Anna Hliaras (10 of Clubs, Ohio)

both a little shorter, but despite their length, we wanted to tell you both of their stories.

Our first card this week is Anna Hilaris, the 10 of clubs from Ohio.

Anna was no doubt a fixture in her neighborhood.

Some called her watchful, protective, and fierce, while other neighbors viewed her vigilance

as grumpiness, the get-off-my-lawn type of person to stay away from.

But Anna was never deterred by how her neighbors perceived her.

She dedicated her time to keeping an eye out on the neighborhood, determined to investigate

every sound or commotion she heard outside.

And detectives think that may have made her a target for someone.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck.

It was a little after midnight on August 9, 1981, when Mary Adams got to the house

that she shared with her younger sister, 57-year-old Anna Hilaris.

Mary had just gotten back from a vacation with friends, and by this time of night, she

fully expected her sister to be sound asleep in her room.

Here's retired Detective Doyle Burke describing the night.

She was gone between August 3rd and August 8th, and was not at home.

She comes home and finds the front and rear doors to the residence locked.

So she starts banging on the doors, you know, looking in the windows, no answer.

their brother, Angelo.

She wasn't just calling him because she was locked out, she was worried.

Her instincts told her that something was wrong and she needed reinforcements.

It was close to 1 a.m. by the time she made that call to her brother.

Mary worried that he might be asleep, but sure enough, he picked up.

She told him that Anna wasn't answering the door and she had a bad feeling about it.

He arrives 30 minutes or so, which is about right, and he starts checking the yard and

the garage.

He finds the garage open.

garage sat backed up to the alley behind the house.

It was there, inside the garage, that Angelo found Anna.

As quick as he could, he grabbed a light to see what was going on.

There was no car, just Anna, lying on the garage floor.

There was a gag in her mouth and her nightgown was bunched up, revealing her underwear.

But it was obvious to Angelo that there was no saving their sister.

by any means.

So the untrained eye, I mean, clearly she was dead.

And so he comes and runs out and says they raped and killed her.

But Angelo told her that he was certain Anna was dead and they needed to call for help

right away.

Angelo ran over to the same payphone Mary had used to call him earlier, and he phoned

police.

By 2.04 a.m., Dayton, Ohio, police officers had units dispatched out to Anna and Mary's

house on the northwest side of town.

The disheveled state of Anna's clothes made it look like she'd been sexually assaulted,

and her nighttime attire made detectives believe that she might have been attacked at night.

They just weren't sure if it was that night.

And that's because Mary hadn't been home since August 3rd, so there was no one else

around who could account for when Anna had last been seen alive, at least not yet.

Along with the nightgown, Anna also had on a blouse-type shirt, shoes, and a red headband.

The gag in her mouth was actually just a piece of cloth, and upon closer inspection, police

noted bruising around her neck, which made detectives think that she had been strangled.

Detectives took in the rest of the scene.

There was a single piece of mail, an electric bill, and a set of house keys laying next

to Anna, but nothing else in the garage looked out of place.

The only thing that indicated a crime had occurred was Anna's body itself.

We asked Detective Burke if police back then went inside the house to look around, but

he couldn't say for sure.

He said if they did, they didn't note that they found anything of interest.

Anna's autopsy was completed later that same day, and the assistant coroner concluded what

Everyone who saw her body at the scene had already presumed, that she had actually died

a few days prior to being found, probably around August 6th.

They also confirmed more assumptions detectives had early on.

She got some abrasions and contusions on her neck.

The hyoid bone is typically broken in a manual strangulation, and it was fractured.

There were retinal or petechial hemorrhages in the eyes, fractures on the back of the

skull with a subarachnoid hemorrhage, and she's on her back on a concrete surface.

That could have been when she fell or it could have been during the strangulation, but she

was strangled.

Cause of death was strangulation.

She had what appeared to be bruising around her vaginal area, but not much else other

than that, so they sent off vaginal swabs to test for semen.

In addition to the forensic evidence collected at the autopsy, law enforcement also sent

off the few things they'd found in the garage for testing, including the mail and the piece

of cloth found inside her mouth.

I couldn't find if they sent the keys off for testing though.

Now while they waited for the analysis on those items to come back, investigators interviewed

Anna's siblings and neighbors to try and zero in on her last movements and a possible

motive for the crime.

They talked to Mary first, and she walked them through the same story she told police

at the scene, and Angelo did the same.

They also told detectives that it was Anna's habit to lock the house doors when she went

out to check the mail, or even just to take out the trash.

So the fact that Mary found the house locked tight when she got home was no surprise.

But the siblings didn't have much else to add.

They said Anna didn't have a partner and didn't have a car.

Detectives gathered that she wasn't known to socialize or ever even have visitors.

It seemed that her whole life was kind of kept to their house and the occasional walking

trip to the grocery store or nearby church.

It was clear from talking to Mary and Angelo that the means, motive, and opportunity just

wasn't there for them to kill their sister.

So they were quickly cleared, and police moved on to speaking with the neighbors.

No one seemed to take note of Anna before she died except a mom and daughter who told

detectives that they'd seen her out in the yard at around 7.30 p.m. on Thursday night,

which would have been August 6th, the day that she's believed to have died.

Now, the frustrating part of looking back on all of this all these years later is that

there's nothing to indicate whether they specified any details about what Anna was

wearing when they saw her.

Was she in her nightgown with her red headband already?

Something else?

Those details are lost to time if they were ever collected to begin with.

But that sighting at least helped detectives narrow down her time of death to somewhere

around the evening of the 6th.

But the window of time was still pretty wide because Anna wasn't someone with an early

bedtime.

two, three in the morning meant nothing.

Picking up trash in the alley, looking in her garage, working on her yard.

No screams, no strange noises, nothing.

And honestly, that's understandable if she was murdered in the middle of the night or

even subdued quickly.

Or neighbors could have ignored anything that had to do with Anna because as detectives

talked to more people, they were finding out that she might not have been the most

well-liked person in the neighborhood.

She liked everything to be in order.

She was kind of the precursor of a neighborhood watch.

She called on everything.

She would chastise her neighbors.

One neighbor said he hadn't talked to her for a few days because she was mad at him

because he put a window air conditioner in and it was too loud and she would constantly

tell him that it was too loud and he needed to do something about it.

Looking at photos, I'm not surprised Anna could hear someone's window air conditioner

unit from her house, especially if this guy lived right next door.

I put those photos up on our blog post for this episode if you want to take a look as

well.

Anyway, detectives were getting the sense that no one heard anything from Anna for a

few days that week.

And no one thought to pop in or call in a wellness check when they hadn't seen her.

And I don't think they liked that, but I don't think they cared.

She was the fiery old lady who ran the neighborhood.

But in a Dayton Daily News article published two days after Anna's body was found, neighbors

who were interviewed didn't show that same concern.

More like a little bit of shock.

But the one thing that has remained really clear about Anna, no matter who we've talked

to or what we've read, she was tough as hell and didn't take shit from anyone.

And neighbors were quick to theorize when speaking to the Dayton Daily News that maybe

that had something to do with her murder.

Here are some of their quotes to the newspaper.

She was the kind of person who was aware of her rights as an individual and would always

stick up for them.

I just hope she didn't blow up one too many times.

I've seen her walk to that garage at 3 o'clock in the morning with nothing but a flashlight

to check things out.

She was a tough old lady.

She was very protective of her property.

She had a quick temper and didn't let anyone take advantage of her.

It's really kind of ironic.

Anna was always saying how inhumane people were becoming in the world.

I guess she really was right.

I remember she was out trimming her front lawn one day a couple months back.

While she was out front, three kids went in her house through the back and stole her TV

set and ran down the back alley.

But she never gave in to fear.

She stuck to her guns.

I always found her to be a nice lady.

So yeah, Anna wasn't necessarily beloved in her neighborhood.

But she wasn't outright hated by everyone either.

And by the way, that incident a neighbor mentioned about some kids stealing Anna's TV, we asked

Detective Burke about it and he said the department never could confirm if that actually happened

or not.

Because you see, Anna made a lot of complaints to police.

She called them frequently about things like a potential breaking and entering, aggravated

burglary, even if someone appeared intoxicated in the alley behind her house.

She saw it all and she called everyone out.

And that kind of backfired.

Because the more frequent Anna's calls became, the more officers became frustrated with her.

If the story about kids stealing her TV is true, though, it doesn't seem like her concerns

were completely unfounded.

Nonetheless, officers at the time started warning other officers about Anna.

They even created an internal complaint memorandum for Anna that said, quote,

Much discretion should be used in the future in accepting any complaints from this lady.

End quote.

This was created on May 31st, 1980.

So essentially a little over a year before Anna was murdered, officers made a note for

other officers to take her calls with a grain of salt.

And that's not to say that a call from Anna was ignored the night she was murdered.

As far as we know, there were no documented calls from her that evening.

But it begs the question, even if Anna had called police to report someone in her garage,

would they have even shown up?

I don't know.

I can't help but wonder if there were instances before that August evening where she'd contacted

police that could have offered up potential clues now if they had all been well documented

and taken more seriously.

But it was too little, too late.

And that made it harder for detectives to nail down a suspect.

If she's yelling or she's in a garage, who knows?

We think two or three in the morning, not that many people are going to be listening

or looking anyway.

So I don't know, that's just a thought.

Or was she just out to get the mail and interrupted someone in the process of trying to break

into her garage once again?

walking to her house, said something to somebody that she saw doing something in the alley,

and they decided enough's enough and lost control of themselves, killed her, stuffed

the gag in their mouth, and went on about their way.

You look at these things and you go, is this targeted or, I mean, I don't think so.

I mean, what did she do other than, you know, just call people out for doing things that

she thought was not appropriate?

But then you could also have someone that you struck a chord with them.

For one reason or another, they're having a bad day or they were just tired of it.

But it's almost like eventually something was going to happen.

For every last person talked to, did you hear anything, did you see anything?

No, but she yells at me because of my air conditioner.

No, I haven't talked to her in a while because she's mad at me.

No, but she's out all the time yelling at people.

When there's a consistent theme there, you've got to pay attention to that, that maybe that

has something to do with her death.

I'd like to think not, but you can't ignore it.

if you will, there were still some documented incidents from reports Anna had made.

Whatever was done or not done back then with those incident reports, it seemed like police

moved on.

And while neighbors could have had a motive to want Anna gone, no one in particular was

on detectives radar.

So it was time for them to think outside the box, look a little deeper into Anna's past

and figure out what led to her constant vigilance.

Best investigators could determine it seemed like Anna's behavior could have been triggered

by her changing neighborhood.

She lived in Northwest Dayton with primarily other adults around her age.

But in the late seventies and early eighties, the demographics started to change.

Younger people moved in and a new group home opened up nearby, about three miles from Anna's

house.

Anna was so concerned that she went out of her way to speak with a woman running one

of the organizations about her concerns over these new people coming into her neighborhood

and the surrounding area.

Now, we couldn't find if Anna had any documented altercations with the people from the home,

but their new presence seemed to amp up her perceived need to keep a watchful eye on the

neighborhood at all hours of the night.

Detective Burke said Anna's fears were unfounded because despite the new group home, crime

in Northwest Dayton wasn't increasing.

He actually said there wasn't any serious crime documented until Anna's homicide.

Now, some people saw Anna as a stubborn homeowner who didn't like to see her neighborhood

change.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't call out the fact that her fears were likely because

she was classist.

In fact, Detective Burke said as much.

But when Anna turned up dead, her neighbors were very forthcoming.

If they thought someone from the group home came to harm her, they would have told police.

But there's nothing the detectives could find to even remotely link her death to that

possibility.

Police had hit a dead end when it came to finding a suspect or even a motive in Anna's

death.

Almost a month into the investigation, detectives again looked at police reports around Anna's

neighborhood, but there was nothing of note.

Everything was pretty quiet in Anna's little neighborhood, except of course for Anna herself.

And it quieted down even more after her death.

Finally, on September 3rd, not quite a month after Anna's murder, lab results from the

swabs taken at her autopsy came back.

The report stated that no significant foreign material was found from the fingernail scrapings,

and the other results weren't more promising.

No evidence of rape was detected.

So that left us with the gag that was in her mouth, and it was not part of the homicide.

She was strangled.

And it was placed in there.

There's no way to tell if it was placed in there before death, after death, during death,

but it was placed in there.

It was ripped.

It was a piece of fabric that was ripped from one of the shirts she was wearing.

And the lab pieced that back together to show it was the same material.

think it can be ruled out definitively, because the autopsy noted multiple bruises.

When we asked Detective Burke about that, he said he asked a pathologist today what

their expert opinion would be on a case like this, and they just didn't have a good answer.

But just because semen wasn't found, and she was still wearing her underwear, we can't

say for certain.

With no other investigative breakthroughs on the horizon, detectives were at a dead

end once again.

Unfortunately, as the years went by, there were fewer and fewer people left to advocate

for justice for Anna.

Her sister Mary passed away in 1988 after battling a long-term illness, and her brother

Angelo, the final member of Anna's immediate family, passed away in 2005 at the age of

80.

For over 40 years, Anna's case sat cold, not being investigated.

That is, until one of our reporters brought her case up to Dayton, Ohio detectives.

Last year, Detective Burke agreed to look at the cold case ahead of our reporter's

interview with him.

He admitted he hadn't even heard of Anna's case before that.

So we asked about any potential evidence that might still be intact today, because I'd

assume there would be DNA on the cloth that was put in Anna's mouth.

But we were met with more bad news.

Apparently, within a couple of years of Anna's case going cold, all the evidence associated

with it—so the rag, her fingernail clippings, biological swabs, that piece of mail, everything—

all of it was stored off-site along with evidence for other inactive Dayton PD cases.

And then sometime around 1983, someone stopped by there and realized that the roof had collapsed

and pretty much everything inside was ruined.

That included every single item associated with Anna's murder.

Ruined.

Waterlogged.

Lost.

Gone forever.

As much as this felt like a hopeless case, it wasn't the end of the road for detectives,

though.

They went back through the incident reports placed by Anna, and one of them stuck out

more than the rest.

A report from many years prior to Anna's murder.

The complaint that caught everyone's attention was dated January 9, 1963, so it was pretty

old.

But in the complaint, Anna said she was hit in the face by a man.

Now unfortunately, that's all we know.

In fact, we have a copy of the complaint, and here's what it says verbatim.

1963.

At 6.30 p.m., suspect Ted Beckner, white male, 35, had attracted the complainant's attention,

then struck her on the right side of the face.

Will prosecute.

We asked Detective Burke what his agency knew about this, and unfortunately, his answer

was nothing.

We asked if they looked up this Ted guy to see if he had any kind of criminal record

or anything to indicate how he knew Anna, but he couldn't find anything.

He said if there was any follow-up done on that incident, the reports no longer exist.

So yet another dead end.

But Detective Burke had one last hope for a Hail Mary.

The idea came when he was looking at Anna's case file once again and found the name and

phone number of an officer that he knew over in Preble County.

I mean, that's astonishing to me, but his dealings with the family was he'd never met

Anna or anything, but Angelo had a little, like a storage area or outbuilding in Preble

County, and he was accused of selling stolen property out of it.

It was by a truck stop.

And so they did a search warrant there and found some things, and also found some drugs,

and suspicion fell on Angelo that maybe he was selling amphetamines to the truck drivers

to stay awake, but it was all suppressed at court.

So he was never charged with anything.

there really wasn't anything that could tie Angelo to his sister's murder.

So that phone call was interesting, sure, but it was a bit misleading.

Despite the renewed investigation, there was still nothing that could indicate who murdered Anna.

Anna's case is one that will only be solved if someone comes forward and speaks.

Even if it's simply some stories that you've heard from family or a friend about Anna down

the road who complained a lot, detectives want those tips.

Sometimes it's the smallest details that can lead to the biggest discoveries.

Anna didn't have kids, and both of her siblings, Mary and Angelo, have passed.

So there's not really anyone left to advocate for her.

I mean, seriously, Google Anna's name.

You won't find much beyond a few really old newspaper articles and now this episode.

It's a little heartbreaking.

You know what's even worse?

Whoever strangled Anna in her garage got away with it.

What if they went on to hurt or kill more people?

What if they still can't?

Anyone with information about the 1981 murder of Anna Hilaris in northwest Dayton, Ohio,

should call the cold case unit at the Dayton Police Department.

That number is 937-333-7109.

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