Speaker 1: What you are about to hear is a work of
Speaker 1: investigative journalism that explores one woman's search for answers in
Speaker 1: her son's death. The views and opinions in this podcast
Speaker 1: do not reflect those of I Heart Media. Previously on Somebody,
Speaker 1: the first car that we thought were the police that
Speaker 1: was not Courtney's vehicle in the league, and they found
Speaker 1: some new evidence that said that it may have happened
Speaker 1: the way the police stated. The metaphor of walking back
Speaker 1: and assumption feels exactly right. You're really trying to reorient
Speaker 1: and reboot really the entire investigation. Every part of me
Speaker 1: wants to believe that my son could have survived. Every
Speaker 1: part of me. It looks like they are handcuffing a
Speaker 1: suspect to bring them in for an arrest. My name
Speaker 1: is Chaparral Wells. This is a story of my on Courtney,
Speaker 1: a young black man in a fancy car who wound
Speaker 1: up with a bullet in his back in front of
Speaker 1: a Chicago police station. And it's the story of my
Speaker 1: search for the truth. This is somebody, everybody, somebody every day,
Speaker 1: No bide, no, no, that's right. This is a video
Speaker 1: of Courtney sleeping. Babe still want to go out. It's
Speaker 1: taken a few years ago by his girlfriend at the time, Roseo. Babe,
Speaker 1: you still want to go out? Churn up. Hmm Yeah.
Speaker 1: Roseo and Courtney they were one of those on again,
Speaker 1: off again couples, but everyone knew that Rosseo was the
Speaker 1: love of his life. She always felt like a daughter
Speaker 1: to me and still does. Can you show us your tattoo?
Speaker 1: This is it, but it's um actually Courtney's name, and
Speaker 1: the date we started officially dating. Um. It's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: It was eleven, twelve thirteen. I made him way to
Speaker 1: day to ask me out the next day so it
Speaker 1: could be eleven. Corney was very caring and for Rosseo,
Speaker 1: she received all of that. He'd make up breakfast, he'd
Speaker 1: packed her lunch. He even sometimes he watched her niece
Speaker 1: for her. He's like, oh, this is a kid I'm
Speaker 1: taking to school and babysitting her And I'm like, you're
Speaker 1: doing what? Yeah. He just loved kids. Rosie and Courtney
Speaker 1: joining World Ventures at the same time. She also got
Speaker 1: a BMW as a sales reward. Courtney's was my room
Speaker 1: and Rossel's was Champagne. I'm kind of competitive, so as
Speaker 1: soon as Corney pulled it out, I was like, I
Speaker 1: have to go get mine too. But at World Ventures,
Speaker 1: Courtney had a lot of other female co workers. You know,
Speaker 1: Courtney really loved women. That's Maryland. She worked with Courtney.
Speaker 1: She saw all the drama around him. There was always
Speaker 1: an incident with with something like, oh, you know, you're
Speaker 1: flaring with this girl or you're talking to this girl.
Speaker 1: She can't be playing games and having like all these
Speaker 1: different like you know, girls that you're talking to, like
Speaker 1: we're here to run a business. When I think about
Speaker 1: all these other women that it things that he had
Speaker 1: a relationship with, they were to me just filling the gap.
Speaker 1: Here I am talking to Alison from the Invisible Institute
Speaker 1: about all of this. Don't know why he and r
Speaker 1: broke up because he was shams. Oh she found out that.
Speaker 1: I knew Courtney had a lot of little girl friends,
Speaker 1: but what I didn't know is that his love life
Speaker 1: was getting in the way of his job. I found
Speaker 1: this recording of Courtney talking about his setbacks at work.
Speaker 1: You think about me is that you know, it looks
Speaker 1: good on the outside, but sometimes it can be bad
Speaker 1: behind closed doors, and you know, and that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the obstacles that you're gonna have to go through. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to be able to take a punch in.
Speaker 1: Courtney's boss set him down more than once and told
Speaker 1: him he needed to stop dating people from World Ventures.
Speaker 1: They even removed him from the leadership team. But Courtney
Speaker 1: started seeing another co worker anyway, so they had to
Speaker 1: keep it a secret. Her name was Alma, and the
Speaker 1: night he was killed, Courtney was on his way to
Speaker 1: her house. When word got out that Courtney was shot,
Speaker 1: all of his friends started calling each other. They were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who Courtney was going to see
Speaker 1: at that hour. Eventually they landed on Alma. A lot
Speaker 1: of people were very very up that were Courtney's coworker,
Speaker 1: Maryland again, because first of all, we had no idea,
Speaker 1: like no idea that you know, they were even like
Speaker 1: talking or messing around or anything. She lives in a
Speaker 1: really rough neighborhood. Maybe an exploit for saw something and
Speaker 1: got upset that Cortney was there, Like you know, so
Speaker 1: many things ran through our head, and of course the
Speaker 1: first thing to do is blame her, because why were
Speaker 1: you even there. A few hours after Courtney died, the
Speaker 1: police went to see out mom and they drove her
Speaker 1: to the hospital. Lots of Courtney's friends were there. Courtney's
Speaker 1: friends were grilling Alma for information. She told them that
Speaker 1: she didn't hear anything, she didn't see anything, just that
Speaker 1: Courtney had text her saying he was outside her house
Speaker 1: and then he never showed up. I wonder if they
Speaker 1: would have blamed her if that hadn't if they hadn't
Speaker 1: been romantically involved. I feel like people do that to women.
Speaker 1: You know, you could see the pain on her face
Speaker 1: that she felt some sort of guilt, and I told
Speaker 1: her at that that very day, you can't feel guilty,
Speaker 1: Corney Courtney. Ultimately, Cortney made the choice. He unfortunately made
Speaker 1: a choice that was deadly for him. The more I
Speaker 1: learned about Almah, the more I understood this wasn't just
Speaker 1: the hookup situation. It was starting to get serious is
Speaker 1: and he was trying to bond with her kids, and
Speaker 1: he was over there at three or four nights a week.
Speaker 1: It had been more than a year since my last
Speaker 1: meeting with police. In their latest case update in Courtney's
Speaker 1: file just stated that they had no updates. I needed
Speaker 1: to know who shot my son and clearly the police
Speaker 1: weren't going to be any help, so Alison and I
Speaker 1: we went on without them. We kept going through Courtney's phone,
Speaker 1: trying to understand not only who he was talking to,
Speaker 1: but what was going on in his life in the
Speaker 1: exact time of his interactions that last night. We got
Speaker 1: help from this digital forensic expert, Dr Ashley Podowski, who
Speaker 1: volunteered her time to go through Courtney's phone. Hi, Ashley,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm doing good. How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm doing very well. She has these tools to scrape
Speaker 1: every bit of information off the phone and organize it
Speaker 1: so we can find any clues that were there. So
Speaker 1: I'm actually sending you something right now. I mean, she's
Speaker 1: got an email from drop box. She's based in South Dakota,
Speaker 1: so we had to send her Cordiney's phone. I was
Speaker 1: nervous that the phone could get lost, because you know,
Speaker 1: that was all that I had of him, and it
Speaker 1: was evidence. So I was just nervous of it leaving
Speaker 1: my presence. These are precious things to me. It was
Speaker 1: about a week and a half when we received the
Speaker 1: phone back. It came back safe and sound, thank god.
Speaker 1: Plus it came back with a detail log of all
Speaker 1: Cortneys calls texts with time stamps as accurate as they
Speaker 1: can get. I calmbed through them with my family. When
Speaker 1: did he make the nine one one? Carl at one
Speaker 1: sixty three, so from one level, it had to be
Speaker 1: about one twelve. Now after this, okay, I'm going We
Speaker 1: were looking for signs that Courtney was in trouble, that
Speaker 1: something was going on, but we didn't see anything. The
Speaker 1: only thing that we found was him goofing off with
Speaker 1: his friends and also singing and dancing and making videos.
Speaker 1: Then we looked at the day he was killed. I
Speaker 1: wanted to see exactly when Courtney and Alma were in touch.
Speaker 1: He sent her a text in top of the morning
Speaker 1: at am. She rolled back a few hours later, and
Speaker 1: then they were texting all afternoon, lots of heart emojis.
Speaker 1: He messaged her again about ten PM from a World
Speaker 1: Venturous presentation. He was in the city training a new
Speaker 1: recruit Casey. Everybody was really happy like um. By the
Speaker 1: end of the night, we ended up listening to music
Speaker 1: and he was wrapping, which was really cool. I found
Speaker 1: the photo of Cordney circled up around a kitchen table
Speaker 1: with some friend He's wearing his favorite red hoodie and
Speaker 1: everyone is holding Dixie cups. Corney is doing a hand
Speaker 1: gesture and basically it's the rock on sign. Corney was
Speaker 1: always doing the rock on side and pictures rock on dude.
Speaker 1: You know, right about midnight, Courtney text Alma saying I
Speaker 1: need to book a massage super sore. Then Alma text
Speaker 1: him back, I got you. Corney says when, and she
Speaker 1: wrote today. Then just before one in the morning, Corney
Speaker 1: headed to her house and Belmont Craigan. On the way there,
Speaker 1: Courtney was just being his social butterfly self. He was
Speaker 1: on his phone. He was talking to friends and chatting
Speaker 1: on Facebook Messenger. He texts Alma, I'm outside. She texts back,
Speaker 1: what really, and he was like, yo, okay, I'm going,
Speaker 1: she said, meaning that she was headed downstairs to open
Speaker 1: the gate. From the phone records and parking tickets that
Speaker 1: we found, we know that Courtney and Alma had this
Speaker 1: little routine. He drive down her street, cut through the alley,
Speaker 1: and parked by the church where he could leave his
Speaker 1: car overnight, right by this gold statue of Jesus arms
Speaker 1: open wide. Courtney would text Alma saying he arrived, so
Speaker 1: she go downstairs and opened the gate for him. They
Speaker 1: did this several nights a week, over and over again.
Speaker 1: Ali Park Alma, Ali Park Alma. And that night on
Speaker 1: March four, Corney sent his last text to Alma at
Speaker 1: one eleven in the morning, but he never showed up
Speaker 1: at her door. I've been uh living in ministering here
Speaker 1: for nineteen years already. This is Father Richard Ballas. He's
Speaker 1: a Catholic priest at the church on the corner St.
Speaker 1: Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr. Father Ballas lives on the second
Speaker 1: floor of the church rectory. I know there was a
Speaker 1: shooting movie here right in front of the rectory between
Speaker 1: the two streets there. I remember that, and they put
Speaker 1: flowers there, and but I don't remember the name. I'm
Speaker 1: probably numb to a lot of this. And what about
Speaker 1: that police station right there? Do you have any interaction
Speaker 1: with the police there ever? Well, yeah, the the policemen
Speaker 1: very good to us. We used to have perish carnivals
Speaker 1: every year, and of course for security we had the
Speaker 1: police at that. The previous pastor stopped it because of
Speaker 1: games the gangs in Belmont Craigan. It feels safe during
Speaker 1: the day. There's parks and schools, but at night it's
Speaker 1: a different story. I had one, two, three, four or
Speaker 1: five six eight cameras. This is Jerry Brito. He's a
Speaker 1: mechanic who's lived in Bellmont Craigan for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Down the street from the church where Courtney used to
Speaker 1: park to go to Alma's. Jerry's put up cameras all
Speaker 1: over his property. He says, some years are quiet, some
Speaker 1: years are really rough, like when someone moves out and
Speaker 1: some of the people move in and they start selling drugs,
Speaker 1: or they have people are joining gangs and they bring
Speaker 1: the gangs over in Bellmont Craigan. The gangs are mostly Hispanic.
Speaker 1: You've got the stylers, the Royals, and the Patucos. Then
Speaker 1: there's the Four Corner Hustlers, a black gang. They've all
Speaker 1: got their territories. Jerry says the police come to his
Speaker 1: house all the time to pull his camera footage because
Speaker 1: the city's cameras don't always work. They even got his
Speaker 1: videos for Courtney's case. They always respectful and they'd tried
Speaker 1: to do the best they can with what they have.
Speaker 1: And when the city's cameras don't work, the gang bangers
Speaker 1: know it. If they've been shooting. They know that they
Speaker 1: can get away with it. To the camera is not working,
Speaker 1: that's a problem, if you ask me, He's right. Broken
Speaker 1: cameras are a serious problem around Chicago. Citizens pay for
Speaker 1: them to help solve crimes, but often they don't work,
Speaker 1: like the camera on the corner by Alma's place, the
Speaker 1: most critic called camera. Courtney's police file says that camera
Speaker 1: didn't capture anything because of a DVR error. Chapralle and
Speaker 1: I've gone over this quite a lot. She's still suspicious.
Speaker 1: It just tells me, like this whole pod cameras and
Speaker 1: all these things, I just don't trust it that camera
Speaker 1: would have shown Courtney going down that street and turning
Speaker 1: into the alleyway. We've gone out to the neighborhood several
Speaker 1: times to track down other cameras to see if police
Speaker 1: missed any. Did they get this one? I wonder if
Speaker 1: they got the better Yeah, so they have cameras too.
Speaker 1: We don't know if they get that. We did find
Speaker 1: cameras that were not noted in their reports, but it's
Speaker 1: possible they were put up after Courtney's death, so we
Speaker 1: didn't have any footage, but we knew there had to
Speaker 1: be more information out there. I believe that somebody knows something,
Speaker 1: somebody saw something, and it just takes a lot of
Speaker 1: courage um from somebody to tell what they saw. All
Speaker 1: the police file on Courtney's case was thin. They only
Speaker 1: documented interviews with a handful of people, So we decided
Speaker 1: to go back and reinterview everyone the detectives talked to.
Speaker 1: That meant it was time to talk to Alma, Courtney's
Speaker 1: secret girlfriend. Alma and I haven't really been in touch,
Speaker 1: but now Allison really wanted to talk to her. So
Speaker 1: almost two years after Courtney's death, I text Alma to
Speaker 1: see if she would meet with us. As I was
Speaker 1: texting her back and forth, Alma mentioned something something that
Speaker 1: she never told me before, and I think it's totally
Speaker 1: crazy that she will withhold this information. She said she
Speaker 1: heard gunshots the night Courtney died. I asked her that
Speaker 1: question the day after Courtney was killed, I asked her
Speaker 1: did she hear anything? Did she see anything? And this
Speaker 1: girl never once told me that she heard gunshots the
Speaker 1: night that he died. Hi there your Alma. Hi'm Allison.
Speaker 1: Very nice to meet you. Thank you for setting us
Speaker 1: side the time. This is Bill in February, I arranged
Speaker 1: a meeting. We met up with her on the North
Speaker 1: side of Chicago in Uptown, where Alma works at a
Speaker 1: cell phone shop. I remember it was freezing outside, so
Speaker 1: we used a conference room in a lawyer's office nearby. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, you were probably like, oh, I don't want
Speaker 1: to go out, and now we're literally right around the corner.
Speaker 1: I sat next to Alma, Bill and Allison sat across
Speaker 1: the table. All the microphones and the fact that we
Speaker 1: were in a law office made it feel sort of
Speaker 1: like an interrogation. And Alma, she definitely looked tense. The
Speaker 1: way she was sitting. It was like she was protecting herself.
Speaker 1: I was just praying that she would finally tell us
Speaker 1: everything she knew. I was just ready to put myself
Speaker 1: in her train of thought and let her tell her story.
Speaker 1: Alma played us some videos of Courtney when we first
Speaker 1: sat down. This was like one of those good morning videos,
Speaker 1: like he was awake, was everybody else doing? It's him?
Speaker 1: And he was always trying to make me laugh because
Speaker 1: I was always really serious. That was him all the time.
Speaker 1: He'll say the USA or not the US, that let's
Speaker 1: get it. Did the people you work with now that
Speaker 1: you guys were romantically involved. No, okay, so it was
Speaker 1: sort of on the down though, Yes, okay, how did
Speaker 1: you feel about that? Um? I was fine with that.
Speaker 1: It was it was a little bit complicated, just because
Speaker 1: of the way that our team is set up. They've
Speaker 1: been keeping their relationship a secret for months, but Courtney
Speaker 1: had become close with her three kids. Well, I told
Speaker 1: my son that Courtney passed and he asked me what happened,
Speaker 1: and I told him that he was shot, and he
Speaker 1: just started crying. Did he ask a lot of questions? Um? No.
Speaker 1: After that, he just he didn't want to be outside.
Speaker 1: He would always tell me we had to hurry up.
Speaker 1: Do you sense that the kids are still afraid? For
Speaker 1: a long time, they were like coming home from school,
Speaker 1: my son would say, we have to starry up because
Speaker 1: I don't want to die. We went back to that night.
Speaker 1: We asked Alma to walk us through what she remembered.
Speaker 1: H He messaged me like around close to one in
Speaker 1: the morning, and then uh, he asked me if I
Speaker 1: was home, if he could come over. She said she
Speaker 1: was in her room listening to music on her headphones
Speaker 1: and her roommate Brianna came in to tell her that
Speaker 1: she was making a late night run to Walgreens. As
Speaker 1: she was telling me that we heard two gunshots and
Speaker 1: a car drive off. And was that before or after
Speaker 1: you'd gone downstairs to be ready to open the door. No,
Speaker 1: that was before we heard the gunshots, like as I
Speaker 1: was receiving the text message that he was there. So
Speaker 1: the text message came in and we heard the gun
Speaker 1: shots at the same time. She went downstairs to open
Speaker 1: the gate as usual, but Courtney wasn't there. What did
Speaker 1: you think happened at that point in time. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was a little bit worried, but it's not It's
Speaker 1: not unlike him to change plans quickly. Because I almost
Speaker 1: said she heard gunshots right as she got Courtney's text
Speaker 1: saying I'm outside. It was one eleven am. But that
Speaker 1: just didn't make sense to us because we knew that
Speaker 1: four minutes after Courtney text Alma, he was still alive
Speaker 1: and well. He was messing around on his phone Facebook,
Speaker 1: messaging his friend Brandon, who had just gotten a new job.
Speaker 1: Courtney wrote to Brandon, nice, bro, You're gonna kill it man.
Speaker 1: Courtney sent that text message to Brandon at one fifteen am.
Speaker 1: That was four minutes after he texts Alma and the
Speaker 1: Forends that expert confirmed those times. Allison showed Alma the
Speaker 1: timeline we put together, so we have if you're hearing
Speaker 1: the shots here, obviously he's not gonna be doing He's
Speaker 1: not gonna be text you know, saying to Brandon, nice bro,
Speaker 1: you're gonna kill it man. So does this at all
Speaker 1: like revising your brain what might have happened, or like
Speaker 1: when you might have heard the shots? Does this refresh
Speaker 1: anything for you? It doesn't make sense. Okay, but you're
Speaker 1: you're pretty competent that you heard the shots before you said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go open the door. It was between
Speaker 1: here and here. My text messages were back to back.
Speaker 1: Did it sound like distance or did it sound really close?
Speaker 1: It sounded close. It was two of them pretty like
Speaker 1: back to back. It sounded like they were either on
Speaker 1: the street or like on the block over, but they
Speaker 1: were close. It didn't sound like it was just a
Speaker 1: when you heard the shots, as you think, oh that
Speaker 1: that could be Courtney or did it not even cross
Speaker 1: your mind? It didn't cross my mind because around that time,
Speaker 1: like there was just a lot of things going on
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood, so we had heard gunshots before, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was it wasn't something that was like out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary. We kept asking Alma to replay this moment.
Speaker 1: Was she really sure about her timing? Almost in her
Speaker 1: bedroom with her roommate, there's music on her headphones, and
Speaker 1: then they hear gunshots? How many shots too? And did
Speaker 1: you all make eye contact or acknowledge that you had
Speaker 1: both just heard shots? Or was it just so commonplace
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't even have a reaction. Really well, I
Speaker 1: had my headphones on, so I took him on off,
Speaker 1: and she was like, did you hear that? And I
Speaker 1: said yeah, but I wasn't sure. So after that, she
Speaker 1: said that she was going to the store, and I
Speaker 1: told her that she should wait because we didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on. She went to all grants, did
Speaker 1: she see anything not on her way there? Um, when
Speaker 1: she was on her way back from the store, she
Speaker 1: said that there were police officers with flashlights looking up
Speaker 1: and down the street like they were looking for something.
Speaker 1: So I couldn't understand why I took almost so long
Speaker 1: to speak up about this. I specifically asked her after
Speaker 1: corney died more than once. If she had heard any shots,
Speaker 1: I was piste off and I know I'll both positive.
Speaker 1: I asked, did you hear anything? But I never recalled
Speaker 1: you saying anything like that, So I was like, when
Speaker 1: you said it, I was like, because we were we
Speaker 1: were piecing together at the timeline, we we had to
Speaker 1: figure that somebody else would have had to have heard something.
Speaker 1: So that's why that question I posed that to you,
Speaker 1: And so I was like, okay, because that was like
Speaker 1: an important piece of information. Just at the time I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure. I felt like I had to be sure.
Speaker 1: Even if Alma wasn't sure, she still should have told
Speaker 1: me something. And she didn't even tell the detectives when
Speaker 1: they came to our house that morning, she said no.
Speaker 1: One't even asked her about the shots. Instead, they asked
Speaker 1: her about the password to Courtney's phone. To his phone,
Speaker 1: I told him he has a kN iPhone, it's his fingerprint.
Speaker 1: He didn't never passwords his finger print. By the time
Speaker 1: that we got the phone back, the phone's on locks,
Speaker 1: so they probably had to take his finger and to
Speaker 1: lock his phone. The police got into Courtney's phone just
Speaker 1: hours after he died. They put in their report that
Speaker 1: Courtney's pass code was his birthday. Now, I know that
Speaker 1: couldn't be true because he had way too many girlfriends
Speaker 1: to do something like that. When the police talked to Alma,
Speaker 1: they wanted to see her phone too, and they just
Speaker 1: looked at it and they said it wasn't gonna be
Speaker 1: much help, and they just handed me back my phone.
Speaker 1: How long did they have her phone far, maybe like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, just opened it and he looked up and down.
Speaker 1: And they never asked you if you heard anything, or
Speaker 1: they didn't consider your witness. No. After that, they just
Speaker 1: gave me their business card and they said that they
Speaker 1: were going to call me to speak with me. And
Speaker 1: after that I never heard from them. There's just a
Speaker 1: few lines and Courtney's foul about the police talking to Alma.
Speaker 1: But then there's another report about one of Alma's ex boyfriends.
Speaker 1: His name was Kevin, but he also went by Hawk.
Speaker 1: They all worked together. Alma and Courtney actually met for
Speaker 1: the first time at a birthday party for Hawk. Alma
Speaker 1: said Hawk Kevin tried to start a fight with Courtney
Speaker 1: that now, Courtney says something to me, like, you know,
Speaker 1: we were at a birthday party, people were having drinks.
Speaker 1: Um he said something to me him and I laughed
Speaker 1: it off. Kevin overheard, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: there was like an exchange of words, and then Kevin
Speaker 1: tried to fight Courtney. I think he was just jealous
Speaker 1: of how Courtney was as a person and how other
Speaker 1: people reacted to him. I think that was really it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't anything else, someone told the police. After Courtney died,
Speaker 1: Hawk posted then deleted a message on Facebook saying sorry Courtney,
Speaker 1: you can take that different ways. But then three of
Speaker 1: Courtney's friends remember another message he posted on Snapchat saying
Speaker 1: something like, Lord, forgive me because would he have even
Speaker 1: known that Courtney was on rout to your place morning? No,
Speaker 1: that day, after I came back from the hospital, he
Speaker 1: came to my house and he asked me what Courtney
Speaker 1: was doing on his way to my house. So he
Speaker 1: was surprised to learn that you two were seeing each other.
Speaker 1: I don't think, I mean, no one knows until now.
Speaker 1: And again, you didn't feel like he could be involved
Speaker 1: in this in some way, No, like no chance or
Speaker 1: like probably probably not. Since Courtney died, I've been asking
Speaker 1: Alma about her other ex boyfriends. She told me one
Speaker 1: was in prison. We looked it up. He was in
Speaker 1: for attempted murder. Another X was just getting out of
Speaker 1: jail when Courtney was killed. But all the way in
Speaker 1: New Jersey. We asked Alma if she had any suspicions
Speaker 1: of who killed Courtney. No, not, who might have done it.
Speaker 1: I know that um, Like down the street from where
Speaker 1: I live, there's a house that UM this guy like
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's a game member. He lives there.
Speaker 1: We ended up getting into the conversation of what happened
Speaker 1: to Courtney, and he told me he's like, it wasn't
Speaker 1: anyone from this neighborhood. He's like, I think someone mistook
Speaker 1: him for someone else. Wait a goddamn it, Al'm waa
Speaker 1: talk to this guy and he knows something about what
Speaker 1: happened to my son. And she never told me this either.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I had the whole my tongue. Y'all.
Speaker 1: When did you have the conversation with the guy who
Speaker 1: lives in that house about what he said happened? Um?
Speaker 1: It was I don't remember the exact day. It was
Speaker 1: like two days after I got punched in the face,
Speaker 1: so like my eye was a little swollen, and I
Speaker 1: had like a hoodie on and um when I was
Speaker 1: walking down the street, he saw me with my eyes
Speaker 1: swollen and he asked me, you know who hit me?
Speaker 1: Said no, I got punched the face. Do you mind
Speaker 1: telling us what happened? Alma looked over at me. Bill
Speaker 1: and Alison looked at me too. I hadn't told them
Speaker 1: about this, the punching incident. It happened at my place.
Speaker 1: A couple of days after Courtney died. I was at
Speaker 1: Chapelle's house. Uh, talking to someone there and what happen?
Speaker 1: Punched in the face? What who chappar? Can you enlighten us?
Speaker 1: Is Courtney's cousin. This was honestly pretty embarrassing for me
Speaker 1: because when I invited Alma to my house, I wanted
Speaker 1: her to feel comfortable, but then this crazy cousin of
Speaker 1: Courtney's physically attacked Alma. We were just talking. They asked
Speaker 1: me what happened that day. I told him exactly what
Speaker 1: I remembered, and then in the middle of the conversation,
Speaker 1: they said, you killed my cousin and they punched me
Speaker 1: in the face. Why did the person accuse you of that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's just what he said. Everybody was
Speaker 1: trying to find out what happened to Courtney, and everybody
Speaker 1: was trying to lay blame from where because it just
Speaker 1: didn't make sense. My family was like, he shouldn't be
Speaker 1: over in that neighborhood. That's that's the Hispanic neighborhood. Why
Speaker 1: is he over there? He's with that girl, you know.
Speaker 1: That's how they felt. This is why things were strained
Speaker 1: between me and Almas since Courtney died. Why will she
Speaker 1: cooperate with us after I let her get punched in
Speaker 1: the face. But let's get back to Alma's neighbor. The
Speaker 1: guy who seemed to know something. Do you know his name?
Speaker 1: I don't. I just you know what he looks like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's uh, shorter than myself. He has really long hair,
Speaker 1: like don't pass his waist, and he has a few tattoos. Um,
Speaker 1: but he's old. Is walking around the neighborhood. The day
Speaker 1: after Courtney was shot, he said that his house was
Speaker 1: rated by him by the police. They came in searching
Speaker 1: his house. I never seen anything about this guy and
Speaker 1: the police file, no raid, no nothing. But I had
Speaker 1: a vague recollection of him too. I remember like after
Speaker 1: the shooting when we were all in Belmont Craigan passing
Speaker 1: out reward flyers. I do remember a man with long
Speaker 1: black hair standing on his deck talking on his cell phone.
Speaker 1: Just then a bunch of kids came out on bikes
Speaker 1: to see what we were doing, as though he sent
Speaker 1: them over or something. It felt strange, but there was
Speaker 1: so much going on at the time. I just fouled
Speaker 1: it away. Thank you so much time. This was like therapy.
Speaker 1: Never talked about him right. We said goodbye to Alma
Speaker 1: and headed back into the colde. The next day, my
Speaker 1: aunt Kim came over. Kim and I were raised like
Speaker 1: sisters because we're so close in age. I need to
Speaker 1: see the report that the police took on her. I
Speaker 1: told her all the details of our interview with Alma.
Speaker 1: Reread this stuff being I'm saying, I'm like, oh that, mommy.
Speaker 1: I told him about Alma hearing shots after all the
Speaker 1: problems with her timeline in this new story about the
Speaker 1: guy with the long hair, all the stuff the police
Speaker 1: had missed. They barely asked her anything when they talked
Speaker 1: to her hours after Courtney died. They didn't speak to
Speaker 1: her roommate either. They just never followed up when you
Speaker 1: when you getting somebody and you interview right now, you
Speaker 1: still actually new same question, just to see if it
Speaker 1: lays up. You want to know what you are. Did
Speaker 1: you see anybody running? How many shots? None of that
Speaker 1: stuff was asked. Police hadn't given me any updates, hadn't
Speaker 1: told me what they thought happened to Courtney. But it
Speaker 1: turns out Nurse Hawkins from the e R said police
Speaker 1: told her that very night Courtney came in what they
Speaker 1: thought happened a car jacking, and they they still want
Speaker 1: to He tried the car jacking on and he sped away.
Speaker 1: They shot into the car. He drove to the police
Speaker 1: station and asked for help, saying that he had got shot,
Speaker 1: and that's when they called the paramedics. This whole thing
Speaker 1: is just get stranger and stranger by the minute. I
Speaker 1: have theories in my head. Who knows, but somebody covering
Speaker 1: for somebody. So when Alma told us that this long
Speaker 1: hair guy down the street said police raided his house
Speaker 1: the day after Corney died, we needed to know more.
Speaker 1: We looked, but we couldn't find a record of the raid.
Speaker 1: But we did find lots of other times police were
Speaker 1: sent to this house, including for shots fired. Police found
Speaker 1: shell cases and everything. So a few weeks after our
Speaker 1: interview with Alma, Allison and Bill took a team to
Speaker 1: Belmont Craigan to find this guy. So I'm gonna pull
Speaker 1: up to the church and then we can look at
Speaker 1: see if there are any skid marks. Yeah, that's very
Speaker 1: close to where it's like right behind where Courtney would
Speaker 1: have potentially been shot, like you know, on the opposite
Speaker 1: side of the church. Five teller suit you. We walked
Speaker 1: up to the gate of his house. Sure enough, this
Speaker 1: guy was standing on his second floor deck and he
Speaker 1: had long hair, just like Alma described. We called to him.
Speaker 1: We didn't record because we didn't want to scare him off.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't come down, he wouldn't give us his name
Speaker 1: or phone number, but he talked to us from the deck.
Speaker 1: He said he didn't remember Courtney shooting, but he did
Speaker 1: remember that he was asleep that particular night March four,
Speaker 1: two years before then. He told us it was a
Speaker 1: black guy who got shot. When we asked if he
Speaker 1: had any trouble with police in the area, he said
Speaker 1: he couldn't talk about that because he works with them
Speaker 1: providing janitorial services. He wished us luck. He said we
Speaker 1: were doing a good thing for the family. We dug
Speaker 1: around and got his arrest records. His rap sheet is long.
Speaker 1: Once he was arrested for driving a car in an
Speaker 1: armed robbery, but most of the cases against him have
Speaker 1: been dropped in court. I hope you goings. Thank you
Speaker 1: for making what we were doing. A few weeks later,
Speaker 1: Alma put us in touch with her former roommate Brianna,
Speaker 1: the one she'd been living with whom Courtney was killed.
Speaker 1: I met up with her at a dunkin Donuts. She
Speaker 1: remembers the night when Courtney was shot, but says she
Speaker 1: was the one who heard the shots, not Alma Um.
Speaker 1: So when I heard it, I went up to her
Speaker 1: and I had asked her if she had heard anything,
Speaker 1: and she let me know that she was in her room.
Speaker 1: She had her headphones on so she couldn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: So their stories didn't fully line up. But Brianna also
Speaker 1: remembered that guy who lived a few doors down. He
Speaker 1: had like longer hair, um black hair, and he um
Speaker 1: he had a couple of tattoos. Do you know if
Speaker 1: you ever tried to talk to Alma just um, they
Speaker 1: would pass by through the neighborhood and it was just
Speaker 1: a high and by as far as I know, at
Speaker 1: the time of the shooting in Brianna was dating Christian Hernandez,
Speaker 1: the guy who co signed for Courtney's BMW. So a
Speaker 1: few days after I talked to Brianna, Chapel and I
Speaker 1: talked to Christian, he came over to Chapel's place with
Speaker 1: his new girlfriend and their baby. How old. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: congratulations boy girl. Okay, I have a little boy too,
Speaker 1: he's nineteen months old. Can't wait, Collete. We settled in
Speaker 1: around the dining room table and started talking. Christian said
Speaker 1: that right after Courtney died at a candlelight vigil, Almah
Speaker 1: told him she had her shots. She told me when
Speaker 1: Abriel was outside right here with the candles, And I
Speaker 1: asked it, did you tell Chapel? She said he yes,
Speaker 1: but she did not tell chaparl And I talked to
Speaker 1: five of Courtney's other friends who had been in touch
Speaker 1: with Alma in the days following. Almah didn't tell them
Speaker 1: about hearing shots either. Then Christian's girlfriend nudged him. She'd
Speaker 1: been quiet most of the interview, but it was clear
Speaker 1: she wanted him to tell us something. He seemed tentative,
Speaker 1: like he didn't want to say I had. It was
Speaker 1: about Alma and something she posted to Facebook the same
Speaker 1: night I met with Brianna. What are you going to
Speaker 1: tell them that the thea she called you that he
Speaker 1: went on Facebook and he's seen and he showed it
Speaker 1: to me. Alma put an emoji with like the zipper
Speaker 1: face and like that. I don't know how what's a
Speaker 1: called is doing this? And I told herm like, well
Speaker 1: that's weird. Christian's girlfriend made a sign with her hands,
Speaker 1: that thing Courtney always did in photos. Alma had posted
Speaker 1: two emojis, the rock on emoji and the zipper face.
Speaker 1: Then she stopped responding to Chapelle's text messages. Her lips
Speaker 1: were zipped coming out. If Alma wasn't we need to
Speaker 1: find someone who would so. A couple of weeks later,
Speaker 1: we met up with the World Ventures guy named June.
Speaker 1: He's a heavy set guy with a fuzzy beard, about
Speaker 1: forty years old. He's a DJ. He works at a
Speaker 1: tire shop and he also has a cigar company. He's
Speaker 1: always talking about it on Facebook. I just want to
Speaker 1: know who's ready for Rooftop Evact. It's gonna be exclusively,
Speaker 1: gonna have a hand roller. He's gonna host the show.
Speaker 1: Tell us what's in the tobacco, what the tobacco was worth,
Speaker 1: how to savor it, how to roll it. June knows
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I got an ear to the streets.
Speaker 1: I talked to everybody, actually everybody with autmost respects. So
Speaker 1: people respect me and they'll help me whatever way you can.
Speaker 1: June wouldn't say too much about his past with gangs,
Speaker 1: but he did say this. In Chicago, if you're not
Speaker 1: you're labeled as one, and majority of time you have
Speaker 1: no choice. It's by where you live or by who
Speaker 1: your family is, and you have no choice but to
Speaker 1: be what it is. Jim came with us the first
Speaker 1: time we went around the neighborhood a couple of days
Speaker 1: after Courtney died. So when I found out what had
Speaker 1: happened the first day there was reached out to local gangbangers.
Speaker 1: Um none of them took admitts to it, and they
Speaker 1: won't lie to me, so if something did happen, they
Speaker 1: would tell me the truth. And I found out in
Speaker 1: the past maybe about three other murders, and I found
Speaker 1: out who it was within a week or two weeks
Speaker 1: of it happening, and I've had gang members tell me
Speaker 1: all this guy did it, such or such did it
Speaker 1: because they know the innocent should have never gone touched.
Speaker 1: After asking around, June gotta leave that Courtney's murder might
Speaker 1: have been a case of mistaken identity. He said he'd
Speaker 1: heard the Four Corner Hustlers was beefing with another gang
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. They had said there was some Hispanic
Speaker 1: guys running around in that neighborhood. So they had claimed
Speaker 1: as a possibility that maybe they had confused him for
Speaker 1: somebody else. So I had to follow that lead as well.
Speaker 1: It was falsible, m hmm. Before we left, June told
Speaker 1: us a bunch of rumors he heard about Courtney's murder.
Speaker 1: He heard that Courtney was killed while buying weed. He
Speaker 1: heard the police did it, and that's why the camera
Speaker 1: supposedly didn't work by Alma's house. But we needed facts,
Speaker 1: and we needed witnesses, and soon we were going to
Speaker 1: find them. Every Body. The song by every Day No
Speaker 1: by These Noting Somebody is a co production of The
Speaker 1: Invisible Institute, The Intercept Topic Studios, and I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in association with Tenderfoot TV. I'm chaparral Wells. This podcast
Speaker 1: is produced by Alison Flowers and Bill Heally. Sarah Guice
Speaker 1: is our story editor. Ellen Glover is our associate producer
Speaker 1: for The Invisible Institute. Jamie Calvin is executive producer for
Speaker 1: Topic Studio. Maria Zuckerman, Christie Gressman and Leta Malod are
Speaker 1: executive producers. Special thanks to Lizzie Jacobs for the intercept.
Speaker 1: Roger Hodge, Deputy Editor, is supervising producer. Sound designed by
Speaker 1: Carl Scott and Bart Warshaw. Michael Rayphael is our mixed engineer.
Speaker 1: Our theme song, Everybody's Something is by Chance The Rapper.
Speaker 1: Original music for the podcast by Nate Fox of The
Speaker 1: Social Experiment and Eric Butler. Additional reporting by Sam Steklow,
Speaker 1: Annie Winkhari Blackburn, Raji Sinclair, Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana
Speaker 1: Brozo's kellerher Francis McDonald, Diana Archmagian, Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan
Speaker 1: and risa Apantaku. Translations support by Benny Hernandez Occampo and
Speaker 1: Emma Perez. Fact checking by Noah are Jenny. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Chris Rasmussen Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic, David Brelow, and
Speaker 1: Julie Wolf. We want to hear from you. Email us
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Speaker 1: for links to additional materials, go to our show page
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Speaker 1: list of everyone we want to think there so many
Speaker 1: people helped us along the way.