What She Buried | 1. The Pen Pal

"Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana."

“"Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it."”

"So there's no... No, no buyers remorse. More like buyers rejoice." "I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it." "Bier's rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may have like. See her Saturday return policy at Carvana.com." "Listen to every episode of what she buried, add free right now when you subscribe to the

binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else get exclusive bonus episodes and unlock

more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to the binge channel on Apple podcasts and tap subscribe or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. The binge feed your true crime obsession." "Can't sight media."

“You know that quote, "Well-behaved women seldom make history."”

"You've seen it on bumper stickers, mugs, Instagram grids." "It means unless a woman boldly breaks convention, she's going to fade into oblivion, just folding laundry until she dies. I like it. I get it." "But I counter that badly behaved women also seldom make history. You can't actually break too many rules. Especially if you're the wrong type of woman to begin with."

"I've been reporting on women in prison for eight years now. I have a new book out on the topic. It's called unreasonable women. Slightly sarcastic title. It's about how many so-called murderers were actually making quite sensible decisions, often to defend themselves or loved one from abuse. And yet they're painted as cold-blooded killers. Because these women, they've ventured into a field traditionally reserved for men, violence, and for that they've been severely punished,

disappeared far away. Wipe to clean from history. Usually." "All right, so did you start?" "We've been rolling." "Okay, we're good. We're- this is our beginning." "Hi. Hello." "So, how are you?" "Tired." "Tired." "But, um, awakening, awakening every day, one day at a time." "Not long ago, I found myself with my producer Eric, in the visiting room of a vast women's prison in central Texas. Across for me,

speaking into a telephone receiver, from behind a wall of bulletproof glass, was a woman I'd been corresponding with for five years. Her name is Kuenetta Harris." "So, okay, I mean, obviously, I'm so glad

“I get to finally meet you in person." "I ain't no man. I think it was ever going to happen. But now here”

we are." "Here we are." "And I wish that we had more time, I could have a more natural conversation." "I don't know. Was Prince retirement on a give- was like an hour?" "Yeah." "So, yeah, so instead of what I would like to do, which is Sincasa." "Singasa, sing this up and relax and talk. I'm going to be asking a little bit more in terms of just like some questions." "No." Kuenetta was dressed in prison whites. She's a black woman in her 50s, taller than I had anticipated,

more commanding, and her hair was long, wavy, past her shoulders. She was wearing this pair of gigantic, state-issued sunglasses. She's losing her vision. Texas prison health care is notoriously lacking. I couldn't see her eyes. "This is kind of going to be your story. This whole thing that we're looking at. This whole... I don't even... I don't know. It's so complicated, Kuenetta. I don't know if you know about this." "It's so complicated."

"Oh, just multi-layered. Complex." "Confusing." "Yeah, very confusing." "Are you confused?" "I've been confused." Confused. That was an understatement.

I first got to know Kuenetta as a penpal of sorts, and through our years long correspondence,

I learned about her past and what brought her to prison. Like so many women I've reported on, she had a history of abuse and trauma. For such women, killing can mean an end to their torment,

I'm Kuenetta agreed. But the more I dug in, the more people I talked to,

“the more I realized that my initial concept of Kuenetta, of what she'd been through, and what she'd”

done, it flattened her. At first, I thought Kuenetta's narrative would move from point A to point B

pretty easily. But soon, I learned that with Kuenetta, there weren't no straight lines. Only a laparinth, elaborate, and disoriented. When they'd meet her, it's like they own a high. And this loaded was surely, you know, that high comes down. "Oh, look at her." She's just, and she, I said, "This is not true." This, it didn't happen like you said, did it? "Did you think it was a good idea?" "No. I told, no. I told them why."

"What's the good idea?" Sometimes when you're a light, you attract, you know, darker energy. When I go to the kitchen, you get everywhere.

“"What's actually shot at me?" "This is it." "Hey, listen, there's a lot going on back."”

Turned out, there were many versions of Kuenetta's story, and almost every single version contradicted the one before. "He's loving, he's a mentor." "How am I in trouble? I don't have no teenager to take no home." "We had our computers and our cell phones. How to kill someone without leaving a mess. How to clean blood off a couch." "And he scribbled a signature on it and there goes the money." "I thought that was rather clever." "It was, I kind of,

I kind of, wow, that's pretty good." By the time I was sitting across from Kuenetta, in that Texas women's prison, I was thoroughly perplexed. Prosecutors and the state depicted Kuenetta as a ruthless killer and worse. I had known someone very different, someone smart and insightful. Someone I considered almost a friend, but when I really dug into her past, I was confronted with

far more complexity than I ever anticipated. And now, I was trying to make sense of a person, and a story that was all wrapped up in the deepest truths and the thornyest lies. So what do you do when you don't get the story you're planning? The story you thought would adhere to a relatively clean narrative? What do you do when you come face to face with somebody who simply won't fit into any mold? Well, I was about to find out.

So what happened? Because you never really told me. I don't know if you can, but if you are

comfortable, I would ask if nobody asked. I mean, but I prefer you, if you don't, if you're not going to tell me it accurate or prefer you don't. You're thinking back to let me that's her background. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is what she buried. I'm Justin Vanderloin, episode 1, The Pen Pal. Even in Buyer's Remorse. By a new car, I'll be moving in. Let's get started.

“Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.”

You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no Buyer's Remorse. More like Buyer's Rejoice? Uh, I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyer's Rejoice by your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See your seven-day return policy at Carvana.com.

One of the first things I did when I set out to write my book on reasonable women was to create a survey.

16 questions, which I sent out to 10,000 women in 55 facilities across 27 states. More than a thousand completed surveys made it back to me. Not a bad batting average. There were stories of neglect and poverty. I've been during assaults. Of having no home and no food. Of domestic and sexual violence. Of the system failing people again and again.

And there was one response that really stood out. It was a letter saying why the writer, Kwaneta Harris, wouldn't participate. Kwaneta, who had been accused and convicted of murder. She had no interest in the questionnaire, but she was interested in corresponding with me.

salaciousness of the story. I got where she was coming from.

You can't always trust a journalist. She wasn't going to respond to my question, she said.

But she had some things she wanted me to know. Women in prison were always characterized as monsters. But, she wrote. I've yet to encounter these monsters. Although, I've met plenty of women with mental illness, untreated, and undiagnosed. She ended her letter telling me she simply hoped I'd portray women in prison humanely. I wanted to hear more from her. We started writing regularly. It was all we could do. Prisoners in Texas solitary weren't allowed

to make phone calls, except a family. And even those calls were few and far between. So we wrote

back and forth, a lot. But we never heard each other's voices. But then one day in March 2023,

almost exactly four years after our very first correspondence. I was sitting at my desk and my phone buzzed with an unknown number. It was Kwaneta. Over night, she and everyone in her unit had gotten the right to make calls. They could do it on prison issued tablets. Rumor had it, the men in solitary had been hunger striking and the administration had bent. "How do you think that ever began to talk to you Kwaneta in the flight time?" So, how do you start a conversation with someone

“that you've been in a conversation with for like years, but never heard their voice?”

"Oh, oh, I'm going through it in a lot. Oh, no, no, no, it's not my thing with you after I got already known." No, you don't sound, you sound exactly like I thought you would sound. "Yeah, yeah, I feel like I already know you." We chatted pretty regularly after that, but our kids, our lives, my daily life in Brooklyn, hers in a Texas prison, but also about writing. By then, Kwaneta wasn't just writing to me. She was getting published. First, in underground

pamphlets of prison writers, but soon in national outlets, the Boston Globe, Teen Vogue, we'd commiserate about applying for fellowships. "Yes, you told me that it was cut through, just being told, I didn't believe it. I thought it was like the damn drug gang. What is this?" Her stuff was legitimately good. Kwaneta's really got away with words. She's also a great storyteller, which is another part of what this show is about. Kwaneta's stories.

“Her work was important. She wrote about sexual violence, about forced labor,”

about incarcerated people dying from the heat, about parenting from prison. She was on the inside with this special view of everything our systems try to keep hidden. "How are you not scared?" "Oh, scared." "You know, people are scared. I mean, people, a lot of people won't write anything out, right?" "Oh, I don't care. Oh, oh, retaliation." "Yeah, I'm not going to do something." "Oh, you're what more they're going to do to them." "They've already taken my phone for months,

taken up, eat messages from my, taking everything from my, they gotta feed me. And if they want to act the fool and don't feed me, guess who needs to lose weight?" "Me?" "I'll be all right. I just don't let it bother me. I've lived so long being afraid." I had told Kwaneta, I want to write about you. Make a podcast about you. The real you.

I want to tell your story like it's never been told before, and she was on board.

She said she didn't want some polyanipersian, just the human one.

“And that's what I wanted to. So I would be looking into her life, all the places”

and people who shaped her. And there was one person who had shaped her above all others. Roberta Powell, Kwaneta's mom. In late September 2023, I flew to Detroit and headed to a red brick bungalow of seven mile. Roberta's house, the house where Kwaneta grew up. Kwaneta and Roberta have, in many ways, a typical mother-daughter relationship.

They love each other, need each other, irritate the hell out of each other, talk all the time, and like to complain about each other. Nobody in the world knows more about Kwaneta than her mom does. More about what's been done to her. More about what she's done. I'd been to Roberta's place before.

It felt a little apprehensive. We pulled up to the curb. The house had a small porch

“overlooking a patch of trim green lawn. Roberta came to the door.”

We sat down on a couple of love seats in Roberta's cozy living room. There was a photograph there of Kwaneta, back from when she was free. A young woman in her 20s, her hair and a little bob, red lipstick, a crisp nurses cap. Roberta took out her iPhone. She also had some recent photos of Kwaneta to show me. A few weeks earlier, a magazine photographer had been allowed into the prison to take portraits of Kwaneta. Roberta was admiring

her daughter. Mostly. Only think she has a, she's a mama you would notice that. I say your elbows are so dark. You haven't had me thought. Say I've had some shots since 2015. I see it. That's

“our article. I think it was much. Why won't you smile? I don't know. In the photos, Kwaneta is”

always across that glass. I like the one with the handcuffs, but you don't like that. I do like it.

I think it says something. And she's always cuffed when she's around. Oh yeah, they don't let them off. Well, that's amazing now. You got pictures. How can you still when you got them? Period. Because we want to come see her. She says you're not coming down here, seeing me through no glass. For the whole of Kwaneta stands solitary. All eight years, Roberta had only been able to speak with her daughter for five minutes, every two to three months. But now that Kwaneta had a tablet, they could be

in regular contact. How has talking to her about? I sleep so much better. Because every night, you know,

I rock at a sleep, basically. You know, I pretend like she's in my arms. And I rocked like I rocked

when she was a baby. She had anxiety. So I said, you know, I got you. I know you got me, mama. I just hug a pillow and pretend it's air. Roberta was only 17 when Kwaneta was born. Kwaneta's dad was a man in his late 20s, but one time thing, not really in the picture.

“That's how Roberta wanted it. She'd watch how it went when her mom and her aunt had been”

stuck depending on men. They had to do as they were told and take whatever they were given. Roberta decided to go it on her own. And all alone, she would make sure that Kwaneta, a black girl

with a single teen mom, would never have to submit to a man or to anyone. I wanted her to have the

advantage of grabbing everything that other children had. I wanted Kwaneta to have her own bedroom and being able to walk to school and being an area where she could have a good education. Roberta pulled long shifts at the Wonder Bread Factory, the post office, the bowling alley, sold sweet potato pies to the union folks at Chrysler, even landed a job as a correctional officer at men's jails. She bought her house the one we're in now, and she found a way to send Kwaneta

to the local Catholic school, our lady, Queen of Heaven. A good school that taught you not so much that I'm into the Catholic religion, but they taught you well from right. It was a ticket to a better life, something different than Roberta's parents, or into Tennessee's sharecroppers had, something different than Roberta had. Something very uncommon in our family, she was one of the first go in a school uniform. She went in a school Catholic school uniform. She didn't notice the

difference to other people pointed it out. But that was like a point of pride. For me, you know, she didn't notice I didn't want any public schools. And you feel like the public schools failed you. Yes. Roberta hoped that armed with her natural smarts and a good education, Kwaneta would do great things. At the very least, she'd get out of Detroit. Kwaneta wanted that too, but not on Roberta's timeline. Kwaneta wanted out fast. Right after high school, she ran into a guy at the mall. His name was

Antonio Harris, Tony, for short. Soon after meeting, Tony decided to join the Air Force. If Kwaneta wanted to come along, they'd need to get married. I didn't think a 19-year-old was ready for marriage with anybody. I discouraged it to the day. Why? I felt she was not ready. What do you

I really didn't want her leaving me out state. But she left. Do you wish you hadn't? Sometimes I wish you hadn't, this whole thing wouldn't come up. Evening by his remorse. By a new car, I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Kwaneta. Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyers remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out.

Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carpona. Limitations and exclusions may have liked. See her Saturday return policy at Carpona.com. This whole thing that Roberto was talking about, it's what landed Kwaneta in prison.

“For now, what you need to know is that it revolved around a man Kwaneta met during her years”

as an Air Force wife. His name was Michael Giles. The first time Kwaneta mentioned him to me

was in our fifth letter. She wrote that they met when she was a young dumb 21-year-old. She didn't elaborate much at first. Over time, she told me a lot more about Michael Giles. He was a very good friend of mine. He was somebody who was there when I needed him. And I'm thankful for that at the same time, you know, two things can be true it was. Michael was 12 years older. A master sergeant a few years away from his full benefits retirement. He'd been stationed

around the world for two decades, often on the move. That was before cell phones and all that. I would write like a book, take him, and I would get back like a quarter of a page.

“Gwen Haney is Michael Giles' younger sister. And when Michael finally left the Air Force and came”

back home to Dallas, Texas in 1997, Gwen found that he was still basically a buttoned up military guy. I'm talking with the rules and just, you know, the way he dealt with life in general was all everything at her, you know, placed in everything. So yeah. Mike used that military focus to get his degree and he quickly landed a job in tech support for the local phone company. He saved scrupulously and realized his long standing dream. He bought

a home of his own. It was a meticulous ranch house on Wood Creek Lane in the working-class Dallas

suburb of Garland, 20 minutes from his sister. Oh my goodness, he used to always be at our house for

food for eating in. I made these poppers and they're jalapeno peppers with cream cheese, wrapped in bacon and he might had a shaved head so he'd be sitting there and I'd never be so hot, he'd be sweating, be like, oh, that ain't hot, that ain't hot. He just sees sweat hanging now, sweating down. That was what everyone had come to expect of Mike. Steady, dependable, rule following, and always up for a good meal. Which is why what happened in the summer of 2006

was so peculiar. Mike loves quenz cooking. Mike's dependable. He shows up when he says he will. And then suddenly, on the morning of July 4th, Independence Day, Mike just bowed out of the family barbecue. My mom said she talked to him and he said he was going to cook at home and wasn't coming over. So they have the barbecue without him, then he's scarce, like nowhere to be found. Hey, been calling his home number in self on number and leaving messages and I didn't get a return

“call. Quenz has to her husband. I think we should go over and check in on Mike's house.”

See what's going on. And my mom overheard me and I really didn't want her to go because I didn't know. But Quenz mom wouldn't take no for an answer. They go over to Wood Creek Lane together.

Gwen, her husband, and her mom. They parked in the back of the house and the first thing they noticed

is Mike's blue Honda. It's there. They knock on the back door. No answer. They peer in the dining room window. You could see all the way to the hallway. Everything was gone. All the furniture and everything. Quenz husband walks around to the front of the house. He saw the sign in the window that said the house was for rent and that had his cell phone number to call. Mike's cell phone number. They're standing there wondering what's going on and right then

Gwen shows the text to their mom and their mom's like, "No. No. Mike wouldn't just leave. The Honda is still here. He goes everywhere with that car. But mom has recently begun to show signs of dementia. She's also having mental health problems. It's a tough time." Gwen's like, "Mom, you're confused. Let's get your back home."

And then my mom's birthday is August 19th and Mike never missed in an air car.

So I'd text or I'd send an email and I'd be like, "You know, Mom is birthday. Wouldn't get a card?" And I would get a, and I said, "You really need the caller." You know, because she wants to talk to you about Bob. A lot of communication with his cell phone and email address, but never a phone call. No calls. I forgot in birthday. Just as Gwen's starting to wonder what's really going on, her phone finally does ring.

She sees Mike's number. She picks up. But it's not Mike. It was a lady on the cruise ship, and she said that she was calling, because she found his phone, it had dropped in exiting at a port. And so at that time when the lady that called me, you know, I'm thinking, and she said that that him and his bride is bride is what she said. So I'm thinking,

“you know, in my head, Mike ran off and got married. You know what I mean?”

And they're on the cruise and stuff, you know, so on and so forth. So that's just, you know, what I thought really enjoying at that time. In the summer of 2006, Michael Giles was 47 years old.

He'd never been married and he had no kids. He'd recently lost his job at the phone company.

Gwen thought, okay, maybe he really did run off and get married? Admittedly, she was often in the dark about his romantic life. She wasn't alone in that. He wasn't going to talk about what he called foolishness because he didn't curse. So he, his words were, oh, I don't, I'm not going to get into that kind of foolishness. Karnita Smith is one of Michael Giles' first cousins. They were close.

And she wasn't going to take, I'm not going to get into that foolishness for an answer. I said, well, I'm just checking, Michael, I mean, as old as you are, you've got your house,

“you don't, you know, things like that. I think he just wanted to stay on the playful side of life,”

that innocent side that I'm going to describe it as the boyish side. The boyishness worried Karnita. She noticed that when Mike did talk, he didn't gauge what she called gentle bragging. He could come off a little naive. He'd say he'd saved so much money. He had two cars. He owned his own home. If a person can recognize that side of him, then he's an easy, how can I say? I'm just going to put it this way. He can be an easy take.

I never wanted anybody to take advantage of him ever.

So, when Mike seems to withdraw from everyone in the summer of 2006, and will only give updates with cryptic texts and emails, Karnita goes into noisy cousin mode. She's calling and sending him news about her life. She's basically begging for more information. In September, she writes him an email. She's trying to be peppy, kind of inviting, no drama. I left a message on your cell phone today. I was everything going for you. She gets no response.

A few weeks later, she's getting desperate. Please, don't leave me and not tell me anything. You know we are glued at the hips. Crickets. She hears through the family grapevine about Mike's mystery cruise ship

“elotement. She's getting panicked. Who is this woman? Do we trust her?”

Just before Thanksgiving, her neither rides her cousin again. We had to read this one to us. I think about you so much because I love you and I want to so bad hear your voice again. Most of all, you make me laugh. I guess now you're making someone else laugh. I guess that's okay. I want to laugh too. Email me or call me darling. Your cousin's favorite, Karnita. It's a plea. Even if you found a new life, keep me in it.

15 months pass. The emails have totally stopped. Karnita is at a loss.

That's where everything stood on Friday, October 12th, 2007.

“That morning, Gwen gets a call. It's not from Mike, but it's about him.”

Two investigators from the Department of Veterans Affairs are looking into the foreclosure of Mike's home. They want to speak with Gwen in person. They meet in the parking lot of a low's home improvement store. And they tell me that they were looking for him and asked questions about the last time I'd talk to him and all that and I told him as a hey, I'd just have, you know, text messages and emails. I said, but I haven't talked to him in a very long time. And so they suggested

that I go to the city of Garland. And so I went over there and filed a missing person report.

Several hours later, and 10 miles east, a detective named Gary Sweet is at his desk at the Garland Police

Department. Our supervisor comes in, Lieutenant van Cleve, and he said there are two ladies at the front desk that want to speak to a detective. The ladies, as Gary Sweet calls them, were the VA investigators that Gwen Heaney, Michael Giles, younger sister, had met with in that low's parking lot. Well, it's almost quit in time. It's like you can hear crickets chirping in the office. How many people are going to jump up and volunteer at Quentin Time to go out and talk to this, because

it's going to take a while. I didn't mind over time. And I was the senior guy in there at the time. I was the oldest, been in there longer than anyone. So I gave me the story that this guy had been paying on his house. He had a VA loan paid perfect record on it. And then all of a sudden, about a year ago, he just stopped making payments. And the ladies told me, they said, and there was something else real funny, there was a weird looking concrete slab in the backyard. And we don't really know

what to make about it. So my partner and I kind of look at each other. So let's go out there and

“take a look. So we had out there in the minute, I see that slab. I think this does not look right.”

Coming up on this season of what she buried. One thing I was told right off the top is don't fall for her because she got a ready of dealing with men. I said, "With a foot, you get all this money fun." Jial's gave it to me. I was like, "Why would he give you that much money?" "I had guns all over the fucking house. And one chance he shouted me." She has scratches on her face. And her eye was swapping. I can tell she's been in the fight.

You know, how to kill someone without leaving a vest, how to clean blood off a couch. One way tickets out of Dallas are all that time. Like, you know, just the craziest searches. He admitted everything. And she was like, "Yeah, I did this. I was like, "Girl, you're going to jail. You're going to jail. You're going to jail." There were so many different

sides of her that she tried to play. And I never knew which planet I was coming out that day.

He had gotten a letter or something about Quantetta Hershey been killed in an accident. And then now, Tracy Nat would be taking over. She's going to get her story up. Even if she has to give it out by her hands and I can deposit her, she's going to get exposure to her story. Don't you feel like she's got the gun to her head and she's like deer just...

“Yes, you know. I think hostage video is the vibe of that email.”

You want me to tell you today he died? I tell you today he died? Yes, I do. Queen Carvania stood halo by the morning sun and army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana to a lovely SUV and inexplicably Queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we face it! And offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up feesmail by.

What she buried is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media. This show was reported and hosted by me, Justine Vanderloom. Eric Benson is the executive producer. Ashley and Craig Baum is the managing producer. Production assistance from Lane Rose, Josie Duffy Rice, Mozi Secret, Emily Martinez, Shiba Joseph and Michael Meyer. The story editor is Matthew Cher. The series was mixed in sound design by Garrett Tidiman, a support from UN-Li Trimulin.

Fact checking by Matthew Giles. A special thanks to our operations team. Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dingle. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean,

please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.