Deshawna Wilkerson (3 of Clubs, Ohio)

After a night out at the bar with some friends, a man in his mid-twenties, who Wilk called John, arrived back home a little before midnight on October 21, 2001.

He walked into his bedroom, which he occasionally shared with his new girlfriend, D'Shauna, and he was thrown off. When he saw the gifts and roses he had put on the bed for her were just sitting there, untouched. It was sweetest day the day before. And if you've never heard of this holiday, you're not alone. I've never heard of it either, but based on my research, it's a holiday, basically like a pre-Valentine's Day in October.

And this day was a big deal to John. And he was already a little annoyed that D'Shauna hadn't called him to thank him for the gifts. But now it seemed like she hadn't even seen them. He knew that she had gotten off work at 11, just a little while before he got home. And he was expecting that her mom would have dropped her off by now. So John walked out of his room to ask his mom where D'Shauna was. John lived at home with his mom, who we'll call Beth, and she told him that D'Shauna did get home a little after 11 that night. But just a few seconds after setting foot inside, she told Beth that she had to step out to take a phone call. She said she'd be right back, so Beth didn't even think about it again until now, but now Beth is realizing that D'Shauna never returned.

In an instant, John was worried less that something bad had happened and more that D'Shauna hated his gifts. He started calling D'Shauna over and over and over again. He did this through the night and into the next day when he felt like it was a reasonable-ish enough hour to call D'Shauna's mom. Danita and Danita told John the same thing Beth had that she'd dropped her daughter off a little after 11 and everything seemed normal.

She hadn't come back to pick her up at any point, so she had no idea why. D'Shauna wouldn't be at John's and Beth's, and that's when it hit John, where she might be. Even though she spent most of her time at John and his mom's house, she had just turned 18 and had gotten her own apartment. John had a key, so he and Danita, worried herself, now went over to check things out. Here's retired sergeant Bruce May, who's working cold cases with the Dayton Police Department.

But what he didn't know was that those officers were establishing a crime scene around the very person he was looking for. Around 11.30 that morning, the Police Department had gotten reports that the deceased body of a severely beaten woman had been discovered into an alleyway in West Dayton. It appeared as though she had been dragged back there and dumped. And considering this was a pretty high-traffic area. Responding officers concluded that she couldn't have been there for very long. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut, and she had signs of other blunt force trauma all over her body.

A later autopsy would show that she had been stomped on so hard that seven of her ribs broke. But what ultimately killed her was being strangled from behind by some kind of ligature. This poor woman hadn't even had the chance to defend herself because her hands had been tied up behind her back with shoestrings. Probably the ones from her left shoe, which was missing. That shoe wasn't anywhere in the alley with her, but her left sock was just not on her foot.

It had been stuffed in her mouth to silence her. Now. There were obvious signs of sexual assault, though officers didn't think that that happened. There. Her purple-flowered scrub top was pushed up, exposing one of her breasts, and her green scrub pants were pulled down to her knees. There was no ID on this woman, not a phone, not a purse, nothing.

But she did have a large tattoo that spelled out a name, D'Shauna, though they didn't know if that was her name or someone she knew. So while they were still getting their arms wrapped around the case, she was listed as a Jane Doe. But within a few hours, that would change. John and Danita had come to the conclusion that they needed to report D'Shauna missing, so the two of them walked into the police station to file a missing persons report. And that is when everything fell into place. John and Danita knew then why D'Shauna never came home, and detectives finally knew who their Jane Doe was. But now they had a bigger mystery to solve.

Who killed D'Shauna? The first person they wanted to talk to was John. The age gap between him and D'Shauna stuck out to detectives. I mean, she'd just turned 18. But as far as a violent history, he didn't have one.

I mean, she made it seem to Beth like this was a call that would only take a second. She really couldn't wrap her head around what had happened. Because if something was wrong, she felt like D'Shauna would have said something. Because Beth wasn't just the boyfriend's mom, she and D'Shauna were close. I mean, D'Shauna even called Beth Mom, and she loved spending time with her. But D'Shauna was lucky in that she also had a close relationship with her biological mother, Danita.

So detectives hoped that maybe she would know more than Beth. When Danita came in to talk to them, she painted a glowing image of her daughter and all her aspirations.

She had no background in any type of crime.

And those co-workers did know something helpful. They said that there was one person who seemed to be at odds with D'Shauna right before her death, someone who lived actually close to where her body had been found. It was another one of their co-workers, a man who we'll call Frank. They told detectives that a few days before D'Shauna's murder, Frank had come into work with scratches on his hands, and they found out that those scratches came from D'Shauna.

When she and Frank had gotten into a fight, they'd even witnessed it, so Frank was next on their list to talk to. And just 48 hours after the crime, Frank was called down to the police station and immediately told detectives that he'd tell them everything.

Frank said that he worked with D'Shauna at the nursing home and he'd had a crush on her for a while. He was about three or four years older than her, and he developed feelings when they were working together. He said that he'd finally worked up the courage to ask her out, but it didn't go well. His advances were too forward and it made her angry.

And he said, I was shut down coldly. I don't know the gravity of the scratches and they call him down. And usually, if you are the perpetrator, you make up lies. Everything he said was the truth.

They never put him anywhere near her at that time, and he had good alibis.

They asked the lab to check her clothes and what little belongings she had left for latent prints and blood, and they submitted her vaginal swabs for the presence of semen. They also pulled records for Deshauna's phone and pager, thinking that if they could track down that last call she left to make, or maybe any weird numbers calling her, they could find her killer. But before they got any results back, they got some unsettling news. In December 2001, just five weeks after Deshauna was murdered, John's mom Beth, was attacked.

She was assaulted in her home, tied up with shoestrings and robbed before the perpetrator fled out of the bathroom window, right as cops were arriving. The similarities in this weren't lost on detectives, the shoestrings. The fact that Beth was targeted in the exact same home that Deshauna had last been in before her murder. I mean, the big difference was that Beth had made it out with her life. But that meant she could name her attacker, and she did because it turned out that Beth knew him.

He was one of John's friends, someone we're going to call Sam. But forget talking to Sam about Deshauna's murder because they couldn't even find him to arrest him for Beth's attack. I mean, dude was in the wind. So while a manhunt was underway, they hoped maybe that evidence would continue to help them build their case. Maybe have some DNA to test against Sam if and when they found him. Those results arrived in January of 2002, but they were the opposite of helpful.

The items submitted came back negative for Leighton Prince, and the analysis of the vaginal swab was inconclusive for semen. Though they weren't completely devoid of DNA, the testing showed that there was a mixture of DNA of some other kind. They know Deshauna was one of the contributors, but the technology wasn't advanced enough at the time to give any more information on who the other contributor might be. The cell records they got were unhelpful, too. Now. We weren't given a ton of details on the exact numbers that came in or were dialed out. Probably because there is still some fuzziness around it for cold case detectives.

May told us that he's been trying to get in touch with the OG detective on this case, but he hasn't heard back from him. But the one thing May did tell us is there's a suspicious call placed to Deshauna's phone at 12.02 a...m. on October 22, 2001. Now, the number might have been from a burner phone. They aren't sure, but they have some questions that they think the public now can help them with. So I'm actually going to give you some more information on how you might be able to help at the end of this episode. With that, though, every piece of evidence got filed back away for safekeeping, in hopes that it could be tested again later on.

All of 2002 passed with no progress and no Sam. But he finally surfaced in January of 2003. He was arrested and made to stand trial for his attack on Beth. And listen, court proceedings rarely play out like you see them on TV, but this trial, this one, had a Perry Mason moment. And if you don't know what it is, ask your mom. On the stand. Beth told everyone about her attack in December 2001..

She was robbed and physically assaulted in her own home. She told the court how her son's friend Sam, knocked on her door real late and asked to speak with her son John. And when she told him John wasn't there, he asked for his phone number. But something in her gut told her not to give it to him. So instead, she said she'd go get her phone and call John for him. Now, as she's walking back to her bedroom and searching her phone for John's contact, she presses Dial to call John. And at the same time, Sam was suddenly behind her, holding a knife to her throat.

He demanded that she give him all her money, and he told her quote I'm getting ready to leave town. She said she dumped her purse on the bed and gave him the $23 she had, but he demanded more now. What Sam didn't realize is that the call to John that Beth had been making had actually gone through. He picked up and he was hearing all of this on the other end of the line, so he freaked out. And he had the friend he was with.

Call his sister and call the police while he stayed on the line with his mom. So that's why police ended up showing up and Sam ended up fleeing now. Back in 2001. Beth had told police that Sam tied her up and escaped out of the window just as police were arriving and Beth's daughter were coming into the house. So during trial, Sam's defense attorney is like poking at her, poking at this, saying things like, OK, well, other than tying you up, did he touch you? but did he touch you?

And I know what he was doing. The case against his client wasn't looking great, so best he could do at that point was mitigate. It seems like he was trying to make it seem like what happened to her wasn't that bad, but that backfired.

Because that is when the truth that she had kept to herself for almost two years came pouring out of her for the first time in court, on the stand, Beth told everyone that Sam had actually raped her that night. Beth recalled the assault in detail, including how Sam made her wash herself in front of him before he left to retrieve shoestrings from John's room to tie her up. Beth told detectives that she never got medical treatment and never told anyone about the sexual assault. Because she was afraid. If her son found out, he would do something to hurt Sam and end up in jail.

Thankfully, though, it was Sam who ended up in jail. He faced charges of aggravated robbery, kidnapping, felonious assault and rape, but in the end, he took a plea deal. He pled guilty to aggravated robbery and kidnapping, and the assault and rape charges were dropped, so he was sentenced to seven years for his crimes against Beth.

While Sam was incarcerated, detectives began looking into his history and found that this wasn't his first assault. In 1986, when Sam was a teen, he was convicted on sexual assault charges and spent about nine years in prison.

He had a knife with him at that time, which is commonality with him. He seems to carry knives during his assault, He also seems to choke people. And he confronted Deb. He was very physical with her.

He hit her so hard she took 14 stitches in her forehead, where he hit her in the head. She was a small build, five foot tall, 100 pounds, and she was about 40. And he tried to stab her, and when he did, she was wearing a large medallion.

And the knife went into the medallion and bent it, which is probably what saved her.

A security guard for the Roosevelt Center heard her screams, responded and scared Sam away from the scene. And he escaped that day for a brief period of time, until he was arrested at that time for attempt murder, attempt rape and felonious assault.

We feel that he would have followed through on all of them, especially Beth, because he knew her, she knew him.

I mean, it was just a few weeks after Deshauna's murder, when he was at Beth's to rob her, saying that he needed to get out of town. Luckily, Sam was incarcerated now, so they felt like they had a little time to confirm their suspicions before going to Sam directly with their questions.

When detectives sat back down with John, they asked him about his relationship with Sam. John told them that he was sick knowing what Sam had done to his mom, especially because he thought him and Sam were friends. I mean, John and Sam worked together, they hung out sometimes outside of work, and John thought Sam was all right, though he knew that Deshauna hated him.

It just never occurred to him that Sam could be so evil. John actually choked up when he talked about Sam's potential connection to Deshauna's death, but he told detectives he wanted to help, however he could. After their conversation, on January 17, 2003, detectives headed to the prison where Sam was kept and asked him for a DNA sample. Retired detective Doyle Burke, who worked on the case back in 2003, remembers Sam's exact words to him.

It wasn't until 2009 and 10 that detectives took another look at the case and resubmitted the evidence, hoping that they would get hits on any of the DNA. But still nothing.

It just increases by the day and in six months you're going to have something better. We have a lot of hope that it can solve this case. The problem Cold Case investigators run into is we get a lot of hope up all the time. And when it comes back, it destroys our feelings because it hurts us and we hate to see it for the victims and everything.

The Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

And they want to be able to say we never let anything influence us. We have analyzed this individually with all the policy and procedures across the nation in the highest example. They have this board, they have analytical people there, they have the supervisors of the various squads. Which means they not only listen to and have us submit all the reports from all the witnesses, all the crime scene pictures, everything like that, totally inclusive in this investigation then. And this is what we love about them. They will take apart all the evidence you have.

And sometimes we go up there because the DNA people are so good, they see things that we don't see that they can get DNA off of. And we've had a recent cold case from back in 1978, and they got the DNA off of her clothing. Where a perpetrator grabbed and pulled it, that was spectacular, and that's still under investigation now.

And I can't brag about BCI enough. They're not reinventing the wheel, they're making sure that your case is airtight.

But I'm not ending this on a downer, because even though it's taken time. The BCI has the case now, and the Dayton police are hoping there's enough evidence in their case to resubmit everything for DNA testing. And the unit is confident that they won't be waiting for very long. So they're still doing what they can to keep things moving on their end, and they're under more pressure than ever. Because the clock actually ran out on Sam's time in jail.

He's been out ever since, he's residing in Dayton now.

Oh, other than the fact that the house she was at was like two to three blocks away from where Sam lived at the time. May believes that there are many more cases that haven't been reported. And actually, that's part of the reason they wanted us to do this episode.

Or, if you need to remain anonymous, you can submit a tip to the Miami Valley Crime Stoppers at 1-800-637-5375.

And finally, if you were the last phone call to Deshauna, if you talked to her on October 21, 2001, around 1130 or midnight. Detectives would love to talk to you. And if you yourself have been sexually assaulted by Sam or anyone else. I want you to know that there are safe spaces where you can talk to someone about what happened. The National Sexual Assault Hotline number is 1-800-656-4673..

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?