The Murder of Estella Brantley (Connecticut)

Estella Brantley’s murder should have been urgent from the beginning. She was found in one of Bridgeport’s most visible public places, around witnesses who may have heard her final moments, with evidence that would one day matter more than anyone could have known when it was first collected. But for years, Estella’s case stayed unresolved, folded into a larger city-wide pattern of deadly attacks on women and families left wondering whether anyone was really fighting for them. Then, decades later, science brought the case back to life. But Estella’s family was still left asking whether DNA told the whole story.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Kylie Low?

  Estella Brantley's murder should have been urgent from the beginning. She was found in one of Bridgeport's most visible public places, around witnesses who may have heard her final moments, with evidence that would one day matter more than anyone could have known when it was first collected. But for years, Estella's case stayed unresolved, folded into a larger citywide pattern of deadly attacks on women and families left wondering whether anyone was really fighting for them. Then, decades later, science brought the case back to life. But Estella's family was still left asking whether DNA told the whole story. I'm Kylie Low and this is the case of Estella Brantley, on Dark Down East.

• 1:28Kylie Low?

  It was around 7:30 on the morning of October 30, 1980, and a man was driving his girlfriend to work through Seaside Park in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when something in the grass caught his attention. They were just passing the Perry Memorial Arch at the end of Park Avenue, close to where the road curves through one of the city's most recognizable public spaces. Seaside Park stretches along Long Island Sound, a place meant for walking, picnics, baseball games, and ocean air. But that morning, just off the side of the road, among the trees and fallen leaves, the man thought he saw the shape of a person. According to reporting by Daniel Tepfer for the Connecticut Post, the man pulled over and told his girlfriend to wait in the car while he went to check.

• 2:11Kylie Low?

  He didn't have to get very close before he knew his instinct was right. Less than 20 feet away, lying face down in the grass, was the body of a woman. He ran to call police from a payphone near a hot dog stand. When Bridgeport Police arrived, they found the woman partially clothed. She was wearing a sweater and a navy pea coat, but her pants and underwear had been pulled down and were still caught around one leg. There were small marks around her neck and a scratch on her left wrist. A broken necklace was found around her neck. Officers also found between $35 and $40 near her body, along with an empty wine bottle a few yards away, though police said they didn't know whether the bottle had anything to do with her death.

• 2:52Kylie Low?

  Police soon identified her through fingerprints as 30-year-old Estella Brantley. The autopsy answered one of the first questions investigators had at the scene. Estella died of strangulation, and the medical examiner placed her time of death at approximately 5:30 that morning, roughly two hours before her body was found in Seaside Park. She had fingernail impressions on the front of her neck, indicative of "classic manual strangulation," meaning hands squeezing the neck. Investigators also learned that Estella had engaged in sexual activity several hours before she died. But in 1980, that finding could only take them so far. Police said they were unable to determine whether she had been sexually assaulted,

• 3:37Kylie Low?

  and DNA testing was not yet available to identify whose biological material had been recovered or what it meant for the case. Without that kind of "scientific" answer, investigators had to build the timeline the old-fashioned way. Who saw Estella, when they saw her, where she went, and who might have been with her in the hours before she was killed? Police located witnesses nearby who may have heard Estella in her final moments. Students at the University of Bridgeport, which sits close to Seaside Park, later told police they heard a woman screaming in the early morning hours, which aligned with Estella's estimated time of death. One student said the woman was yelling "Oh, God, help me" over and over again.

• 4:21Kylie Low?

  But no one called police at that time. So even early on, investigators had pieces. They had a location, a cause of death, a rough timeline, and people who may have heard the attack as it was happening. But none of that was enough to identify the person who killed Estella. And as the days passed, the urgency of the first response faded. By the end of November, Estella's case was still unsolved. The following month, the state's attorney's office asked Governor Ella Grassau to authorize a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. It was a significant reward, and a sign that investigators were trying to shake out new leads to progress the case.

• 5:03Kylie Low?

  But Estella's murder wasn't viewed in isolation for long. In Bridgeport, women with similar vulnerabilities had been killed before her, and more would be killed after.

• 5:16Kylie Low?

  By the time Estella Brantley was killed in 1980, Bridgeport police had already been facing a troubling pattern for years. Several women, many of them Black, many of them with known or suspected involvement in sex work, were found dead in different parts of the city. Some had been strangled, some had been beaten, some had been shot or stabbed. And while investigators did not publicly confirm that all the cases were connected, the similarities were hard to ignore. In fact, as early as July of 1977, Police Inspector Anthony Fabrizi told The Connecticut Post that investigators believed they might be dealing with a man who had encountered women in the same vulnerable circumstances before.

• 6:01Kylie Low?

  He said police were gathering information from women on the street about earlier attacks, including accounts that suggested the attacker may have been driven by "sadomasochism," violence, control, and the pleasure he took in hurting his victims. One of those earlier victims was 20-year-old Anita Marie McIntosh. Anita had come to Bridgeport from the Bronx just weeks before she was killed. According to reporting by Michael Mako and Kayla Torres Ocasio for the Connecticut Post, police believed that on the night of June 21st, 1977, Anita got into a white vehicle, likely near the former Hotel St. George on Congress Street, just a short distance from the Bridgeport Police Department.

• 6:45Kylie Low?

  Around 1:15 the following morning, two men flagged down firefighters returning from a call and told them there was a woman lying in the road on Silomon Avenue. Anita was found with a plastic clothesline around her neck. Beneath it, police found a black stocking wrapped tightly around her throat. She had bruises on her body and rope burns on her wrists and legs, leading investigators to believe she had been restrained and sexually assaulted before she was killed. Police believed the attack happened somewhere else, and that Anita was then dumped at the spot where she was found. Two years later, in August of 1979, 28-year-old Dora Sissy Ann Fraser Bailey was found dead

• 7:28Kylie Low?

  in a vacant building at 156 Crescent Avenue. Dora had been shot once in the head. According to later reporting by Jack Dolan, she had one prior arrest for prostitution in 1975. Then came Estella, in October of 1980. The following year, 23-year-old Gail Pedway was found brutally beaten but still alive in the bushes near East Main Street and the Connecticut Turnpike. She died a little over a week later. And in June of 1982, 27-year-old Carolyn Fay Harper was found bludgeoned to death inside a vacant three-story building on East Washington Avenue, known as a hotspot for illicit activity.

• 8:10Kylie Low?

  Carolyn's clothes were in disarray, and she suffered massive head injuries from a blunt instrument, but no weapon was recovered and no suspects were identified.

• 8:21Kylie Low?

  After Carolyn's murder, Common Council President Ernest Newton said he planned to ask the chief state's attorney's office and the governor for help investigating not just Carolyn's case, but the unsolved murders of Anita McIntosh, Dora Bailey, Gail Padway, and Estella Brantley too. Newton put the concern plainly, saying, "My concern was not what their profession was, but that it was murder." If that request led to outside help, it did not lead to immediate answers, and it didn't stop the violence. By 1985, newspaper reporting described at least six open slayings of people involved in sex work in Bridgeport.

• 9:02Kylie Low?

  That list included a new name, Denise Brady, whose skeletal remains had been found in 90 Acres Park in December of 1984. Police hadn't determined Denise's cause of death, but they considered her death a homicide. Another case sometimes included in the broader group was that of 27-year-old Unique Van Allen, who was found shot to death in front of 108 Arctic Street in December of 1983. In February of 1986, another woman was found dead in Seaside Park. Her name was Linda Heggs, also known as Linda Cooper. Carla Hudesick Moran and Gary J. M. Metrotas report for the Connecticut Post that 31-year-old

• 9:45Kylie Low?

  Linda was found lying in a pool of blood near Grove Road, about 150 yards from the Perry Memorial Arch, the same general area of Seaside Park where Estella's body had been found more than five years earlier. Like several of the victims before her, Linda had a recent arrest for prostitution. By 1987, Bridgeport Police and members of the state's attorney's office had formed a task force to review eight killings over the previous decade that involved victims connected to sex work. That list included two newer cases. Fifteen-year-old Melody Morales, who was stabbed on Cosseth Street in January of 1987 and died two days later, and thirty-one-year-old Jaclyn Byrd,

• 10:29Kylie Low?

  also known as Sharon Byrd and Jaclyn Blackwell, who was stabbed and dumped on East Main Street. The task force reflected what families had already known for years. These cases could not be brushed aside as isolated tragedies, even if every death was not connected to the same person. Together, they exposed how vulnerable these people were and how little protection they had when someone decided they were disposable. But even with police and prosecutors reviewing the cases together, the task force didn't bring the answers families were waiting for. It eventually disbanded without resolving the killings, leaving Estella's case and so many others

• 11:13Kylie Low?

  in the same place they had been for years, open, unresolved, and waiting for someone to finally tell the truth.

• 11:26Speaker 00

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• 11:33Speaker 02

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• 11:36Speaker 00

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• 11:57Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist, stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 12:35Kylie Low?

  For Linda Bowling, Estella's case was "personal" in more than one way. Linda was not only Estella's sister, she was also a Bridgeport police detective. She knew how homicide investigations were supposed to work. She knew what urgency looked like. And in her sister's case, she felt she wasn't seeing it. Linda believed that investigators weren't giving Estella's murder the same time, energy, and attention they would have given another victim because Estella was black and because she had known involvement in sex work. It was a concern shared by other families, too. Para Rosario, whose sister Carolyn Fay Harper was killed in 1982, said her family felt

• 13:19Kylie Low?

  ignored in a similar way. She said police never contacted her mother or even provided the family with a report about Carolyn's case. Inspector Anthony Fabrizi denied that race or occupation affected the department's work. He said police pursued every possible lead in every homicide, regardless of who the victim was. But in the same reporting, he also described the difficulty of investigating murders of sex workers by saying, quote, "They live outside of the mainstream of society. They have irregular hours. They have irregular lives. They are fair game to all of the sickos. They never know who they are getting in a car with," end quote.

• 14:02Kylie Low?

  The phrase "fair game" said a lot, even if he did not intend it to, because that was exactly what the families feared: that someone could target these women and count on the world not looking too hard, not asking too many questions, not staying with the case long enough to make the person responsible answer for it. Linda did try to push. She went to Fabrizi with her concerns, but he later said he told her that he wasn't in the habit of reporting to subordinates. By the mid 1980s, Estella's case was still one of the several unsolved killings of women in Bridgeport, whose lives and deaths had been grouped together by police, press, and families. There had been rewards offered, there had been public statements, there had

• 14:47Kylie Low?

  been a task force, but none of it had brought an arrest in Estella's murder. For the Brantley family, the case didn't just go cold in a file cabinet, it went cold in real time, while they were still grieving, still asking, and still waiting for someone to prove that Estella's life mattered as much as anyone else's. The longer Estella Brantley's case sat unresolved, the more it became tied to a broader question in Bridgeport. What exactly was happening inside the police department during the years when women connected to sex work were being killed and their cases were going cold? That question did not have one, simple answer. It involved street-level policing, informants,

• 15:30Kylie Low?

  internal affairs, old rivalries, and allegations that surfaced years after the fact. And one officer, whose name appears repeatedly in that complicated history, is James Hahnis. Hahnis was not a peripheral figure in Bridgeport policing. Joel C. Thompson reports for the Connecticut Post that James Hahnis joined the department in November of 1970, and by 1977, the same year Anita Marie McIntosh was found strangled, he had been promoted to detective and assigned to Special Services, the division that investigated gambling, prostitution, and drug offenses. That meant Hahnis's work put him in proximity to the

• 16:12Kylie Low?

  same streets, informants, and communities that surfaced again and again in the unsolved cases of women connected to sex work. Over time, Hahnis developed a reputation as a tough officer. According to later reporting, he earned the nickname Batman, a reference to the book and movie The SuperCops, about New York City officers David "Batman" Greenberg and Robert "Robin" Hans, who used a sex worker informant to make major drug arrests in Brooklyn in the late 1960s and 1970s. But by the late 1980s, Hahnis's name would surface in a controversy that connected directly back to the cluster of unsolved killings in the city. The allegation came through another Bridgeport officer, George Lawson.

• 16:59Kylie Low?

  Lawson was an 18-year veteran of the department before he was arrested in June of 1987 by Internal Affairs and Special Services on suspicion of selling crack cocaine to a paid police informant named Simon "Macho" Diaz. The police board fired Lawson and the following year, he went to trial on three counts of sale of cocaine by a non-drug-dependent person. Lawson's defense was not simply that he had been falsely accused. He claimed that what investigators interpreted as drug sales were actually his attempts to gather information from the informant, Macho, about three homicides.

• 17:40Kylie Low?

  At trial, Lawson testified that Macho had admitted to killing Unique Van Allen, who was found shot to death in December of 1983, and that Macho claimed Sergeant James Hahnis knew about that murder. But he went further. With the jury out of the courtroom while the judge considered whether the testimony was relevant, Lawson said Macho had also told him that Hahnis allegedly killed a young woman believed to be a sex worker and dumped her body in 90 Acres Park. Lawson then said Macho claimed Hahnis had "oft" a sex worker in Seaside Park. Those allegations seemed to line up with two unsolved cases: Denise Brady, whose skeletal

• 18:23Kylie Low?

  remains were found in 90 Acres Park, and Estella Brantley, who was found strangled in Seaside Park. Lawson claimed that when federal agents, ATF agents, and Bridgeport Police heard him on recorded tapes, they misunderstood what they were hearing. On one of the tapes, Lawson was heard saying, "Wrap it up, be careful." Prosecutors treated that as language connected to a drug transaction, but Lawson said it referred to information Macho was supposed to get from Hahnis during a pre-arranged meeting sometime later near the railroad tracks on East Main Street. But Macho himself could not testify and could not be questioned about any of it.

• 19:05Kylie Low?

  On Thanksgiving Day in 1987, about six months before Lawson's trial, Simon "Macho" Diaz died in a suspicious fire inside an abandoned building in New London. The fire was later ruled arson. James Hahnis denied any involvement in the murders, and an investigation into Lawson's claims reportedly did not turn up any connection between Hahnis and the homicides. George Lawson was ultimately convicted and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in that case. Although unproven, for Estella's family, the allegations gave shape to a fear that had already been building, that the truth about Estella's murder had not simply been

• 19:48Kylie Low?

  missed, but possibly buried somewhere inside the very institution responsible for finding it. James Hahnis continued rising through the Bridgeport Police Department. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1991, and in July of 2002, he became deputy chief. Over the years, he received several commendations, and at one point, he was named Police Officer of the Year. But the allegations raised during George Lawson's trial were not the last time James Hahnis would find himself at the center of controversy. In November of 2003, Hahnis was removed from command of the Central Precinct and reassigned to special duties after allegations that he had improperly used a criminal information

• 20:33Kylie Low?

  system. According to reporting at the time, Police Chief Wilbur Chapman said Hahnis had used the National Crime Information Center system at the police headquarters to look up the owners of cars parked at a mobile home park in Milford as a favor for a friend. Chief Chapman described the use of the system as improper under administrative standards and a felony under state law. He even drafted a warrant for Hahnis's arrest, but Bridgeport State's Attorney Jonathan Benedict declined to sign it, reportedly finding no probable cause that Hahnis had intentionally committed a criminal act. In the end, Hahnis was not criminally charged. He lost two holiday pays as discipline.

• 21:18Kylie Low?

  In 2011, Hahnis was placed on administrative leave again, this time while the department investigated what Police Chief Joseph Godet called only "an allegation of a serious criminal nature." At first, city officials would not publicly explain the allegation, but the timing raised questions because the FBI was already looking into complaints involving Bridgeport Police, including how drugs confiscated at the gathering of the Vibes Festival in Seaside Park were handled. Several officers had reportedly complained about confiscated drugs, including tanks of nitrous oxide used to fill balloons that festival-goers inhaled to get high.

• 22:01Kylie Low?

  Hahnis had worked "security" at the festival, and FBI agents were reportedly asking about his role there, as well as his involvement with towing contracts and towing companies. But the allegation that led to Hahnis being placed on leave was not about the festival or towing. According to later reporting, Veteran Police Lieutenant Thomas Lula had filed a complaint accusing Hahnis of "obstructing the investigation into the 1977 murder of Anita Marie McIntosh, one of the women whose death had long been discussed alongside Estella Brantley's case." Lula was not with the Bridgeport Police Department in 1977,

• 22:44Kylie Low?

  and reporting doesn't make it clear how he came to know the details he included in his complaint, but his report was serious enough that Police Chief Godet turned it over to the FBI. Hahnis and his attorney denied any wrongdoing. His attorney said neither he nor Hahnis had been given details of the accusation and described the complaint as "the work of a disgruntled subordinate who had been denied overtime." To be clear, Lula's complaint did not accuse Hahnis of killing Anita McIntosh. According to Michael P. Mako's reporting, it identified a separate suspect, a man who was 73 years old in 2011 and who was reportedly friendly

• 23:28Kylie Low?

  with some of the officers accused of obstructing the original investigation. So, once again, Hannes's name was not attached to a charge, a conviction, or even a public finding of wrongdoing. It was attached to an allegation and to an investigation that remained unresolved in public for a long time. While that investigation continued, Hannes stayed on paid administrative leave. Months passed, then more than a year. And by the summer of 2012, as Hannes remained away from the department, Estella Brantley's case suddenly moved in a direction her family had been waiting on for more than three decades. There was an arrest.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Stop, this is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe: Ahead of Crime in Real Time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month.

• 24:46Kylie Low?

  Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 24:50Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist. Stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:28Kylie Low?

  In July of 2011, Detective Hador Teixeira of the Bridgeport Police Department's Cold Case Unit picked up Estella Brantley's file. By then, Estella had been dead for more than 30 years. The detectives who first investigated her murder had done a lot of work, but they had no viable suspects. What they did have, though, was something investigators in 1980 could not fully use: biological evidence that had been preserved from Estella's body. DNA testing was not available when Estella was killed, but in 2011, Detective Teixeira found a notation in the file indicating that evidence collected as part of the sexual

• 26:08Kylie Low?

  assault kit was still on file with the state medical examiner's office. That evidence was sent for testing. And about eight months later, investigators got a match. The DNA profile pointed to an inmate at Garner Correctional Center in Newtown: 53-year-old Leonard Jackson. Jackson was not a new name to police generally, but he was new to Estella's case. Police later said that even though Jackson had a known history of involvement with sex workers in Bridgeport, he was not considered a suspect in Estella's murder until the DNA hit. His criminal history included convictions for reckless endangerment, threatening, assault,

• 26:53Kylie Low?

  patronizing a prostitute, and moving a dead body without a permit. That particular conviction stood out. In 2006, Jackson had been arrested for illegally disposing of a body after police said a female sex worker died of a drug overdose while with him, and he was caught dumping her body. Jackson was also convicted of possession with intent to sell controlled substances within 500 feet of a school, which was the sentence he was serving when his DNA matched the evidence in Estella's case. In 2012, Detectives Teixeira and Robert Winkler went to the correctional institution to speak with Leonard Jackson. In one recorded interview,

• 27:36Kylie Low?

  Jackson acknowledged knowing Estella. He said he had paid her $20 and had sex with her, then said she stayed for a little while and left. He also seemed to wonder why police were asking him about Estella now after so many years, instead of asking him about her back then. Jackson told detectives, quote, "She was nice, pleasant. I knew she had passed away. I didn't know how." End quote. But Jackson's story later changed when detectives confronted him with the DNA evidence. He continued to say he did have sex with Estella, but denied killing her, until Detective Teixeira pressed him with the gravity of the situation, saying,

• 28:19Kylie Low?

  "There is a woman who is dead at Seaside Park. Your DNA is found in her. We are trying to sort this out. We just want you to tell us the truth. Here's the time right now. We want to give closure to her family. She was a mother." End quote. Eventually, Jackson responded, quote, "Seems you have the cards stacked up against me. I guess I'm going to sign my life away." End quote.

• 28:48Kylie Low?

  The detectives told him they didn't want him to say anything that wasn't true. They just wanted to know what happened. And then, according to police, Leonard Jackson confessed. Jackson told detectives that he and Estella had gone to a pool hall on East Main Street the night before her body was found, then walked together in Seaside Park. He said they argued because Estella was seeing another man and planned to move in with him. According to Jackson, he slapped her. She slapped him back. And then, quote, "I kept hitting her and just went crazy." End quote. Jackson said he couldn't remember if he strangled Estella,

• 29:30Kylie Low?

  but he said that when he left Seaside Park, she was lying on the ground. When detectives asked what he would say to Estella's family, Jackson said he was sorry about what happened. On August 16th, 2012, nearly 32 years after Estella Brantley was found dead in Seaside Park, Leonard Jackson was charged with her murder. For police, it was a major cold case arrest. But for Estella's family, it was not that simple. Outside the courthouse after Jackson's arraignment, Estella's daughter, Gwendolyn Brantley, said the family still had a lot of questions. Quote, "This is a different story from what we were told over the years.

• 30:13Kylie Low?

  We want to be involved in this case. We want to see justice brought to the right person." End quote. Her words reflected the complicated place their family was in. They had waited more than three decades for an arrest. Now that they had one, they still weren't sure they had the truth. Linda Bowling, Estella's sister and retired Bridgeport detective, was more direct. She had long believed that then-Bridgeport Deputy Chief James Hahnis was responsible for Estella's death, and after Jackson's arrest, she said publicly that Jackson was the victim of a police cover-up. Hahnis had never been charged in connection with Estella's murder.

• 30:55Kylie Low?

  He had also never been charged in connection with the accusation that he obstructed the investigation into Anita McIntosh's murder. In May of 2013, after nearly two years on paid leave, Hahnis returned to his position as deputy chief and head of the patrol division, the investigation apparently finding no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on his part. So by the time Leonard Jackson's case moved towards trial, there were really two stories unfolding at once. One was the prosecution's case against a man whose DNA was found in Estella's body and who, according to police, had confessed. The other was the Brantley family's lingering fear that even now, after all these years,

• 31:40Kylie Low?

  they were being asked to accept an answer that didn't match what they believed happened. Leonard Jackson's trial began in October of 2014. By then, the case against him rested on two central pieces of evidence. The DNA profile, developed from evidence preserved from Estella's body, and Jackson's recorded statement to detectives Hader Teixeira and Robert Winkler, which prosecutors characterized as a confession. But before the jury heard that evidence, there was another issue the court had to address: James Hahnis.

• 32:13Kylie Low?

  Jackson's defense attorney, assistant public defender Dennis Harrigan, wanted to question an FBI agent about the federal investigation involving Hahnis. But Judge Maria Khan ruled that he would not be allowed to do that without permission from the US Department of Justice. The judge said she had reviewed sealed letters from the FBI about that investigation and didn't see any evidence connecting the federal investigation of Hahnis to Estella's murder. The way I interpret this is that the ruling did not mean there had never been questions about Hahnis and Estella's case. Those questions were already part of the public record. But as far as the judge can see from the sealed FBI material,

• 32:56Kylie Low?

  the federal investigation into Hahnis did not connect to Estella's death in a way the defense could present to the jury. The defense also tried to keep Jackson's recorded statement out of evidence, arguing that it had been coerced. But Judge Khan disagreed and ruled that the jury could hear it. So the trial moved forward.

• 33:18Kylie Low?

  For the prosecution, the story began in Seaside Park. The jury heard the original case evidence, including testimony about the discovery of Estella's body, the screams echoing in the park, and the medical examiner's conclusion that she had been strangled. But the center of the case was not what investigators knew in 1980. It was what the cold case review uncovered more than 30 years later. Detective Teixeira testified that he learned about preserved evidence at the state medical examiner's office. Once tested, that evidence produced a DNA match to Jackson, whose profile was already in a national inmate database. Then came the interview. The courtroom heard the recorded statement categorized as a confession

• 34:03Kylie Low?

  as detectives pressed the defendant with DNA evidence. The jury heard him on the tape saying, "Okay, I did it. I did it. I did it." End quote. To the state, the evidence all worked together. The DNA put Jackson with Estella. The statement prosecutors argued explained how that encounter turned fatal and the motivation behind it. But the defense asked the jury to separate those pieces. Assistant public defender Dennis Harrigan did not dispute that Jackson's DNA was found in Estella's body. His argument was that DNA proved sex, not murder. And as for the recorded statement, Harrigan argued that it was not a reliable confession at all.

• 34:47Kylie Low?

  He said Jackson had been questioned for an hour and a half and was ready to agree with detectives whether what he said was true or not. The defense had considered calling a psychologist to testify about Jackson's alleged susceptibility to false confessions, but after a ruling that would have allowed prosecutors to bring in a separate police interview where Jackson reportedly refused to confess to another cold case murder, the defense did not call that witness. In the end, the defense called no witnesses at all. Jackson did not testify. The defense case came through cross-examination and closing argument.

• 35:27Kylie Low?

  The DNA had an explanation, the confession could not be trusted, and the state had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Leonard Jackson killed Estella Brantley. When the case was finally turned over to the members of the jury, it was clear they were struggling. During deliberations, jurors asked to rehear parts of Jackson's recorded statement, testimony from the medical examiner, testimony from a former University of Bridgeport student who heard screaming, and testimony from an FBI DNA expert. At one point, they asked whether someone other than Jackson could have had sex with Estella, based on the evidence. The tension in the jury room became visible from the outside.

• 36:11Kylie Low?

  One juror was replaced because of illness, which meant deliberations had to start over. Later, the jury sent a note saying they needed a few minutes of air away from each other. When jurors left the courtroom at the end of the day, one woman was crying. But despite the challenges, on October 31st, 2014, 34 years and one day after Estella's body was found, the jury reached a verdict: not guilty.

• 36:40Kylie Low?

  The courtroom was stunned. Even Leonard Jackson himself appeared surprised, but he smiled and said he was happy. He was not released outright, though. He still had time left to serve on an unrelated drug conviction. The members of the Brantley family present for the verdict left the courtroom without comment. But Estella's sister Linda Bowling was not there when the verdict was read. She never believed Leonard Jackson was the person who killed her sister. The Connecticut Post reported, "She still maintained her belief that Deputy Chief James Hahnis was responsible." Hahnis did not comment on those allegations. Over the years, James Hahnis's name has been connected to several controversies, but

• 37:25Kylie Low?

  none of those matters resulted in criminal charges. According to Brian Lockhart's reporting for the Connecticut Post, Hahnis retired from the Bridgeport Police Department in March of 2017, ending a 47-year career with a multi-six-figure payout and a pension reported at $186,000 a year. When he retired, Bridgeport Police Chief Armando "A.J." Perez acknowledged the stories that had followed Hahnis, but said, "I think he takes pleasure or is amused by having people think he is this person, but he's not. He's one of the nicest guys I've ever worked with." End quote. Former Chief Perez, by the way, has a few scandals of his own, but there's not enough

• 38:08Kylie Low?

  time to get into those in this episode. I attempted to reach James Hahnis as part of my reporting for this story, but as of this recording, I've been unsuccessful. Estella Brantley's murder is still legally unresolved, and the people who loved her are still carrying questions that no official outcome has fully put to rest. The same is true for the other cases that had once been discussed alongside hers. Anita Marie McIntosh, Dora "Sissy" Ann Frazier Bailey, Gail Padway, Carolyn Fay Harper, Denise Brady, Unique Van Allen, Linda Heggs, Melody Morales, Jaclyn Byrd. According to records I could find, all of their cases remain unsolved.

• 38:54Kylie Low?

  Decades later, there is a long list of people in Bridgeport whose families never got the one thing every family deserves: A clear, public answer about who took their loved one's life. I've filed records requests for every single one of those cases, by the way. I think Bridgeport PD is about to be sick of me. For Estella Brantley, the record holds pieces of an answer: A preserved evidence sample, a DNA match, a recorded statement, an acquittal. Years of suspicion, years of denial, years of waiting, but none of it adds up to resolution. Estella was 30 years old when she was killed.

• 39:36Kylie Low?

  She was a mother, a daughter, a sister, a nurse's aide. She loved her two kids, and they loved her back so much. For too long, Estella's case was talked about through the circumstances of her life instead of the fact of her humanity. But the bottom line has always been what Linda Bowling said in 1985 about women like her sister: They were human beings. They had lives, they had families. And Estella's family is still waiting for the truth to be proven.

• 40:14Kylie Low?

  Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram @darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Low, and this is Dark Down East.

• 40:45Kylie Low?

  Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and AudioChuck. I think Chuck would approve.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But soon they'll find it.

• 41:09Speaker 04

  He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff, and they said, "Maybe she'll find out where this girl is." I saw him violent.

• 41:22Speaker 05

  Backhanded her, pow!

• 41:26Speaker 05

  Listen to The Devil's Quarry, Season Two, in the Bone Valley feed, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.