Ramble. There's something called a Buddha house in Ethiopia.
It's where people go to seek protection and healing.
The main objective at these Buddha houses is to ward off the evil spirits or the disease causing evil eye.
They focus primarily on traditional medicine and on a daily basis.
These Buddha houses, they open their front doors and there's all sorts of people coming in.
They're also dealing with illnesses that doctors cannot even pinpoint or perhaps even cure.
People with strange new hallucinations forming.
Or sometimes, people involved in very mysterious accidents.
Like 7 year old heaven. Her little body appears very crumpled when she's carried in through the Buddha houses front door.
They're asking what happened.
They need to know so that they can even try to heal her.
And the general story seems all over the place.
She's brought in by her neighbors who try to explain what we don't really know what happened.
But here's what we think happened.
At the entrance of their house, all of their houses, they have this bar.
It's like about the height of an adult.
It's a wooden bar. And apparently the kids in the neighborhood, they would swing on that bar all the time.
Just swing back and forth like they're doing pull ups.
She must have been swinging when she fell and hit her head.
And she's not responding now.
Look, there's cuts all over her body.
I mean, that looks like she would fall and maybe scrape herself on a branch, right?
Pieces of wood, rocks. It's not completely unbelievable.
And it's true, there's lots of rocks around that door.
She must have hit her head on one of those.
Her little three year old sister had found her laying on the ground outside their front door.
She didn't even understand what was going on.
So she went to grab a family member, a 15 year old girl, so just kids.
And she tells her, look, heaven's outside playing.
She's sleeping. The 15 year old is confused by this.
She runs outside, sees heaven on the ground, puts her hand on heaven.
And by this point, heaven is cold.
She's screaming. This 15 year old is screaming for all the neighbors, all the adults to come help.
And now they've rushed little heaven to the Buddha house to be healed.
Heaven is seven years and seven months old, but she looks closer to five because of how tiny she is.
And the healers could just take one look at heaven and they knew there is no healing to be done.
This little girl is already dead.
But the questions now are, if she had fallen, she had fallen so hard that it killed her.
Wouldn't she have fractured a bone?
Wouldn't she have broken a bone?
Or if she hit her head on a rock as she came down, wouldn't she have blood a lot more?
The only blood that they found on her body was on the back of her dress is this tiny tear sized blood droplet.
When heaven's mom finally sees her seven year old daughter's body, she finds something very odd.
The little girl's mouth, there's something inside of her mouth.
It's like sand. It's actually more like cement.
It's sand mixed with water to make this very thick mixture and there's even pebbles inside and it looks like she just has a mouth full of cement.
Why would, what do you mean?
So she's falling and she just eats a chunk of cement.
It doesn't even make sense.
On top of that, she has a full handprint around her neck.
I mean, you could see five finger markings where someone had dug into her little daughter's neck.
You cannot say that's from a rock.
How could the neighbors try to even tell her that this is a result of her falling off a bar?
How could they argue that her mouth had to be filled with this sand so that she could be healed?
They said that is healing sand.
What? Yeah, it feels like everyone is in on this one big conspiracy of what happened to heaven.
Nobody will tell heaven's mom what actually happened because this is not the truth clearly.
And heaven's mom is on a journey to figure out what the hell happened to her daughter.
We would like to thank today's partners who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support Abraham's Oasis.
They are a non-religious, local, legally registered non-profit in Ethiopia that provides medical care, food, and a safe haven for lost, abandoned, separated children in the aftermath of the war.
Additionally, there is a change.org petition for heaven and her family that we will be linking in the description, so please check that out.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team.
And we would also like to thank you guys for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates.
As always, full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast.com.
A few disclaimers before we get into today's case.
This is a highly requested case.
I tried to do all the research in English and it just wasn't working, so we worked with a wonderful Ethiopian translator to help gather the source material for today's episode and fill in the extra needed context.
But as always, if there is anything mistranslated, miscommunicated, or any additional information you may have, please leave it in the comments.
A few disclaimers, there are mentions of CACSA and descriptions of a brutal death of someone under the age of 10.
Please always prioritize your mental health and well-being, stay safe, and if you can't handle today's episode, take a walk.
We'll see you in the next one.
With that being said, let's get into it.
As a custodian for the bank, there's a few rules that you have to follow.
Most banks operate on a buddy system.
Nobody is opening or closing the bank by themselves.
Unlike other businesses where they tell the employees, hey, go park at the very back of the parking lot so that the customers can park near the front, bank employees are typically told to park very close to whichever exit they leave from, likely the back exit, in a well-lit area of the parking lot.
More often than not, if they're closing down the bank, they leave through a man trap.
It's where, typically at the back of the bank, they have a back door.
You exit at that door, then lock the door behind you.
But instead of being outside of the building, you're in this small little box, and there's another door in front of you.
You unlock that door, walk out, lock it behind you, and now you're fully outside.
This is to make sure that on your way out, no one barges their way into the back of the bank.
A man trap is added for extra security.
Being a custodian for the bank is not the most well-paying job.
I mean, she used to be a nurse for seven years, but this is safer.
Only because there's security cameras everywhere.
And so she thought, that way, if someone comes for her, if they try to kill her, at least it'll all be caught on camera, right?
Four months into her job, she's helping close up the bank.
She's walking out into the dark parking lot when the security guard stops her.
What's wrong? Is that car picking you up?
Are you waiting on a car?
She wasn't. She looks around, and in the darkness of the parking lot, she can make out a car with these few young, bulky men.
That's how she describes it, just standing around the car, and she's squinting to get a better look.
She recognizes one of them.
It's the one that escaped from prison, the one that essayed and murdered her seven-year-old daughter, Heaven.
Heaven's mom had just clocked in as a scrub nurse at the local hospital.
This is before Heaven passed.
This is before she works at the bank.
She reaches into her pocket and she's going to put her phone on silent, which is her very normal routine during surgeries because she's a scrub nurse.
She can't touch her phone.
She can't turn off the ringer if it goes off, but something in her tells her, what's the point in turning it on to silent?
Nobody calls her anyway while she's at work and she's basically at work all the time.
Let's just keep it on. She scrubs in for surgery.
They're working on this man who has a fractured shoulder from a fall.
It must have been a pretty nasty fall.
His shoulder is looking rough.
And all of a sudden, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Her phone starts ringing in the middle of surgery.
This is exactly what she was supposed to avoid.
She let it ring because she can't touch it.
She's starting to sweat.
The doctor is staring at her like, hello, why did you not silence your phone?
And then it stops. Then it starts again.
She says at this point, one of the other nurses comes in, grabs her phone from the pocket, leaves the operating room and picks up the call for her.
She is informed. It's an emergency.
You got to leave. Her daughter is sick.
Heaven's mom remembers thinking in that moment, first of all, my daughter rarely ever gets sick.
Second of all, she just saw her this morning.
She was the one that woke her up.
Heaven was like, mommy, you got to wake up.
You're going to be late for work.
Come on, get up. She was full of energy.
She would have noticed if her daughter seemed even a little bit ill.
I mean, she's a nurse. On the doctor's instruction, Heaven's mom runs out of work.
She grabs the nearest taxi and goes straight home.
And when she gets there, her daughter's not there.
She's been taken to a Buddha house, a traditional healer, and nobody is telling her which Buddha house all the adults inside the neighborhood gone.
The only person left in the neighborhood, if you will, is her landlord, Getna.
To give you some context from our Ethiopian researcher, a lot of people rent out a house in a fully fenced space.
So inside of this fully gated yard is normally one big house where the landlord lives with typically their extended family.
So it's not just like a nuclear family unit.
Maybe grandparents, maybe sisters, siblings of the landowners.
And then nearby this big house, there's a few smaller one to two bedroom houses that are built onto the property that people can rent.
It's kind of like detached guest houses that you can rent out of.
Oftentimes, there's one bathroom that's a separate building that all the residents of all the individual houses use.
It's kind of like a small three, four family community behind each fence.
That's what I'm referring to when I say the neighbors, the neighborhood.
But they're all typically relatives of Getna.
They're all kind of connected.
Yes. Now she's trying to ask Getna, because he's the only one left behind, the landlord, what the hell is going on?
Where are your sisters?
Where is your wife? Where is my daughter?
Where is heaven? In a few hours, slowly little bits and pieces start unraveling and heaven's mom will find herself in another hospital room, witnessing her seven year old daughter's autopsy.
Heaven's mom was told that her little girl had fallen from a wooden bar that she was swinging off of because kids like to do what kids do, you know, things that could potentially hurt them.
There was no adult around directly supervising.
She got hurt and she passed away.
It's a freak accident, if you will.
But as heaven's mom, a nurse is sitting in through this autopsy.
She knows that they're all lying to her.
Every single one of them, every single one of her neighbors, every single one of the adults, every single one of the people she trusted with her kids, she doesn't believe a single word out of their mouths.
If she fell from a wooden bar swing, would she have fractured bones?
Yes. Would she have a broken bone?
Probably. Would she have fractures to her skull if it killed her from the fall?
But instead, she has these strange cuts that are all over her body that are almost too identical in depth and length, like someone had done it themselves.
There's only one single droplet of blood on her.
And just a brief content warning here, please be aware that heaven's autopsy results are incredibly disturbing.
It is very clear from the get-go that heaven did not pass from a fall.
She has extensive injuries.
Her cause of death appears to be strangulation.
There are finger markings around her neck embedded in her neck.
You can almost see someone's handprint.
The muscles around her private areas were all torn.
You cannot explain that from a fall.
There is extensive physical trauma to her private parts.
Had she not been strangled to death, she likely would have died from her injuries to her private parts.
In an interview with her mother, she describes the true condition of her daughter's body.
She states that the tearing on her daughter's private parts were so bad to the extent that, quote, only her spinal cord is visible and her uterus cannot be seen.
If you are someone like me without kids or you're not around children frequently, heaven is described as being a very small seven-year-old about the size of a kindergartner.
They're typically not even four feet tall yet at this point.
Who would do something like that to this tiny little girl?
Heaven's mom realizes pretty on that every single person in the neighborhood is lying.
She did not fall. This is not an accident.
She was essayed and she was murdered viciously.
She starts running through the possibilities in her mind of who could have done this.
The only person she really spoke to after getting back to the neighborhood was Getnet, her landlord.
Heaven's mom remembered asking Getnet over and over, what happened?
What happened? Please, where is she?
What happened? And he's obviously acting strange.
He refuses to answer. In fact, he could barely keep eye contact with her.
He just stares into the void.
He's sitting on his couch, not responding.
It's so weird. When she kept asking him, did you see something?
What did you see? I mean, you're like one of the only adults on the property at the time.
He just kept saying, what?
Huh? And refusing to answer.
She looks down and she sees that his hands keep going in and out of his pockets.
Like he's sweating, like he's fidgeting, he's hiding something.
At this point, Heaven's body had already been taken to the Buddha house.
Heaven's mom is demanding Getnet take the landlord, take her there.
Which one? Your sisters took her, so you must know.
You are here. It's not like you just got home.
Your sisters took her to the Buddha house.
Finally, he's like, okay, I will take you to the Buddha house.
And before he gets into the taxi, he grabs a Gabby to wear.
Now, from what I'm told, Gabby is like a white cloak that many wear to attend funerals.
Nobody had even given confirmation that Heaven was dead yet.
Like he's going to Heaven's funeral right now?
Yeah. Is that energy? Yeah, like he's like, okay, she's dead.
Let me grab this. But Heaven's mom has no idea what even happened.
She just had word that she's sick.
Why are you grabbing funeral attire?
She's so confused by this.
It's like he knew before anybody else knew.
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Even later, when they get to the Buddha house, they eventually rush heaven to the hospital.
Doctors reported that Gennet was acting very strangely.
He wasn't crying at all, which that alone isn't the most alarming thing in the world.
But at one point he tries to sneak into the autopsy room.
He gets caught trying to sneak in.
He gets kicked out. Then he retreats into the bathroom.
Now at this point, the doctors are like, this guy is very strange.
We need to figure out what's going on with this guy.
They listen through the cracks of the bathroom wall.
And for some reason they're alarmed enough to even call the police.
They push their ear up to the hole and they hear him.
Gennet, the landlord, the only adult present during the time on the phone saying, I'm at the hospital right now.
Yeah, my neighbor's kid was R worded and murdered.
They haven't performed the autopsy yet.
So at this point, so when they brought the kid into the hospital, the doctor obviously know this, what's going on?
The only thing the doctors are told is that she fell.
She fell. So the doctors are like, okay, well, we got to perform an autopsy.
It's a little bit strange, but they haven't performed an autopsy.
They're not coming to a conclusion, but they catch him sneaking into the autopsy room.
Very strange. They listened to him and then he's like, she's been R worded, but they don't know that information yet.
They don't know that information.
Right. So at this point, all everyone had said about heaven was she had followed and she had passed.
How would he know that? That she had been R worded.
Once they search his place, they go and they search his house.
They find heaven's other shoe inside his house.
There would be no reason for her shoe, the one shoe that's missing, the ones that she was wearing that day.
She only had one shoe on her foot.
The other was in his house.
There would be no reason for that.
Heaven's mom had lived next door to him for two years.
She had known the entire family for two years.
The man in the bathroom, get net is heaven's mom's landlord.
And not even that. The man's wife is someone that heavens mom had known since she was in school, like primary school.
She's known this woman for most of her life.
She's one of the main reasons that heavens mom was like, you know what?
I'm going to rent this house specifically.
So it's well known in Ethiopia that a lot of parents will rent these guest houses, if you will, on this bigger property.
The bigger property is completely fenced in.
And as long as one adult is home on the entire property, the other adults will go to work.
So it's kind of like a safe space environment, a gated neighborhood for the kids to play with each other.
And it's not like each house needs to have an adult present.
Typically it's one adult for maybe three, four families.
So she, she rented this place because she wanted to make sure the environment was safe for her daughters.
Now get net and his family, they have three children.
They have children heavens age.
She said, I saw him as a brother.
I lived there because I felt a sense of ease there with him.
He and his family are the only ones I trusted enough to move into their property.
Not that it really matters if this was premeditated or not because he deserves the harshest punishment regardless.
It's pretty evident that he went out of his way to plot out this crime.
Heaven's mom said in an interview, he was waiting.
We just didn't know he was waiting when his wife left because his wife is a stay at home wife, but his wife left because I think one of her siblings was getting a checkup at the hospital for a pregnancy.
He was the only one left with the kids.
He's in the house most of the time because he doesn't have a job either.
So after his wife and I left, our children start playing outside together.
And that's what my sister told me.
So heaven's mom's sister is home, but she's 15.
So she's a child, right?
Heaven's mom's sister is 15.
So this is heaven's aunt.
This is the 15 year old that her little sister comes.
So heaven has a little sister that's three years old.
Heaven is seven. And then she has an aunt that's 15 that is staying with them.
So the aunt's technically a child as well.
Yes. I see. So Get Night is the only adult that's there really.
Now she says, that's what my sister told me.
Then heaven came into the house because she said Get Night told all the kids to go home.
So all the kids are playing in the yard and Get Night is like, everybody just go into your homes, which is weird.
Heaven goes into the house according to heaven's aunt, the 15 year old.
And at that point she starts doing her homework and she realizes, oh, I need to go use the restroom.
Now, remember how I said a lot of the houses are built.
They share a common restroom in an outside building.
It's like a separate little outhouse.
While heaven was taught to bring water to clean herself down there after she uses the restroom.
So she has to get water from the 15 year old.
She tells her 15 year old aunt, can I get some water for the restroom?
She gives her the water, heaven leaves and never comes back.
Get Night has been presumably waiting for her saying things like, hey, heaven, come here.
Can you help me with something?
Now this is not a strange man.
This is their landlord, the man that she's seen for the past two years.
I mean, the father of her friends.
One likely walks over to not be rude and because nothing is alarming about this, but he snatches her and he already had prepared this mixture in a water bottle, sand, pebbles and water.
If you make sand and water, it's basically cement.
Even sand alone is difficult to get out of your mouth.
But if you were to put sand, water and pebbles, he forces her to drink this concoction.
He forces it down her throat and stuffs her mouth full of it so that even if she screams, nobody can hear her.
He brutally assaults her in what her mom describes as quote, the front and back to the point where he tears all of the muscles and there are extensive internal injuries.
And the reason that I wasn't trying to be as specific is the internal injuries seem to be so bad that her mom states, when you were to just peer inside from the autopsy, you cannot see her uterus, which is very odd.
Like you can only see her spinal cord.
Like that's how extensive the internal injuries were.
Afterwards, he takes her body, contorts her, shoves her into a bucket to wash away the evidence.
There are reports that he likely mixed bleach into the bucket to clean up after his crime, to get rid of any forensic evidence on heaven's body.
In the process of trying to get rid of evidence, he goes and grabs a washcloth.
So a lot of people, especially even in Korea, they will wash like washcloths and then hang them outside to dry.
He grabs a washcloth that heaven's mom had left outside to dry.
And he wipes down heaven's body with it.
He puts her clothes back on, takes a razor blade and starts making cuts all over her body as if to make it appear that she was scratched by branches after falling.
He even sets up a scarf around that wooden bar to make it seem like she was swinging on the wooden bar and fell.
And she scraped herself as she fell.
And what is this scarf for?
So they said that the kids would hang the scarf and then take the loose ends of the scarf and swing back and forth.
The final sick touch is this is almost directly in front of her mom's doorstep.
Still waiting to be found.
The only part of his plan that does not go incoordingly is he had forgotten one of her shoes that was the one tiny shoe that's left behind in his house.
This is how he is caught.
Get net the landlord is the killer.
The police throw him into jail.
But after three days, his jail cell empty.
He escapes. The police tell heaven's mom, I mean, it's pretty clear that he did it.
We're pretty certain he's the one that did it.
Right. But he escaped and we recommend that maybe you flee.
Maybe you leave. Honestly.
What? Yeah, he mentioned that he wanted to kill you.
They do not provide her any assistance or protection.
Like they make it very clear.
Hey, this is your problem.
He told us that he wants to kill you and we're not going to do anything about it.
At first get neck and his family, they would send people to talk to heaven's mom, which according to our Ethiopian researcher, they said in this is very common.
That if you have some sort of misunderstanding, especially between multiple families or different adults or a big fight with someone, you're going to send third parties to try and diffuse the situation first.
A peacemaker that can facilitate both parties coming together.
He just wants her to drop the case, drop the charges, move on.
But heaven's mom refuses.
I mean, how can people even stand by him?
How can they even come to her doorstep and be like, you got to forgive this man?
It is so clear that his sisters, his wife, they know what he did, but they're standing by him.
They keep trying to tell heaven's mom, this is a big misunderstanding.
The fact that heaven's body was washed was not because get net was trying to get rid of evidence.
No, it's because at the Buddha house, we were there with her.
They poured holy water on her.
You know, we were just trying to save her.
We're pouring holy water on her.
Because heaven's mom is saying, look, this man washed heaven's body of the evidence.
There would be probably more evidence.
How do you not watched her?
And they're saying, he didn't wash her.
Nobody washed her to get rid of evidence.
Nope. That's holy water that we poured on her to save her in the sand in her mouth.
I mean, have you heard of emnet?
And that is usually some sort of, it's a real thing, sand, ash or crushed granite that is taken from a holy place and it's placed or smeared onto one's body.
Usually you only smeared on the parts that are in pain.
So if you sprain your wrist, a traditional Ethiopian healer might apply this to your wrist where you feel the pain.
And it's, it's almost like a dark brown clay like appearance.
Then you pray and then you will typically feel healed.
They start arguing that the sand or the cement found inside of heaven's mouth is just that healing clay.
Even nobody ever consumes healing clay.
If someone were to fall off a wooden bar or a tree, the last place you would imagine all their pain is, is in their mouth.
You might smear it on their head or their face or their skull.
Why inside the mouth? Like how do you explain that?
So these are the killer's family members.
Yes. And they're arguing for the killer.
Yes. They're arguing all sorts of crazy things for him.
I mean, it's like the most ridiculous stuff.
That next relative explained that she's like, I'm the one that did that.
His sister is like, I did that.
I put it inside heaven's mouth because quote, I know it's sand, but every morning I mix it with water for my children to drink.
Cause they're like, why would you put it in her mouth?
And she said, because I make my children drink it.
And they ask, well, does it melt when you mix it with water?
She responds, you put your faith in God.
That's how you live. That's why I have emin in my house always.
I did the same thing for her that I do for my children.
That is all. She's not even answering the question.
I mean, none of this makes sense.
Everyone who uses emin is like, what are you saying?
This doesn't even make sense.
Like if I saw a kid that was laying there, I would not shove emin into her mouth.
The twisted part of all of this is that heaven's mom believes that they took heaven to the Buddha house for the purpose of getting rid of more evidence and trying to come up with explanations for the evidence that they couldn't get rid of.
So I'm sure that they scooped out as much of the sand and cement in her mouth as possible, but there's remaining.
You can't get it all out.
And of course they're going to find it in the autopsy.
So they're taking her to this traditional Buddha house to be like, of course we did these traditional actions to try and save her.
Anytime Getnet's wife or his family are questioned about heaven and what happened to her, his wife has this bizarre smile on her face.
It's like a smirk. Anytime the interviewer is talking about, well, heaven's mom said that she's, she's like sitting there and you can see her.
That's the sound I want to make when I see her face.
That's what I imagine the noise is like, like very like, well, she's dumb.
Like that's the face. Even if she truly believes her husband is innocent, which I find very questionable, but even if she truly believes he's innocent, then why would she be smirking?
I think regardless, a child is dead.
It's very unfortunate.
It's not a time to be acting like a school bully.
She also claims that the pictures heaven's mom has posted of her daughter.
So there are some, I don't know how deep into the research you'll find it, but there are some pretty graphic photos of heaven out there that we're not posting.
Heaven's mom had posted parts of her body to prove to the world this is what happened because people were not believing her.
There were people saying, well, you don't have proof.
You're just doing these interviews crying and saying these things.
So she had to go out of her way to post these photos to say, why is nobody listening to me?
I'm telling you this is what happened and we need to do something about it.
And the wife just says, these are not human pictures.
What? Basically saying, I don't know what that is.
Her mom is claiming it's her uterus, but it doesn't look human.
So I don't know what she's trying to prove.
Accusing heaven's mom of taking like an animal organ and posting a picture of it.
At one point she's like, that picture doesn't even look like heaven.
And the interviewer is very confused by that statement.
She says that picture does not look like heaven.
The interviewer points out, I just showed you a picture of only heaven's private areas.
How do you know that's not heaven?
Like her face isn't even in the picture.
What are you talking about?
Like I'm showing you truly just private areas to show you the extent of the damage and you're saying that's not heaven.
It's really weird. How are you so confident it's not her when I just showed you her private areas?
She just smirks and says, for me, it's just that doesn't look right at all.
What does that even mean?
She just keeps insisting, I am here to, she does interviews.
I am here to share the truth.
Heaven's mom is not telling the truth.
I have never been on media before, but now here I am because what is being spread are lies and it's hurting me.
She also states that she hopes people will stop pointing fingers.
I saw this on TikTok. Maybe it originates in Ethiopia and became a TikTok thing after, or perhaps she saw it on TikTok too, but she says, when you point the finger, just remember three fingers are pointing back at you.
So this could happen to you tomorrow.
She's trying to argue that your husband could be, quote, falsely accused of R-wording and killing a child tomorrow.
Wow. Yeah. Which like, no.
Even when the interviewer tells her a seven year old is not like an egg, she cannot swing from a bar that's about adult height and just die.
They take her, they take Getnet's wife and the family to the house again.
And Getnet's wife is trying to explain, oh, this is the bar that she fell off of.
But when the interviewer starts asking technical questions of like, okay, so she's hanging from this height, she starts getting very flustered.
The wife tries to explain, she likely hit her head on this rock right here.
And she points at a rock, but that doesn't make sense either.
There's no signs of a concussion or a skull fracture or even head bleeding.
What are you talking about?
On top of that, if they're trying to say that the kids were known to swing their scarves off this bar, that means the height at which she would have fallen from is about hip length of an adult actually.
Because if they use their scarves, that makes it even lower.
You're telling me a seven year old falls from hip height and just dies almost instantly?
I mean, never say never.
I'm sure maybe there have been freak accidents where it has happened, but this just seems, I mean, the odds of that happening seem slim to none, especially if you consider in all of her other injuries, it just doesn't make sense.
How do you explain the sand in her mouth, the suffocating, the clear fingerprints around her neck, the essay?
Her responses, well, only God knows the reason for that.
Which then starts changing into, well, only God knows how she fell.
Cause he starts asking, you're saying this, she fell from here and what?
And she goes, only God knows how she fell.
It could have just been her time.
I don't know what hit her or where, but that's how the kid, heaven's little sister, found her and told the police.
As for Get Next's very weird behavior after heaven's body is found, she justifies it by saying, well, my husband, you know, men grieve differently.
Fathers grieve in different ways than mothers do.
She states that it's very frustrating that the public perception of what happened is different from the truth.
She said that every time she sees heaven's mom, heaven's mom starts screaming and yelling that they're heaven's killers.
And she says, we never say anything back to her because we understand that she is a mother who lost her child.
We try to be understanding of her pain.
I will say this today, tomorrow, and I will keep saying it.
That girl was not R worded.
She did not die because she was R worded.
She fell and she died. How does she expect anyone to believe anything she says?
I truly don't know. Do people believe her though?
No. The interviewer even asks her, you're on this like social media campaign.
Trying to get people to believe you.
Do you think you're doing a good job?
And she ignores the question.
She's just like, I mean, this is the truth.
The interviewer is like, are you proud of what you're doing?
Like, do you feel like people are listening to you?
And she's like, well, this is the truth.
I'm here to speak my truth.
It takes a full month for Gannett to be re-arrested, which it's not like he was hiding in plain sight.
It's not like he was hiding at all.
He went after heaven's mom with a gun.
If the police found heaven's mom, you would have found him lurking nearby.
So why does it take a month to arrest this man?
It seems like they just don't care.
Another element of disgust here is that the sisters also live on the property, right?
Heaven's mom said, some of them were home that day.
They were actually home.
There's no way that they didn't hear anything that he did.
She said the walls are so thin that oftentimes you can hear people making coffee and having coffee time in the mornings.
They live really close to him and their place has really thin walls.
So now, I mean, how can they tell the police she's lying?
Heaven's mom has no idea what she's talking about.
All the police decide they want to drop this case.
They just don't care for it.
One of the police officers also happens to have ties to Gannett.
Heaven's mom states that all the evidence has been covered up by Gannett's family and that the only cop, that one cop, they refuse to even look for the bucket.
Because they're like, I know that he washed Heaven's body in a bucket to get rid of the evidence.
There's a bottle filled with sand somewhere.
They refuse to look for it.
Gannett's children would tell Heaven's mom, actually, our dad asked us to clean up blood using bleach that day.
And we did. But police won't listen to the kids.
They won't listen to Heaven's mom.
They just keep telling us, stop blabbing such nonsense.
Everybody knows that she died because she fell.
There was only one female cop that believed Heaven's mom.
She was the only one that did not want to close this case.
She was getting pressure from all the sides to drop it.
The next time Heaven's mom visits the police station, the female officer is suddenly giving her the cold shoulder.
And she's like, what's wrong?
Did I do something? I only ever tried to help you.
She's so confused. What are you talking about?
I know. And I've been so grateful.
The officer tells her, I heard what you've been going around saying, bad-mouthing me to people.
And she just storms off.
People are trying to turn these two women against each other, and it's apparently working.
So now Heaven's mom is completely on her own.
Every time she tries to bring the hospital records to the investigating teams to show them, see, this isn't on an accident.
The hospital said that she was essayed.
They would conveniently lose the report or tell her it wasn't enough.
They need more. Also, they said, it's the hospital that you worked at.
So there could be a lot of bias.
They could be lying. You could have told them, the doctors, what to write on the autopsy.
I mean, what does she gain from it?
That's the crazy thing.
So there are people who doubt her story.
They think that there's no proof.
She's just going on these interviews and claiming this is what happened.
But it doesn't make sense.
What does she gain from this?
Because there are so many more people that want to kill her.
There are people online that are writing they should have R-worded the mom too.
So I truly don't know what she gains from this.
I know that there are people who are sending her donations locally.
Like they're trying to support her, trying to give her housing and food and all these things because it's very difficult for her to work.
But I don't think any of that compares.
I don't think she's someone that didn't like working.
It just doesn't make sense.
So all of this is happening and she's getting stalked by GetNets family members.
She had to quit her job. She worked as a nurse for seven years and now her whole career is gone and she just can't risk her life for it.
She has no funds, no resources.
Nobody's on her side. She eventually got a job at the bank as a custodian because all the cameras, the security officials there, maybe that would be safer.
Four months into the job, a bunch of people come, GetNets family members and other young men try to kidnap her.
And what happened after?
She just had to quit and nobody cared.
She quit the bank as well?
Yeah. So she's constantly just bouncing around looking for jobs while trying to get justice for her daughter.
So every time they find her, she gets a new job because it's not even just, hey, drop the charges.
Right now there's people telling her that she deserves to be R worded that this is her fault.
Why? Yeah. They think it's her fault because she left her kid at home.
And they also think it's her fault because she decided to have a kid in these times.
What? Yeah. It gets crazier.
I will read you some of the netizens comments.
Now finally, after a month, he's re arrested, he's tried for his crimes.
August 1st, 2023, GetNets is sentenced to 25 years in prison.
25 years. What's wild is even that after he's proven guilty and sentenced to 25 years, people are blaming the mom.
They're saying it's been a year already.
People need to let this go.
Some people are commenting it's the mother's fault for bringing a child into this world during unsafe times.
The mother should also be essayed.
The child deserved it. Who told her to give birth to a daughter first?
Heaven's mom, she's not arguing, but she's trying to explain the situation.
And she says, as I told you, I work almost 24 hours and I raise my children alone.
I have no family to support me.
I am from the rural province and I got to where I am on my own.
She also supports her younger sister's education, the 15 year old.
It's not like she's gone from the home so she can avoid responsibilities and avoid the kids.
She basically lives her whole life working to support her family and yet people are trying to blame her for what he did.
She says, I made a lot of sacrifices to raise my daughter.
At least if they killed me because of my sins, it would be better.
But what could a child ever have done to deserve this?
They haven't even started life yet.
There is no law in sight.
Who do I scream to? This is not enough.
There needs to be more harsh sentences.
If there were, you wouldn't hear about such crimes happening.
But aside from that, even though she did what she could, she still feels a lot of guilt.
She said that part of why she quit as a nurse was yes because she was being stalked by Getnet and his family, but also she still has another daughter that's three.
And she felt this guilt ever since Heaven's murder because all these people are saying it's her fault that if she hadn't been working, if she wasn't always at the hospital, she could have maybe protected Heaven.
Most people with hearts, souls, brains are supporting Heaven's mom.
Some netizens in comments read, there are times that make me hate being a human being.
Instead of asking us to hide our daughters, keep your sons in check.
I am a mother too. I have a daughter.
Now I have to live in fear.
This monster needs to be castrated.
Another reads, you know what?
I think the man should be free.
I think they should free the killer, free the man and give him to us.
You see what we'll do to him.
Some netizens are more straightforward writing, just kill him, kill him, kill him, kill him.
These people haven't stopped.
Heaven's mother needs protection.
The law needs to protect her.
Many of them want further punishment for not just Getnet, but also his wife and sisters.
Arrest his wife too. She's an accomplice.
I don't think that she realizes what's coming out of her own mouth.
What kind of person is his wife?
Doesn't she have children of her own?
Another reads, it's very obvious she rehearsed everything she needs to say.
She asks one question and she doesn't know how to respond.
What surprises me is that she also has children.
She doesn't even show remorse for heaven.
She, the wife, needs to be sentenced to 25 years and her husband needs to be sentenced to death.
Here's the thing. I am not allowed to sign up for free trials in this house anymore.
And that is a rule that I've set for myself.
I have been caught too many times signing up for subscriptions free trials and forgetting to cancel it.
And I swear the free trials are getting longer.
What used to be a seven day free trial is now like a month.
And if you are anything like me, you want to get full use out of that deal, which means you're trying to keep it for a full month and canceling it just the day before it ends.
Except I use it for a five days max and then I just forget about it.
It isn't until months later when I see that I've been charged several times that I realize I've done it again.
It is why I started using Rocket Money.
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That's rocketmoney.com.
Rocketmoney.com. To give you further context, here are some wild things his wife has said.
Why are people accusing my husband?
It's not like he was caught in the act.
They have no proof. My husband is not the type to R-word or do that sort of thing.
If he were an R-worder, he would have raped the 15-year-old nanny that we have living in the house.
To that someone writes, May God judge the barbaric people who are accomplices of this beast.
Be brave, Heaven's mother.
God bless you. This is news in 2024 because Gatnet and his attorneys are now appealing his sentence, stating that it was too harsh.
Heaven's mom said, We should be the ones to appeal because 25 years is not enough.
He was just a little girl.
He only killed her. He not only killed her, he tortured her, he R-worded her.
The act is horrific. 25 years is not too harsh.
25 years is not enough. Look at how he's doing in prison.
He's sentenced to 25 years, but he is fine.
He's laying in prison, being fed.
Men who are essaying and killing children are just happily eating food provided by the government and living happily.
She said she has very low hopes for justice during this appeal.
She said, From what I've observed, they might be successful in getting him out of prison.
We don't know yet and it's not looking good.
They are not treating us or our case like they should and it's heartbreaking to see how it's being handled.
He might not even stay in jail for that long, which is wild considering many people don't even believe that this is his first time committing a crime.
It's his first time getting caught.
According to locals, there have been stories circulating afterwards that he might have been responsible for two other children's deaths.
At both times, he was a suspect, but the families could not prove it.
There was nothing to prove.
Heaven's mom states, What hurts most is the support around him.
I was told that I'm nothing but dirt.
He has contacts. He has connections all around.
He can pay people off. Me?
I'm a poor mom and I have no power.
Every time she shows up to court during the appeal, they treat her, the court and even the perpetrators family.
They treat her like she's the offender.
Like she's the one that needs to be put on trial.
On one occasion, he was being escorted out of the courtroom and he turns his body to her and he says, Do you think I won't get out?
You bitch. Heaven's mom was so startled and terrified, but also so angry and he just keeps going.
You daughter of a whore.
You think I'm not going to get out?
Finally, Heaven's mom collects herself and in a controlled, contained tone, she tells him bluntly, even if I am just a woman, even if I cannot get justice here, I will never allow you to live on the outside.
But the female guard hears, walks over, looks again at, looks at Heaven's mom.
You will be jailed unless you stay silent.
She's talking to Heaven's mom.
Jail me then. Do it. It's not like anything happened to him in jail.
He gets to lay down and get fed.
If you have the power to arrest me, do it now.
I am the mother who lost her precious daughter.
What happened to him? Did you not hear him insulting me?
So she asked the guard that and she responds.
Yes, I did, but he's under the protection of the law.
So I should stay silent.
Well, you also have children, don't you?
Should this happen to you too then?
Eventually the female guard tells Getnet to also be silent before walking off.
Heaven's mom said, why is there no death sentence in our country?
Is it because our children are not our country's children?
Can they not see mother's tears?
What if their children were killed in such a gruesome way?
What would they do then?
This is a small girl that was R-worded and murdered by a man.
The judgment should set the example for these crimes.
Otherwise, where will we go?
Where will the mothers and children go?
It's not like we have another country.
It's not like we can flee somewhere else.
Who do we cry to? Who listens to us?
If our children can't be safe in our homes, where else can we go?
Should we stop working and spend all our time with our children?
Then how can we feed our children?
Only God is on our side now.
Many advocacy groups have spoken out to state that they believe that the sentencing is way too light.
The Ethiopian Women's Lawyer Association states, the murder itself should have been enough to sentence him to life imprisonment or to death.
It's especially sickening and outrageous when such a horrendous crime is committed against children.
It is unclear if that change is going to come soon considering there was this organized candlelight vigil held for heaven in the capital of Ethiopia.
It was a peaceful gathering just for community members to come out and remember heaven, honor heaven, but also demand justice in a peaceful way.
And heaven is just one of the many cases that the advocates are pushing back against.
Notably, an 11-year-old girl was essayed by her father.
He received only 16 years in prison.
A man strangled an essay to a 14-year-old girl.
She passed away. He got 19 years.
A 17-year-old essayed a 5-year-old girl.
He got 6 months in prison.
A 41-year-old man who essayed multiple little girls around the age of 8 was only given 10 years.
So I would say given all these cases, the community just holding a candlelight vigil is rather impressive considering everything going on.
But of course, police officers force their way into the crowd, force them to break it up.
It's been stated that police forced camera crew to delete their footage before letting them go.
A prominent human rights attorney states, heaven's death cannot be in vain.
We must use this tragedy as a catalyst for change.
The Ethiopian government must strengthen its child protection laws, ensure that justice is served in all cases of child abuse, and provide better support for victims and their families.
One of heaven's mom's biggest memories of heaven is every time she would come in from work, heaven would drop everything and run up to her and slam into this big hug, she would run so fast that heaven's mom would almost topple over.
And now heaven's mom says, my daughter is dead, I am dead inside, I am just a dead woman walking.
Heaven would have turned 8 years old, September 25th of this year.
Heaven's mom said the worst part of all of this is as a previous nurse, she knows that heaven is not the only one.
There are so many heavens.
So please check out the change.org petition linked in the description and stay safe.
Let me know your thoughts and I will see you in the next one.
