What She Buried | 6. Ghosts of Tricie's Past

To make sense of Kwaneta's present, Justine has to go back in time. She meets Kwaneta's ex-husbands and learns unsettling details from Kwaneta's childhood. - Want the full story? Binge every episode of What She Buried ad-free now by subscribing to ⁠The Binge+⁠. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to ⁠GetTheBinge.com⁠. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at ⁠Patreon.com/TheBinge⁠. What She Buried is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. - For more of Justine’s work, read Unreasonable Women, which follows three women who have been punished for defending themselves. The result of seven years of reporting inside U. S. prisons, it's a gripping, urgent look at how survivors are criminalized, called "required reading for anyone who cares about women and justice," by Bookpage, "remarkable... riveting," by Kirkus, and "true crime at its finest," by Booklist. Available now on ⁠Amazon⁠ or ⁠Bookshop.org⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 0:30Speaker 00

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  Campside Media.

• 1:11Speaker 00

  When Quinetta told me about the killing of Michael Giles, I felt like we were getting closer to what had happened, to what she did, and to who she was. But I kept circling back to the same question. Why?

• 1:27Speaker 00

  I didn't accept the prosecution's theory that Quinetta was an evil mastermind, some diabolical manipulator, that she had planned Michael Giles' murder well in advance. I thought she and Michael Giles probably did have an altercation the night of his murder. And she had, for many years, repeated the same thing. During that altercation, he sexually assaulted her with his gun. After that, though, she laid out for me such a strange series of events. She said she calmed Michael Giles down. She gave him a bowl of vanilla ice cream and some Benadryl.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  She soothed him, offered him a massage, took his gun, put it to his skull, and then shot him point-blank.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  I kept asking her versions of the same question. What was going through your head then?

• 2:24Speaker 02

  I was scared.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  I was scared and I was angry. And I remember my lawyer said, "Never admit you're angry."

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Do you think that your reaction to him in that moment was not just your action to him in that moment, but to...

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Looking back on it now and thinking about things that have happened, it just was unsung. No more. I'm tired. No. You're not gonna do this. No. And I think it was more than me and him in that room at the end. Ghosts of Tracy's past, is what I call them. The things that have happened to me in the past were in that room with us.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  I wanted to find those ghosts. So, soon after our meeting, I went looking for them.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  I wasn't sure what I would uncover, but I thought that if I went backward in Quinetta's life, I might have some chance at understanding the here and now.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is What She Buried. I'm Justine Vanderloo. Episode 6: Ghosts of Tracy's Past.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  One of my main interests when I report on women in prison is how common abuse histories are. Some studies have found that up to 94% of women in prison were sexually or physically abused before they ended up behind bars. My own work has focused on women who are in prison because they reacted to abuse or assault. From the first time Quinetta contacted me, she was talking about this. What I read in academic reports and found in my research for my book, Unreasonable Women, she saw it all around her. Everyone she met in prison had their own story of abuse, even if some of them couldn't or wouldn't see it.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  One of Quinetta's neighbors in solitary once casually mentioned that her grandfather had sex with her, starting when she was 13. Quinetta tried to break it to the neighbor. "You were raped." "No," the neighbor said. He was making sure I didn't have a bad first experience. I knew it was wrong. I still did it, every time.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  For Quinetta, it was easy to talk about what had happened to other people. But early on, she wrote to me. "The stigma and shame of allowing myself to continually accept abusive behavior is stronger than the shame of being a convicted murderer. 'I'm not too eager,' she wrote, 'to tell my most shameful experiences. I wonder how many more are like me.'"

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Over time, Quinetta opened up about those shameful experiences, events that had, in part, defined her life, set it on its course. And she almost always circled back to a handful of men.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Her ghosts.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  You wanna go from where we met, or what?

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Yes, please. That's Antonio Harris, or Tony, Quinetta's first husband.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Okay. I met Quinetta on the east side of Detroit. I was in college, my first year, or something like that. So it was either '89 or '90. And I met her at a mall...

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Quinetta got his number and called him later that night.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  And said, "Hey, you wanna talk? You wanna go out?" Something like that. So I went out with her and started dating her.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  They were just having fun, nothing serious. Then, Tony decided to join the Air Force.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  So she was like, "You're not gonna just leave me here and all this other stuff." And so I thought about it, and then I said, "Okay." So I married her.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  So I married her, just like that. It was the same story I had heard from Quinetta and her mom, Berbertha, that the marriage was hasty, maybe not fully thought through.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  I was a young adult.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  Exactly the words Quinetta had used to describe herself back then.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Let's explain this as a young adult first. Okay, so you're in the military. Yeah, you're not making much money. And you gotta stay in the dorms or the barracks. So somebody said, "Hey, I wanna marry you." You've been girlfriend and boyfriend. And you say, "Well, let me weigh the odds." So you don't have to stay in the dorms, you get housing allowance and all this other stuff. And I was like, "Oh, well, that sounds pretty good." And so that's why I pretty much did.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  So a marriage got Quinetta out of Detroit and Tony out of the barracks. But beyond that, it didn't offer either of them anything too positive. They were stationed in California, where the marriage started to go bad. And then they moved to a base in England, where it got worse.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  I was in the Special Ops squad at the time. I wasn't Special Ops myself, but I worked on the aircraft for Special Ops. So we were gone, like, I would say, 100... Probably close to 120 days a year.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  Quinetta had their son by then. She was alone, just 21, in a foreign country with her baby and a husband who was gone for a third of the year. That was why a tight-knit group of Black Air Force members started checking on her.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  So this is kind of how Quinetta met Michael Giles. Michael Giles did not have a family or anything, but he always was really fond of Quinetta.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Quinetta never really knew how to characterize the start of the relationship with Michael Giles. Was his only interest in seducing her? Or had he been a nice guy? Someone who really cared for her and helped her? Had they been friends? Or all of the above?

• 8:40Speaker 00

  No matter what, Michael Giles was inarguably there for Quinetta, which she needed as her marriage deteriorated. The end was messy. Quinetta and Tony, it's fair to say, did not have great conflict management skills.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  I had encounters with Quinetta. The one that made me say I wanted to divorce her was when she cut up all my clothes and set them on fire in my house. I'm laying in the bed and she comes upstairs and says, your clothes are on fire. And lays next to me and I'm thinking in my mind, she's not that crazy. The next thing I know is the smoke alarm went off. And so I went downstairs and sure enough, my clothes are on fire. And so I went to work the next day because I didn't have a uniform.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  I had to go in my regular clothes with my head down, embarrassed, pretty much crying.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  After that, Tony and Quinetta ended up having at least two major altercations. She told me that in one instance, Tony's relatives came to visit and jumped on her, fought her. Tony remembered the fight involving his family, but he said it was verbal, never physical. Quinetta has called Tony abusive. He's denied ever hurting her, but he said that she did have a bruised finger from grabbing at him once as he was angrily trying to leave. They decided to finally call it quits. Tony asked the Air Force to pay for Quinetta to go home immediately, back to Detroit. The Air Force refused and said they'd need to wait. So Tony requested that Quinetta at least move into temporary on-base housing.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  With Quinetta in the new housing, Michael Giles became more forward. He approached Tony.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  He was like, you mind if I talk to her? You know, like, talk to her, like, go with her or whatever. And I told him, I don't give a dang what you do with her because as long as you keep her out of my life. And that was basically the story the last time I talked to him about it, too.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  So Tony thought he was more or less done with Quinetta. Except Quinetta never did go gently. Now she was stressed, separated, stuck in temporary housing and far from home. So Quinetta did what it seems became her habit whenever she was in a tough spot. According to Tony, she came up with a scam.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  I guess she met up with guys at the club and stuff like that. And she took a bunch of guys' checks and she cashed them all. And so all these guys on payday is looking for their check.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Of course, these were just suspicions. As usual, no proof.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  So the commander, again, brings me in his office. Well, what do you think we should do about this? Because this is your dependent. And my only thing I could say to him was, you turned down my early return to the pin. And he approved it.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Quinetta got her ticket home. After that, Tony didn't want to know about her. Then again, seemed like he never had.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  I never really discussed her childhood, really, to tell you the truth. Or she never really opened up a lot, let's put it that way.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  They were married for six years and they had a son. But Tony's take on Quinetta remained pretty vague. But like, I mean, you were married to her. So what was she like as a person, I guess? Like, at that time at least, did you have an impression of her? Like, did you love her?

• 12:39Speaker 03

  I would say yes. I mean, if you live with somebody that long, you do.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  The marriage to Tony had offered Quinetta a chance to lead a conventional, middle-class life. And it didn't pan out. So it was back to her old neighborhood, where she found a new man who would soon become a new ghost.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  She was going with this guy. His name was Al. And Alan apparently didn't have a job, but he had money. I'm pretty sure he was a drug dealer at the time. And so I'm pretty sure that's how she got her money.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season, you create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  In 2002, Ryan Wedding was an Olympic snowboarder at the top of his game.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  Ryan's style is really gunning it in gold.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  And in less than a minute, it slipped away. But he continued to chase the high.

• 14:03Speaker 06

  Ryan James Wedding. He controls one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in this world.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  I'm Michelle Shepherd and from CBC Podcasts and The Toronto Star, The Most Wanted Olympian. Available now.

• 14:24Speaker 07

  Y'all smoke marijuana? I don't. I don't smoke, but I got a lot of friends do, so.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  This is Al, Quinetta's second husband.

• 14:35Speaker 07

  That's nice of you. Is it legal here? Oh, it's legal. It's legal, yeah. Oh, marijuana is legal in Detroit.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  These days, Al's on the right side of the law.

• 14:44Speaker 07

  See, I don't want to be in trouble. I'm 59. I don't want to do a day in jail.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Al used to be a drug dealer. He's open about it. But his new gig is real estate. Buying homes, fixing them up and renting them out. For fun, he plays chess. When we met, he had a board out on the table, the pieces scattered mid-game.

• 15:06Speaker 07

  So this is what we do. We battle with this. We gamble with it.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  It all tracked. Quinetta had told me that Al was a secret intellectual. He'd hide his books to keep up his street reputation and then read political philosophy in bed next to her. She'd always liked that about him, that he was a reader. Meanwhile, Al had liked everything about Quinetta. He still did.

• 15:32Speaker 07

  How's she doing?

• 15:36Speaker 07

  I mean, as well as a person can in solitary for... Yeah, she's strong.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  Al is eager to talk about his memories with Quinetta.

• 15:45Speaker 07

  We had such a good life. We had everything, beautiful house, luxury cars. She had a good job, I had a good job.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Once they moved in together, he wanted to provide for her as he felt she deserved. They had a daughter. For their first Christmas as a family, Al went out and got a tree.

• 16:07Speaker 07

  It was a big tree. She would just stare at the lights. She was probably three or four months old, staring at the lights. Yeah. So we had a good life.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  A good life. As we talked, Al kept repeating the phrase.

• 16:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, we had a good life. That's what I was trying to always tell people. We had a good life. Me and Tracy really had it made. We was the envy of all our friends. Because she had everything a woman could want at that time. She had expensive ass work shoes. There was some shoes with springs in them. And she kept her hair awesome. And I just loved the girl, man. I just love her now.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  But even Al can admit, the good life wasn't a perfect life. Quinetta may have had a Christmas tree, expensive shoes and awesome hair. But her second husband, like her first husband, was gone a lot. Half the nights, he didn't come home. And the nights when he was absent, they could be preferable to those when he was present.

• 17:13Speaker 07

  I remember one time, I think she was cheating on me. So she got all dressed up. So I'm looking at her. I'm like, damn.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  Oh, I'm finna fuck you now. Now, he can get after me, but you're not leaving right now. I'm finna fuck you right now. I'm your husband. How did she react to that? She submitted. What the fuck? Was she gonna tell me the truth? She submitted to that shit.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  When Quinetta thinks of Al, she remembers him as a smart and devoted partner. She still considers him a friend. But she also remembers him as an abuser, quite a brutal one. She once wrote me, hell, I survived Al. I could survive anything. And Al didn't entirely deny Quinetta's claims of abuse.

• 18:11Speaker 07

  I was waiting on some drugs to get to Detroit. You know, she wanted me to take her to work or something. And I didn't take her to work. And she was pissed off about that. And I think she pushed me and I slapped her or something. Then she called the police. I was in my neighbor's garage when they were looking for me. So they didn't ever find me that day. But yeah, that's what had happened. I didn't want to take her to work. And she was mad or something and said someone pushed me. And I might have slapped her or pushed her. I don't know. I shouldn't have did it.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  The police report for this incident is detailed. It says, Alan Harris struck complainant Quinetta Harris in the forehead, then grabbed a loaded 38 caliber and pointed it at her. Al then allegedly told Quinetta, don't come any closer, and left the house with their daughter. When the police arrived, they observed a large lump above Quinetta's left eye. She said she couldn't hear from her left ear. The responding officers noted that Quinetta was visibly frightened and shaking. When the officers asked if she was OK, Quinetta shook her head side to side. She said, not OK.

• 19:27Speaker 07

  I was on some bullshit. I probably was drinking too. On some drinking shit. And I shouldn't have been though. Yeah, let me just sit this way.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  It felt like Al was growing agitated. He looked away from me and stared down at the chessboard, slamming the pieces into their squares.

• 19:44Speaker 07

  These are pawns. OK. Can this go over here? This goes, that's a king. This the king, this the queen. Yeah, go right there. That's lovely. Yeah. Oh, look at that. That looks nicer. I appreciate it. I'll make it even.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  I tried getting him back on track.

• 20:01Speaker 07

  But just that one.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  One time, just that one time? I mean.

• 20:06Speaker 07

  What? Uh, having, having, uh, uh, uh, domestic violence?

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, one time.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Really?

• 20:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  In any case, the so-called good life? It came with violence.

• 20:20Speaker 07

  I had guns all over the fucking house.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:23Speaker 07

  I had guns in the kitchen, kitchen, everywhere.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:27Speaker 07

  Uh, uh, uh, and she, one time she shot at me.

• 20:33Speaker 07

  She, she shot in the ground.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Okay. Did she?

• 20:39Speaker 07

  Hey, listen, there's a lot going on, babe. I don't want to say nothing negative to make her look bad, but, but this shit here, the, uh, uh, it was something happened. I don't know if we was arguing or something. And I came out the side door, she shot in the ground. I don't know what that was about, I don't know.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Just the one time?

• 21:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, we really wasn't violent to each other. We was, we was having a good life. We was excited.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  So it was just the one, so it was just the one shot and the?

• 21:13Speaker 07

  One shot, but it was my gun. I had guns all in the fucking house.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  And then you just did the one, the one hitting?

• 21:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  That was kind of the deal, Quinetta and Al had. You have to navigate the violence, but you get the money. Quinetta's marriage to Al marked the first time in her adult life that she was financially comfortable. During this time, as best as I can tell, she wasn't committing any thefts or frauds. But then, in 2003, Al was arrested and charged with intent to distribute cocaine and gun possession. He was acquitted on the drug charge, but took a plea on the gun charge and got 46 months. Quinetta remembered when Al, on his way to prison, handed her his wallet and his jewelry. She was almost relieved.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  She wrote, "I felt giddy, then guilty, but he left me with money." "He demanded," Quinetta added, "that their daughter attend a private school." Even with Al locked up, she intimated, she and her kids wanted for nothing. But Al didn't remember it that way. He said he actually had no plans in place for his family if he were caught.

• 22:34Speaker 07

  You know, I didn't ever think I'd be in trouble.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Really? It feels, it feels like a high, a high-risk profession.

• 22:42Speaker 07

  I'm gonna tell you something, Justine, I was good at that shit.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  But once Al was locked up, he realized he couldn't do much for his wife and daughter.

• 22:52Speaker 07

  When I was in federal prison, I had partners out here. And they tell, you know, I seen your wife, man, she don't, she ain't looking like herself. I, I said, well, I understand she, she might have to pay some bills or something, you know?

• 23:05Speaker 00

  And Quinetta couldn't cover those bills with what Al had left behind.

• 23:09Speaker 07

  Bunch of jewelry and stuff like that. I don't know, I had money there. It was probably money hid there, but it probably wasn't, probably five thousand, six, it wasn't no, some stats in the mouth, because I never thought I would be in trouble for this shit. I told you, I was, I was locked up, so you can only make a call. So whatever was there, that was there. I had bought her a Rolex, I had Rolex. We had matching necklaces. I know she probably pawned all that shit. You know, it was just, everything was just going down. Everything was going down, because I wasn't there. I can't get nobody to do anything, you know? When you going through that, you really on your own, in a way. So she couldn't have, she, I know she had never been through that.

• 23:54Speaker 07

  She couldn't really handle that.

• 23:59Speaker 03

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• 24:32Speaker 01

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  Al left a permanent mark on Quinetta. A lump, she says, above her eyebrow. His name, tattooed across her chest. And he left a mark emotionally, too. Quinetta may have sometimes despised Al, but she also had been attached to him, dependent on him. His sudden departure left her in dire straits. Al was her ghost a few times over. But then, there were the main ghosts, as I'd come to think of them. They were from long ago. I couldn't talk to them. Some of them, Quinetta didn't know their names.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Others, she wasn't telling. In her fifth letter to me, Quinetta told me that when she was very young, she'd been molested by a family member. Fondling, she said. She told her grandma, who simply responded, "Stay away from that person." Quinetta never told anyone else. It was an early lesson. Push it all down. She'd honed that technique. There was another incident Quinetta told me about that had done far more to shift the trajectory of her life. When she was 12 years old, she was kidnapped and gang raped.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Quinetta hadn't talked about this incident very much in her life, but I also wasn't the first person she told it to. She told some female friends, who remembered. She mentioned the rape in a social history taken while she was in police custody after her arrest. She told one of her attorneys before the trial. In Detroit, Quinetta's cousin, Princess Powell, remembered that 12-year-old Quinetta had gone missing, and something had happened to her. But Princess wasn't quite sure what. Another person close with Quinetta's family recalled that Quinetta had disappeared, and she'd been found with bruises all over.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  The person said, "Quinetta had been raped by three grown men." Roberta, Quinetta's mom, had also told me about what happened. It started with a bike ride.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  I had bought her a Schwinn bicycle. Beautiful. And it folded in two. I might have paid 300 and some dollars for that bike then.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  Quinetta went out on the $300 Schwinn bike with a girlfriend. Roberta remembered her pretty, bright daughter, dressed cute that day, with a little charm that said "Tresi," her nickname, dangling from her belt. But Quinetta didn't return. Roberta waited for hours. No Quinetta. Roberta started to panic. She called for help.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  My uncles and cousins and them went around the area where they said that they think she was there.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  Roberta's family knew the area, the people in it. The men walked each block, asking questions, investigating. It took at least a full day, Roberta thought, maybe longer.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  There was a lot of tracking in the streets to find them, what happened to her. They got word when they did release, so we basically were around the corner.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Quinetta had been held in a vacant home about a quarter mile away from Roberta's house.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  She was physically assaulted. And sexually assaulted.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Quinetta has never told me how she felt when this happened. The actual emotions that go along with this experience, they seem to be tucked far away. But she told me that she remembered how her mom felt. Roberta was devastated and cried a lot. Quinetta figured, if she were to elaborate on what happened, it would only hurt Roberta more.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  It hurt, but, you know, I often tell her, you know, your love, the love for you, and the love that God has given us with you, is gonna overpower that stuff that they did. You know, don't claim the victory that you're on. You're okay, and we'll get through it. And, um, time passed, and we just didn't talk about it anymore.

• 29:34Speaker 06

  Do you wish you had, or you think it was good not to?

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Well, if she wanted to, we could have. I didn't have a problem with it, but I don't think she wanted to.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  As far as I could tell, it wasn't a matter of wanting to talk about it or not. It was just that Quinetta got the message. First, when she was a little kid, and then again, when she was 12. That she should keep quiet and move on. One night, after the rape, she overheard her grandpa and uncle talking. They were wondering if Quinetta was gonna start acting crazy.

• 30:08Speaker 06

  You couldn't sleep? You were awake and you heard them saying that?

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. I couldn't, I heard them talking. Um, God, I don't even remember where I was. I just remember hearing them talking. I don't remember if I was at my mother's house or my grandmother's house, but I heard them talking. And-

• 30:24Speaker 06

  After that, I learned how to put on a mask. Everything is okay. Everything, I never talked about, everything is fine. And, um, but I start writing. And I remember my mother would catch me writing stories or writing this and she, "What is wrong with you? What were you writing?" I was just writing imaginary stories. Um, I would write stories. I would, a lot of imaginary stories about people. Um, I don't think it was gory or anything, but it was, it was too much. My mother used to say, "You're spending too much time in fantasy land in your head." Huh. Do you remember about the stories that you were writing? Like, do you remember?

• 31:06Speaker 06

  I just remember that they were, I remember they were about a boy I had, a boy I made up.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Back then, Quinetta and another girl walked to school together every day. That other girl was her first real audience.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  And I told them to her, I counted as this is real. I think it was just antics that these people were doing and, you know, this and the other. And that was it. I remember it being, you know, happy, happiness. And I don't know if that was just me trying to reach or something.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  So Quinetta's initial foray into storytelling allowed her to connect with a friend. She could leave behind her own experiences and her own neighborhood, a place where she had thought she was safe, but had been mistaken, and she could land in a new, happy place. She also started to see, if you could tell a good story in just the right way, people would want to believe you. And then, of course, making a story gave her authority and agency. She had lost control. Now, she could take it back. She could even use her talents as a storyteller to right wrongs. She kept at it.

• 32:27Speaker 06

  And I got in trouble because I told the teacher, one of the teachers, my mother went up there for parent teacher conference, and my mother said, "Why is this woman telling me that all you talk about is going to Hawaii with your dad? I don't even have a relationship with my father."

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Quinetta's dad, who was rarely around, he wasn't taking her on any tropical vacations. But Quinetta could pretend. And at school, where nobody knew any better, she could present her fantasies as real. In the early days, when truth wasn't welcome, stories moved into its place. And stories became lies, which started to grow. I wanted to talk to Quinetta more about how this all might fit together, her trauma and where it had led. I wanted to hear more from her about the ghosts of Tracy's past.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  I wanted to talk in person, again. My producer Eric and I had always planned to make a second visit to Quinetta in Texas. It had been easy the first time around, so we didn't anticipate any issues when we made the request. Hi.

• 33:44Speaker 05

  Hey. I'm taping. We have gotten a response back from TDCJ.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  Eric, TDCJ representative spoke with the victim's family after the last media request was submitted. The family has protested this interview. Quinetta Harris is now unable to be interviewed by media because of this. You can communicate with her through USPS and JPAY. That's the email.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  We were beyond confused. We'd talked to Michael Giles' family. His sister Gwen and his cousin Carnita had participated in the podcast. And they insisted. They hadn't said anything to TDCJ. They didn't know of any other family members who even could have. I'd actually had interactions with TDCJ in the past, years earlier, where they used my communications with Quinetta to pin fake charges on her. When I protested, they threatened to revoke my ability to ever talk to her. Meanwhile, she faced the possibility of more time in solitary for the fake charges.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  So on some level, I was always waiting for them to do something like that again. But even if we couldn't see Quinetta, TDCJ had said I could still write to her. And Quinetta was still able to call me. So at least we could keep talking. And we did, for hours. But then, on a Saturday in March, I got an email. It had been two weeks since I'd interviewed Quinetta in person. I called Eric and read it to him. Just received permission to send you this to tell you, quote, "No podcasts, no articles, no story, no nothing. I am withdrawing cooperation and can no longer communicate in any way with you or through

• 35:42Speaker 00

  any third party, including family and friends. I am requesting any interviews and notes pertaining to podcasts be destroyed. TDCJ has notified me I am in violation if persists. Quinetta Harris." For five years, I'd been in contact with Quinetta. First letters, then emails, then calls, then the prison visit. And through it all, Quinetta never held back. She'd already told me. Nothing scared her, as long as she could keep writing and talking. Her attitude had always been, "Bring it on, TDCJ."

• 36:26Speaker 00

  But this new email, the tone was totally different than anything I'd ever read before.

• 36:30Speaker 06

  You almost like feel like, don't you feel like she's got a gun to her head and she's like, "Dear Justin," you know?

• 36:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think hostage, hostage video is the vibe of that email.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  So what was TDCJ holding over Quinetta? What could be so powerful that she would cut me off? Quinetta had never backed down from TDCJ. And now she was submitting to their demands that she withdraw from the podcast? And she was asking me, a journalist, to destroy all of my materials? Years' worth of stuff? Dozens of on-the-record interviews, given with full consent?

• 37:10Speaker 06

  And that can't be undone, and it can't be undone by the force of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice or anybody else.

• 37:17Speaker 05

  Right. Now, I will note one thing, which is that the Texas Department of Corrections has not actually made this, has not, has not said this to you.

• 37:30Speaker 06

  Right. Which is also intriguing, like, they said I could continue with JPAY and USPS. And that was the last we heard of them. So now we're hearing from them, like, through her.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  It's all very strange. I mean, it's strange. It's very strange. Do we think there is zero, like, obviously, our interview was shut down by TDCJ. Obviously, they wrote back and said, "You can't, you can't do an interview her. You can only, you know, you can only write to her." We think there is no chance that something happened like Quinetta realized she had been talking about her crime for three hours.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  In other words, maybe Quinetta got spooked. Maybe, after telling me so much, she sat alone in her cell and started to spiral. This podcast wasn't going to turn out like she'd hoped. Maybe she'd gotten in too deep, exposed herself in a way that felt vulnerable and out of control. And instead of just talking to me about it, instead of actually facing the issue, she'd reverted to her usual problem-solving technique. Create a topsy-turvy scheme that throws everything into chaos.

• 38:50Speaker 06

  She masterminds all of that, including TDCJ's part in it?

• 38:58Speaker 05

  You never would believe that.

• 39:00Speaker 06

  Who?

• 39:01Speaker 05

  Everyone we talked to in Dallas.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Taking a step back, I realized that just because I couldn't talk to Quinetta directly, that didn't mean my reporting was done. There were still other avenues to explore, other voices to hear. And ultimately, they would bring me as close as I would ever get to truly understanding who Quinetta was and why she'd done the things she had. That's next time on the final episode of What She Buried. Unlock all episodes of What She Buried ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. And it doesn't stop at What She Buried. Subscribers get a binge drop of a brand-new series on the first of every month.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  That's all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. And between drops, you've got ad-free access to Crime Scene, the Binge's weekly series, plus instant access to over 60 true crime podcasts, shows like Wild Boys, Blink, and My Fugitive Dad, so you'll never be short on stories. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit Subscribe. Not on Apple? Head to GetTheBinge.com to subscribe directly. What She Buried is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media. This show was reported and hosted by me, Justine Vanderloon.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  Eric Benson is the executive producer. Ashley Anne Krigbaum is the managing producer. Production assistance from Lane Rose, Josie Duffy Rice, Mosi Secret, Emily Martinez, Sheba Joseph, and Michael Meyer. The story editor is Matthew Share. The series was mixed and sound design by Garrett Tiedemann, with support from Ewan Lyd from Ewan. 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, Vanessa Gregoriades, and Matthew Share.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  If you enjoyed What She Buried, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.

• 41:27Speaker 01

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