What She Buried | 5. All the Kwanetas

0:00Hi there, it's Jonathan Beness from Getting Better with Jonathan Vaness. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been in this fight since 1949, and honestly, 250 years into the American experiment, it's time we all decide what kind of country we actually want to be. The founding fathers got plenty wrong, but keeping Church and State separate, they got that one right. Right now, Christian nationalists are trying to erase that history. They're misusing government power to push their beliefs, rewrite what America looks like, and decide who gets to belong here. Americans United is holding a line against every bit of it. They've sued the Trump administration seven times in the past year alone, 12 times since its second term started. They're calling out officials who use our tax dollars to push their religion, defending public schools, and making sure the government actually follows the Constitution. None of that happens without people like you. If you want to be part of a community that's actually doing something about this, go to aew.org slash getting dash better. Enjoy the fight.

1:03Because when America is divided, we are Americans United. Listen to every episode of What She Bairied, add free right now when you subscribe to the binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else, get exclusive bonus episodes, and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to the binge channel on Apple podcasts and tap subscribe, or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are. The binge feed your true crime obsession. After the Erica Flores fiasco, it was undeniable. Even among people charged with heavy crimes, a difficult demographic to begin with, Quenetta was a challenging client. She was a defendant in a murder trial, who, while out on bond, seems to have staged an elaborate

2:05ruse to coerce a 19-year-old single mother into giving police a false confession. It would be a lot for any attorney to deal with. The day after Erica's false confession, Quenetta's lawyer quit. He told me, I do the slicing and dicing. When the defendant starts to slice and dice, I gotta go. The court appointed Quenetta a new representation. Robby McClellan and Richard Franklin. They were professional partners, but when I met them, they had that look that married couples get after spending decades together, kind of matching. The Richard is balding with gray hair and tortoise shell glasses, and Robby is blonde with bright lipstick heels. They'd worked countless murders, manslaughter, aggravated assaults, aggravated robberies. And yet, as always, Quenetta stood out. Dealing with Quenetta was hard. It was a stretch for me because there were so many different

3:08sides of her that she tried to play, and it was just very difficult because I never knew which Quenetta was coming out that day. Who were the different Quenetas? There's the Quenetta that was the rape survivor. There was the Quenetta that was the abused woman. There was the Quenetta that was trying to save her husband from being sent off to some foreign land. We're fighting was occurring. I mean, you picked the day. She's got a different story as to why her life is the way it is. All the Quenetas. It certainly felt to me like Robby wasn't too fond of any of them, but she and Richard would nonetheless mount Ezealous Defense for their problematic client. We were blaming this murder on her boyfriend, right? Were you? Well, that's what I'm asking. I thought we were. Yeah, they were. It had been a while. She maintained that she was innocent, that he did it,

4:15and that he was the brain's mind the whole thing, and he was forcing her to do it. She had to do what he said. Okay, so that's what we were going with. He, as in Deandre, Quenetta's boyfriend, he did it. This seemed to be the best approach, as far as Richard and Robby could see, because there was tons of evidence that Quenetta had orchestrated a financial fraud to steal Michael Giles' money, and that Quenetta had set up Erika Flores. But when it came to proving that Quenetta had actually pulled the trigger, that was where things got murky. And if the trial came down to why Quenetta might have pulled the trigger, they were going to get murkier still. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is what she buried. I'm Justine Vanderlin. Episode 5. All the Quenetta's.

5:16There's no direct evidence she had done the crime. Nobody saw her do it. She didn't admit to do it. She actually said she never did it. Josh Healy was the lead prosecutor in Quenetta's case. Remember how Erika Flores was convinced to take part in a sting operation that would expose a racist DA with a scar on his head? That's Josh. There's nothing to suggest that he's ever been part of any racist conspiracy, but he does have a scar on his head, which is an unusually shiny head. When I met Josh Healy at his office, now he's in private practice, a defense attorney. He had his feet up on his desk in this room stuffed with files. He'd beckon me in. He'd done a lot of press about this case, and he was always open to talking about Quenetta. And when he did, this big juicy grin spread across his face.

6:17What Josh lacked in direct evidence of the crime, he made up for it in circumstantial evidence. The concrete slap, the money trail, Erika Flores. And Josh's favorite part of all? Quenetta's search histories. We had our computers in our cell phones. You know, how to kill someone without leaving a mess, how to clean blood off a couch. One way tickets out of Dallas around that time, you know, just the craziest searches. Josh Healy put the highlights, things that could help him best make his case, in his prosecutor's notes. They read, Defendant looks up images of the brain on victim's computer. Defendant searches the value of victim's house. Defendant searches blood stain removal hints at doityourself.com. Defendant searches, how do I get blood out of furniture on esk.com? It was going to be challenging for Richard and Robbie to explain all of that away at trial. Josh knew he had the advantage. And it was clear that he really wanted Quenetta locked up.

7:20This one was personal. I always said if I end up dead, there's like five people to look at, and she's one. Just, I mean, that's an nature of our business when I was a BA at that level. We're the other four. Josh Death penalty guys, you know, serial killer, racist killer. Had one, they didn't seek death, but he killed two people and it was just evil. Just bad people. Josh You put her up with them. Josh Yes, she probably works because she's got half a brain. To be honest, I mean, there are certain people that deserve to be rotting in hell from what I call prison. And she is one of them for what she did to that guy. So I wondered when Josh was dealing with Quenetta, what was it about her that made her especially terrifying? Had he felt it in person when he interacted with her? When she was like first in jail, did you meet her? Well, I can't talk to her without her lawyer present. I'm not allowed to.

8:22When she was in jail and for the bond hearing I saw her there, yes, but I can't talk to her until she, I don't know if I've ever had a conversation with her. Oh, Josh had never actually spoken to Quenetta. He just formed this idea of her. And the idea, it didn't just come from the crime he was charging her with. Josh will love to tell us everything. He takes right to stop us in the hallway and tell us all sorts of terrible things about our client. Why? As Josh. That's Josh. He likes to talk. He does. He likes to talk. So he'll tell us stuff. He'll tell us stuff. And show us stuff. And there was some gross stuff that he found from her to various people out there that he showed us. What kind of gross stuff? What she was sending a picture out of her private parts. Oh, there we go. Okay. And Josh had had it on the big screen in his office that look what's not good.

9:28But by the same token, it was not going to be admissible in evidence either. The pictures had been found by the police when they searched Quenetta's devices. And Josh had to turn them over to Richard and Robbie as part of discovery. But still, what was the purpose of displaying them on the big screen? That he showed us to say, look, here's what you're dealing with. It sort of strikes me as maybe a little unusual. And maybe it's not for a prosecutor to find say personal photos of somebody's vagina and then have it on his screen. How's it come up? No, no, no, he wouldn't show it to the general public. No, no, but it was stuff that it was it was information that they had acquired by Sopena, you know, they subpoena all this stuff that all the stuff they can get. It's jarring to envision two white men dressed in their suits and ties.

10:33One charged blocking Quenetta up, the other with defending her. Staring at these images of her body, images that were enlarged on a screen. But just in terms of like his curiosity about it, was that have to do with anything? Well, we have the same information he does, okay? And we could have gone through there, we could have gone through our copy of it and found the same thing. We just hadn't gotten that far yet. Well, it kind of it kind of explained a little bit of the oddity of her relationship with men. He does it to get his idea of what he's dealing with and what he wants to do with her. We never came to any kind of agreement at all prior to trial on what we could do with her. The reality here is that there's research that shows that when a woman's sexuality is evoked, people perceive her to be lacking mental capacity and moral status. The legal system itself is based on an idea that most of us hold, even unconsciously,

11:36that in the words of the old-time jurists, chastity equals veracity. That a woman's sexuality is inverse to her truthfulness. Innocence and guilt are all intertwined for women here. For Black women, research shows that this is compounded. They are disproportionately incarcerated, often denied the right to self-defense, and hyper-sexualized from girlhood. It seems unlikely that Queneta knew the full academic backdrop back then. She probably also didn't know that various people were inspecting and chuckling about and pathologizing intimate photos of her as they sifted through all of the discovery documents. But even if she had, by the time Queneta's trial rolled around in October 2009, it was pretty obvious to everyone concerned that she was doomed. Even the judge. Do you remember how quickly you knew that she was guilty?

12:43Well, as a judge, you're not supposed to pre-judge somebody and make that determination until you've heard everything, but day one. The honorable Andy Chattam. Most judges won't speak to the press. Andy, however, he's a media whore. I love this stuff. I will tell you, I've never, he's never met a microphone I didn't like. Maybe a Mr. Career. No, I got a face for radio and voice for newspapers. And when Andy Chattam was faced to face with Queneta during pre-trial hearings, he saw, well, the same person Josh Healy did. Confident, adamant, she was not guilty of this. This is what she does. She's a con artist. She is able to convince people to do things that they would not ordinarily do. The Andy Chattam, it was simple.

13:44She's the cement lady and she will always be the cement lady. There's no other app description that I can think of. It's better. Queneta was up against a system that, from the start, viewed her case as a made for TV spectacle. Here was this master manipulator of men, a harlot who took scandalous photos and victimized an upstanding American veteran. Everyone seemed to agree that Queneta was guilty as hell. She even had a tabloid worthy nickname bestowed on her by the judge. That concept of Queneta as the cement lady, it cast a pole over the proceedings and it made her extra frantic. But the thing that doomed Queneta really wasn't anything that judge or the lawyer said or did. It was that Deandre showed up. So we took her in the back and were like, okay, he is going to talk.

14:45He is going to tell the story. They're going to convict you based on his story and everything else. What do you want us to do? That's when she told us to go ask and see if they would do something less. Queneta knew what she was up against. If convicted, she faced life without the possibility of parole. So she agreed to a plea. 50 years in prison. Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana to a lovely SUV and inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up these male fight.

15:48Some evil thing happened here. Three people die in a quiet suburb in Mississauga, Canada. It's not a coincidence. One after the other in the same house. Is this bad luck or something more sinister? They were worst investigative mess I've ever encountered. Long simmering what took you so fucking long to get here. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is what happened to the Harrison's. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven. What happened to the Harrison's is available now on the binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today. Subscribers to the binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, add free. To accept this recall, press one to refuse this.

16:52Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now. Hi. Oh my god. Hi. I'm so exhausted. I'm just trying to keep the track. Heal me. It had been about a week since our interview across the glass. I was back in New York. Queneta had just returned from the hospital unit. A checkup. She'd been having trouble reaching me on the phone, so she was a little frazzled at first. But pretty soon, she relaxed. And now she seemed almost eager to go where we'd never really gone before. She wanted to walk me through exactly what had happened in those moments before and after Michael Giles died. I already knew about the time surrounding the killing in late June, early July 2006. Queneta's flight to Texas, the days of spaghetti warehouse, of half-priced books, of sex, and arguing. It's hot.

17:53They're both out of sorts. They have it in for each other. So much history. So much resentment. There used to be salad on people, too. Before. They were on cardboard. Same thing happened to the place twenty sixamen in, a house under when they went home on the floor to collect the eggs. For their own own money. Smiling at the suburbs. I had here was yapıl experts, England, but I didn't. Michael wrote, you love to bring up the old and talk trash to me. Queneta wrote, you have ruined my life, my career. I wonder if I go in today if I even have this bullshit job, or if you called and got me fired from that. Michael wrote, I was into you, but you love to fight, love to control.

18:57I want to make some responsibility. Now she was back in town looking for some funds, doing their quid pro quo. So I don't know the timeline, because maybe you know the timeline. But I'm like, okay, you want me to tell you today, you dad, I'll tell you today, you dad. Yes, I do. Please, no, you dad, you dad owned the floor for July that night. In Queneta's telling, the series of events that leads to the killing begins a few hours after Michael Giles mom has gotten the call that he's not coming to the family barbecue. Bickering has turned into full-blown arguing. It's getting really heated. Queneta and Michael had arguments before. He's never been the sweetest guy with her, but he wasn't violent. Until she says, he was. I just remember he was on top. He was on top.

19:57And that's when it started, he was in my ear talking shit. He was on top and then he was mad. I remember he was, you know mad. You just want to be just talking shit. You didn't make it into self-matter. What happened in that room was never recorded or documented. Michael Giles can't respond to accusations. And Queneta only has, well, her word. But then again, violence between people in a romantic relationship that almost always happens behind closed doors, often when tensions run high. And when a man feels he's losing someone or something. And it doesn't just happen to sweet, submissive women. It also happens to women who lie and who scam, who do drugs and do crimes.

21:02Imperfect victims, who nobody will ever fully believe. And when it came to Michael Giles, the fact is that Queneta never accused him of harming her. Michael just the once on the night of his death. Put the gun in me. This isn't the first time Queneta has told me this. In August 2020, after we'd been corresponding for over a year, she gave me a similar account, written down, disjointed, but with the same elements. She wrote, the 9-millimeter came out. His gun. In me. Threats crying, choking. Queneta said that she had a method for when a man was like this.

22:05Did Michael Giles sexually and physically assault Queneta during this moment? You will never know for sure. What I do know is that Queneta had survived abuse before. And so she'd hone certain techniques to subdue an angry man. I remember calm him down. I remember talking him down, but just think that's what I do. That's what I do. Well down, baby. You don't get dirty. I'm comfortable with being at grip. The whole, you know, I shouldn't have been doing this. I know, I know, it's not going to, I know I push you to do this. I know I'm on a white making some man would be, and I know, you know, it's my, I know, I know how to do that. Once Queneta had neutralized the most immediate threat, she had a single goal in mind. I remember just thinking, I'll get the gun. But how do you disarm a military man? One who is not happy with you. He's been finished.

23:07He's shaking. And I remember making him a bowl of ice cream. And now ice cream is, he asked me to pass him his binadriel or something. I knew, Claire, to something in fact, that took a pass a minute. It seemed hard to get him from whatever state he was in, that he had a gun like that into a relax. It took a while. Michael is still upset and Queneta is still reassuring him. Now, in her telling, she coaxes him to lie down on the couch. She straddles him, begins to massage his back. The whole time she's been tracking the gun. Now, with Michael just lying there, she reaches for it. But what happens that you get it and then what you do is shoot him? And what happens there? He didn't even know I had grabbed it and slid it and I think when he reels, I said, remember him pinsy and remember him pinsy.

24:10She lifts the gun, presses it to the back of his head and pulls the trigger. Shooting someone in the head, there does seem to be an element of rage to that. A lot, I guess? No? I think it was more self-dragraging and I shied on it because I didn't want, I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, I knew that I wasn't thinking like, oh, I'm going to shoot him in the head. I don't remember thinking that. It was like a reflex. But why? In that moment, why kill him? What about a less permanent solution? Get the gun and just back out of the house. That's what I should have been. You know how you have argued that it was fun when you don't say the things you're supposed to say, when you're in a shower, you think, oh, this is what I should have said. I had one of those problems. I was never going to call the police because I didn't supposed to be down here. But I should have held it on him. It didn't work like that.

25:13It didn't happen like that. It's easy to come up with better decisions when your years and miles away listening to how a situation unfolded. But people in prison for murder, it goes without saying they made some very big mistakes. And Queneta's conceding to this should have done it differently. Shouldn't have even been there. But once it happened, there was no turning back. Queneta Harris shot Michael Giles one time in the head and then she took off. Did you know that he was dead? I had to be dead. I didn't check. I ran. If you ran, did you take it in? Oh, yeah, I'm sure. I have my phone and I have my purse. Of course, I know that, but I don't know if I don't remember grabbing it, but I had to have it to get in the hotel. You then run straight out. You got your stuff in your mouth. I must have. Because my stuff wasn't in the park, so I must have grabbed it.

26:13Or, you know, grabbed it running out. I think, as I was driving, it was just like... Yeah, I have to know he was dead. But just like, like the way it happens is not like with the emotions and stuff, it's not linear. I had to do it too much. I was scared. And I remember running. And all that driving. And the more I try to back and forth, I didn't see a no banner. Finally, she checks into a hotel just off the interstate. I left the light from. I was supposed to go to the car to light stuff. I wanted to take a shower. I'm scared to get to the start. I just was scared. I don't know what I was just scared afterwards. I don't understand. I was really scared. I can't believe Labor Day is almost here.

27:13I'm not ready to let Summer go just yet. We've got the picnic menu planned, friends are coming over. And my one stop before everyone arrives is always total wine and more. I'll grab a couple bottles of wine, some tropical canned cocktails, plus a few hard celtars like mango, lime, and pineapple. That's why I keep coming back to total wine. The selection is incredible. And with the lowest prices, it's easy to prep for the long weekend. This Labor Day shopped total wine and more. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly, B-21. What Quinnetta told me, it's plausible. It lines up more or less with the stained couch, with the bullet to the brain. Even with the approximate timing that Michael Giles family remembered, that last call to his mother on July 4th. The way Quinnetta talked, flat, about a sexual assault, about Michael Giles actions,

28:14that was, in my experience, interviewing people who've gone through similar things. Normal enough. Some people crumble, some people are removed. I'd heard of driving back and forth after killing someone, running, scared, to crappy hotels, crappy or motels. And most people didn't call the cops. They were not from communities, typically, that had good relationships with law enforcement. Some were already involved in other illegal activities. And also, you panic when you have a dead body. It's natural to think about how to hide it, not how to present yourself to authorities for punishment. I'm not the only one Quinnetta told this version of her story, too. Quinnetta's lawyer, Robbie McCleng, of the Richard and Robbie duo, remembered this account. It's just, it hadn't been useful as a defense. I mean, I remember that story, because the massage part is what clicks it back in my memory,

29:16because I was like, you're giving him a massage and then you shoot him in the back of the head. Really? Wow. I looked at her kind of funny, like, I don't think that's really going to be a defense, because you knew when you were telling him you were going to give him a massage, you knew you were going to shoot him in the back of the head. That's intentional. I mean, it is intentional. I didn't think it was going to be a strategy that was going to get her what she wanted. She wanted it to be like some sort of battered woman syndrome or something. And I'm like, I don't think you're going to get there because you literally picked up again and shot him in the back of the head. That is intentional murder. No two ways about it. Quinnetta only ever described what could be defined technically as intentional murder. So if this was all a lie, it was a useless one. In my opinion, if Quinnetta were lying about this, she would have lied better, because she's a fantastic liar.

30:19She could have made up a story in which Michael Giles had abused her for years or was hurting her in that very moment and she fought back. But she never said that. I thought this story is chaotic and it doesn't absolve her of her crime. And for that reason, it's a conceivable scenario. I hope you're not believing her, believe me, yes. That's your prerogative, obviously. Josh Healey again. Yeah, I'm neither here nor there. I'm trying to understand what happened. Obviously, nobody knows what happened in that room. I mean, what happened after seems quite clear, but what happened then, it's anyone's guess really. Josh knew that there were no absolutes here. But he also felt strongly that Quinnetta planned the killing in advance. That she murdered Michael Giles for the money and only for the money. And I can't refute that. I wasn't in that room either. What to believe.

31:19What not to believe. People like Josh were saying, don't believe a word Quinnetta says. But remember, Josh never even talked to her. I had for years. My own instinct was to keep listening to Quinnetta. It was too neat and simple to discredit her entirely because she lied. But engaging with Quinnetta and the complexities and uncertainties of her story, it was confusing, a little alienating. I needed some guidance. So I called in an expert of sorts, my friend, Josie Duffy Rice. She's a journalist with a Harvard Law degree who has worked in a public defender's office and now does podcasts and substanks and articles. She's a person who's basically entirely immersed in the criminal legal system and knows a ton about it. I told Josie this whole story, start to finish.

32:23Up until then, she'd never heard of Quinnetta. It was all new to her. My immediate thought is this sounds like both an extremely fucked up thing to do to kill someone, lie about it, fake that they're so alive, take their money. It sounds so ridiculous. And also, it sounds to me like the reflection of a behavior towards someone she resented and hated for whatever reason. Josie, unlike anyone who I'd ever talked to about this, put herself in Quinnetta's shoes right away. What I'm picturing is this dude has, like, for years been at best, needy, at worst, manipulative, coercive. Now he's got any fired from her job. Now you're on your third marriage, whatever. That job wasn't making you shit money anyway.

33:23You probably, like, you hate him. You resent him. You don't even, not only do you not feel bad killing him, you don't feel bad taking his money. What doesn't sound to me, like, it happened, is that she was like, in that moment, under such duress that she had to shoot him. And it could be true that she felt like her back was against the wall, but not in a way that is self defense. Like a guy saying, I'll call your next job and get you fired. That doesn't rise to the level of, I get to kill him, get away with it. I think it's totally plausible she did not go down there to kill him. I also think it's totally plausible that became part of the plan. Pretty fast. Josie sensed how I was feeling. It must be, I think that's the way I say this. I wonder for you how, like, disappointing as such a shitty word, but that's actually how you feel. I'm like sucks to go into something, feeling X.

34:23And look, I love guilty people. They're my favorite kind of people. But it is really is like, oh, I thought you were being abused and killed this guy. And then actually you made your fiance put bandages on so you could put it into it. Like it feels like a different vibe. However, Doreb reminds me of the like, the Nietzsche idea of like suffering doesn't make you good. Like all of it could be true. It's interesting this vibe of like, using like your, you're a bad person who also might have been in a kind of shitty situation. I would say it's not exactly disappointing. I think what it is is completely discombobulated. Look, I do not discount the possibility that they're very evil people in the world at all. I'm not one of those people that's like, everybody deep down is good. There are 8 billion people in the world. I'm sure some of them are like irritably bad. I think most people are somewhere in the middle. And, going out into me, still feel somewhere in the middle. She does not feel to me to be like an irredeemable harlot.

35:28She does feel to me more manipulative than, you know, some other people. To me, that doesn't mean that you're getting played, right? Like, I think it can only be true that she wants a good story about her and likes you and has these opinions about the system that are like actually good and interesting and misses her kids and feels mischaracterized and did some really fucked up shit. Kwanada had stacks of magazines in her cell. She read and wrote voraciously. She knew about the craft of journalism, how stories are reported, how information is verified, how a profile subject takes shape over the course of an erudive. When I started doing this podcast, she'd been eager to participate, not just by talking to me, but by offering me reporting suggestions. The name of an old friend who might remember things from back in England, the phone number of an ex-husband who could offer a different perspective on their lives. Information on where old hospital records or police reports might be found.

36:32She seemed to be guiding me toward something. And it became clear that most everything and everyone from her life before was in Detroit, the city where she was born and raised. So I went to see if Detroit was the missing piece of the puzzle. There, I could try to understand her world by getting to know the people who shaped it. I was a drug dealer. I had guns all over the fucking house. I had guns in the kitchen, in the everywhere. And she, once I actually shouted me, she was shouting the ground. Did she? Hey, listen, it was a lot going on back. That's next time on What She Bared. Don't want to wait for the next episode? You don't have to.

37:32Unlock all episodes of What She Bared early and add free right now by subscribing to the binge. And it doesn't stop at What She Bared. Subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. That's all episodes all at once. All add free. Search for the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to subscribe directly. What She Bared is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media. This show was reported and hosted by me, Justine Vanderloom. Eric Benson is the executive producer. Ashley Ann Krigbaum is the managing producer. Production assistants from Lane Rose, Josie Duffy Rice, Moisey Secret, Emily Martinez, Shiba Joseph, and Michael Meyer. The story editor is Matthew Scher. The series was mixed and sound designed by Garrett Teedermann with support from E.W. and L.I. Trimulin.

38:33Fact 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 Gregoriatis, and Matthew Scher. If you enjoyed What She Bared, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.