Teresita Basa: The Victim Who Solved Her Own Murder

A Chicago respiratory therapist is brutally murdered in her apartment. Did her ghost solve her own case? Sources for this episode include:Teresita: The Voice from the Grave by John O’Brien and Edward Baumann“A Chicago Murder Solved By a Ghost” (Chicago Tribune)“Voice from grave names murderer, begs vengeance” (Boston Globe) Keep up with Killer Stories! Instagram: @killerstoriespodTikTok: @killerstoriespodX: @killerstorieshq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:07Harvey Guillén?

  There's an old folk tale called "The Singing Bone." In the story, a man is murdered by his own brother and buried beneath a bridge. Years pass, the world moves on, but one day, a shepherd finds a bleach-white bone in the dust, and he carves it into a mouthpiece for his flute. And when he blows into it, the bone begins to sing. It doesn't play a melody. It speaks a name. It tells the story of the murder. We call these fairy tales because we want to believe that death is a door that locks from the outside.

• 0:50Harvey Guillén?

  We want to believe that, once a voice is extinguished, it stays silent. But sometimes, the truth is too heavy for the grave to hold. Sometimes, a victim refuses to stay a victim. And sometimes, the only person who can solve the murder is the person who was murdered. I'm Harvey Guillén, and this is Killer Stories.

• 1:39Harvey Guillén?

  It's February 1977, 8:00 PM, on a Monday night. Teresita Basa is home in her Chicago apartment, talking to a friend on the phone, Ruth. They work together. The conversation is casual, just two middle-aged women shooting the breeze. But at some point, Ruth hears a man's voice in the background. It sounds like Teresita has a gentleman caller over, which is exciting. But Ruth never gets the full scoop on who he is, not even a name. They make plans to get lunch the next day, and the call ends around 8:15, as late as 8:20.

• 2:17Harvey Guillén?

  At 8:40 PM, a couple who lives down the hall from Teresita smells smoke. At first, they think they left their stove on after dinner, but they eventually learn it's coming from outside. They open their front door to find the hallway filled with a gray haze, smoke billowing out from an apartment down the way. 15B, Teresita's place. The firefighters arrive and a janitor keys them in. It's mostly dark inside because the electricity has been knocked out, but flashlights illuminate enough to tell the place is a mess. It looks like it's been torn apart, and they quickly find the source of the smoke.

• 3:00Harvey Guillén?

  In the bedroom, there's a mattress and a pile of clothes on fire. But the real surprise is what firefighters find underneath: Teresita's dead body. She's naked, lying on her back with her legs spread, and there's a butcher knife in the exact center of her chest, embedded all the way to the handle. Firefighters smash the window in the apartment to clear the smoke, and police begin assessing the scene. It looks as if someone had been frantically searching for something.

• 3:41Harvey Guillén?

  There's an upended cocktail table, overturned plants, ashtrays, napkins, and clothes thrown about the room, a Butterwiser can under the edge of a couch. And yet, the only clue in the entire apartment as to what might have happened is the most recent note Teresita wrote on her memo pad. It says, "Get concert tickets for AS." That's A period S period, like initials. Nobody knows who or what that could mean. And shortly after 11 PM, Teresita's body is driven to the nearest hospital, where she's pronounced dead on arrival. She's 47 years old.

• 4:24Harvey Guillén?

  The murder shocks everyone in Teresita's orbit. Who could have wanted such a sweet woman dead? She worked as a respiratory therapist in a hospital during the day, helping people. At night, she studied to complete her doctorate in music. She taught piano lessons on the side, and in her spare time, she was writing a book. I feel like I'm a busy person, but like Teresita makes me feel like I'm lazy. She came to America from the Philippines, where she was born into the country's aristocracy. She loved Chicago. She loved people. She was a rule follower, a devout Christian, really kind, the type of person who didn't

• 5:06Harvey Guillén?

  drink, but always kept alcohol stocked for whenever friends came over. I mean, really, why murder anyone, but why murder her? Detectives interview everyone they can: friends, coworkers, neighbors, and they get a number of stories that they're hopeful will turn into leads. Like how a neighbor saw Teresita get into an argument with a graying white man in his 50s three weeks earlier. Or how a friend said she was in a financial dispute with her book publisher. Or how her building manager said her most frequent visitor was a construction worker

• 5:48Harvey Guillén?

  friend, a man who liked beer. Investigators also learn about two crimes that were never reported to police. First, someone had broken into Teresita's place before. They didn't steal anything valuable, I mean, a pan, a cup of spare change, some whiskey, and records show her locks were changed afterward. And then, there's an incident that's harder to verify. It's mostly just a rumor going around the building, but it supposedly happened just two weeks earlier. Tharicita was attacked by a man in a ski mask while waiting to be led into her apartment. She had forgotten her keys. Detective's first theory is

• 6:32Harvey Guillén?

  there must have been some type of sexual component to the crime, since she was found naked with her legs apart. But that theory's quickly thrown out. A medical exam shows no sign of an assault. And officials are extra sure their findings are correct because the examiner tells them Tharicita never had sex. She died a virgin, at least in the traditional, technical sense. The medical exam also shows Tharicita wasn't just stabbed. She was choked, too, hard enough to fracture her larynx. The results send detectives back to the drawing board.

• 7:15Harvey Guillén?

  They're thinking maybe the killer staged Tharicita's body to throw them off. It could have just been a robbery gone wrong. That would explain the disheveled state of the apartment, but it didn't look like much of anything was taken. Plus, if it was just a robbery, why so much violence? Why strip her naked? Why set a fire? What kind of robber kills with a butcher's knife? Detectives assume the answers to all their questions lies with the gentleman caller, the man Tharicita had over that night. Clearly, they were close, at least, close enough for her to take a phone call while he was in there.

• 8:00Harvey Guillén?

  But no matter how hard they try, detectives can't find that mystery man. The case turns out to have a lot more suspects than anyone expected. But one by one, officials go down their list until it runs dry. The investigation hits a standstill. And when weeks of nothing turn into months of nothing, it starts looking like the case might go cold. But then, that August, a new lead falls into the detectives' laps. And it's the most unexpected break of their careers.

• 8:43Harvey Guillén?

  A call from police in the suburbs of Chicago leads to a conversation with a married couple named Jose and Remy Chua. According to the police, the Chua's have some crucial information that could help in Teresita's murder case, which is music to the detectives' ears. But when they actually sit down with the Chua's, something feels off at first. It takes a while for them to open up, like they're reluctant or too embarrassed to speak openly. Jose's a medical doctor, and Remy, she's a respiratory therapist. So they worked in the same field as Teresita, but Remy barely knew her. She met Teresita once

• 9:28Harvey Guillén?

  at an orientation a while back, but they worked different hours, and Jose didn't know her at all. In fact, he didn't even know she'd been murdered until months after the fact, until the first time he heard her name spoken out loud. For a second, Jose hesitates when talking to police, unsure whether to continue. It starts to feel like detectives are wasting their time. But then he launches into a preface, and he says, "Listen, I know I'm a man of science, but I believe there are some things science can't explain." And then, with a face that's stone-cold serious, he asks,

• 10:13Harvey Guillén?

  "Do you believe in exorcisms?"

• 10:22Harvey Guillén?

  Okay. So Dr. Jose Chua and his wife, Remy, both say they basically didn't know Teresita Basa. They might as well have been complete strangers, which makes the story they tell detectives in August 1977 all the more strange. Now, when you hear it, you'll understand why Jose prefaces things by using the word "exorcism." But that word isn't totally accurate. There were no demons involved, at least not that we know of. Anyway, this is a story he shares with police. It's just a few weeks earlier, late summer. A regular day like any other.

• 11:04Harvey Guillén?

  Jose and Remy are in their living room relaxing when, out of nowhere, Remy stands up from her chair and walks away, silently, mid-conversation, with a strange expression on her face, like she's in a daze. Confused, Jose follows Remy. Something like this has never happened before. He eventually finds his wife in their bedroom, lying on her back on their bed. She's stiff, eyes wide open, and she remains completely still until Jose leans over her body and asks if she's okay.

• 11:47Harvey Guillén?

  That's when she finally opens her mouth to speak. But when she does, it's not her voice that comes out. It's something else, someone else. And the voice shouts, "Mama? Mama, are you there? Mama?" It's speaking in Tagala, the national language of the Philippines, a language Remy knows, but the voice has a sing-song quality to it, and it almost sounds like it has a Spanish accent to it. The voice coming out of his wife's body also tells Jose, point-blank, that it's not his wife.

• 12:31Harvey Guillén?

  It says, "I am Teresita Basa." Now, according to Jose, this is the first time he's ever heard that name before. So he has no idea he's listening to a dead woman speak.

• 12:47Harvey Guillén?

  But he's obviously still confused and disturbed and concerned for his wife, for himself. And then the voice, AKA Teresita, catches him up to speed. It says it's coming to him from beyond the grave to talk about her murder, and not in vague terms either. It doesn't say, "Hey, some man came into my apartment and killed me." Details that had already been public. No, it's like, "My killer's name is Alan Shoury. That's Alan with two L's and two A's and Shoury, like shower with a Y. He's the man who murdered me in cold blood. Tell the police."

• 13:32Harvey Guillén?

  Now, I don't know how you're supposed to react to a dead woman's voice emanating from your living wife's possessed body, but Jose apparently chooses kindness. He tries to empathize with what it's saying and ask more questions about what happened that night, and he learns a few different things. Like that Alan arrived at the apartment around 7:00 PM, that he came alone, that he stabbed Teresita with a knife, and that Teresita let Alan in. Because Alan was her friend. Now, let's pause for a second. Can you imagine being the first person hearing this story?

• 14:16Harvey Guillén?

  I mean, if you're a homicide detective, chances are you're not big on supernatural explanations, but you deal with them a lot more than most people think. Mostly self-proclaimed psychics calling into tip hotlines trying to solve big cases, which is kind of like playing the lottery. If they're wrong, no one's really gonna find out. So it's no skin off their back, just false hope for the people who have stakes in the case. And if they're right, they get their 15 minutes of fame and possibly some pretty lucrative opportunities. But the interaction detectives have with the chihuas doesn't feel like playing the lottery. It feels different.

• 14:57Harvey Guillén?

  For starters, it's not an anonymous tip by a self-proclaimed psychic. It's a medical doctor referred by other police officers. And sure, some of the details could have been pieced together by reading about Teresita's murder in the papers, but... Not all of them. Like the killer arriving at seven and acting alone. The timeline lines up with what detectives already know. And detectives press Jose on if the voice said anything about rape. And he says, no. Just that she was rendered unconscious and stabbed. So that checks out too.

• 15:39Harvey Guillén?

  But there's one detail that obviously stands out above the rest. The killer's alleged name, Alan Showery. Detectives haven't heard it before, but its initials are A.S. Like that note that Isita wrote to herself. Get concert tickets for A.S. When talking with detectives, Jose also acknowledges how strange his story sounds. And Remy too. Remy, though, says she barely has any memories of what happened. It was like she blacked out every time. It started as a little episode at work, seeing Teresita in the bathroom mirror.

• 16:24Harvey Guillén?

  And she says it progressed into what Jose saw that day. The Chua's both decide not to tell anyone what happened at first. They assumed no one would believe them. And they didn't want to look foolish or waste anyone's time. But then the voice returned again and again. And each time it kept begging Jose to do something. To help solve Teresita's murder. So Jose finally gave in. With one caveat. He told the voice he needed real evidence.

• 17:06Harvey Guillén?

  Something that could prove to the police he wasn't making things up. And that's when it gave Jose information not even the police knew yet.

• 17:18Harvey Guillén?

  It said that a few pieces of jewelry were stolen from Teresita's apartment that night. A Filipino pendant, which was a gift from her father, and a Parisian cocktail ring, which was a gift from her mother. Teresita's family could identify them both for the police. As for where to find them, the boy says Alan gave them both to his wife. It's a lot to process. And I'm not going to say detectives are convinced by the Chua story, but they are intrigued enough to suspend disbelief for a while. They don't have any other working leads,

• 18:01Harvey Guillén?

  so they decide to put the impossible to the test to find out if they're working the first ever murder case that could be solved by the victim themselves. They show up on Alan's doorstep with a hope and a prayer, like, "Knock, knock, Mr. Shoury? Is a killer home?"

• 18:29Harvey Guillén?

  If you're having a hard time believing the whole ghost Nancy Drew thing, well, you're not alone. The lead detectives on Teresita's case catch a lot of flack around the office. There's a near endless stream of jokes, paper clips thrown at their heads, mailboxes filled with fake notes from the dead. You know, your typical light bullying. But here's the thing. When those same lead detectives actually dig into Alan Shoury, the person, three facts stand out. One, he worked at the same hospital Teresita did as an orderly. Two, he had a rap sheet that included some serious crimes.

• 19:12Harvey Guillén?

  And three, he lived within walking distance of Teresita's apartment. So with that info in mind, does it really matter how they found out about Alan? The detectives trying to solve the case? Think no.

• 19:28Harvey Guillén?

  When they show up at Alan's apartment, almost six months have passed since Teresita's murder. Alan answers the door and immediately knows why detectives are there. He's like, "Ugh, this must be about Teresita Basa. Come in." Detectives find themselves in a dining room, staring at a blond woman sitting cross-legged on the floor. It's Alan's wife, Yanka. She's German, beautiful, and very pregnant. She's wearing a maternity gown and surrounded by books about psychic phenomena, which feels like a really weird coincidence, given what drove detectives to Alan in the first place. But they remain level-headed.

• 20:12Harvey Guillén?

  They ask Alan if he'll come down to the station and answer some questions. He agrees, and they follow him into the bedroom as he changes. They pat him down when he finishes dressing to make sure he doesn't have any weapons on him. Alan's agreeable about everything. He tells his wife, Yanka, he'll be right back. At the station, Alan seems excited to be able to help. He tells detectives that he and Teresita were very good friends, totally platonic. They worked together and often rode the bus home at the same time, since they live so close. Sometimes Teresita would invite Alan over for a beer, because she liked the company. And Alan says the last time that happened

• 20:57Harvey Guillén?

  was about six months before her murder. Now, at this point, detectives decide to bluff. Because why not? They're already listening to voices from beyond the grave. This whole Alan thing was a long shot from the start. So they tell Alan that they found his fingerprints all over Teresita's apartment. It's a bold lie, because if that were actually true, he would have been a suspect long ago. But Alan takes the bait. Suddenly, his mood shifts. Nerves set in. Backpedaling happens. His story changes. Inconsistencies begin appearing.

• 21:40Harvey Guillén?

  And when detectives start to point them out, Alan eventually comes clean.

• 21:47Harvey Guillén?

  He admits that he went to Teresita's apartment on the night she died. He says he showed up around 6:30 to help her fix her television, but he didn't stay long. He told Teresita he'd be back later to finish the job, but he forgot to return. He tried calling her later that night, but the line was busy. He says they can ask his wife, Yanka. He was home. He didn't go back. He was fixing some wiring at their place. This time detectives suspect that Alan is the one bluffing. So they call him out on it. They say they'd love to go back to his place and speak with Yanka. Alone.

• 22:31Harvey Guillén?

  Alan can wait at the station. And while they're at his house, they'd also like to take a look at her jewelry. Back at Alan's place, Yanka says she remembers a lot about the night Teresita was murdered. Detectives tell her they suspect Alan could be the killer. But she finds that totally unbelievable. She says she's confident her testimony will clear his name. But without knowing it, Yanka's account completely undermines her husband's. She says Alan came home at 8:00 PM, and he never fixed any wiring in their home. In fact, they never had any problems with their electricity before, not that she's aware of.

• 23:14Harvey Guillén?

  And she remembers the sirens started only after Alan came home. She says they both found out about the murder later from TV news. At this point detectives can't believe their luck, that things are playing out the way they are. One of them points to Yanka's books on ghosts, psychic phenomena, and ESP. He asks her if she has any interest in that kind of stuff. And when she says yes, he tells her, "One day, I'll tell you a story about a psychic experience I had."

• 23:51Harvey Guillén?

  Then he's like, "Grab your jewelry box, we're heading down to the station." With Yanka in one interview room and Alan in another, officials called Teresita's family and friends to see if someone can come identify her jewelry. And the first person to answer comes to the station and notices Teresita's ring right away. It's on Yanka's finger. She had been wearing it the whole time. They're 100% certain. Detectives press Yanka and she tells them Alan gave her the ring sometime in late February as a belated Christmas gift, AKA shortly after Teresita's murder.

• 24:35Harvey Guillén?

  And with everything seemingly falling into place, officials stop making jokes about ghosts and exorcisms. At first, Alan tries to say, "No, he bought the ring from some guy on the street." But pretty soon, Yanka's in hysterical tears and Alan is confessing to Teresita's murder. Turns out, it really was just a robbery. Alan tells officials that he often used to run errands for Teresita, take her places, fix things. He always did it for the money and she always tipped. So he suspected she kept a lot of cash in her home.

• 25:18Harvey Guillén?

  His paychecks as an orderly weren't cutting it. He was behind on his bills, hurting, and he had a child on the way. He decided he was going to kill Teresita before he got to her apartment that night on the walk over to help her with her TV. But Teresita only had $30 in cash lying around. He didn't find that out, though, until she was already dead. So he took her jewelry. Alan says Teresita was unconscious when he put the knife through her sternum. So she didn't feel anything when she died, as if that is any sort of consolation.

• 26:02Harvey Guillén?

  And detectives were right. He did stage her body to throw them off. He wanted it to appear sexually motivated. But Alan doesn't just confess to police. He also confesses to his wife and soon to be child. He tells Yanka, they've had a great seven years together, but it's over. He did it. He's responsible. Later, he'll try to walk back those words, claiming his confession was given under duress. And Yanka will actually stand by his side. She'll testify that her husband only admitted to murdering Teresita because detectives threatened to put her in jail

• 26:46Harvey Guillén?

  as an accessory if he didn't. But ultimately, it doesn't matter. At trial, Alan pleads guilty to all three charges against him: robbery, arson, and murder.

• 27:01Harvey Guillén?

  And the judge sentences him to 14 years in prison. Did the vengeful spirit of Teresita Basa solve her own murder? Officials certainly tried to downplay the elements of the story, like the means don't matter, only the end. But the Rojo Se and Remi Chua play in this investigation is really the reason we're still talking about it today. Because it seems to defy everything we know about life, death, and the afterlife. But not everyone is a believer. Some suspect Remi knew Teresita better than she let on, knew Alan as well, and didn't trust him. So she faked the whole thing

• 27:45Harvey Guillén?

  so that Alan would be on the detective's radar. And that could be true, I mean, really, I mean it. But also, that seems like a lot of trouble to go through when she could have just picked up the phone and said, "Hey, have you looked into Alan Shoury?"

• 28:05Harvey Guillén?

  In the old folk tale, once the singing bone tells its story and the truth is out, the music stops. The spirit finds its rest and the bone falls silent. In Chicago, after the trial, the episodes stopped too. Remichua never spoke in that Spanish-accented Tagala again. Teresita's family finally took her home, to the Philippines, for a proper burial. We like to think we live in a world governed by hard science and cold facts—fingerprints and rap sheets. But the case of Teresita Basa reminds us that justice doesn't always follow a straight line.

• 28:46Harvey Guillén?

  Sometimes, it has to travel through the dreams of strangers, or the voices of the living. Whether you believe Remichua was a vessel for ghosts, or simply a woman whose subconscious couldn't let a killer walk free, the result is the same. The bone sang, the name was spoken, and the truth, quite literally, rose from the grave. Thanks for tuning in to Killer Stories, a Spotify podcast. New episodes release on Mondays. If you liked today's story and want to learn more, we drop some of our favorite sources in the episode description. Until next time, I'm Harvey Guillén.

• 29:31Harvey Guillén?

  Stay safe out there.