What She Buried | 3. The Money Part

A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13,000 people.

“It's like they have a stuff you want to hear about on TV.”

Fifteen murders in the last five years. Some criminals I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa, and from CBC's uncover and the fifth estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek, and what's behind it all.

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“When I first got in contact with Queneta,”

she was just another name on my list. My list of 10,000 people held in women's prisons across the country. I sent surveys out to all these women, and I ended up writing a book on reasonable women about them. I've now spent eight years reporting on survivors of violence

who've been criminalized for protecting themselves. And as time has gone on, I've come to see that while a few cases are cut and dry wrongful convictions, most are more nuanced. I no longer expect to find perfect victims.

At first, Queneta had declined to answer the survey.

Instead, she'd written me a letter, and then we'd corresponded for a while, before she decided to finally send her survey response. It was 10 dense handwritten pages. She answered my questions in detail,

mostly expanding on her life in prison

“and her experiences in the legal system.”

But there was one question Queneta declined to answer entirely. I'd ask that she told me about the days leading up to Michael Giles' death. To that, she responded, "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me." So, I'd rather not.

Over time, I guess it became clear to Queneta that I probably would believe her. And she began, bit by bit, to tell me more.

I never pushed her on it,

not until we were sitting across from each other at Lane Murray Prison. That's when I asked again about the days leading up to the death of Michael Giles. So, what was going on for those three days? I argued, went out to eat, went to the movies,

went to something called a gaity warehouse, went to a half-priced books, we don't have that image again and I was like, "I went to a furniture store." Okay?

And I knew it. Sex? Sex? Yeah, we had sex one twice. It kind of sounds like a romantic weekend.

I was mean for first thing a lot. We were arguing a lot. But it was puny for us. It was like, "Look what you're wearing, how are you wearing it?" And then it is escalating.

I knew some of the evidence in Quinnett's case. The whole, the concrete slab, the red stain on the couch, the renter who'd been told, do not dig in the backyard.

All of that evidence led to Quinnett. So, the very least, back in 2007, she knew a lot more about Michael Giles' disappearance than she was letting on. But there was something else that took investigators a bit longer to unravel. Something that made the prosecution's case against Quinnett

pretty hard to dismiss out of hand.

I'd never really asked Quinnett about this.

Not until that February day, when we were sitting across from each other, separated by the prison glass. After. Which was that?

Well, after he was dead. Well, I don't know which part is after. The money hurts. So, the thing is with the money. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media,

this is What She Barried. I'm Justin Vanderland. Episode 3, The Money Part.

Quinnett told her mom, "We're birth of Powell,"

“that she was going on a trip out of town.”

She'd be visiting her friend Kim, who she'd met back when they were both Air Force wives on the base in England. But when Quinnett came home, she didn't look like someone who just spent a few days relaxing with an old friend. She comes back and I knew something wasn't right.

She escaped the Sequoia, pulling up his vehicle that Nissan. And she was just white. And I said, "What's going on?" Quinnett has shrugged it off.

She said, "She and her boyfriend Deondra, the man she was living with at the time. It had some kind of disagreement. I didn't get into it, but she wasn't scared." Rebirth wasn't satisfied with Quinnett's explanation.

Are you so pale? What's with the SUV you suddenly seem to own, where to come from?

“Again, Quinnett didn't have any good answers.”

So I had my friend, and he showed it the list apparently, "Let us play." And they was registered to jail. And I asked her again, "What's going on with this vehicle?" She covered it.

I don't know what she said, but she covered it.

You know, this is a girl that never really had a reason with a lot of me.

I believed her. But how do you cover that you have this guy? Well, she said something about it was something to do with Kim's husband, and he was dying to cancel Kim. The friend Quinnett had told Rebirth that she was visiting.

I even tried to catch her, as she always tell me the story that she told about the girl's husband, had got injured in the accident. So she said her husband had got injured in the accident in the sister. And he did it in a die for Kim's. But was the injured or a cancer?

He ended up dying for Kim's. Yeah.

“Maybe Quinnett didn't have such a consistent story about why she had told a truck back from Texas.”

I knew about the truck.

But I didn't know about the truck.

Princess Powell, Quinnett is cousin and friend, was also wondering, "Where did Quinnett get this new truck?" This new truck was kind of funky. I got into the truck. Just smell like old blood.

You know, I asked you to thought something did like a mouse or something was in the guts of the truck or something. You know what I'm saying? It just had an off smell. And she said, "We've been trying to work get this smell out.

We've been trying to get this smell out." And I was like, "You know, you sat in, it was just off a smell, and then the air of it fell thick." It was just like, "You didn't want to be in that truck." But truck was unsettling.

And so was Quinnett as a parent. She has scratches on her face. And her eye was swollen. I can tell she's been in the fight. And I was like, "What happened?"

I said, "Did you find out about Charles?" You know, and she just looked at me and she let me believe that. Dee. Dee Andre Knight. Quinnett is boyfriend.

Whatever Princess thought had happened between Quinnett and Dee Andre. It seemed to have passed quickly. Because not long after Quinnett returned from Texas with the new truck and the scratches on her face, she and Dee Andre looked like they were doing better than ever.

Actually, their life was suddenly very comfortable. Quinnett's son was already attending a prestigious school. And now Quinnett applied to get her daughter into one of Detroit's finest private kindergarten. She dropped $25,000 just to enroll her. And I knew something was off.

I didn't know what had happened. But I knew something was off. Princess had the same job as Quinnett. They were both LPNs, licensed practical nurses. They monitored vital signs, gave meds, helped with dressing and bathing.

You definitely couldn't get rich that way. So where was that money coming from? Princess didn't think that the fathers of Quinnett is too children were paying those tuition bills. And Quinnett's boyfriend, Dee Andre, he was in construction.

Not a bad-loving, but not the kind of money that would explain dropping $25,000. Or all the other stuff Quinnett was suddenly splashing out on. She was rebuilding Dee Andre's house. They totally stripped down the kitchen. They put in a sliding wall.

The attic up there. That whole attic is redone.

She refinished that attic. She paid off her mama's car. And her mama said it to me too. She said, "I knew she had too much money. I knew she had too much money." But yes, she paid off her mama's car.

So I asked all the cars they were driving. And then I know Dee Andre had got a vent. That, a corbat. Princess couldn't work it out.

“Then Quinnett let her in on a little secret.”

She told me her account. She had like $80,000 in her account. No, 180. I said, "Wait, what the fuck, you get all this money from?" Child's giving gave it to me. I said, "Why would he give you that much money?"

I said, "That doesn't make sense. Why would he give you that much money?" Before this podcast, I wrote and reported another podcast about a different woman who had been convicted of murder. It was called "Believe her." I was literally the title. "Believe her." And that's my approach to my work.

The people I report on, the people I've written a whole book about now, they've usually experienced pretty relentless sexual and domestic violence all their lives. And they usually haven't been believed, particularly after they fought back. I've seen cases, many cases, where these women were so clearly trying to protect themselves. But then when police, prosecutors, even the media, get their hands on these stories,

the narrative flips. The women are portrayed as nothing more than cold-blooded killers, liars, drama queens, fabulous, master manipulators. Exactly what they called "queneta." I very purposefully counter all of that when I approach women in prison.

“As a starting place, I believe what they say about their lives.”

I don't think they're going to tell me every detail with 100% accuracy from the beginning. Who could? But I start with "Believe." And then we go from there. It's a process.

It's how we interacted with "queneta." It's how I first received what she said and wrote about her past, her experiences, and about the days and weeks surrounding the death of Michael Giles.

"Queneta" had always been clear with me.

She had killed Michael Giles. But she had also always told me that she believed the killing was justified. She said there had been an altercation, and it was him or me. Everything that came after Queneta said was done in a panic. A messy attempt at a cover-up.

Not good. But you can sort of understand it. But then there was the money. The first time I really understood the extent of the money was on one of my trips to visit Ribertha, Queneta's mom.

Ribertha had gone all out on this immense spread of food that she kept trying to feed me. "Fukubang, it's all the same. I don't know if it was for you." Resistance was futile. There was also cheese, pink marshmallow fluff, olives, mix nuts,

and a full-shark kudori board. So a lot of eating. But in between bites, I would fit in questions about Queneta, or Ribertha would reflect on her daughter's life. How it could have gone differently.

So what's in here? That's the truth. I'm going to give you some of that girl. I don't know what her life would be. But she would be successful. She'd be raising the children.

“That's why I tried to do things for them,”

and I knew she really did. Instead, she would have sent them to go to school. She would send them to the college. No questioning my man. I don't know. It's been a bit free. She's been there.

Queneta was free for 35 years. For a long stretch of that time, I don't think she was too happy. Sure, she presented as independent, capable, self-assured, fun, even when she felt lower desperate.

This was out of habit, Queneta told me, and necessity. She once wrote, "Society expects black women to be strong.

Carry weights. Never complain."

there was so much turmoil.

I was just thinking about... If the problem was men... If the problem was men... If the woman didn't confess... Yeah.

“Everyone in corrections, because of men.”

I've obviously seen plenty of cases where this is true. She's locked up because she fought back or because she protected her kid, or because he made her take part in a crime under the arrest, or she stayed loyal, or she was too scared to speak out to her own detriment. It felt like we're birth that was helping me make sense of Queneta.

Fleshing out this portrait of the woman I knew, a woman with so much in common with other incarcerated women. And then, Roberta went to a back room and came out with a box full of documents about Queneta's case. When I was living, you see the story yet.

This reminds me of the folders. The discovery, or this rough-shot version of it that Roberta had, included police and prosecution files. Documents that the state had been legally required to hand over to the defense. The records weren't super organized.

Roberta's system seemed to be to put it all in piles. I started rooting around the papers. I didn't know. Oh, there's an incident report.

“These were reports from the police department in Garland, Texas.”

On one page, there was a summary of a checking account. A joint account belonging to both Michael Giles and Queneta Harris. And Queneta Harris. So, this says here, 53,000 to you.

What? This was what it says. They said that out of this account. She didn't even know. 40,000 went to her, 53,000 to you.

She never gave me a dime.

Never. Are you a cracker? The last day was split. I don't know about that. How do you flip it?

What? What? How do you flip it? What? I know that her, her journey.

“As if it was that, the students in German were up from the Swimvy.”

I see it. I didn't write it, but put that on the side, right like me. Queneta knows how to write like me. In other words, she could have forged Rebirth a signature to move the money around.

And there was a lot of money moving around. Some checks to family and friends. And far bigger sums, wired to accounts owned by Rebirtha, Queneta, and DeAndre. The majority of the checks and debits occurred in Michigan.

Wow.

You never really read it.

Really a lot going on with checks. And then in the piles, there were photos. Oh, I got a picture of her and DeAndre in Vegas. This is where she is. Is this after?

All of us, this will see if suppose the cure that you left. This was taken in September, just one thing they did. The picture was a snapshot of Queneta and DeAndre in a red Ferrari. Set again the backdrop of Caesar's palace casino. I'd known that Queneta stole money from Michael Giles after he died.

I thought, that's poor form, okay? But it's not unheard of. A perverse decision, yes. But could be spur of the moment. A one-off.

Or maybe you do it because you're desperate because you need the cash to live. But in the picture, Queneta and DeAndre don't look desperate or torn up. They look jubilant and the checks. There were so many for such a long time. Fifteen months worth of checks and transfers.

I mean, but. So, like, what, okay, in the most, in the most, I mean, it looks, I mean, it looks, it's number. It's number. Yeah, that's not correct.

Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13,000 people. It's like, it has stuff you want to hear about on TV. Fifteen murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of super villains.

I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's uncover and the fifth estate,

But I'm not saying another word, leave me alone.

The mile zero murders. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sanju Baskar this week sitting in for Simon Mayo. And I'm Mark Kermode, this week sitting in for Mark Kermode.

“And Mark, what films will you be reviewing this week?”

We have suburban dinosaurs in the end of Oak Street. We have a restaurant or biography in Tony and lady with that very special guest, Sean Clifford. In all the police reports, the forensic notes, the interview affidavits. You'll find very few details pertaining to the actual killing of Michael Giles. No witnesses, no DNA, no fingerprints, no weapon.

Michael Giles' body was discovered around 15 months after his actual death, in a state of advanced decomposition.

In life, he'd been husky and tall, but his remains weighed only 80 pounds.

Lodged inside the left orbit of Michael Giles' skull, just behind where his eye would have been. There was a partially deformed bullet that police later concluded had been fired from a 9mm handgun. The gun seemed to have been aimed at the base of Michael Giles' neck, fired upward. Then, buried along with Michael Giles' remains, investigators found a pillow.

The pillow with a small hole clean through it. Police believed that the pillow had been used to muzzle the sound of the gunshot, but that was it. The gun never located. The bullet.

“No forensic evidence that would lead back to anyone.”

The pillow? Nothing helpful there either. In the end, though, authorities didn't need those connections. That proof. Because the money?

The money pointed straight to Quinnetta Harris. A perfect paper trail. We had all the checks. So we knew who they went to and who to go look for, and we just had to find them. A few weeks after Quinnetta was arrested and Detroit and transferred to Dallas,

Gary Sweet returned to Michigan. We wanted to go back and all these people that received money. $10,000 checks. Mother received a $50,000 check. And I want to think at that time, and my numbers may be off.

But I want to think she was making about $29,000 a year. At that time, working at this nursing home. In fact, Quinnetta's W2 for 2006 shows that she made just over $21,000. And she was sending her kids to a private school. So we're like, "What is she telling these people?"

When you write a check to a friend for $10,000, and just give it to them, I don't have any friends like that that just give me that kind of money. Every story we got was different. Mostly, though, Quinnetta told some variation of this one. One of the friends and one of the acquaintances she gave a check to set her

actual biological father wasn't who she thought it was, and that he was a rich, famous attorney, and she got a large inheritance. Cornelius pits. That was the name of Quinnetta's fake dad. I saw that name in the files I ended up pulling.

For a while, I assumed it was made up. Until one day I googled the name. And there he was. Cornelius pits. Sameed Detroit Criminal Defense Attorney, with silver hair slicked back.

It was an absurd lie. It was also creative. And, at its root, sad. Quinnetta's biological dad, Eviet Nomvet, he rarely showed up for her. When Quinnetta was a kid, we're birth ahead the truth,

that he suffered from PTSD and severe mental illness.

Quinnetta always wondered, "Did I do something?

Did he reject me?" Later, she learned that he ended up in a group home, talking about how Ryan C. Crest owed him money. Cornelius pits as a father? That was a far grander tale. She'd been telling it since she was a girl.

She could tell people hard that he was a judge.

“You know, was this judge that was on Detroit TV all the time?”

Cornelius pits? Yeah. She said, "Yeah, she's a tell people that that was her dad." That wasn't her dad. Princess Powell obviously hadn't been told that the mystery money came from Cornelius pits. She'd been given a few different explanations.

They came, they flew up here just to talk to me.

Pulled me off my job. She was questioned. She signed an affidavit. I showed her a copy.

“I did write this. That's my handwriting.”

I printed peoples at, and I was a married at the time. Swear that I've been told by my second cousin and co-worker Cornelius, that she received her lump sum of money as a gift from a friend named Tim. That was another lie, too. Who received $10 million settlement

where her husband was killed by a J.B. Hunt truck on his way to work. That's where she was telling people where she got the money from. That was the lie.

But she ain't never gave me a nickel.

I wouldn't accept her shit. Because I knew I just thought that she was scamming. So I didn't want money. No money.

“Perhaps more than any other thing I uncovered during my reporting.”

Complicated how I approached the story. Because it totally scrambled the narrative of Quinetta as a survivor. It made her, instead, not just someone who fought back, as she had said. But someone who had then perpetrated a pretty intricate series of financial crimes. The details are as follows.

Over a period of months Quinetta seems to have stolen more than $200,000 from Michael Giles. His investment accounts were liquidated. His military pension payments were ciphoned off. Any cash he had lying around? That was long gone. The money moved from account to account, so it's hard to know exactly what Quinetta bought with it all. She apparently made some car payments, and Princess remembers that Quinetta finished

Rebirth's attic. The small Detroit bungalow now had one extra room. Some of the money went to a few of Quinetta's friends. The ones who are hearing stories about Cornelius pits, or stories about Kim's cancer

“stricken husband and his deadly run-in with the J.B. Hunt truck.”

Other payments, authorities believe, went to Quinetta's kids tuition. And a decent amount of money, it seems, went, tellingly. To benefit the man Quinetta was living with, her boyfriend, Deondrei Knight. Who, according to what we've heard, apparently got a Corvette, a motorcycle, and a finished basement. And Deondrei knew, at least to an extent, where that money was coming from.

We found a notarized power of attorney, granting her access to everything. The document was dated and signed by Michael Giles on September 27, 2006, which was nearly three months after Michael Giles disappeared. And we want to find out who signed that, because he's dead. To get a power of attorney, you need it notarized.

But to actually transfer the proceeds of Michael Giles' investment accounts to his bank, you needed to go a step further. The bank required an agent to come and collect signatures in person. In this case, the agent was a man named Donald Eberley. We find Donald Eberley, and basically trying to get the story out of this woman

got on the accounts. And he says, "Yes, she showed up with that power of attorney." And he says, "I have to actually see him silent." And she says, "Well, he can't. He's had a stroke." Donald Eberley agrees to meet with Quinetta Harris and stroke survivor Michael Giles, who also was in a serious car accident.

So she sits up on time for him to come to their house. And he shows up at the house. And he tells us, "There's a guy in the hospital, a bandage is all up."

And so that resembled enough of Michael Giles, who he had never met,

but you know, had the driver's license. The ailing wounded person in the bandages is, understandably, not doing great. He's speaking in a whisper. But he's able to get out that, yes, he does want his investments transfer to his savings account. And yes, he wants to add Quinetta Harris

as a joint owner on that very account. Donald Eberley holds out the first of several papers for the bandaged man. And he scribbled a signature on it, and there goes the money. Okay. Assuming Michael Giles was, at that time, buried under a concrete slab, who was actually on the hospital bed.

It wasn't much of a stretch to see the obvious suspect. The Andre. Same bald head, same broad build. He bore a decent enough resemblance to Michael Giles, especially if you imagine him wrapped up like a mummy in lying prone

So Gary Sweet asks the Detroit police to find the Andre.

“They arrest him and bring him to the station, where Gary is waiting.”

When Gary figures, they don't actually have that much on this guy. This is probably a waste of time. I had a running bed with my guy with me. I said, he's not going to admit to any of this.

He would be dumb to admit to it, because we, I mean, we don't have a real strong case on admit it everything. But I mean, he admitted to everything. He admitted to sign in the paper. He admitted to forge in the power of attorney.

I mean, he confessed to all that stuff we thought he did. He spilled immediately. Almost immediately. Why? I don't know.

I was shocked. But yeah, it was within the interview within four or five minutes. He's telling us everything. It's all his involvement in her plans and plot. DeAndre gave her up right away.

The mother of his baby girl, born just 11 months after Michael Giles disappeared. But he didn't have any instinct to protect himself or to protect her. The her here, by the way, is Quynetta, not the baby. No.

Is that unusual? In the criminal world, probably not.

“I mean, I think he probably knew what was about to happen with her.”

And what was about to happen to her?

Well, basically, she was going to find herself quite trapped.

And when she understood that she had no clear path out of the mess she was in, it seems that Quynetta went to unimaginable, desperate, and reckless lengths to forge one. I can't remember what her name was, but she played like she was in. I don't want to offend anybody by things. But African, or a different race.

She, you know, changed her voice. She was like, "Hey, I have this opportunity." That's next time on what she buried. Don't want to wait for the next episode. You don't have to.

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This show was reported and hosted by me, Justin Vanderloom. Eric Benson is the executive producer. Ashley Ann Craig Baum is the managing producer.

“Production assistants from Lane Rose, Josie Duffy Rice, Mosey Secret, Emily Martinez,”

Sheba Joseph and Michael Meyer. The story editor is Matthew Share. The series was mixed and sound-designed by Garrett Tidamen, a support from U.N. Li, Trimulin. Fact checking by Matthew Giles.

A special thanks to our operations team. Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dingo. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriades and Matthew Share. If you enjoyed what she buried, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.