Ivory Green (Jack of Spades, New York)
2023-04-19 00:30:35
For years, some law enforcement agencies have replaced the faces of traditional playing card decks with images of missing and murdered people and distributed those cards in prisons hoping inmates would come forward with information needed to crack these cold cases wide open. Now, audiochuck is dealing you in. Each week, we will be working with investigators and family members to bring you the details of some of the coldest cases from around the country in hopes that someone listening can finally bring these victims the justice they deserve.
Before we get started in today's case, I wanted to remind you all of the petition for Darlene Hulse. Her case is the one we covered extensively in the Deck Investigates. Millions of you have listened to her story. But as of this recording, her petition only has about 90,000 signatures. And her daughters at least want to get to 100,000 before they start presenting this petition to the people in power. I know that some of you probably forgot.
You live busy lives. You were listening while you were driving or doing something with the kids, so this is your friendly reminder. Please go sign that petition. You can find a link to it at darlenehulse..com. I have a link to it right in the show notes for this episode.
If you haven't listened to the story yet, go do that now. There are 15 episodes on Darlene Hulse's story. So again, please, please go sign, do it for her family. This is the reason that we're telling these stories every week.
So with that, we can now jump in to our new episode.
Our card this week is Ivory Green, the Jack of Spades from New York. Ivory was just 17 years old when she vanished while on her way home in Utica, New York. Despite a slow start to the investigation, investigators have tried to make up for lost time. Spending years putting together the pieces that point toward the people responsible, people who refuse to talk. Even 19 years later. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is the deck.
Charlotte Greensmith was expecting her daughter Ivory to walk through the door any minute. It was March 6th, 2004, and Ivory had left earlier that evening at around like 4 p..m. To go hang out with some friends, which wasn't unusual. She was a social 17-year-old girl, and as long as she came back every night, Charlotte had no problem letting her stretch her wings a little bit. And as far as Charlotte knew, she was coming back.
She had gotten a call from Ivory at about 7.
45, saying that she was walking home and asking about dinner now. Charlotte didn't know where she was walking from. But after she hung up, she heated up a plate of food—chicken, barbecue ribs and potato salad. She expected Ivory to walk through the door any second, but as the minutes ticked by, Charlotte realized something was wrong.
She never made it, I never heard the key turn the lock.
That plate of food sat in the fridge all night, untouched, and Charlotte stayed up waiting for her daughter. Waiting for the door to swing open, like it always did. But the lock never clicked and Ivory never showed. By the next morning, she couldn't stay in their apartment any longer, so she walked over to a nearby community center. It was a popular spot, especially with the kids and younger adults who lived in their apartment complex.
Ivory hung out there a lot, too, and had even worked there, so it was the first place Charlotte thought to go. But when she arrived and spoke to one of the women who worked there, her heart sank. No one had seen her daughter. From there. She set off on foot, stopping everyone she recognized and asking if they had seen Ivory walking home the night before because someone had to have seen her. Utica isn't a massive city, and their family have friends and other family members all across town.
But out of every one Charlotte flagged down, only one woman claimed to have seen Ivory. It was Ivory's godmother, and Charlotte told our reporter that she'd claimed to have seen Ivory walking and even told her to head home. But the problem was, Charlotte didn't know where her daughter had been, and from the way Charlotte described their interaction, it doesn't sound like Ivory's godmother told Charlotte where her interaction with Ivory went down. By the time Charlotte made it across town and back, it was about 6 p...m.
And getting dark, so she headed home and found the apartment was still empty. She didn't come.
I called the police station, I was in tears because I didn't know what happened to Ivory. I wouldn't like her not to make it home.
Charlotte told our reporter that when she contacted the Utica Police Department, she was told that she had to wait 24 hours before she could officially file a report. And so the next day she did. But when we spoke with Sergeant Michael Curley of the Utica Police Department, he said that they don't have any record of a report being filed. Until March 16th, which is 10 days after Ivory was last seen. Here's Sergeant Curley.
So, according to mom Charlotte Green, she reports that on March 6, 2004, that's the last time that she actually physically sees or speaks to her daughter. The report comes into the Utica Police Department on March 16th of 2004. So we have a 10-day discrepancy as to when. Mom states that she last saw and spoke to her daughter, and with respect to the date that she makes the missing persons report. So there's a lot of missed time in 10 days. To figure out exactly what happened to Ivory, where she was, who she was with, what kind of activities she was participating in. So I think, unfortunately, in most cases, you want to get off the ground running right away, in a 10-day capacity.
There's a lot of information that you have to go backwards first before you can go forwards to make the investigation.
Now, Charlotte told us, this isn't true. She says she filed a report as soon as she could and physically went to the station every day to check in. So why there is a 10-day gap there, she doesn't know. And Sergeant Curley wasn't assigned to Ivory's case at the time that this was all going down, so he can't speak to it either. But ultimately, the report was filed.
And since Ivory was a minor, her case initially went to the Juvenile Aid Division at the Utica Police Department.
What the juvenile aid is? What do they do with a missing person? You know, initially, they'll make what's called in New York State. A file six report A file six report is when we put out statewide bulletins or nationwide bulletins. That a missing person has been entered. And that it should anyone locate them in a period of time to notify the Utica Police Department, that would be the first steps, the second steps would then be attempt to locate her at home, see if she returns at any point. And speak to the individuals that she was known to most associate with, or the locations in the city that she was known most to associate with.
When the Juvenile Aid Division looked into Ivory's past, they found that she had a history of running away. And while that didn't mean police stopped looking for her, it was something they were aware of.
Again, Ivory had a history of running away, she had a history of being on the street. She was involved in some stuff that kept her away from home for periods of time. So the first few days obviously were just a preliminary investigation into where might she be.
This is also something Charlotte denies. She told us Ivory had never run away from her home before and hadn't spent any nights away without telling her mom where she was. Which is why she got so worried so quickly when Ivory didn't come home. Now, we did come across a newspaper article in our research that quoted Charlotte saying Ivory had run away from a group home that she'd previously stayed in. But she told us that article wasn't accurate either. According to her, Ivory had spent some time in a group home, although she didn't tell us what for.
And when it comes to her running away, she said Ivory would have no reason to run from the home because she would visit her. I don't want to get too hung up on this discrepancy, though, because, regardless of her past, she had been missing for almost two weeks. By the time the Juvenile Aid Division kicked off their investigation. And when they did, they started by trying to establish who Ivory was with right before she went missing. But that proved to be much more difficult than they expected.
So part of the investigation clearly has been, have we been able to identify anyone that was with Ivory at the time of her disappearance? A lot of differing information has come forth as to when the last time people saw her, what her actions were, when they saw her. So I don't know that anyone has truthfully told us that they were with Ivory at the moment, that she was last seen.
Investigators were met with a wall of silence when it came to who Ivory may have been with. They spoke with her friends, tracked down anyone she may have been associated with. But everyone they spoke to couldn't or wouldn't say where she'd been, who she'd been with, or what she was doing. But investigators weren't out of options.
We knew right away that Ivory probably had a phone. So the investigators made an immediate effort in an attempt to get any information they could from cell phone providers, from any kind of digital access. But again, you know, 2004 access to criminal investigations with the large providers is a whole lot different than it is in 2022..
Now, Shirlette doesn't believe Ivory had a phone when our reporter spoke with her. She said she thinks the call she received on the 6th was made from a friend or family member's phone. Although she's not sure who would have lent her the phone or where exactly. In Utica, she was calling from, cell or not, though, there was no way for investigators to track Ivory through whatever phone she used. And they ran into the same issue when they looked into surveillance footage.
You know, I think a lot of us think that 2004 wasn't that long ago, but in the effort of technology, it's eons ago, right? Like, surveillance photos weren't what they were now. Nothing was digital, it was all VHS or camcorder stuff, you know?
So the canvases were done for that stuff. But the businesses, the homes, didn't have ring doorbells back then, they didn't have electronic, cloud-based servers that could have phones. It was extremely expensive to have a surveillance photo on both your business and your residence at that time. So it just, you know. Canvases were undertook to attempt to locate things like that, but they just weren't as prevalent as they are now.
So they had no cell data, no surveillance footage, no one who would talk to them about where Ivory had been before she vanished. It was just dead end after dead end. They knew something had happened to her, but what that was remained a mystery. But the thing about people is that they like to talk, maybe not directly to police, but to each other. And as the weeks went by, police started to hear whispers.
And then the rumbling started to occur that something nefarious might have happened to Ivory.
No one would give any details, but from what police could piece together, Ivory had been involved with a tough crowd. Despite being 17, she gravitated toward an older group, many of whom had criminal records. And by late April, two names in particular kept coming up over and over in their conversations a pair of cousins, Benjamin and Plummer Reed.
Now, both guys were already known to police. Benjamin, who went by Benji, was 23 and had a history of criminal violence, as did Plummer, who was 27 now. Plummer and I guess by extension, Benji were also distant relatives of Ivory's. Plummer is Charlotte's niece's half-brother, according to Charlotte. Now, once police started hearing those names, they began connecting some dots.
And while everyone they talked to had slightly different stories to tell, they put together one solid theory. Benji and Plummer Reed either knew what happened to Ivory or they were directly responsible for her disappearance. Of course, that was just a theory. There was no body, and without anyone saying that they'd witnessed a crime, investigators couldn't be sure. But it was enough to make the Juvenile Aid Division hand over her case to a missing persons detective in the Utica Police Department.
But again, despite having names, there wasn't anything concrete to tie Benji or Plummer to Ivory's disappearance. They were known to roll with the same crowd, but without physical evidence, there was nothing that could be done. Sergeant Curley didn't share with us if they were interviewed over the course of that first month. But they were on police's radar and by April 29th they were front and center.
And then at the end of April. On April 29th, 2004, there was a shooting between two individuals, which led to the arrest of one party who had shot the other party in the head. That kind of really spurred the case into perhaps this was much more than a missing person investigation.
The individuals Sergeant Curley is referring to are Benji and Plummer. He'll be calling them individuals throughout the episode. Because he couldn't name them in our interview. But even though he couldn't call them by name, he gave us permission to do so anyway. On April 29th, police got a call that Plummer had been shot in the backyard of his great aunt's house. When police and paramedics got to the scene, he was somehow still alive, despite having been shot in the head.
They rushed him to the hospital, where he survived, and police were able to piece together what had happened. Plummer had been sitting in a broken down car in the backyard, just kind of hanging out. And Benji walked up and got in, too. And then, seemingly unprovoked, Benji pulled out a handgun and shot Plummer three times in the head. Before coming to blows with him outside the car and eventually fleeing the scene. This was an unexpected, random act of violence between two people who, by all accounts, were on decent terms. Benji turned himself in later that evening and he immediately denied being involved in the whole thing.
But Plummer, who was still alive and talking, was 100 sure it was him. Although, as far as I can tell, neither Benji nor Plummer could or maybe would tell police why the shooting had occurred in the first place. But a few days later, police got a call from Charlotte. She said that she knew what the motive was because she had been on the phone with Plummer when it all went down.
He was about to tell her what happened to her daughter.
Now, Plummer hadn't told police he was on the phone with anyone, especially not Charlotte, but she was adamant. He told her that he had seen a news segment on Ivory's disappearance, which made him want to tell her what happened. But just as he was about to confess whatever it was, he knew she heard a loud pop on the other end.
She heard what she described as a tire backfiring. We now know clearly that those were the shots fired as corroborated by individuals in the residence at the time. But it's 2004. It's very difficult to obtain cell phone records, at times very difficult to obtain any other corroborating information. As the individuals involved certainly weren't speaking, the suspect wasn't going to tell us anything as to why he shot him.
And the victim, at that point, I think clearly and rightfully so, became afraid for his life. And at that point, has thus far never said any more information about the disappearance of Ivory Green. He has denied to this date that he was on the phone with her and was about to tell her information about Ivory. However, we have certainly no indication to discount what Charlotte was saying.
Charlotte even spoke to Plummer after the shooting and asked him to tell her what he was going to say. But he said he didn't remember, and whether that was true, she didn't know. Unfortunately, this code of silence wasn't uncommon. Ivory was from an area where there wasn't a lot of trust in police.
There still isn't to this day. In fact, talking to the police at all is one of the worst things someone can do in that area. Here's Lieutenant Scott Cifinelli.
Based on my experience, a lot of people don't want to tell what happened to them because they were the bad guy two weeks ago. And we've proven that. So they can't, you know, snitch, as they say, because someone will snitch on them.
This has made finding out what happened to Ivory difficult, to say the least. Some people have even tried to throw off the investigation.
We have numerous individuals who have provided statements, whether it to be to their own personal benefit, to throw us off track for whatever reason. Have told us that they saw Ivory at a particular time, which may jive with the investigation until we know. And some, unfortunately, have been just so wildly inaccurate, that has created leads for no reason. There are individuals who said that they witnessed Ivory get into a vehicle and was taken away at a time that we know probably is very unlikely. So at that point, you know, you have to certainly track down who the individual providing the information was, who the individual in the vehicle may have been.
Could Ivory even have been in that particular location? So it's a tremendous amount of man and women power to investigate leads that have gone virtually nowhere, and a lot of times have been wholly inaccurate on their face.
There was a lot that Sergeant Curley and Lieutenant Cifanelli couldn't tell us regarding who they spoke to and how they verified what information was accurate versus what wasn't. But Sergeant Curley told us that they were eventually able to pin down where Ivory was last seen.
From all the information we have, the last place that Ivory Green was seen was in the Oneida Square area in Utica, walking to her residence. According to her mother, she had received a phone call from Ivory just prior to that, stating that Ivory would be home shortly. She was walking home and then, unfortunately, as we know, tragically, she never arrived home. And the last place we can piece together, based on a multitude of information, is that she was walking in near the Oneida Square area.
Oneida Square was just a mile and a half from the Greens apartment, comfortably within walking distance for Ivory, especially since she didn't have a car and was used to walking everywhere. But as for where she was coming from, or who she was with, that remained a mystery. Even though the investigation felt like it was stalling, Charlotte never gave up and she continued working to bring awareness to her daughter's story. She held a dance in honor of Ivory's 18th birthday and then a march to bring attention to her case on what would have been her 19th.
A billboard went up at the start of 2006 as well, and meanwhile, investigators continued trying to interview everyone they could.
Every individual that was arrested in the Utica Police Department for a three or four year period was debriefed about the missing person. Ivory Green, You know, it was everybody that came in. Whether you got picked up on a pettite larceny shoplift in charge, or you were there for a major crime, everyone got spoke to about Ivory Green and what they knew. So a huge part of the investigation was attempting to cultivate information in a variety of street sources, as well as the information we had. And I think it's a two-pronged attempt in both, you know, Catch-22, that the information you got came from a lot of sources.
However, it was a lot of self-serving. Those individuals wanted to help themselves at the time of their arrest, so you couldn't discount what they said until you ran it down. But you realize that you just spent a few days running down frivolous leads that took you nowhere.
It was, in a word, frustrating. By the two-year anniversary of Ivory's disappearance, investigators felt like they were stuck running in circles. They knew Plummer and Benji knew something. By that point, Benji was serving out his sentence for attempted second-degree murder, and Plummer had been in custody for a parole violation. But neither of them would talk.
No one would talk, searches were coming up empty and everyone was left wondering what had happened to Ivory. However, they were about to get what seemed like the big break they were waiting for. Because as the investigation into Ivory's disappearance was going on, there was another, seemingly unrelated investigation running simultaneously. It dealt with one of the biggest drug trafficking gangs in Utica. And in April of 2006, an FBI special agent filed a criminal complaint against them that suggested Ivory's disappearance wasn't random.
So to explain everything, I need to rewind to May 2005, when the Oneida County Drug Enforcement Task Force and the FBI began investigating a drug trafficking gang. The gang operated under the front of being a recording studio called Brick Money Entertainment, run by this guy named Raymond Garrett. Brick Money was responsible for a lot of the drugs coming into Utica at the time. And one of their members was a man named Brendel Watkins, who happened to be Ivory's cousin. Now, as the Drug Enforcement Task Force and the FBI were investigating Brick Money, they learned that back in 2003, Brendel pocketed money that he was supposed to use to purchase cocaine from dealers outside of Utica. Obviously, Raymond Garrett and the other Brick Money members were not happy about Brendel stealing their money. Which eventually caused him to leave and start his own drug dealing operation called Get Money Click.
But Brick Money was violent. Like these weren't people who would just forgive and forget one of their own members betraying them like that. And over the course of the investigation, the investigators on that case started to hear whispers that, in retaliation, Brick Money members abducted and killed Ivory. To investigators on Ivory's case, this seemed like a huge deal. This could be that missing piece of the puzzle investigators were waiting for.
Sergeant Curley even told us that some of the names that came up in the Brick Money investigation had also come up in Ivory's case. But there were some holds for one. If Brick Money were going to go after one of Brendel's loved ones, Ivory just doesn't make a ton of sense. He had other people who were closer to him, and two investigators kept running into the same issue.
People just weren't giving them accurate information.
At the time that brick money was being investigated, parts of that group were supposedly working as informants for federal and local investigators. During the course of those comments, they were making statements as to how the drugs and guns were coming into the city. And I think during the course of time, it was well proven that the information that they were providing was wholly inaccurate. And put police and investigators on a track that was nowhere near where they needed to be. And then tangentially provided information on other cases that led nowhere as well.
Including Ivory's.
Yeah, some of the information about Ivory came out of that investigation. I think over time, and in the totality of what we've learned, that there's probably not a lot of relevancy to that investigation and the missing of Ivory Green.
So it was back to the drawing board. They continued interviewing everyone they could, running down every lead. And despite not having much cooperation, there have been a decent amount of leads, even if some of them seem far-fetched from the start.
Because you have to go into it, you have to chase a lead in an optimistic way, right? We don't want to go right off the bat saying this is nothing. If you have that attitude, you're going to end up with nothing, right? So a lead comes in and you hope for the best. And you work it based on your training and experience, and you know, at the end, it is what it is, right.
You hope for the best and you do your best, and then sometimes it's a swing and a miss.
They had lots of swings and misses, but they never gave up, and neither did Charlotte. Over the years, she continued to advocate for Ivory, but not just for Ivory. She's volunteered with NCMEC and helped comfort families with missing children of their own. Eventually, she got married and moved out to Georgia, but she keeps in contact with the Utica police, so here's where Ivory's case stands today.
Investigators have gathered hundreds of leads, led multiple searches, and interviewed everyone they could. And while they still aren't 100 percent sure what happened, investigators have landed on one thing Ivory was most likely murdered.
So the timeline we have is that on March 6, 2004, Mom states that that's the last time she's seen Ivory. On March 16, 2004, she is reported formally missing to the Utica Police Department on April 29, 2004. The shooting of that individual occurs, and then, we believe, somewhere in that month and a half time frame, Ivory Green goes missing.
And I think, unfortunately at this point, and I think mom is on board, that Ivory Green was probably murdered during that initial few days of her going missing.
It's been difficult for them to piece together exactly what happened and a lot of what they know today. They're keeping close to the vest, they know. Ivory was with both Benji and Plummer in the days leading up to her disappearance. And so a lot of the investigation has centered around them and the people that they're known to associate with.
The two specifically involved in the investigation, on top of the associates, are part of the investigation that we have centered on for the course of the investigation over the last 18 years. And believe that they have a strong bit of knowledge, if not a direct hand, in what happened to Ivory.
But what exactly happened to Ivory, what the last few minutes of her life were like, that's still a mystery. Chirlette believes Ivory was abducted while she was walking home, and whoever grabbed her killed her once they realized what they'd done. But Sergeant Curley has a different theory.
From the information we have, it wasn't an abduction type case, it wasn't a forcible grabbing and dragging into a vehicle or taking with someone. That the individual she went with from the information that we have was very complicit and compliant on her part. You know, whatever the reason for her going with them at that time. I think is a huge part of the investigation that we're just not willing to publicly speak about. Because it speaks to the motive that we may need going forward to put a prosecutable case together or interviews. But there was no force required to get Ivory to go with the individual she went with.
Sergeant Curley and Lieutenant Cifanelli have two goals. The first is to find out who killed Ivory so they can be brought to justice, and the second is to find Ivory's body so Chirlette can bring her home. Over the years, they have been given dozens of tips, but none of them have led to the discovery of Ivory's remains.
We've searched lake bodies, we've searched river bodies, we've searched wooded areas. They've searched national grid-owned properties that people have stated, they've searched abandoned buildings. The one information was that she may be buried in New York City. We went all the way down there to look at places, so it's traversed one end of the state to the other in an attempt to locate Ivory and bring some closure to Chirlette. In any capacity, just to bring her daughter's remains home and give her a chance to bury her. No stone, literally no stone, has been unturned in an attempt to locate her.
The problem is the people we're speaking to, the information again, you don't search 20 different areas. If you're getting concrete information, you have street information that people have heard, or information that people are trying to throw you off the path.
And we're not going to discount any of it. But none of it, unfortunately, has been relevant or useful to locate here.
This investigation has been an uphill battle from the start, and the longer it goes unsolved, the more difficult it becomes. Partly because so much time has passed, and partly because some of the people involved have been murdered themselves.
There's a lot of people we can't go back to anymore in this investigation, we have what we have. There's a lot of people over 18 years that changed locations that tragically passed away that are victims of violent crime themselves. So, you know, as time goes on, it's certainly an uphill battle to try to determine definitive information as to the location and whereabouts. And what happened to Ivory on that night.
But even though some of the people they would like to go back to have passed away, there's one thing they've got up their sleeves that might do all the talking for them DNA.
There were leads that consisted of possibly securing evidence that could have DNA on it, so we do have evidence on hand, but without getting into specifics. I'm not going to say what that evidence is or what lab results could have been. But yeah, there's stuff in the UPD property room that was held for forensic reasons.
Lt. Cifinelli wouldn't tell us where they got the evidence that they have. It couldn't have been from Ivory in Charlotte's apartment since she didn't go missing from there. But whatever it was from, and whatever they have, they're keeping it under wraps. They also have Charlotte's DNA on file, so if they find remains, they can determine if it's Ivory and they can bring her home.
And they will bring her home.
So this investigation is very active and ongoing. Lt. Cifinelli maintains a direct role in it, even with his new position in the United County District Attorney's Office. We have a dedicated investigator at the Utica Police Department. Every year we try to at least do some kind of media outreach.
Either we go on the radio or we put posters out to never forget about Ivory Green. We're going to do everything we can and in that we're going to run down every lead we possibly can.
Charlotte told us all she wants to know is what happened to her daughter. It's been just over 19 years since Ivory disappeared, and that's longer than she was alive. Lt. Cifinelli is dedicated to getting Charlotte the closure that she so desperately wants.
I've told that to so many people that right now we're working for Mom, right? I mean, it seems like we're just simply working for mom to get her an answer. And that hasn't worked yet in regards to making somebody feel bad enough to tell us something. And maybe the reality is, we haven't. Just we haven't talked to that person yet, who has that information, who holds that key?
I think we have, but it remains to be seen.
We have a Mohawk Valley Crime Stoppers 100 anonymous tip line that we utilize for a lot of crimes. Some tips have even come in for Ivory. So individuals wishing to provide an anonymous tip can either go to p3tips.com. Download the app both on the Play Store or the Apple Istore. Or you can call an 800 number 1-866-730-8477, 1-866-730-Tips, and that is the Mohawk Valley Crime Stopper tip.
Or you can call the Utica Police Department Criminal Investigations Division at 315-223-3510.
The Deck is an audiochuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast..com. So what do you think, Chuck, do you approve? I approve?
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