← The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told
Loading summary
Transcript8 lines
- [00:00]
iHeart Podcast Host
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:07]
Anna
Hey, it's Anna, host of the Girlfriends Jailhouse Lawyer. You can listen to this brand new season now. Plus all episodes of the Girlfriends Season 1, Season 2 and the Girlfriend Spotlight. Plus if you have an I Heart True Crime plus subscription, you'll get episodes completely ad free and one week earlier than everyone else. And because the Girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer has been selected as one of Apple's Summer Listens, we're offering you a free 30 day trial. It's a limited offer, so make sure you grab it before it's too late. Once you're all signed up, you'll get access to some of iHeart's other chart topping true crime shows like Betrayal, the Godmother, Burden of Guilt, American Homicide, and loads more. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for I Heart True Crime plus and subscribe today.
- [00:57]
Mary Kay McBrayer
How could a beautiful young first grade teacher be stabbed 20 times, including in the bat, allegedly die of suicide? Yes, that was the medical examiner's official ruling after a closed door meeting. He first named it a homicide. Why? What happened to Ellen Greenberg? A huge American miscarriage of justice. For an in depth look at the facts, see what Happened to Ellen on Amazon. All proceeds to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children.
- [01:42]
Anna
Diversion Audio.
- [01:47]
iHeart Podcast Host
A Note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take care in listening Detective Joseph Stahula was self conscious and uncomfortable as he approached the one story brick home in a quiet cul de sac in suburban Skokie, Illinois. He was investigating the murder of respiratory therapist Teresita Basa. Joseph was tired of spinning his wheels on the case. There was so little to go on and he was close to giving up. A tip just came in from a woman receiving threatening phone calls from one of Teresita's co workers. Joseph was here to follow up. The detective knocked on the door. A dark haired man in surgical scrubs greeted him. This was Dr. Jose Chua, the woman's husband. Jose led Joseph into a gold carpeted sitting room and motioned for him to sit in one of the gold velour chairs beside a gold draped window. It was 1977, people still decorated in color then. Jose called his wife Remy into the room and she sat beside Joseph. Remy explained she once worked at the same hospital as Teresita, but they didn't have the same shifts and they never really knew each other. The one connection they did have was an orderly named Alan. His shifts overlapped with both of theirs. Allen was a friend of Teresita's and Remy and her husband believed he was the one behind the phone call. As Remy explained the situation, Joseph noticed Jose seemed anxious, like there was something else on his mind. Finally, Joseph turned and asked if there was anything he needed to get out. Jose looked even more uneasy. We don't really want to get involved. Didn't you already speak with the Evanston police? Joseph shook his head. They told us about the phone calls and that you knew certain other information, but they were reluctant to give any details. Jose looked over at his wife. He was silent for a long time. Then he took a deep breath, looked into Joseph's eyes, and asked detective, do you believe in the occult? Welcome to the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told Mary I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. Today's episode we're calling Teresita Stretching the Boundaries of Belief. There are plenty of true crime stories out there that are hard to believe, but this is one that's more than just far fetched. It's about a woman coming back from the dead to solve her own murder. Something beyond the realm of what most people consider possible. And yet the story of Teresita Basa was credible enough to appear in a US Court of law, come before a judge and jury, and send a man to jail for murder. More after the break. I don't want to say that I don't believe in the supernatural. I just don't want to believe in it. I do not have the second sight and I do not want it. Here's a list of other things I don't want. I don't want to hear your dream about me. I don't want to know about your premonition. I don't want to hear that you see a little boy spirit in my house, no matter how benevolent it seems to be. I don't want you to read my cards or my palm or my tea leaves. I don't want any of that. Keep all that shit to yourself. I'm not saying it's not real and I'm not calling you a fraud. But I am a cynic and I don't want to hear it because I don't want to activate my frequency illusion. That said, I think possession is an outlier. Okay? First let me acknowledge that I know it is an established fact that well intentioned exorcisms have resulted in the tortuous murders of many people with mental and physical disorders. And obviously people in power have abused the idea of its existence. And yet this one. Something about this one I can't shake off. The way I shake off the others. Maybe the idea of another sentient thing entering my body without my permission and without my knowledge is just too scary. It's just too real to completely abandon. But even with my beliefs, I couldn't accept an instance of possession as fact, especially not in a court of law. But not everyone thinks like me, and in some places the culture does widely accept possession as fact. It's something to keep in the back of our minds, at least as we talk about this case. The Edgewater Hospital was an eight story yellow brick building just a few blocks down from the lakefront in uptown Chicago. Originally constructed in 1929, it once functioned as a low key rehab facility and it was meant to feel more like a luxury hotel than a hospital. It was the kind of place where Frank Sinatra went to dry out. But as the White flight of the 1950s led to the economic decline of the 70s, the hospital lost its sheen of luxury. Edgewater sank into bankruptcy and the buildings fell into disrepair. This tragedy involves three people who worked at Edgewater during the mid-1970s, during its less glamorous the first of those three employees is Teresita Basa, a generous extrovert who loved to read, play the piano and throw parties. Teresita's childhood on the island of Negros in the Philippines was idyllic. She spent it chewing sugar cane with the neighborhood children on the veranda, wandering through her mother's orchid gardens, and practicing piano on the family's Mahogany Steinway. In 1947, when she was 18, Teresita left home to study music in Manila. There she lived with Senator Jose Romero and his family, who were old friends of her parents. Jose Romero became the Philippine Ambassador to England just as Teresita was graduating from college. She went with his family to London and obtained a degree in pianoforte at the Royal College of Music. On one occasion, Teresita even met the Queen of England. But the meeting that ultimately changed her life forever was with a Russian composer named Alexander Shrepnin. Teresita met Alexander after attending one of his concerts in Paris. She was instantly charmed by the famed and talented composer. He told her she was talented and possessed the potential to become a truly great musician if she continued her studies. Alexander and his wife Both taught at DePaul University in Chicago, and he suggested the city might do well for her studies. So she moved to nearby Bloomington and enrolled at Indiana University. There, Teresita studied music and piano. She went on to graduate school, where she worked in assistantship teaching the piano. But when she learned the Romeros were Moving to Washington D.C. teresita left Bloomington and went to live with them. It was in D.C. in 1965 that Teresita met the only man she would ever really love. Teresita didn't like talking about the man she almost married. So details of their whirlwind romance are hazy. We don't even know his real name. But the story goes something like this. Teresita met Joe at a party. He was a tall, handsome lobbyist from Chicago who swept her off her feet shortly after they started dating. Teresita's immigration status put an ocean between them. To maintain her student visa, she had to return to the Philippines. She was only allowed to come back to the States after two years. So Joe followed her to the Philippines. Then, just a week before Joe was going to leave the island, the other shoe dropped. Tale as old as time. Teresita's father was tipped off by an old friend. Joe was wandering around the red light district. The friend followed Joe to a brothel and walked in on him with a 17 year old sex worker. Teresita was devastated and humiliated. And then her father's health declined. He passed away from a respiratory illness in the early 70s. Teresita packed up her things, bid goodbye to her mother and boarded a plane back to Chicago. No longer willing to accept financial assistance from her widowed mother, Teresita resolved to support herself in returning to her music studies. Teresita enrolled as a respiratory student at a YMCA community college and supported herself as a typist and until she graduated in June of 1974. Just a month later, she got a job as an inhalation therapist at Edgewater Hospital. Teresita returned to her nearly completed master's degree and in the phrase all postgrad students know. She finished all but her thesis on the works of Alexander Srepnan. She bought a piano and moved into a larger apartment where she'd be able to host gatherings and play for her new friends. Teresita met folks from the Filipino community and from her church. She formed a band called the Mahogany 5. 15 Filipino musicians and a Polish drummer. By the winter of 1977, Teresita was back to her real self. The glowing hostess, laughing and leading the party. She was happy and full of life. And on February 21, 1977, that life came to an end. It was 8:30pm On a chilly night in February of 1977. An acrid stench of burning filled Teresita's apartment building. Within minutes, fire trucks pulled up. They ran toward the smoke gathering in front of apartment 15B the janitor unlocked the door and the fireman used a pike to break the glass doors leading out to the balcony. The air in the apartment began to clear. The fire started in the bedroom, where a smoking mattress now sat in the middle of the floor. Something underneath the mattress continued to smolder, so the firemen pulled away the mattress. They found a pile of bedding and dirty clothes beneath. Then, as the men sorted through the burnt fabric, their flashlight beams landed on something which made everyone freeze. It was a woman's leg. Teresita Basa was dead. She was lying under the pile of clothes, naked, with a knife sticking out of her chest. When the detectives arrived, there were a few details which stood out to them immediately. The door was locked and there were two beer cans in the living room. In the kitchen, a cutting board rested on the counter with a half chopped tomato and no knife. There was also a note in her diary reading get tickets for as. But what stood out most of all was the destruction of the apartment. Teresita's carefully organized books were thrown from the shelves, her beloved record collection spread across the floor, and her jewelry tossed over the top of the dresser. Teresita's door was locked from the inside, so the killer must have been someone she knew and trusted. The position of Teresita's body initially suggested the crime may have been sexually motivated. But the autopsy revealed Teresita was never assaulted. It seemed the killer only undressed Teresita in the hopes of misleading the detectives. The last thing the killer did was to set the fire, probably hoping to get rid of the evidence. It's not exactly the plan of a genius, but the murderer was just smart enough, or maybe just lucky enough, not to leave any clues behind. With no hard evidence to go on, the lead detectives on the case, Joseph and his partner, Lee Eplin, decided to hit the pavement. As they interviewed Teresita's friends and acquaintances. They pieced together her last day. Teresita went to work as usual. She finished her shift and left the hospital around 3pm Around 7:10, she took a call from Dr. John Abela, another member of her band. They chatted about ticket sales for the upcoming concert. But in the middle of the phone call, Teresita paused to answer a knock at the door. She told John she would call him back later. A guest just arrived, someone she might be able to sell a ticket to. Not long after that, she received another phone call, this time from a friend at the hospital. She heard a man's voice in the background and asked Teresita if she was interrupting something. Teresita laughed and said it was nothing like that. She would tell her about it at lunch the next day. They hung up, and 40 minutes later, her neighbor smelled smoke. By the end of March, the detectives knew all the details of this story from Teresita's friends and family members. But that was when things started to stall. Lee and Joseph followed one dead end lead after another. Everyone she regularly interacted with, from her thesis advisor, her friends, and even a legal assistant who helped her with her immigration paperwork. They all had alibis. Months passed, and still there was no progress on the case. Then, in August, a phone call came in to the Evanston Police Department. It was from Remy Chua, another Filipino woman who worked at the same hospital as Teresita and whom you might remember from the top of the episode. She claimed to have received a number of threatening phone calls from one of the orderlies at the hospital where she and Teresita worked. A man named Alan Showery. Actually, the call to the Evanston Police Department was the second one that Remi made. The first call she made was to the Filipino Consul General. In that call, Remy had more to say. She also claimed that she knew it was Alan Showery who killed Teresita. She said she knew because Teresita entered her body and said it herself. The Chuas did not believe in superstitions. They were medical professionals who moved to the United States from the Philippine island of Luzon three years earlier. Jose Chua was a doctor back in the Philippines, and his wife, Remy, was a pharmacist. They were both in the process of becoming licensed to practice medicine in the United States. They were a working couple with four children, and they didn't have time for ghost stories. And yet, in the summer of 1977, they were the center of a baffling supernatural occurrence. On July 11, co workers said they saw Remy run terrified out of the locker room of the Edgewater Hospital. When asked about the incident, Remy brushed it off. But later, she told a different story. Remy claimed she was sitting in the locker room when Teresita Basa appeared. She was silent. She didn't move, and she didn't explain herself. She just stood there until Remy fled the room. Remy's strange behavior continued at the hospital. She started sitting at Teresita's lunch table and singing softly to herself, just as Teresita once did. Remy did not know Teresita, but suddenly she was acting a lot like her. She would speak with Teresita's distinctive regional accent and make conversation about things. Teresita Loved like parties, orchids and classical piano. Understandably, her co workers, many of whom did know the murdered woman, did not find this amusing. Several employees complained to Remy's supervisor, but when confronted, Remy claimed she didn't know what they were talking about. Remy's odd behavior continued until an afternoon in mid July when she showed up on her day off and verbally accosted her supervisor. Seemingly unprovoked. She yelled about working conditions at the hospital and complained about her co workers. Her supervisor tried to calm her down, but when she wouldn't stop yelling, he fired her on the spot. To those around her, it seemed like Remy was having some kind of breakdown. That evening, things worsened. Remy and her husband were sitting together in the living room when she abruptly stood up and walked down the hall towards the bedroom. Jose followed after her and found her lying on their bed staring at the ceiling. When he asked if she was alright, she replied, Mama? Mama, are you there? Mama? Jose froze. The voice coming from his wife's lips didn't sound like her own. Something was obviously very wrong. He asked her if she knew her name. Remy replied, in Tagalog, I am Teresita Basa. Tagalog is one of the official languages of the Philippines, but it was not the one that Jose and Remy used to speak to each other. They were both from Northern Luzon and usually spoke to each other in their regional mother tongue. Not only that, but Remy was speaking with an odd Spanish accent that he never heard her use before. She repeated, I am Teresita Basa. Jose was terrified. She said she wanted his help. She needed him to stop her killer. Jose insisted he didn't understand, but Remy insisted right back that she needed him to go to the police with the name of her killer. But before she could give a name, Remy blinked and her expression changed. She looked around and asked, what happened? How did I get in the bedroom? Remy didn't remember anything, and when her husband tried to tell her about her odd behavior, she insisted it must have been some kind of sleepwalking. Jose asked if she was feeling alright, and Remy claimed she was fine, just really thirsty. For the rest of the evening, Remy looked fine until around 11, the phone rang. Jose picked it up and a man's voice asked for Remy Chua. Jose handed the phone to his wife. She listened for a moment and then hung up. Jose asked her who it was and she told him she didn't know, but he'd threatened her. He told her she was going to be next. Okay, if this was fiction, which it's not, it's a true story. But if it was fiction, this is where I would be punching holes in the conceit. You mean on the same night Teresita possesses Remy? Teresita's killer calls her and threatens your next. Why would the killer just happen to call Remy Chua, a random co worker of his first victim, mere hours after she was possessed by the very ghost of the woman he killed? Unless the killer was now a ghost too. I might be a skeptic, but when a conceit is well established and consistent, I will go with it. That's of course, if the story was fiction, which it's not. It's real. And Jose later testified to this call under oath. Jose hoped it was over after this incident. Maybe it was a bad and tasteless prank. But then, two days later, it happened again. This time it was in the middle of a phone call. The Chuas were trying to sell their house and Remy was talking to their real estate agent. Suddenly, she handed the phone to her husband and said, teresita wants to come back. It happened just as before. Only this time, Teresita seemed more desperate. She said, you have to go to the police. Jose told her he couldn't. He didn't have any proof. He was going to look crazy. Remy took his hand and said if he needed proof, she would give it to him. The third and final possession happened the following day. Jose came home from work to find his wife sobbing on their bed. She was crying for her mama. Teresita was back. But this time she finally told him the name of the killer. It was Alan Showery. And Teresita knew how the Chuas could prove it. Joseph listened to the Chua story in a state of disbelief. It sounded crazy, and yet there was something about Jose. He just seemed so earnest. Then there was the jewelry. The Chuas claimed the spirit told them about two pieces of jewelry Allen stole from Teresita's apartment. There was a jade pendant and a pearl cocktail ring from Paris. Teresita also told them her cousin Ronsomera could identify the pieces if he saw them. As Joseph drove back from the Chuas, he couldn't help thinking that he was in an impossible situation. Alan Showery was a good suspect, and even though he was a known friend of Teresita's, the police had never really interviewed him. Allen was a handsome black man in his early 30s. After graduating from high school, he enrolled at NYU, but he dropped out after about a year. From there he bounced around the United States and ultimately landed in Chicago. That was when he moved in with a German immigrant named Janke Kalmuck and eventually got a job as an orderly at Edgewater Hospital. Allen was known around the hospital as a jack of all trades. And he would often help Teresita with repairs and odd jobs. Teresita trusted Allen. He'd been to her apartment before and he was a person she would have let in without a second thought. But the minute Joseph mentioned where his tip came from, he was going to be the laughingstock of the entire police force. When Joseph returned to the station, he pulled Teresita's file. The first thing he saw was the note from Teresita's diary. Get tickets for as as could be Alan Showery. It took six days to track down Allen, but the two detectives eventually found him in a tidy little apartment where he lived with his pregnant common law wife, Yanka. Showery was friendly and pleasant when he greeted them at the door. And as he welcomed the detectives into his apartment, Joseph couldn't help noticing that Yanka was sitting cross legged in the dining room next to a stack of books about ghosts and the occult. Allen seemed eager to help. Once Joseph explained he was investigating the murder of Teresita Basa, he agreed to come down to the station and answer a few questions. At the station, the detectives told Allen they found his fingerprints all over Teresita's apartment. They hadn't actually found his fingerprints, and it seems to me, at best morally ambiguous to lie that they did. But it did get Allen to admit that he was in Teresita's home on the night she died. He said Teresita was complaining about her broken TV set and Alan Showery offered to help fix it. He arrived around 6:30 and Teresita brought him a can of beer to drink while he worked. That same can would later be found in the wreckage of her trashed apartment. When Allen realized he didn't have the right parts for the tv, he left and spent the rest of the night at home with Janka. Allen said Yanka could vouch for him. They left Allen in the interrogation room and drove back to his apartment to speak with Yanka. While they were doing that, another cop was getting in touch with Teresita's friends and family, Asking if anyone would be willing to come in and look at some jewelry. Yanka agreed to come down to the station and even bring along her jewelry box, though she didn't understand why she needed to. Teresita's friend, Richard Passati was waiting at the station, and as soon as he saw Yanka, he went white. He pulled Joseph aside and whispered, that woman is wearing Teresita's ring. It was the pearl cocktail ring Teresita's mother bought in Paris. When Richard looked through the rest of Yanka's jewelry, he found a jade pendant of Teresita's as well. Yanka said Allen gave her the items as belated Christmas gifts. The detectives claimed that when they confronted Allen with these facts, he admitted that he was behind on his bills and was falling further into debt. He knew Teresita must have money. She always tipped him so generously when he did work for her. He heard she was from a wealthy family in the Philippines and that she once met the Queen of England. So he returned to her apartment after leaving to look for the right parts for the tv. He put her in a chokehold until she passed out. Then he dragged her to the bedroom, undressed her, stabbed her in the chest, and set her body on fire. When he searched her apartment, he found only $30. By the end of the night, Allen signed a confession. He was charged with homicide, and the case was declared closed. At least that's one version of the story. At the trial, Allen claimed after police found Teresita's jewelry in Allen's possession, that they threatened to arrest Janka as an accessory to murder. Yanka was eight months pregnant, meaning if she was arrested, she might very well be forced to give birth in prison. The detectives knew that, and they used it to coerce Allen into a confession. And there was more. There was the fact Allen's fingerprints did not match the ones found on the beer cans at Teresita's apartment. There were the five strands of hair found on Teresita's body at the morgue, which definitely did not belong to Alan Showery. And perhaps most concerning of all, an attorney for the defense discovered Remy Chua was known to sell jewelry at Edgewater Hospital. When Ianka testified, she said that Allen told her he bought the jewelry at the hospital. And a different picture started coming together. After a grueling 13 hours of deliberation, the jurors could not come to a conclusion. They were actually divided along racial lines. The four black jurors believed it was possible that Chicago police might use unethical means to force an innocent black man into signing a confession. That seems so obvious to me, I'm tempted to write off the reservation of the rest of the jurors as well, because I guess they believed in ghosts more than racism. But bear with me. The trial ended in a hung jury. But before another trial could begin, Alan Showery ignored His attorney's advice and changed his plea to guilty. Some people might attribute this change to the influence of Teresita's spirit. Others might consider that if Allen was tried again and convicted, he would face serious charges. Changing his plea to guilty could have meant a more lenient sentence. In the end, Alan did get some clemency. He was given the minimum sentence for murder, 14 years. He was out on parole after four and a half. So what can we take from this? Did Remy Chua stumble into the wrong room at the wrong time and somehow become the unwitting host for the spirit of Teresita? Did she have some knowledge of the crime, but worried that coming forward might implicate her? And if that was the case, how could a possession help? Or what place does it have in a crime at all? For going to understand that, it might be good to understand the way people see possession in the Philippines. In October of 2023, a high school in the small Philippine community of Laui was closed following an incident where 14 students claimed to be possessed by sinister spirits. It was called a mass possession, and it was not the only one of its kind. Just a month earlier, seven students were rushed from their high school on the neighboring island of Cebu after the apparent sudden onset of spiritual possession. In 2019, a school on the island of Negros, the same island where Teresita grew up, was closed after 20 students collapsed in class due to similarly otherworldly forces. Spiritual possession is nothing new in the Philippines. The Filipino word for it is sapi. It translates to joining. The concept came from what scholars call folk Catholicism. That is, the sect of Catholicism which evolved when indigenous spiritual practices fused with the religion imposed by Spanish colonists. Cases of sopi can vary wildly, but many of them follow a similar pattern. The possessed person begins acting strangely, and there might be changes to their voice or posture. They will usually admit they are possessed and speak as the possessing entity. When the incident is over, the person often has no memory of it. In fact, they may not even know anything happened at all, which is a mercy. Can you imagine being possessed? I mean, no, I don't want to imagine it. But imagine if you were possessed and you knew it. Okay, but back to the anthropology. To Western doctors, this phenomenon of possession can look a lot like a dissociative episode caused by trauma. But in a 2019 article, Professors Christina Jaime Montiel and Angelica Vidalo Ing argue this view of possession is limiting. As long as the possessed person believes they are occupied by a spirit, then that belief will have a real impact on what happens. When they are treated, they're saying essentially, if Remy believed her possession was real and she came from a culture which backed up that belief, then it was real, even if it came from a place of trauma and dissociation, like, say, if she witnessed or was a part of something terrible like a murder. The question is, did Remy believe she was possessed? Could she have believed it if she was unaware that it was happening? And did the possession of bring honest justice? Ghost stories never wrap up neatly. It's one reason why I don't like them. In addition to the many that I listed earlier. At the very least I will be unsettled because, like with this ghost story in its unclear conclusion, I will leave it feeling uneasy and unsatisf. Foreign thank you to John o' Brien and Edward Bauman for their book Teresita the Voice from the Grave. I do not have the fortitude to dive this deep into the occult. So many thanks to Zoe Louisa Lewis for writing this episode. We also used a number of articles in researching. All of these sources are linked in our show notes. If you want to learn more, Join me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told for a story about a sweet looking Chinese grandmother who earned her moniker the Mother of All Snakeheads by rising up the ranks of the Fujianese gang world and becoming one of the most prolific human traffickers of all time. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. Your host is me, Mary Kay McBrayer and this episode was written by Zoe Louisa Lewis. Our show is produced by Leo Culp and edited by Antonio Enriquez. Our theme music is by Tyler Cash, executive produced by Scott Waxman.
- [39:07]
Anna
Hey, it's Anna, host of the Girlfriends Jailhouse Lawyer. You can listen to this brand new season now, plus all episodes of the Girlfriend Season 1, Season 2 and the Girlfriend Spot Spotlight Plus. If you have an iHeart Truecrime plus subscription, you'll get episodes completely ad free and one week earlier than everyone else. And because the Girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer has been selected as one of Apple's Summer Listens, we're offering you a free 30 day trial. It's a limited offer, so make sure you grab it before it's too late. Once you're all signed up, you'll get access to some of iHeart's other chart topping true crime shows like Betrayal, the Godmother, Burden of Guilt, American Homicide, and loads more. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for I Heart True Crime plus and subscribe today.
- [39:56]
Mary Kay McBrayer
How could a beautiful young first grade teacher be stabbed 20 times, including in the back. Allegedly die of suicide. Yes, that was the medical examiner's official ruling. After a closed door meeting. He first named it a homicide. Why? What happened to Ellen Greenberg? A huge American miscarriage of justice. For an in depth look at the facts, see what happened to Ellen on Amazon. All proceeds to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children.
- [40:35]
iHeart Podcast Host
This is an I heart podcast.