phone calls so yeah but you're reliable but in a weird way i appreciate that you're welcome i didn't want anyone to think that i was like full -blown insulting you no it's cool yeah
it's what we do here that's what we do we just insult each other fuck you you're the worst i hate you everybody's like what the fuck is going on that's all right leave it all in yeah leave it in this is the truth mention it all what an intro i know what an intro what are you bringing to the table you know what it is sometimes i haven't even gotten to it yet i don't care we're gonna get i care but you know what it is we are you know we're ahead of ourselves here so we're we're recording recording recording we're claiming our power back and we're feeling all like well right now i have a unicorn
ponytail she does so that's where we are we are the scariest thing about this is i'm not kidding we are full blown sober as a yes as a judge as a shoe sober as a shoe you know i like alliteration actually that's honestly shoes are always sober i was gonna say there's never a time where i have can say i've seen or heard of a drunk shoe you have mikey have you heard of a drunk shoe your shoe when you went to bed oh my god that's she wasn't drunk she was just a bitch yeah my shoe like she was broke she was yeah she was a broke bitch that's what my shoe was you gotta send that shoe out yeah i do have to
send that make an appointment i gotta get a cobbler to fix that are there still cobblers hell yeah there are cobbling every day i'm cobbling cobble cobble cobble i can't fix my shoe i need a cobbler for that no honestly i was gonna say you could fix that shoe but no one could fix no no one could we tried all over the place it was like i invented i was gonna say it was like at an event where we had to like walk out on stage yeah but elena had long pants on and i was like just walk out yeah barefoot and then just don't cross your legs when we get out there and if i do i just be like this is who i
am i don't wear shoes but no she walked out there with a broken heel it's true but going back to the point yeah what was i've never seen a drunk shoe shoes are always pretty sober yeah but judges i don't know they like them to be and they should be of course you know lay down the law but but even when they go home at night they're fallible yeah and even when they go out to dinner or like to a birthday party they're they're a judge but like still they're but they're not on the clock getting crazy at birthday parties no one knows what it means but it's provocative you ever been to a birthday party
with a judge can't say i have where are we i don't know but we're gonna find our way back where do we go from here where we go from here is a pretty wild tale it's also it's a sad tale because it involves like a really really cool lady who lost her life in a terrible way but then she ends up solving her own murder oh shit from beyond beyond beyond beyond beyond this is beyond so oh okay all right let me get a little more so now to this tale because this is a wild one and i think this is what dave like loved this one too we were this is just such a good like the in the end when it all comes together
you're like hell yeah because she like solved her own shit you know that song that's on tiktok right now where it's like yes exactly it's gonna be like that that's what it is it's it's happy in the end okay i like that thank you for setting us up to know that no problem just so you can like like roll with me here because there's some really sad parts i'll roll with you but this is the case of teresita basa the voice from beyond the grave and again like i said this is a case where a ghost possibly pointed to her own murderer shit now let's talk about teresita because teresita lived a pretty cool
life she seemed like a really cool lady very kind like just somebody who you wanted to be around oh Teresita Basa was born on March 13th 1929 in Dumaguete City Philippines and she was the only child of Pedro and Socorro Basa so Teresita right off the bat was a very passionate child when she liked something she dove headfirst into it and she took a lot of different interests a lot of different likings to different things like she was really well -rounded but she really really loved music and she loved gardening especially oh and her mother had this beautiful and lush garden in the back of their
home and she showed her everything she knew about taking care of it and Teresita's family was actually one of the wealthier on the island at the time swanky and this afforded her the tools at her disposal to learn the skills that she was interested in she was able to dive into music she was able to take time to learn gardening and she wanted to learn piano at one point i really want to learn how to play piano love the piano yeah i want to dive back into the piano really bad um so her family of course wanting to like nourish whatever it is she was interested in they had imported a steinway grand piano from manila and she
would sit around this piano and just play for hours and she would learn all the classical music like she was amazing at it and when she wasn't learning to play classical music on the piano she would be be sitting in front of their victrola with a pile of 78 records absorbing all the latest songs that had made their way to the philippines i love picturing this right now right yes like it's just she sounds like a cool chick she does she really does right from the get -go too she was just like music she was into shit yeah she sounds just like a fun time yeah just sitting there listening to records
and i'm sure it took a little while for certain songs to get to the philippines so like she was discovering them on a whole different wavelength like I didn't even think of that yeah that's cool that is cool now when the Japanese army invaded the Philippines in 1941 Dumaguete was used as a critical strategic point and at this time her parents were kind of agonizing over whether they should leave altogether or and flee into the mountain regions to just avoid everything because many other people had done so and ultimately pedro her father was persuaded by those in authority to stay um because the local
government was like kind of on the verge of collapse and quote his counsel would be needed more than ever so he was a very influential guy in the government okay wow um and the invasion was a profound influence on terra cita who was a teenager at the time she had grown up and she was very used to learning english in the classroom classroom but was now against her decision being learned forced to learn japanese in its place oh wow and she was comfortable learning english she was now like thrown over to this other thing that she didn't choose right and at the same time this island paradise that she
had enjoyed as a child where you know she knew everybody it was like they were in this nice little routine and you know like it it was just easy easy living yeah thing it was now dramatically transformed and a lot of filipinos were forced into service work for the soldiers oh man it was really bad there was like a lot of bad stuff happening so very drastically different from when she had grown up right that's she's a teenager that's so hard that's such an like important time in your life yeah and for like like your home to be changed so dramatically like that yeah and that's i mean like everything
is changing everything you like as a human every part of it now everything around you was changing i can't imagine having to adapt to that so by 1947 the island had more or less kind of returned to normal luckily but for teresita it was a lot of like trauma and a lot of memories there was a lot of violence there that had happened a lot of oppression that had happened and so ptsd going yeah so she was like it just wasn't the same so she made the decision to move to manila and once there she studied music at saint scolar i'm gonna try to say this i'm sorry at saint scholastica's college i feel like
you did that right and eventually she became a very accomplished pianist pianist and after her graduation she ended up moving to london oh Ooh, bitch. And continued her studies in music at the time at the Royal College of Music in London.
Nice. Now, London was very different than where she had grown up.
She had grown up in a tropical climate, a very tight -knit community.
Sunlight. Like that.
She was very used to all that.
And it was like a whole new world for Teresita London.
Culture shock. But she loved it.
She loved it. And whenever she could get away from schoolwork, she would love just exploring the city.
And she loved all the outdoor concerts that would happen and all the different things that she could go to the museums, all that fun stuff.
That is fun. So after two years at the Royal College of Music, Teresita graduated with a certificate in piano forte.
Ooh. Yeah. And she loved being in London.
She loved her time away.
She had a good time.
She met some people.
She did some things.
but she was missing her friends and family in her home okay as we all do so she had hoped to return back home just for a visit but instead she actually was convinced by her friends to go on a tour of europe with them oh shit and she did she ended up packing yeah she ended up visiting vienna salzburg paris other places like all kinds of cool places that's a dream of mine and it was was in paris that teresita met a russian composer by the name of alexander cherepnin he definitely took a liking to teresita but a liking in like a mentor way oh okay i was like am i going to regret my past statement
and he was very impressed by how dedicated she was to music her skills like just how varied she was in her musical talents and he really believed that she could become a great composer if she continued her studies wow what a fucking compliment i know right so turepnin and his wife actually both uh taught at de paul university in chicago oh funny that they met them in paris i know and invited tarasita to visit them anytime she was in chicago so it sounds like this was like meant to be yeah so in the summer of 1957 she was 28 years old and she ended up flying from the philippines to honolulu hawaii
and from there she traveled a pretty short distance relatively i suppose to bloomington indiana yeah it's only like a six hour flight yeah there you go insider insider uh and there is where she enrolled in the foreign exchange visitors program at an indiana university during her time there she made a lot lot of friends.
She really did well academically.
She had a good time, but she didn't end up finishing her credits completely.
She was actually just a handful of credits shy of completing her graduate studies.
And she ended up relocating to Washington DC like out of nowhere.
All right. And I think she was just like bebopping, you know, like she was just hitting everything.
Bebop -a -loopa, baby.
So she relocated to Washington DC and that's where she took a job as a typist with a family friend.
This family friend was working in the government because remember oh her parents are very influential like they are doing stuff in the phil um in the philippines and so this was like a connection right and so she could do this typing job while also continuing to study music at the library of congress oh yeah she's doing everything teresita so while she's working and studying in washington dc she attended a diplomatic reception like fancy and there is where she met edward o'meara who was a chicago lobbyist and he took an immediate liking to teresita but in the romantic sense um and remember she's
like a grown adult at this point yeah she's like 28 and soon after this first meeting they started dating and they started spending a ton of time together and then unfortunately just as the relationship ship was kind of like taking off her visa was set to expire no and she was required to return to the philippines before she could apply for u .s citizenship oh god damn so in 1965 she was 36 at this point and she returned home to her parents um and edward actually came to visit a ton came to the philippines but during his final trip to dumaguete pedro basa her father found something out about edward
omira of course he did he works in the government of course he did could not get anything past pedro pedro found out that edward had been frequenting one of the city's brothels bitch and that ended terracita and edward's relationship mighty fast good and pedro was essentially like uh i think it's time for you to leave bye and go home to the usa hit you on the the way out or actually maybe you should yeah so teresita was devastated yeah by this because one it's like she's been duped and then now she can also never see him again yeah it's like not only has her relationship ended in this awful way
but now her dreams of returning to the u .s are kind of put on hold yeah and instead now she decided she was just going to continue pursuing her passion for music she started teaching piano at silliman university and she was trying to find happiness where she was in the Philippines and but no matter how hard she tried she really couldn't feel comfortable there I think she had dealt with a lot of the trauma that was still kind of like soaking into the ground there with growing up and being a teenager through all that you know those photos sitting in your phone the ones that make you smile every time
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On top of that, that uncomfortability that she was feeling a little bit, she just could never feel at home again.
It makes sense. She was also feeling humiliated because she had been basically duped by this slick American guy.
And like that was that was the talk around town.
She had been duped by this stupid American.
And even so, she was excited because her visa ended up being approved.
And she was like, you know what?
I'm going to shake this up.
I don't need him. No, I don't need him to go to the United States.
So she was she was able to return to the United States without that asshole.
I was going to say, because there's plenty more for her in the United States than just that loser.
So on December 7th, 1971, 42 -year -old Teresi Tabasa returned to the United States, and she had less than $400 in her pocket and a small amount of luggage, and that's all she had to start a new life.
Damn. So with help from the Philippines consulate in Chicago, she was able to find an apartment on Mozart Street in the city's northwest side.
How fitting. Yeah, right?
Mozart Street. Yeah.
And she decided she was going to complete her graduate studies at Indiana University.
And in the meantime, she would find more work as a typist during this time.
So she just went back to what she knew.
Now, Edward O'Meara had really traumatized Teresita and she was reluctant to even make new friends.
Yeah, because she didn't trust anyone.
Exactly. And she spent a lot of her time just reading, kind of exploring the city alone.
and she decided she loved the city of Chicago and this is where she wanted to make her home now although she had hoped she'd be able to continue her studies and find work as a piano teacher it didn't take long for her to figure out that the job market for musicians was kind of small a little tough at the time the competition was fierce and the schedule really wasn't great for her and she wasn't going to be able to make enough money to support herself in the meantime time.
So she enrolled as a student in the respiratory therapy program at the Central YMCA Community College in September of 1972 and in the late spring of 1974 she graduated from that that program and she quickly found work as a therapist at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago.
Good for her. So she's working as like a respiratory therapist. She's just like rolling with the punches.
She's a badass like she's like oh this won't work I can just excel at this other thing and I'll just get a job here like she's just killing it yeah like nothing can deter her yeah she's just like an independent lady she doesn't need anybody and she's gonna figure out how to make it work love it so she working at Edgewater kind of opened up a whole new world of experiences for Teresita her new salary meant that she could find a new apartment a little larger and this one could accommodate a piano oh so in September of 1974 she moved into a big apartment and this was in the pine grove apartments
which was a new apartment building across from lincoln park and she immediately began looking for a small piano and now with her success and you know school and the new job and moving into this bigger place she had some new confidence and she started kind of opening up to new friends yeah and she was like you know what i'm working with some cool people i can hang out with these people not everybody sucks like edward yeah it started making her see that like i can be i can live my normal life so she became very close with ruth lobe who was one of the hospital administrators she became one of her
best friends and not long after moving into the apartment she found a very a small but like very reasonably priced electric organ at a music shop nearby oh that's cool and she had it put in her apartment now she she would play all the time and then she ended up forming a small music group with her cousin and a few co -workers oh that must have been so much fun yeah like it's so cute and and they called themselves the mahogany five plus one and they had five filipino members it was her cousin and a few co -workers and then a drummer who was like the only white guy that's why they called themselves
the mahogany five plus one that's incredible that is mahogany five plus one so the name was like a funny play on that yeah and the band played like parties and events like Basically, whenever they had time outside of work, they would play at different things.
Hell yeah, Teresita.
Yeah, and with the new job and apartment and a really cool small group of friends, the band happening.
She finally felt like her new life was coming together.
She was feeling comfortable, but she still had a lot of feelings from that heartbreak.
Yeah, I mean, of course.
Yeah, she was still not ready to totally give in to anybody romantically.
She was not feeling dating.
Yeah, didn't want to get out there romantically.
Yeah, and in the fall of 1975, she got a letter from a former pen pal of hers, Robert, who was saying that he would be in Chicago for a convention and would like to take her to dinner.
Okay. His name was Robert Krauth, I believe.
Krauth had intended to take her on a date.
That was his intention with this.
It wasn't like, I want to take you to dinner as friends.
He was like, I like you.
Yeah. And I want to take you to dinner.
I kind of got that vibe.
So he showed up at her apartment to pick her up And she had invited two of her co -workers With her And the two co -workers said We kind of look out for her I love that So he was like alright So unfortunately the fear of getting romantically Or emotionally involved with men Especially would be something that she would Kind of have to deal with her whole life She wasn't ready to move on from that But fortunately Teresita never let it get to her and never let it take away anything from her life good she was happy and she was fulfilled regardless so truly with the exception of like the small amount
of like introvert kind of like hiding awayness that she had when she first arrived in chicago she ended up loving spending time with friends she like loved any opportunity to throw a party she was like a social gal i kind of girly so she really got over it i also love that she was like if you want to be my lover brother you gotta get with my co -workers you know so you gotta get with my band ha so after what would be her eventual death because obviously we know how this ends i know uh many people would say that although she was what they referred to as a straight person meaning she didn't drink
or use drugs yeah straight edge she always kept beer and good scotch whiskey on hand for whenever she was entertaining for everyone else what a fucking dude so cool like what a girl my girl now one of of the biggest and most memorable parties that Teresita ever threw was in the summer of 1976 her mother had come to Chicago for a visit and Teresita was so excited to take her mom around the city show her all the things that had caused her to just fall in love with that city and she also wanted her mom to meet all of her friends that she made you know and especially her co -workers like Ruth Loeb
and another new friend who she had been spending time with at work named Alan in showry so it was like a great time that's and i love how close she was to her mom yeah like that her mom like taught her how to garden right they had that bond and then it's like she just couldn't wait to show her mom like the new city that she loved that's really special now at about 3 p .m the evening the afternoon of february 21st 1977 teresita was preparing to leave the hospital after a long day of work and she was putting on her coat getting ready to leave when her friend alan who i just mentioned alan showery
i didn't like your face when you said alan yeah he came into the room and they just kind of chatted and they left together they were going to catch the bus together uh they would do that often because the bus went by both their apartments so they would just get on the bus together right now on the ride home teresita had mentioned to alan that And she was there.
Television was all fucked up.
And he was like, oh, I can come by tonight and take a look at it and see if I can try to fix it.
I'm kind of handy. And she was like, oh, that's great.
And then they kind of discussed the mahogany five plus ones upcoming show that they had.
And Teresita said that they might be losing their drummer soon.
And so Alan was like, I can play the drums like if you need someone to sit in, like I can do that for you.
Minus one plus one.
Exactly. So Teresita was like, oh, you know what?
you can buy a ticket to see us at the show and then you can decide if you really want to like be a part of it yeah and at the time Alan was like I can't really like I don't have a lot of extra money so I can't really do it and before getting off at her stop she was like listen I'm going to set a ticket aside for you and you can come pick it up later.
What a sweetheart. Yeah so once she'd settled in at home that that evening she called her friend who was also her bandmate dr john abella and a little after 7 p .m they were just chatting on the phone they discussed the upcoming show you know they talked about ticket sales and how they were going to market it and tarasita had also said that her friend alan who he also knew yep might be taking could take over the drumming seat and he was like and she was like oh it might be you know a good opportunity for you to hear him play if we can get you guys all together they talked for about 10 minutes and then
teresita apparently excused herself and said someone's knocking at the door and she told she did tell him i was she was expecting company and she said someone who might buy a ticket for the concert okay so at about 7 30 p .m she teresita got another call and she answered okay um and it was her friend and co -worker ruth loeb and they just kind of chatted for about 20 minutes very casual chat just best friends you know besties besties being and besties yeah and teresita mentioned that she quote had a male visitor and ruth did hear a male in the background just kind of chatting like nothing crazy
um but she didn't give lobe a name and before ending the call okay that was the last time that lobe or anyone else would speak to teresita basa oh so a little after 8 30 p .m catherine and mario nazi i believe it's how you say it they were cleaning up after dinner they lived on the 15th floor in the pine grove apartments where Teresita lived I know that's high up that is they were just cleaning up and they you know not long after turning off the television they just kind of like settled in for the evening and Mario was like what is that smell and he suddenly smelled burning oh no so they were like
what the fuck so they all they ran around their apartment being like did anything burn or something left on right they couldn't find anything and Mario opened the door in the hallway and was was immediately overwhelmed with smoke that was like filling up the floor so he screamed for his wife to run out with him and they started running down the hallway yelling fire and banging on their neighbor's doors to try to get everybody out right and as they made their way to the elevator mario got um he got out of the elevator on the seventh floor to let the building's janitor know his name was page uh
patro lusa okay he was like i'm sending my wife to the lobby but like there's a a fire we gotta get everyone out yeah which like badass you also shouldn't use the elevator in a fire right probably not no uh but chicago firefighters had actually made their way into the hallway at this point because the fire alarm started going off and they told the men please leave immediately yeah and they had to crawl on their hands and knees like under the smoke it was really thick at this point and they were going through trying to make sure everybody was out of all the different um rooms and they entered teresita boss's
apartment and noticed that whatever the smoke was coming from it was coming from inside this apartment her apartment was the and not only that but it was coming from the middle of her bedroom floor like right next to the bed that's where it seems to be originating that's weird and it was still burning so they used axes and they smashed all the windows the balcony door in her bedroom and they just were trying to vent out all the smoke and they were able to put the fire out and i think they had to use like the fire hose and two handheld extinguishers so it was pretty big and once they had cleared
it all the fire lieutenant warren wellin began investigating trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here and he said it looked like somebody had attempted to burn the mattress in that bedroom and there was a pile of clothes on the floor and it looked like the mattress had been put on the pile of clothes and then lit on fire weird but so he like kicked the smoldering pile and was like what the fuck is under here like what's going on and that's when he discovered the nude body of teresita basa and he found a butcher knife embedded to the wooden handle in the exact center of her chest oh
my god yeah it was mayhem teresita's apartment appeared appeared to have been completely ransacked.
They immediately thought that this was a rape murder or perhaps a robbery gone wrong, and they thought it was a rape because she was found nude.
Right, of course. And with the clothing and mattresses piled on the body, they thought it was basically set ablaze to get rid of any evidence.
The fire caused a ton of damage to Teresita's body.
She had burns on both sides of her body and head head and um little left of her jet black hair was found now fortunately though the fire hadn't made its way through the heaviest part of the clothing pile so a lot of her face torso and upper legs were spared from being burned that's good now fire lieutenant whalen um radioed the police because now they had found a body and it was clearly a murdered body right and so they called in the body and detectives arrived at the scene pretty quickly now to the more seasoned detectives the crime scene particularly especially the pile of clothes in the center
of the floor it made them think of william hyrens who is the lipstick killer we haven't covered him yet that's actually on my list to cover um he murdered several women in the mid -1940s and he would leave piles of items at the crime scene as like his signature oh weird so immediately they were were like whoa this is wild but hyrens had been in prison for decades i was just gonna say it was no longer the 40s so they were like but they were like is this a copycat like what this just is a weird thing to do yeah so but they were like i don't know what this is but it's not good so from a quick search of the apartment
detectives were able to identify the victim from photos and you know personal papers and stuff and they noted that there were three locks on the door and not one of of them had been damaged or broken at all.
Like whoever the killer was, it was likely that they were led into the apartment by Teresita.
There was no struggle in that sense.
The bedroom, though, really looked like a robbery had occurred.
Jewelry boxes were open and flung on the floor.
They were overturned.
Drawers were pulled out.
The contents of everything was strewn around the room.
It was a mess. And the living room was kind of in a similar state of disarray.
Like plants, vases, tables were flipped over two televisions were side by side in front of the sofa and next to them was her organ i'm also like does she have a downstairs neighbor i know that's like what happened did somebody hear anything now outside the bedroom they didn't really get a lot of evidence just like aside from the chaos out there but the fire but they did find a note it was on a memo pad by the phone and on it was written in terra sita's handwriting writing get tickets for as right alan showery right so officers and they they saw that and they were like we should collect that i
don't know who that is so officers started going door to door interviewing residents on each floor just trying to learn something like about her heard anything yeah about the about anyone she knew and what they found was that she was very private yeah she was a private person she kind of kept to herself when it came to her neighbors right Right.
But the neighbor said she was very pleasant.
I just don't know a lot about her.
And the best lead they could find came from the janitor, Petro.
And he told detectives that he had seen Teresita arguing with someone in the lobby a few weeks earlier.
He said he was a white guy, about 50 years old, and he seemed like he'd been drinking.
That's weird. And he said, unfortunately, he couldn't really hear what they were arguing about.
Because he's like, I really shouldn't be listening to people's conversations.
Like, I wasn't trying to.
we're in the city here yeah like i'm gonna leave that alone but he said he hadn't seen the man before this and he hadn't seen him since teresita's neighbor across the hall bruce campbell which i was like wow bruce campbell evil dead ah um you're like not picking up what you're putting down um so bruce campbell her you know um neighbor from across the hall yeah he said he had seen her with a man as well and she never told him the man's name and she didn't hear it she never introduced him or anything but campbell was like fairly certain that the man was a sheet metal worker she he remembers her
saying something about that okay now katherine nazi who was the one who had helped alert everybody about the fire she gave investigators another lead she said she didn't know too much about teresita personally but she did recall hearing from another neighbor a few weeks weeks earlier that teresita had been attacked or raped or something like that what according to katherine teresita apparently had been standing at the door trying to get her key into the lock and a man in a ski mask grabbed her and attacked her what but she didn't have any more information about that so they asked the building
manager joyce kaltzman and joyce kaltzman remembered remembered another incident in september of 1974 where they had to have the locks changed after someone broke into terracita's apartment and stole some things what yeah what are you telling me right now i'm not sure that's the thing like no one had any real information and that was what they told them but all that's so sinister so two separate instances where somebody broke in and on one of those instances she was raped well they said she the way she said it was that she had been attacked or raped or something like that what we learn is she was not raped
okay she might have been attacked though yeah i mean jesus yeah now the case was assigned to 40 year old homicide detective joseph stahula um he already he was on the force for like a decade or more definitely He definitely had already made a name for himself as like the guy who gets shit done.
Like he's not going to quit.
Stahula, he's not going to go anywhere.
And so initially he, like everyone else, believed this was a rape, murder, arson, robbery kind of thing.
Making it very high profile.
So once the scene had been secured, Stahula and his partner, Lee Burley Eplin.
Obsessed. They headed to the apartments to kind of look over the scene.
It was basically how they had been told it would be, like very little leads to go on right off the bat.
But in the kitchen, Stahoula found a cutting board out on the counter and there was some lettuce and half a tomato.
And next to that was a small piece of meat still wrapped in butcher's paper.
OK. And now the only thing that was very absent from this scene in the kitchen was a knife that had been used to cut the vegetables.
and he assumed and was correct that it was the knife that was found protruding from Teresita's chest. So she had been cooking with it earlier?
Yeah. Now other than that the detectives discovered some you know personal papers.
They found her address book with a lot of names and 30 dollars in cash and that that address book had the names and numbers for like everyone she knew.
So they were like jackpot.
Now as Stahula and Eplin made their way through this address book they were recalling people trying to get anything they could they finally came across the numbers of ray king and richard pazodi okay uh they were two men who had accompanied tarasita out to dinner with robert kraus a few years earlier they were the two co -workers that were like we kind of look out for her oh shit they were the ones that she brought to dinner with the guy who wanted to take her out so these are good guys yeah and these two men confirmed they they came like and were there for this they they confirmed that terracy
did didn't have a boyfriend not to their knowledge um but that she like hung out with men like i think they said she liked men for their company yeah but she they were like no she wasn't romantically involved with anyone right um and they did say in the months before her murder she had like seen off and on this man named robert nudson who was a construction worker in his early 50s who knows if that was the guy that they had that the neighbors had seen her and the janitor had seen her arguing with.
Yep. A white guy in his 50s.
Yeah, right. Now, the detective's next call was to Ruth Loeb.
That was Teresita's coworker and closest friend.
Yeah. Ruth confirmed that she had spoken to Teresita on the night of the murder and that the two had made plans to have lunch the following day.
I can't imagine having that knowledge, that your friend - You got off the phone.
Oh, yeah, and then they got murdered.
Yeah. Like, oh my God.
and she had told her like i have someone like someone knocked at the door she's like i heard that person come in right like oh and she told detectives that while she was on the phone with her she heard a male voice that in the background and she said she couldn't make out what he was saying just that it was a male voice and the best she could tell was that teresita was you know in In good spirits, didn't seem to be in this man's company against her will, didn't seem to be stressed out or anything.
Very normal conversation, very normal attitude.
And the information from Ruth confirmed the earlier suspicion that Teresita's killer was likely known to her and was let in voluntarily.
Now going to the autopsy.
On the morning of February 22nd at the morgue, pathologist dr ty ann began his autopsy of teresita's body while he was doing the autopsy stahula and eplin burley eplin there they were waiting in the corner just watching yeah which pathologists love that and among the more significant findings was that beneath the skin of her neck which was totally charred the doctor did find bruising on her throat and a fractured larynx which indicated that at some point before she died and was lit on fire strangled she'd been choked how do they find out if there's bruising if it's charred skin because they're
able to see like the where there's some like gathering like pooled okay okay yeah like underneath the skin exactly oh i see um like because in the different layers yep now they determined that the cause of death was a stab wound lacerating the heart and strangulation Wow.
They also noted that Teresita's body showed that she had not been sexually assaulted.
Okay. So the findings of the autopsy pretty much completely undermined the theory that the detectives had been building since they first got there.
Oh no. She hadn't been raped.
She'd simply been undressed and made to look like she was raped to throw the investigation off.
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so while stahula and eplin discussed the autopsy results with the pathologist two other detectives went to the home of robert nudson the guy that she had gone to um she had been seeing off and on a little bit um and the man he confirmed that he did know teresita and that they'd been on a few dates but he said on the night of the murder he hadn't left his house except for a short trip to the grocery store yeah and they scheduled a polygraph test for him that day but apparently Apparently the officers let him take a Valium before the test, which would make the results inconclusive.
But still, his prints did not match the second set that was found at the scene that they ended up finding.
I'm just picturing him like, do you guys mind if I take this Valium?
And they're like, yeah, that probably won't mess that up at all.
Like what? So for months, the detectives poured over Teresita's life, that address book.
They talked to everyone she knew.
They chased down every single little pulling thread that they could.
Unfortunately, while they initially would have these like promising leads, they would all fall apart.
They'd all get ruled out with an interview or a polygraph exam.
And by the spring, all the leads had dried up and they were running out of people to interview at this point.
And in the summer after Teresita's murder, things at Edgewater Hospital had kind of just returned to normalcy at that point.
I mean, you know, all the employees just had in the respiratory unit just had to go about their lives.
That's really sad because they all loved her a lot.
And, yeah. And a 39 -year -old inhalation therapist at Edgewater named Remy Chua, she was working there.
She had hardly known Teresita.
They had literally, I think, met each other at orientation when Remy was at orientation.
They had worked different shifts.
Like they did not hang out.
They didn't know each other very well.
They knew of each other.
okay um i think they called each other a nodding acquaintanceship at best yeah and that i say this because it's strange because remi's husband and co -workers said that she became kind of preoccupied with teresita's life overnight like out of nowhere one day in july remi was sitting alone in the hospital's break room just all alone and her co -workers are in the hallway way and they see her almost jump out of her chair and tear out of the room like something scared the shit out of her and when they looked to see what she had run from there was nothing there yeah there was and so whatever it was it
scared the shit out of her so badly that she went home she wouldn't finish her shift okay and so remy didn't say anything at the time but later she told her husband dr jose chua that she said she was sitting alone in the break room and she just kind of of briefly closed her eyes like kind of just like resting a little bit and then she opened them and looked up and saw Teresita Bassa standing in front of her not moving or speaking just staring at her what the fuck and she said she jumped up and ran the fuck out of there and she had become obsessed with her life before this happened yes okay like
she had kind of become like very into what had happened and very into like her and asking people like you know like did you and it wasn't like she She was asking people, like, what did she like?
What was she into? Kind of thing.
She was almost telling people facts about her that people were like, how do you know that?
Oh, that's like, why do you know that?
Like, you don't know her.
Yeah. And she was like, yeah, I'm not really sure because I don't know her.
So it sounds like she's an empath.
Now, in the days that followed Teresita's appearance to Remy, co -workers remembered that Remy's personality shifted a lot after this.
they started noticing that she was very chatty when she wasn't very chatty before and she would just quote chatter on about the piano about classical music playing or partying like throwing parties all the things that Teresita was into so she was possessed and Teresita's co -workers were like this is disturbing like they had all been very close to Teresita probably like pissed them off well and it seemed like this woman was doing a strange impression of her almost Yeah so they all actually ended up Reporting it to Remy's supervisor Ted Ellis and being like she's being weird And but now Remy Was feeling
ganged up on and kind of Harassed by her co -workers And who were like what the fuck dude Stopped pretending to be Teresita So she ended up reporting to Ellis That she believed it had become a hostile Work environment And Ellis tried to de -escalate this whole Situation just like what is going on Like what but he was just making making remy angrier when he was trying to de -escalate it she was like i'm not doing anything like i don't understand she ended up being terminated that day for gross insubordination oh man so it was it was rough like obviously getting terminated out of nowhere but it was kind
of a relief for remy because she said she was very confused and anxious at work like something was different and she wasn't feeling comfortable there and she said you know like people making comments about the Teresita thing and like claiming that she was impersonating this woman that she hardly knew.
Like it was just getting weird there.
So she said like she was kind of relieved that she was like out of there because she felt like something, some weird energy.
Okay. I am sitting here like what the fuck is going on?
That evening, as she and her husband, Dr. Jose Chua were relaxing in their living room and she's just kind of like fuck i got fired remy kind of drifted off to sleep in a chair and then a few minutes later she stood up very abruptly didn't say anything to her husband and just walked into the bedroom that wasn't like her yeah and when she didn't come back a few minutes later like just stayed in the bedroom jose was like okay i'm gonna check on her so he went in there and checked and she was lying on the bed with her eyes wide open what and so he was like hey what's wrong you you okay but she wouldn't
say anything so he was like what the fuck like are you okay and then she started speaking in tagalog i believe is how you say it which is um like their native language and she was saying mama mama are you there mama what and jose was very confused and he was like what the fuck because the chua's also they came from the philippines and they spoke tagalog at at home when you just said that they also came through the philippine from the philippines my whole body did the warm yeah like they're like oh i have i'm covered in chills because this is the language they spoke at home yeah and this is the language
that teresita would also know uh -huh and he said the voice coming from his wife was not like her normal speaking voice i gotta go So he said, she was speaking a language I understood, that we speak at home.
But not in her voice.
But this was not her voice.
And then he said, to Jose's ear, it sounded like there was a slight Spanish accent here.
And then he said, Remy had her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
And she said, I am Teresita Basa.
Holy shit. And Dr. Chua was like, oh, fuck.
And he was like, I was very alarmed.
and she kept rambling on in this language about the dead woman whom she barely knew and he tried to get her to snap out of it and just explain what the fuck was going on and then she looked at him and said dr chua i would like to ask for your help and he was like why are you calling me dr chua like i'm your husband and he said so he was like what kind of help yeah and she responded to stop the person who killed me what the fuck and he was like what oh my god stop stop now stop in this moment holy fucking shit jose was like okay this has been a tough week for remi my wife she's having a break gone
through some shit she saw who she thought was teresita basa in the break room people have been shitty to her she kind of got ganged up on she was like fired from work jaywalk maybe she's just really stressed and under a lot of anxiety and this is like some kind of hallucination or like she's having a bad dream she's like maybe having a night terror right now so he started walking towards the bathroom because he was going to get something like a cool cloth to like calm her yeah and like he sounds so sweet he does sound like a sweetie yeah drew would be like i have to leave immediately right and this is and jose
dr chua is like i'm going to take care of you like i'm going to get you something to calm you down I promise you Drew would be running down the fucking street at this point.
And he said as he was walking towards the bathroom, she lifted her arm and gestured to the telephone and said, call the police, please doctor.
Call the police and tell them who killed me.
I cannot rest until they know.
And Jose was kind of starting to panic at this point.
Because he's like, I can't call the police right now.
And he was like, I don't know what to tell them.
I don't know what you're saying.
Like, I don't know what's happening right now.
and then remi suddenly abruptly came to and was very confused why she was in bed and what the fuck was wrong with her husband why he was so alarmed this is real this happened this happened and he explained to her what happened he was like um this is what just happened and she was like what like i have no idea what you're talking about oh my god she must have been so scared and he must have been so scared and they're like what like they had not nothing like this had happened to them before usually it doesn't in your life it's not like these people are people that are like trying to do this all
the time like this was a very random thing and the next day jose had driven his wife to edgewater to get her belongings from work and they you know they came back they were in the living room and remy was talking on the phone and suddenly she hands him the phone abruptly and says teresita wants to come back nope nope nope oh my god what and then then she walked out of the room in the middle of a phone call she literally stopped handed him the phone said Teresita wants to come back and walked into the bedroom and so Jose was like I'm sorry my wife has to call you back and ended the phone call and followed
her into the bedroom and she was laying just as she was the day before on the bed interesting that like she kept going back to her her bedroom to lay in the middle of her bed yep what and again she said i am taracy tabasa i'd be like i believe you and she said she was murdered by a man named alan chowry yeah i already knew that and she said and she spouted this to him she said he came to fix my television he stabbed me he choked me and he stole some of my jewelry and she said and then she just urgently requested him please go to the police please go to the police with this and she was he was so confused
and he was like i can't go to the police i don't have any proof of this like i can't call them and say that you are just telling me this ghost of this woman yeah he's like i can't tell them that you're telling me this beyond the grave like they will think he was like they'll think i'm losing it right i will get in trouble right and the voice just kept pleading for him to help and insisting that they could provide proof and then they provided proof tell me right now they explained every piece of jewelry that he had stolen and they said it was a ring that my mother had given me it was like another
piece of and i'll explain those in a little bit but that ring that her mother had given her a year before oh my god also sorry didn't he work at the hospital with her so this fucker like do remy and um dr and alan and they know him yeah what yep now as they provided this proof of this is what he took from me remy came to and was again completely confused what just happened and this happened again the following day the exact same thing over and over with the voice saying i know like please call please provide this proof please tell them that this is what's happening so Remy was like when she came
to and he told her again that this is you keep doing this this is the third day yeah Remy was like we got to do something it's just going to keep happening otherwise Remy called a friend and told the friend the story and this friend who I guess was connected to the consulate they placed a call to the Evanston police and using their connections were like this is what I've heard is happening right they didn't give give them the full rundown I guess but they didn't give them the rundown from the grief the whole thing so the tip about the chua's was assigned to detective Floyd McKinney at the Evanston police
okay um and he drove to the chua's home to interview them this is absolutely wild so they were worried that the detective was not going to take the story of Teresita's spirit possessing Remy's body and telling them I feel like most people really well that way now remember if they If they were looking to get something out of this and they were looking to like get attention, they would have just said it.
Yeah. They would have been like, wow, she got possessed.
Like this would have been like that thing.
No, they didn't. They just told McKinney that Remy had received a threatening phone call from a former co -worker, Alan Showery, and that she believed that he could have played part in Teresita's murder because of how aggressive he was and that he had mentioned something that made her think.
Guys, this is wild.
So they were like, we have to get Alan's name out there because Teresita is telling us.
Yeah. But we can't tell that Teresita told us this.
Because then they will lock us up.
So they made up a story.
Right. Which it's like, why would they have done that?
No. They would have just said it if they were trying to get attention.
Oh, my God. I'm, like, losing it right now.
So there's no actual evidence to support this at the moment.
And McKinney, the detective, just kind of took the statement, left the house.
Like, I'll write it down, I guess.
Yeah. He was like, wow, that's wild.
And back at the station, he reported it to his supervisor.
like you know they have this name they got a threatening phone call they think it could be connected so his supervisor was like and pass this on to chicago where the jurisdiction is so you know they would have to be the ones to conduct this so they did so detective mckinney and evanston was the one who received the tip okay and they hadn't had any leads in the case since the end of april so he was like awesome like we'll just go with this and he was not aware of all the specifics obviously he got that he got that story from it yeah but he explained to the people in chicago that he had received
a tip from this couple in evanston about a man named alan showery being involved possibly in the basa murder and it was stahula obviously who heard this tip and he got the tip and he placed a call to the chivas the next day okay now this is stahula in chicago who is now having to contact the chivas where did sorry where did the chivas live they lived in Evanston oh which is just another jurisdiction that's why they had to like I see um and apparently they had lived about a half a half hour outside of Chicago so Stahula had to go you know to their address he had to go sit down and talk to them
and he was like what do you guys know right now at first they stayed with the story they heard they received a harassing phone call from a man that Remy believed was Alan Showery yeah and she explained that Showery worked as what she thought was an orderly at edgewater she was like i'm not really sure what he does there's different reports that he was an orderly or he was in a like um respiratory therapist okay but she said he likes to pretend he's a doctor he even gets mail addressed to dr showery that's something something about the story seemed a little strange to stahula he just had like his feeling
yeah his radar was spidey senses are tingling yeah yeah and he said the chewers were being a little cagey and they seemed a little reluctant to talk uh -huh which he thought was weird right and he was like this seems kind of just like a prank phone call like i don't know about this and he said every time that showery's name was brought up he could see jose tense up and become uncomfortable really so he was like what's going on and he kind of pressed on them a little bit and was like what what do you you know like what's happening here and finally jose leaned towards him and said tell me mr detective
do you believe in the occult or an exorcism uh -huh and so he was like i'm open -minded okay and so thank you was explained the events of the previous week the real events they told the detective jose had asked the voice who killed teresita and she had said alan showery and he said she kept repeating his name over and over and over and joseph said or excuse me jose said he said he killed me he killed me he killed me over and over and over then he added credibility to the story because jose explained that the voice had said that xiaori had taken her jewelry and so shua said okay and he was like so he
didn't even give him the specifics of that yet he was is like he took his her jewelry and he was like all right we don't know that yet because people said they didn't think anything was missing from the scene right but he then he was like i'm going to test this so he goes did the voice indicate to you that her killer raped her and jose said oh no no she did not she only said that she had been stabbed oh wow and jose also then right after this went into the description of the jewelry and said that it was a pendant from the philippines that was taken a cocktail ring with a pearl inlay given to tarasita by her
mother a couple of years earlier and also that the i guess that the voice insisted that this was going to be how they would know the truth like i guess the voice was literally like you tell the police this and they'll they are going to find these things in shaury's possession yeah i promised you this so he was like shit this is pretty wild but like how are we gonna get a search warrant that's the like this this this whatever and he was like okay it's weird because in the press they had said this was possibly a rape murder robbery it was not in the press that she had not been sexually assaulted
so that was a strange one and when he went back to the stations to hula considered the whole thing he didn't know what to make of it and like i said no one had reported that any jewelry was missing from Tara Sita's apartment and he said they had interviewed most but not all of the co -workers that she worked with and never no one ever really talked about a man named Alan Showery and then he's flipping through the case file and he comes across the memo pad next to the the tell that was next to the telephone yep and it said on that memo pad get tickets for AS and he was like huh Alan Showery the fact
that she was going to get him get him free tickets and this is what he fucking did to her yeah now fortunately it turned out that whoever received the call from the evanston police earlier in the day like to take that tip and pass it on to the detectives they had already run showery's name for them which i was like badass yeah like ahead of things so they had already pulled his full report his full case file for stahoula so he was like yeah you're an mvp you're the real one alan showery was 30 years old when he started working working at edgewaters hospital yeah he was born and raised in new york
city he'd studied sociology and psychology at new york university and utah state wow before settling in chicago around 1969 so like i said there's varying reports whether what his job at the hospital was but he did work with tarasita yeah alongside her right um they didn't seem like they would be likely friends because on paper they are very different yeah he had an arrest record that was like very long but she probably didn't know that included arrests for burglary in 1967 stolen mail in 1966 theft in 1971 two arrests for rape in 1972 was he doing working at a hospital yep and both of those rapes
were done on chicago's north side where teresita lived now they were but they were both both friendly with each other they had very outgoing personalities the two of them they bonded together they both loved music he was about to be in her band i guess they really got along like the two of them were like friends yeah it sounded like it they used to ride the bus together in the mid -1970s he had been living with his german -born girlfriend yonka kalmak um she they lived on the city north side which was opposite the chicago transit authority okay so investigators were like he was not outwardly obviously
a guy that would have rape or murder on his rap sheet they said he was the sort of person that like you could easily come to like he had a face that projected i want to be your friend that's scary and it took some time to actually track him down but once they got him at his apartment and knocked on the door he seemed perfectly fine with going down to the station and talking to the detectives and before they'd even arrived at the station he asked if whatever they wanted to talk about had to do with tarasita basa they didn't respond they just brought him into the interrogation room and immediately
read him his rights and the detectives explained that they'd been speaking with a lot of his co -workers at the hospital and there were some things that were said that kind of led them to want to talk to alan that's what they let out yeah they didn't say that tarasita told us you did it i hope he did did find that out eventually teresa so shower he claimed that he and teresita were very good friends but he said it was platonic he explained they would talk during work they would ride the bus home together they ate lunch together it was a very normal co -worker friendship wow now initially he said
that he hadn't seen teresita outside of work for about six months but the detectives decided to bluff a little and they told them that they'd found his fingerprints at the apartment they had not yeah and he said there was no way that those were six months old so he was like okay and then he revised his story oh and that's when he told the detectives that not only had he not not seen her in six months out of sight of work he had ridden the bus home with teresita on the day that she was murdered right like that's gonna look a little weird dude yeah and he told them he'd promised to go to her apartment
later that night to fix her television but he said he'd forgotten and instead had gone home and he had fixed wiring in his own apartment lies and he assured them that his girlfriend would verify the salvi i bet she would now they were like huh okay and they were like you have a girlfriend i wonder if she has new jewelry so they said i wouldn't have even thought of that yep and now that they have brought him in for questioning they could now search his apartment so they went and yonko was there so they could question her and when they told her about the alibi she was very confused and said we don't
have any problems with the wiring in here he never did any work on it she was just like fuck that no he didn't and so they were like can we look in your jewelry box and she was like absolutely you can good for her and they didn't really know what they were like looking for quite yet but they you you know they were just like i don't know at this point they were like maybe it's in here maybe it's not and they eventually they were able to find someone like one of her friends who could actually look in the jewelry box too and point to see if anything was recognizable one of teresita's friends exactly
and so they found um who they found was richard posodi who was one of the two men that went on the date with her and uh he said he didn't see anything that he believed believed belonged to Teresita and they had him come down where Yonka was and look into this thing.
And he was like, yeah, I don't see anything that's hers.
And then he was leaving the room and he looked over at Yonka and he said, that ring on her finger is Teresita's.
And Yonka told detectives that Alan had given her the ring as a belated Christmas gift sometime around the end of february what the actual fuck so she said here you go take it and it was later identified by teresita's cousin to be the cocktail ring given to her by her mother oh my god that's disgusting yeah he gave that to his girlfriend as a late christmas gift yep and the cousin also looked in was able to look in the box and identified a jade pendant that was teresita's and remember remember, Remy had said there's a jade pendant, there's a pendant.
She said a pendant, a ring and a cocktail ring that belongs to, and a cocktail ring that belongs to my mother.
Yeah. That was my mother.
Right, right, right.
And he said, the cousin said there was also two other items in there that he believed belonged to Teresita as well.
This is so horrific.
Now after he heard about the jewelry and about his girlfriend denying the alibi, Showery tried to spin a story about how how he bought that jewelry from some guy on the street.
Yeah, buddy, I don't think so.
But both detectives just kind of looked at him and were like, really, is that really the fucking story you want to go with?
He immediately dropped it, and he said, I murdered her.
Just confessed. Why?
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According to Alan, he said he did go to Teresita's that evening to look at the television set to fix it for her, but he realized that he needed to get his tools in order to fix it, so he went back to his apartment a few hours later around 7 30 p .m that's when he was going back to her apartment and he said he just decided he was going to rob her what so he said the reason was he said he had been helping teresita obtain citizenship papers and it had on several occasions driven her to the naturalization office and after he would do this she would always give him a cash tip of five or 10 for just
for helping her out so he decided to rob her so he assumed that she had money in her apartment this is why you shouldn't be kind to people no you shouldn't because also she didn't she had 30 in her right she didn't like she was just doing that out of the she just did that to help you and yeah he broke so he said at the time of the murder he was very broke he was behind on all his bills he was very desperate well got another job asshole and as soon as Teresita to close the door after letting him in he grabbed her from behind and gave her a chokehold she lost consciousness very quickly and he said
he laid her down on the floor and just started ransacking the place for money all he found was thirty dollars in cash and what he thought was expensive looking jewelry so once he'd ransacked the place he went back to the living room he picked her up off the floor carried her into the bedroom and he said he didn't know what to do so he decided to make it looked like rape so he took her clothing off went to the kitchen and got that knife off the counter that she had used to cut up the lettuce and the the tomato and he stabbed her into her sternum holy shit according to alan he described teresita as
being subconscious at the time which i was like nope incorrect you work at a fucking hospital and he said she didn't feel anything who the the fuck are you to say that yeah like you don't even know she wasn't dead unconscious and subconscious after so he said he piled some clothes on top of her body dragged the mattress over to her and set fire to a paper bag that he put on top of the clothing and once that was all on fire he fled the apartment and went back to his what a piece of human garbage yeah now during this questioning stahula put in a bunch of control questions to see if he was telling
the truth Or if he was just repeating things he had heard in the media.
Yeah. Because he wanted to be sure this was an accurate confession and not somebody going to claim that they were forced into it.
Smart guy. So Allen accurately described the scene in the apartment, which wasn't released to the press.
He described what Teresita was wearing.
He said what he'd stolen.
None of that was in the newspapers.
And he also said that he wanted to, quote, make it look like a sex crime and that he had not sexually assaulted her.
and none of that had been released to the media wow so the confession was very genuine and you know just to be sure they had him go through it a second time and they said he never wavered from that confession and so they took him out of the room and they said as he went by yonka who was standing out there he told her that he probably wouldn't be seeing her again for a long time i can't even imagine what she said to him yeah now everything had worked out it seemed and the the detectives were really confident that they had enough to give the district attorney for prosecution.
I mean, they had everything, the stuff.
The only issue is that they weren't sure how to explain how they'd even made their way to Alan Showery.
Right. But there was no way around it.
They had to tell the judge and the jury that the ghost of Teresita Bassa spoke through Remy Chua and led them to their killer.
I mean. And the thing is, they may not have been able to explain what happened, but they were right about every detail.
Right. So it's like, this is going to sound kind of kooky, but everything is right.
This is what happened and it led us here.
So the case was assigned to Thomas Organ of the Cook County District Attorney's Office, who would be representing the state.
Yeah. And at first, Organ was skeptical of the voice from the grave story.
I think so. And he had no idea how he was going to present this case to a jury.
He said, in my five years as a prosecutor handling 70 or so felony cases, I've never run into anything like this.
Also, sorry, is his last name Oregon?
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, right.
But he dove into it and he researched it, investigated it, and he said, they're telling the truth.
Everything in this case just, like, lines up.
It does. Like, spiritually, physically.
And he said, he was like, I believe the Chua's.
How can I not? Yeah, because they didn't even want to tell this to begin with.
That's the thing. And I feel like that gives more credibility.
Yeah, they didn't run out to tell this to anyone.
Right, exactly. So a pretrial hearing was held in the circuit court of Cook County on September 7, 1978.
And this is when Allen's defense attorney, William Suano, he tried to have the charges dismissed because of the unusual circumstances that preceded his arrest. It's like, yeah, sure, but like, why does your client have everything and know everything about her?
Well, and he's claiming that Remy Chua had faked the episodes because she'd been fired.
She was stressed out.
She was trying to get attention.
And prosecutor Thomas Organ argued that the detectives had pursued a viable lead and found probable cause to arrest Alan Showery.
So the paranormal thing that preceded it was unusual, but ultimately irrelevant because it led to the truth.
Uh -huh. And the judge agreed.
Wow. Wow. And Alan, yeah, and Alan Showery was ordered to stand trial for the first degree murder of Teresita Bassa.
Because he planned it on the way over.
Yeah, because he had planned the whole thing.
Alan Showery went on trial January 8th, 1979, and the media went nuts about this.
Thomas Organ knew he was fighting a very uphill battle with the, you know, a lot of his case was resting on a tip from a ghost. Yeah, you know, that'll be difficult.
But he, he fought through.
He was undeterred. In the the months since the case had come to him he had interviewed the chua's again and again and he said it was mostly you know i was trying to get the i knew they were going to be on the stand and he said also i was looking for holes in the story right and he found nothing and he said in front of the jury oregon tried to minimize the supernatural claims and just kind of focus on the facts of the case which was a case of murder and robbery and not ghosts and possession so he was like the reality of the case is that there is evidence in his possession to say he murdered her
yeah and he was like i don't want the jury to forget that that there's facts here regardless of how we got here we got here so for the most part his argument remained much as it had during the pre -trial hearing with alan showery had been confronted with undeniable proof of his involvement and with the jewelry yeah and on that he had given an oral and written confession to murdering her so that is the facts yo and the defense argued that showery had been arrested on nothing more than the chua's unbelievable story of possession and that alan had only confessed to spare his girlfriend from being
arrested along with him and giving birth to their children in jail because apparently she was pregnant oh my god that's horrific now remy chua was in the process they said was in the process of being fired from her job she had personal problems they didn't release what those personal problems were because they probably didn't exist but they told the story the jury that he she had just made up this possession thing this whole act to get attention and sure anybody hearing that would be like under normal circumstances sure yeah tell me that she's stressed out she lost her job there was all this weird
shit going on maybe she wants attention sure why not except that from the start that she was didn't want to report the whole thing even they were reluctant reporters and reluctant witnesses they didn't want to talk about any of it they were stressed out talking about it they were very reluctant and also like cool she got fired from her job she has all these personal problems she made this up uh then why was the jewelry in the girlfriend's possession why did it pan out and why did he know the apartment scene if he hadn't been there and how did he know that she hadn't been raped if he wasn't the one
to to not rape her.
Exactly. And at no time had the Chuyas tried to make money off of or capitalize on this story.
No time. Right. Never.
So like they had nothing to gain here.
In fact, everyone who knew them and anytime anyone talked to them, they were like, we really just want to go away.
Like we don't want to be part of this story anymore.
We don't want to, we don't want to be in the spotlight.
We just want to leave this for you to fix.
And that's it. Because realistically, abandoned statistically i just said they have nothing to gain really they have everything to lose yeah they at least i mean he's a doctor like like people will doubt him if he like made this up and you know she's a respiratory therapist like they have like you know do they have good jobs they have reputations like this wouldn't be a good thing they're not trying to be like you know they're not running around to all the media outlets being like let me tell you my story of possession they're like please don't talk to me right exactly and so in their closing
arguments both sides tried to hammer home those arguments that they've been making the whole time the defense kind of focused on the paranormal part being like this is crazy trying to put in the jury's mind this is wild also propping up showery's claim that he had been coerced into confessing by because the detectives had threatened to arrest his girlfriend as an accessory okay now thomas organ dismissed any claims of coercion saying to the jury that his story might be be believable if it came from a 16 year old boy who might be easily intimidated yeah exactly they said alan showery is an adult
educated man with an extensive criminal history that's the other thing he's literally done like this before and as for the supernatural part about the chivas he told them it doesn't matter as to guilt or innocence what does matter is that the information furnished to police checked out and after 13 hours of deliberation the jury sent a note to the judge on the afternoon of Friday, January 26th, saying that they were hopelessly deadlocked.
I would think, because can you imagine that 13 hours of them going back and forth?
And the judge dismissed the jury and a new trial was set for February 14th.
Oh, they needed Ronald.
So February 14th came and went and the judge had to order a continuance, which got the defense really feeling good because they started getting confident that they could get an acquittal the second time around.
but on the evening of february 21st only a few days later alan showery called his lawyer and asked him to arrange a meeting with the judge and the district attorney the next day showery and lawyers from both sides stood in front of the judge and alan showery against the advice of his attorney pleaded guilty to the murder of terracita basa do you think terracita was like appearing to him at this i wonder if she was like you fucker i'm gonna haunt your ass right and he was like Like, I'm just going to admit this.
The district attorney's office confirmed that they had no plea deal.
They had not offered a deal for this.
Wow. I feel like he had to have been being haunted.
And honestly, I hope that even after he pled guilty, he continued to be haunted.
That's what I think.
And Showery would not give an explanation for why he decided to do this.
Yeah, girl. That's what makes me think.
Because we already know.
Yep. And his lawyer asked the judge for leniency.
Fuck that. That's all he could do.
and the judge considered everything and the request for leniency and sentenced Alan Showery to concurrent terms of 4 to 12 years on armed robbery and arson charges.
What about the murder?
He was never convicted of the murder from what I can tell.
He was convicted of armed robbery and arson.
And that's why he got that sentence.
What? So I wonder if there was some kind of plea deal that happened by the scenes.
There has to have been.
because it's very confusing.
That doesn't make any fucking sense that they were just like, yeah, I guess we'll just throw the murder off the table for no fucking reason.
No big deal, but he admitted to it, which is so wild to me.
I wonder if he had information on like another case.
I wonder if something is out there that we don't know about.
That doesn't make any sense.
And also that pisses me the fuck off because he served the minimum four years of his sentence and was paroled in 1983.
What the actual fuck?
Are you kidding me?
Yep. oh my god Teresita baby if you didn't haunt him and that is the story of Teresita Bassa four years he served four years he served for that what I know Teresita is the baddest bitch alive and the baddest bitch in good for her afterlife also and good for the chivas yeah for listening to her and for like being brave really brave enough to tell a detective when they didn't want to that this is what had happened that and good for yanka for just being like sure come on in and like no i'm not telling you his alibi is correct like no he did not work on wiring that night like good for yanka but like
damn but what do we not know because that doesn't make any sense that like in my opinion it really sucks because justice wasn't served no it really wasn't at all years is not a sentence for that and she like nobody ever went to prison for her murder yeah i'm so angry right now i was too i was very angry fuck there's something that happened in that trial that we that is not public that we don't know about that definitely is hidden somewhere in the annals of that record i i just had like a gut feeling that he had information on another there had been something something like that because that's
nothing like because he had to have helped them in some big big way yeah and that's dave said the same thing he was like there had to have been some kind of deal that happened that we don't know off the books yeah that is infuriating yeah what only got the arson and robbery charge honestly i not only hope that he gets haunted for the rest of his life i hope everybody in that deal right involved in that deal also got haunted them terracita terracita you know what but no you know what if that's what you wanted you go ahead but like live your afterlife yeah because you know what she said i can't
move on until yeah i know that he did it they know hopefully she just got him to admit it yeah and then was like now i can move on see you later i hope she is like playing piano shows in the afterlife strumming on her organ yeah i hope that like men treated her better in the afterlife she's hanging out with her parents i hope she's just like the best i hope she's she's going to london sometimes to hang out and have some fun i hope she like quickly dropped by edward's house just to be be like just to scare the shit out of him I hope so too I would do that yeah hell yeah wow Teresita what a wild
story yeah what an infuriating story because the fact that she invited him into her home and was in invited him into her band like thought he was a friend and that's what he did that's how much of a friend she considered him she was gonna have him be in the band she trusted him coming into her house to fix this tv she was gonna comp him tickets like she tipped him every time he drove her somewhere and she didn't actually really have that much much money and telling like her friends in the band that like oh i have this friend you know alan is gonna be in the band yeah like right like like i want
you guys to like hear him yeah wow i'm so angry right now me too great story though wild story wild story um and with that being said we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not as weird as the beginning of the show because we were like wild and yeah keep it as weird as tarasita keep it as as weird as Teresita for sure and maybe do keep it so weird that you're just like wilded out in a fun goofy silly way be silly goofy like pour one out for Teresita yeah she's a badass If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app
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Hey, weirdos, you know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong.
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