The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (11 page)

None of the many writers on the case have been able to supply a plausible explanation. The obvious “natural” explanations are flooding and earth tremors. But flooding would have disarranged Mrs Goddard’s coffin and moved the sand on the floor; besides, someone would have noticed if rain had been so heavy that it flooded the graveyard. The same applies to earth tremors strong enough to shake coffins around like dice in a wooden cup. Conan Doyle suggested that the explanation was some kind of explosion inside the vault, and to explain this he suggests that the “effluvia” (sweat?) of the Negro slaves somehow combined with unnamed forces inside the vault to produce a gas explosion. Nothing seems less likely.

Yet a “supernatural” explanation is just as implausible. It has often been pointed out that the disturbances began after the burial of a woman believed to have committed suicide; the suggestion is that the other “spirits” refused to rest at ease with a suicide. But the movement of the coffins suggest a poltergeist (
qv
), and all the investigators are agreed that a poltergeist needs some kind of “energy source” – often an emotionally disturbed adolescent living on the premises. And an empty tomb can provide no such energy source.

The Negroes obviously believed there was some kind of voodoo at work – some magical force deliberately conjured by a witch or witch doctor, the motive being revenge on the hated slave-owners. It sounds unlikely, but it is the best that can be offered.

5

The Basa Murder

The Voice from the Grave

There have been many folktales in which the dead have returned to give evidence against their murderers; but there is only one example that has been authenticated beyond all shadow of a doubt. It is the case of a Filippino physical therapist named Teresita Basa, who was stabbed to death in Chicago on February 21, 1977.

Toward 8:30 on the evening of that day, the Chicago fire department was called to put out a blaze in a high-rise apartment building on the North Side. Two fire fighters crawled into Apartment 15B through black smoke and saw that the fire was in the bedroom. A mattress lying at the foot of the bed was blazing. Within minutes the firemen had put the blaze out and opened the windows to let out the smoke. When they lifted the waterlogged mattress, they found the naked body of a woman, with her legs spread apart and a knife sticking out of her chest.

Forty-eight-year-old Teresita Basa had been born in the city of Damaguete, in the Philippines, the daughter of a judge. She had become a physical therapist specializing in respiratory problems – perhaps because her father had died of a respiratory illness – and was working at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago at the time of her death.

Forensic examination postulated that Teresita had answered the door to someone she knew – she had been talking to a friend on the telephone when the doorbell rang. The intruder had encircled her neck from behind with his arm and choked her until she lost consciousness. He then had taken money from her handbag and ransacked the apartment. After that he had stripped off all her clothes, taken a butcher knife from the kitchen drawer, and driven it virtually through her body. Then he had set the mattress on fire with a piece of burning paper, dumped it on top of her, and hurried out of the apartment. The fire alarm had sounded before he had gone more than a few blocks.

Forensic investigation also revealed that there had been no sexual assault. Teresita Basa had died a virgin.

Although Remy (short for Remibias) Chua, another Filippino, had worked with Teresita Basa in the respiratory therapy department of Edgewater Hospital, the two had been only slightly acquainted. Two weeks after the murder, during the course of a conversation, Chua remarked, only half seriously, “If there is no solution to her murder, she can come to me in a dream”. She then went for a brief nap in the hospital locker room – it was two o’clock in the morning. As she was dozing on a chair, her feet propped on another, something made her open her eyes. She had to suppress a scream as she saw Teresita Basa – looking as solid as a living person – standing in front of her. She lost no time in running out of the room.

During the course of the next few weeks, two of Mrs Chua’s fellow employees jokingly remarked that she looked – and behaved – like Teresita Basa. Her husband, Dr José Chua, also noticed that his wife seemed to have undergone a personality change. Normally sunny and good-natured, she had become oddly peremptory and moody. Teresita Basa had also been prone to moods.

In late July, five months after the murder, Remy Chua was working with a hospital orderly named Allan Showery when she found herself experiencing an inexplicable panic. Showery was a sinewy but powerfully built black man with an open and confident manner. When Showery was standing behind Mrs Chua, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye – just as Teresita Basa may have when her killer stepped up behind her to lock his forearm round her neck – and, inexplicably, her heart began to pound violently. She decided that she was suffering from nervous problems and asked for time off from work.

That night her husband heard her talking in her sleep – she was repeating, “Al–Al–Al . . .” She told him later that she had dreamed of being in a smoke-filled room. The next day she felt so ill that she asked her parents to come over. After taking a strong sedative, she climbed into bed. But after a few hours’ sleep she began to babble in Spanish – a language Remy Chua did not speak. Her husband knelt beside the bed and asked, “How are you”? His wife replied, “I am Teresita Basa”. When José Chua asked what she wanted, the voice replied, “I want help . . . Nothing has been done about the man who killed me”. A few minutes later “Teresita” disappeared and Remy Chua was herself again.

Two days later Remy Chua felt a pain in her chest, followed by a
heavy sensation, “as if someone was stepping into her body”. She told her mother (who was still with them), “Terrie is here again”.

When her husband returned he found his wife in bed. The voice of Teresita Basa issued from her mouth, asking accusingly, “Did you talk to the police”? José Chua acknowledged that he hadn’t, because he needed proof. “Allan killed me” insisted the voice. “I let Al into the apartment and he killed me”.

The strain of Remy Chua’s “possession” was beginning to adversely affect the whole family (the Chuas had four children). José Chua finally went to his boss at Franklin Park Hospital, Dr Winograd, and told him the whole story; Dr Winograd took the “possession” seriously but believed that the police would dismiss it as an absurdity. He advised Dr Chua to write them an anonymous letter.

The “possessing entity” had other ideas. The next time Remy Chua went into a trancelike state, the voice demanded to know why José Chua had not done as she asked. He explained that he had no proof. “Dr Chua”, said the voice, “the man Allan Showery stole my jewelry and gave it to his girlfriend. They live together”.

“But how could it be identified”?

“My cousins, Ron Somera and Ken Basa, could identify it. So could my friends, Richard Pessoti and Ray King”. She went on to give Dr Chua Ron Somera’s telephone number. After that she told him, “Al came to fix my television and he killed me and burned me. Tell the police”.

Dr Chua finally decided to do as she asked; he telephoned the Evanston police headquarters. On 8 August 1977, Investigator Joseph Stachula was assigned to interview the Chuas. Their story left him stunned, yet he had an intuitive certainty that they were not cranks. All the same, he could see no obvious way to make use of what they had told him. He could hardly walk up to Allan Showery and arrest him on the grounds that his victim had come back from the dead to accuse him.

A check on Showery revealed that he might well be the killer. He had a long criminal record that included two rapes, each of which had taken place in the victim’s apartment. Moreover, he had lived only four blocks from Teresita Basa.

Showery was brought to the police station, and was asked if it were true that he had agreed to repair Teresita Basa’s television on the evening of her murder. He acknowledged that it was but insisted that he had gone to a local bar for a drink and simply forgotten. Asked if he had ever been in the Basa apartment, he denied it. Then, when asked for fingerprint samples to compare with some found in the apartment, he
changed his mind and acknowledged that he had been there some months earlier. Finally, he admitted that he had been there on the evening of her death but claimed that he had left immediately because he did not have a circuit plan for that particular television.

Now the suspect was obviously nervous, and the interviewers left him alone while they went back to talk to Yanka. She recalled that on the evening of the murder – she remembered it because the fire engine had passed her window – Showery had come home early. Asked by the interviewers if he had recently given her any jewelry, she showed them an antique cocktail ring. She was asked to accompany them back to the police station, together with her jewelry box. Meanwhile, Teresita Basa’s two friends, Richard Pessoti and Ray King, were brought to the station. As soon as Pessoti glimpsed the ring on Yanka’s finger, he recognized it as one belonging to Teresita Basa. The two were also able to identify other jewelry in Yanka’s jewelry box.

Stachula’s partner, Detective Lee Epplen, confronted Showery and told him, “It’s all over”. Showery screamed angrily, “You cops are trying to frame me”. When shown the jewelry, he insisted that he had bought it at a pawnshop but had failed to get a receipt. Minutes later he realized that the evidence against him was overwhelming. He asked to speak to Yanka, and in the presence of the detectives said, “Yanka, I have something to tell you. I killed Teresita Basa”.

He had believed that Teresita was rich and that robbing her would solve all his financial problems. But after killing her, he found that her purse contained only thirty dollars. In order to make the murder look like a sex crime he had undressed her and spread her legs apart. Then he had stabbed her with the butcher knife and set the mattress on fire, hoping that the fire would destroy any clues he might have left behind.

The “Voice from the Grave” case made national headlines. Showery came to trial on 21 January 1979, before Judge Frank W. Barbero. But the story of the “possession” of Remy Chua was so astounding that the jury was unable to agree on a verdict. The defense also objected that the evidence of a ghost was not admissible in a court of law. Five days later a mistrial was declared. But on 23 February 1979, Allan Showery acknowledged that he was guilty of the murder of Teresita Basa. He was sentenced to fourteen years for murder and to four years each on charges of armed robbery and arson.

6

The Bermuda Triangle

On the afternoon of 5 December 1945 five Avenger torpedo-bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a routine two-hour patrol over the Atlantic. Flight 19 was commanded by Flight Leader Charles Taylor; the other four pilots were trainees, flying what is known as a “milk run” that is, a flight whose purpose is simply to increase their number of hours in the air without instructors. By 2.15 the planes were well over the Atlantic, and following their usual patrol route. The weather was warm and clear.

At 3.45 the control tower received a message from Taylor: “This is an emergency. We seem to be off course. We cannot see land . . . repeat . . . we cannot see land”.

“What is your position”?

“We’re not sure of our position. We can’t be sure where we are. We seem to be lost”.

“Head due west”, replied the tower.

“We don’t know which way is west. Everything is wrong . . . strange. We can’t be sure of any direction. Even the ocean doesn’t look as it should”.

The tower was perplexed; even if some kind of magnetic interference caused all five compasses to malfunction, the pilot should still be able to see the sun low in the western sky. Radio contact was now getting worse, restricting any messages to short sentences. At one point the tower picked up one pilot speaking to another, saying that all the instruments in his plane were “going crazy”. At four o’clock the flight leader decided to hand over to someone else. At 4.25 the new leader told the tower: “We’re not certain where we are”.

Unless the planes could find their way back over land during the next four hours, they would run out of fuel and be forced to land in the sea. At 6.27 a rescue mission was launched. A giant Martin Mariner
flying-boat, with a crew of thirteen, took off towards the last reported position of the flight. Twenty-three minutes later, the sky to the east was lit briefly by a bright orange flash. Neither the Martin Mariner nor the five Avengers ever returned. They vanished completely, as other planes and ships have vanished in the area that has become known as “the Devil’s Triangle” and “the Bermuda Triangle”.

What
finally happened to the missing aircraft is certainly no mystery. The weather became worse during the course of that afternoon; ships reported “high winds and tremendous seas”. Flight 19 and its would-be rescuer must have run out of fuel, and landed in the sea. The mystery is
why
they became so completely lost and confused. Even if the navigation instruments had ceased to function, and visibility had become restricted to a few yards, it should have been possible to fly up above the clouds to regain their bearings.

What seems stranger still is that this tragedy should have failed to alert the authorities that there was something frightening and dangerous about the stretch of ocean between Florida and the Bahamas – a chain of islands that begins a mere fifty miles off the coast of Florida. But then the authorities no doubt took the view of many more recent sceptics, that the disappearance was a rather complex accident, due to a number of chance factors: bad weather, electrical interference with the compasses, the inexperience of some of the pilots and the fact that the flight leader, Charles Taylor, had only recently been posted to Fort Lauderdale and was unfamiliar with the area.