June 15, 2021 • 32 mins
When Afrikka Hardy was strangled in 2014 it seemed completely random. But it wasn’t. It was part of a pattern.
Lori Townsend reminisces about her daughter Afrikka, and journalist Thomas Hargrove says Afrikka's death could've been prevented.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
represent those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees.
This series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener
discretion is advised, whether we want to or not. We're
(00:25):
constantly creating records of our lives. Phone calls, emails, even
credit card purchases can be used to pinpoint where we
were at a certain time. When we touch a door knob,
the oil from our hand leaves fingerprints and her skin
sheds DNA, and if we drive by a security camera,
our license plate can be scanned and entered into a database.
(00:50):
But despite all of this information we're creating all of
this power that we're giving the government and police, the
United States isn't getting better at saul being serious crimes
like homicide. In fact, we're getting worse. Murders were solved
in today. That number has dropped dramatically. One of every
(01:13):
three murders goes unsolved. One reporter found those stats unacceptable.
Every day in America, people die who did not need
to die, because every solved murder reduces the occurrence of
murker from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is
(01:34):
Algorithm and I'm ben Key Break, just to introduce myself
really quick. Normally I don't host podcasts. I'm a producer,
which means I normally just do stuff behind the scenes, research, writing,
setting up interviews. Almost a year ago now, I was
working on another show called Monster DC Sniper when I
(01:55):
got an email from a friend. It was a link
to a story about the murder of this young woman
named Africa Hardy. The story was fascinating. It seemed to
flip everything I knew about crime on its head because
it wasn't just a story about trying to solve a murder.
It was also a story about what could have been
(02:16):
done to prevent the murder in the first place. And
there were aspects of the case that we're still unclear.
But if they checked out, then they could fundamentally change
the way homicides are investigated in the United States and
maybe all around the world. Obviously I was intrigued, but
at the time I was busy working on the DC
(02:38):
Sniper podcast, so I put it on the back burner.
I tried to just forget about it, but I couldn't.
I'd find myself on my phone late at night, searching
for articles about Africa's case when I should have been sleeping,
And I was frustrated because I had big questions about
the murder investigation that it seemed like no one was asking. Eventually,
(03:02):
I realized my curiosity wasn't going away. If I wanted
these answers, I was going to have to find them myself.
I decided to start researching the case in my spare
time and documenting things as I went. But before I began,
I wanted to reach out to Africa's mom, Lorie Townsend. Hello,
(03:25):
Hi Lori, Yes, Hey, it's been Is now still a
good time? Yes? I think I wanted her blessing to
embark on this project to make sure I wasn't just
opening up old wounds. If this was in person, i'd
see if you had a water to drink? Do you
have something like that around I? Do I have a
(03:45):
bad rich grape juice? Great juice? Yeah? And I didn't
just want to write a story about why Africa's case
is so important that treated her solely as a victim
or crime statistic. I wanted to learn earned more about
who Africa was and how would you describe Africa. Just beautiful.
(04:06):
She she really was beautiful. And I'm not just saying
that she she's my daughter. She was beautiful. She had
a very bright smile. My daughter was with African American
in Caucasian, so she had tight, curly hair and her
smile just she radiated with a smile. Is there like
(04:27):
a particular memory that stands out when you think back
about her everything? Um, she was Saffy WHI. She was
a little shows She's try to bully her older brother.
She would put her hands on her hips to say,
I'm not considering you, I'm not considering you. Yeah, she
(04:47):
was like one or two wish. She was so that
all the time. She loved Disney movies like Toy Story
was one of her favorites. You know, William Buzz, We'll
see one of those people that knows the words to
all of the songs. Yeah. She could hear song once
and pick it up and never leave you alone about it.
She would sing it until her place out. Yeah. Yeah,
(05:17):
she's my best friend. She really was. We went through
so much together. To me adding that mother and daughter
don't usually go through. When you say it's like going
through odd stuff, do you have an example, um, I
was a little abusive relationship. My daughter was there with me.
(05:38):
She helped me get out of it. We were homeless,
We lived in hotels together. You know, I wasn't financially
capable of taking care of my children. Lori was a
young mother trying to rebuild her life, and she felt
she couldn't provide Africa or her son the stability they needed.
(05:59):
But she didn't want to put them in foster care either.
Instead of losing my children to the system, I placed
them where I would be a part of their growing
up and where I knew they would be safe. Lorie
enrolled her kids in Moose Heart, a charity run boarding
school west of Chicago, and then she worked to get
(06:19):
both feet back on the ground. Lorie started a new
life in the suburbs of Denver, and once things spelt stable,
she brought her kids out there. As a teen, Africa
had plans to go to college and study to become
an audio engineer or maybe a nurse. But when Africa
graduated from high school, Lorie was working at a seven
(06:41):
eleven and struggling financially, and Africa wasn't sure she could
afford tuition. As she tried to figure out next steps.
Africa decided to move back to Chicago, where she still
had a lot of family. Dun A four teams. She
were back to Chicago. She went back with my ex cousind.
(07:04):
She's nineteen, so not like she was a little kid
or anything like that, but her cousin wanted to get
her a job like the post office. I don't know
what happened. Was that exactly why she moved his unclear.
Laurie says she was nineteen and looking for independence. Other
(07:24):
relatives wonder whether she was trying to avoid putting financial
strain on her mom. Regardless, Chicago was expensive but exciting,
and there were so many possibilities, so many things to do,
people to meet. There was a bigger city than when
she used us to about her in Denver. It was
hard to get around. You know, she had a car,
(07:47):
so you know, getting on the boat with you know,
a little scary horror. But she was trying to figure
things out for herself out there. Was that scary for
you or did you feel like she could handle it?
It was definitely scary, not being close enough to know
exactly what's really going on. So it was definitely hard
(08:08):
when we did talk. She was okay, and you know,
she had the two friends and she was going out
to eat nice places and she had nice polls. I
had no idea anything was going on. When I think
back now, I wonder maybe I could have prevented this.
When we were talking and she was telling me where
(08:30):
she was going out to eat or whatever, they never registered.
In my mind, I still beat myself up. Why didn't
the register to me? But maybe she was throwing the signs.
I don't think that you know everything about child, because
there's something that they're not telling you. They're either scared
to tell you, but there is a shame to tell you.
(08:53):
If I knew that this is going on, I would
have stopped it. I would have went out there my
child back home. Do you remember the last interaction you
(09:26):
had with Africa? It was through Facebook. He has sent
me two pictures and she said she was getting fat
and I said, no, you're not. And then I got
off of work on Thursday and I thought I had
misplaced my phone. So I had message through Facebook and
(09:47):
told her I think I may have lost my phone.
So if you need me, messaged me on Facebook. That
was Thursday night going into Friday. I didn't hear anything
back on around Friday. Then the following days when I
found out. It was the making of my fiancing birthday.
(10:09):
So we had went out to eat earlier that day
and we were just at home. Lest you walking dead,
I received a message from my ex husband's girlfriends. She
messaged me oundkasebook and she said, you need to call Tasha.
It's about Africa. I just thought Africa might be trying
(10:30):
to contact me through Patasha too, that's her cousin. I mean, so,
did you really pay any attention to it? She messaged
me back Abound ten minutes later, she said, you really
need to call in regard to Africa. So I called
Tashay are you doing She said, we were up at
the corner's office. We have to identify Africa's body. Nothing,
(10:54):
she said, pick my brain. I'm like the corner for
what And she said, or we had to identify African's body.
She said my daughter's name, and it hit me and
I black out. When I came to I just looked
(11:17):
up at my fiancee that Africa is dead. Cashould call
me back and she told me what happens, and um,
it just unreal to me. She was trying to give
me details in phone numbers that I had a call,
(11:38):
I had a contract. The leading detective on the case,
Detective Forward. Detective Forward informed me that I'd probably hear
some things about my child that I don't want to believe,
but to know that it was true. On Friday, October,
Lori was waiting for a response to message she had
(12:00):
sent her daughter Africa, but Africa had already left Chicago.
In fact, she had already left Illinois. She was forty
five miles southeast in Indiana, living a life that she
had never told her mom about. She'd gone to meet
up with a man who she had only spoken to online. Originally,
(12:23):
she was going to meet him earlier in the day,
but he'd pushed things back because he said he couldn't
find a babysitter. Africa knew it was risky to meet
strangers from the internet, and she wanted to be safe,
so she let her friend Shimika know where she was
and what she was doing, and then texted her when
she met up with the man. Shimika was expecting another
(12:45):
text from her when things wrapped up, but hours passed
and the second text never came, so Shimika texted Africa's
phone to check in. After a delay, she got a response,
but the message seemed strange. She didn't think it sounded
like something Africa would right. Shamika started to worry that
(13:08):
something was wrong, so she tried calling Africa, but she
couldn't get through. Shamika kept calling over and over, but
Africa wasn't picking up. So Shamika called another friend, Eduardo,
and they drove out to investigate. They arrived at the address.
It was a motel six just off Interstate nine. Eduardo
(13:32):
and Shamika found Africa's room and knocked on the door,
but no one answered, so they got someone from the
motel to let them in. They didn't see anyone inside
the motel room, but the shower was running. They called
out to whoever was there, but got no response. As
(13:53):
they walked into the room, they saw the bed was
at a strange angle. One of Africa's shoes, a platform stiletto,
was lying on its side. They saw a shirt button
on the floor, a broken fingernail, and a torn condom wrapper.
They crept slowly toward the bathroom and knocked on the door,
(14:16):
but again there was no response. Maybe someone had just
left the shower running, so they cracked the door open.
Shamika screamed and ran out of the room. Africa Hardy
was lying in the tub, the shower water beating down
on her. There was a thin red bruise going all
(14:38):
the way around her neck. Just above that literature mark.
Detectives notice that Africa had a tattoo. It was a
Bible verse. It read, no weapon that is formed against
me shall prosper it tap the floor informed me that
(14:59):
I you hear some things about my child that I
don't want to believe, but to know that it was true.
She was an escort, prostituting, however you want to word it. Yeah,
definitely something you don't want to know about your fine
teen year old, beautiful child who could have had anything,
(15:20):
done anything that she wanted to. Detective Forward had learned
that Africa was working as a call girl and that
was how Africa came into contact with the man she
met at the motel. He was a client. I can
definitely a hundred percent day that my children will not
raised that way. But my children no struggle and they
(15:43):
know how to overcome struggle. And maybe at that time
Africa may have up that was the way to overcome struggle.
I don't know. I think a lot of it has
to do with the older female that she defriended. Him
was twenty six. Was you that my daughter? My daughter
was nine too, and I think she kind of primmed
(16:06):
in prop Africa. You know, the new girl on the block.
She's beautiful and you can make some money off of her.
M Still to this day, I don't know why she
decided to do what she did. I don't know, I
don't know. I will never get that answer. Did you
ever talk to that friend? Yeah, so I did speak
(16:27):
with her, Like one time, we were on the phone
for about a good hour and she mentioned that Africa,
but hey, it's best money, put money, easy money, that
Africa wanted to come back to Denver. She wanted to know,
to help take care of her mom. So I'm going
to assume that that's why, you know it happened. Yea.
(16:51):
You know, it's hard to put myself in your shoes.
But I imagine that that's kind of confusing to hear
because in some ways it's like, you know, that's a
great thing, she wants to to help you, But then
it's also like hard because it's you know, like kind
of connects you to it or something like that. Does
that make sense exactly? Yeah, Like I feel guilty. I
(17:14):
mean I feel guilty about the whole scenario, but the
part that she wanted to help me, you know, since
Africa was little, I guess she's always looked up to me,
and I have little letters and know if that she
write me, and so when I get famous, I'm not
going to have to worry about anything anymore. I think
in her mind, you know, she thought that she really
(17:37):
had to take care of me because now that she
was grown, it was her turn. You know, mother takes
care of child, nor child had to take care of mother.
It was just something in her that she thought she
wanted to do to me. That speaks to you know
that you guys were close and that she wanted to
help you. When I've talked to people, lots of people
(18:00):
talk about guilt, even in situations where it doesn't really
make sense. I think that that is also sometimes just
like part of losing someone you're very close to, you
always kind of wonder. Yeah, if there's a lot of
things I wonder about. Did she begged for him to stop?
She begged him for her life? You know, I was like,
(18:22):
I wonder these things. I don't know if I'm wrong
for wondering that. I just want to know what my
daughter's wife words were when we first reached out to me.
You said something about old wounds. This is not an
old wound. This is a daily wound, you know, and
um to adjusted things, but it never goes away, It
(18:47):
never ever goes away. UM. I was telling my girlfriend
that I was getting ready to do this interview, and
her father passed away a year ago, and you know,
a very different situation. And but she feels like other
people get uncomfortable when she talks about it, like they
don't want her to feel bad, but she wants to
(19:08):
talk about him. Very true, very true, very very very true.
People think that you're like completely broken, and they don't
want to say anything or mention anything. But in order
for me to keep my daughter's voice going, I have
to talk about it. Let me talk. If I have
to cry, and let me cry. If I wanted to laugh,
(19:29):
let me laugh. So people are really like that. They're
still like that with me today. So it is what
it is. So before you were saying that you're like
kind of curious about this, like you wanted to figure
out a lot about what was going on after this happened. Yeah,
I still have some curiosities, and there's still some things
that I think me to be done and could be done.
(19:52):
Like I get angry because he killed my daughter and
my daughter was found enough freaking hotel m naked in
a shower. Why you know, I get her? You know
why angry myself. Here's another thing. I wonder why this
(20:14):
guy we've left loose because here's the crazy thing about
Africa's case. Well, Africa's death was senseless and seemed utterly random.
It wasn't random. It was part of a pattern. And
years earlier, a man named Thomas Hargrove had tried to
(20:37):
warn police. He said he had evidence that a serial
killer was on the loose, strangling young women in the area,
women just like Africa. Hardy. So, who was Thomas Hargrove
and what was his evidence? Unfortunately, Bury, Indiana is a
good place to be a killer because you're probably going
(20:58):
to get away with him. Hey, Ben, can you hear me?
(21:19):
I'm speaking with Thomas Hargrove over zoom here. Hold on
one second. I have to warn my wife. I'm doing
an interview. Harkerve's the guy who warned police in Indiana
that they might have a serial killer and the loose
Hargrove sixty four. He's got a white beard and wear
thin rimmed glasses. He wasn't the sort of guy I
(21:40):
imagined would be investigating serial killers, so he's curious how
he got into all this. I don't know where these
things come from, but when I was seventeen, I decided
I had to be a reporter, and investigative reporter, an
investigative reporters, somebody looking into a truth that somebody is
trying to hide, Like Africa. Hardy Hargrove grew up outside Chicago.
(22:07):
He was inspired by journalists there who came up with
a creative way to expose the city's corruption. Reporters kept
hearing about the bribes that business owners had to pay
city inspectors, but it was hard to prove any wrongdoing,
so the journalists decided to go deep undercover. The reporters
fought their editor into opening a bar. They called it
(22:29):
the Mirage. Journalists were actually becoming bar keeps, and they
were running this bar for months and months. They were
specifically looking for indications of public corruption. And they found it.
With hidden cameras running, the reporters caught inspectors taking bribes
and ignoring code violations. It was a remarkable project, and
(22:54):
it just seemed like it was so much fun. I
wanted to be like these people. After high school, Hargrove
studied journalism at the University of Missouri. It's actually one
of the country's top programs for journalism at that time.
In the early seventies, a new field was emerging called
computer assisted reporting. The idea was that reporters could use
(23:18):
computers to analyze data like government records. Hard grow quickly
grasped that computing had the potential to revolutionize investigative journalism.
It allowed reporters to step back and look at issues
with a wider lens. From this new perspective, sometimes previously
invisible patterns would come into focus. If you didn't ask
(23:40):
the question in exactly the right way, your program would fail.
And it was very frustrating, but it was astonishing what
computers could do. After college, Hargrove landed a job as
a crime reporter for the Birmingham Post Herald. Being a
police reporter in the Deep South was a remarkable way
(24:01):
to get started. I came as a Yankee and really
wasn't expecting to like that experience, but I did. Her
Grove loved the work experience he was getting, but being
a police reporter wasn't always easy. It's one thing to
think I want to write exposes about crooked politics. That's
another thing to see what happens because of bad policies,
(24:25):
poverty and desperation and violence. Hard Grove kept a police
scanner running all the time, even at home. If he
heard a dispatch that sounded newsworthy, he'd immediately drive out
to the scene of the crime. Sometimes, if he happened
to be nearby, he would beat the cops there. One
(24:47):
was at a convenience store in Hoover, Alabama. I opened
the door and didn't see anybody, and then found the
cashier behind the counter. The cashier had been shot. He
was lying on the ground leading out. He didn't say anything.
(25:08):
He wasn't especially conscious, but he breathed his last It
is an experience to see someone die. I didn't really
think when I was a teenager what it was like
to cover the news. I guess I didn't realize that
(25:30):
when you experience the news rather than just right about it.
It really is a life changing process. Hard Group's time
as a crime reporter was also when he first learned
about serial killers and a phenomenon called linkage blindness. In
the late nineties seventies, the term serial killer did not exist.
(25:55):
That was invented in the eighties. The term did not exist,
but the idea that someone could kill over and over
again was becoming common among Americans at that time. Just
to the east of Birmingham, Atlanta was experiencing the Atlanta
child murders, and those murders were not being solved. It's
(26:18):
unusual for children to be murdered. It's very unusual for
child murders to go unsolved, and there was criticism of
the Atlanta Police Department for not recognizing the patterns sooner.
I started attending academic symposiums that looked into the question
of the Atlanta child murders, and I heard from criminologists
(26:42):
that this is a well known problem called linkage blindness,
that when there are connected cases, often the connection is
not made by police because of the nature of how
homicides are investigated. If someone murdered, a detective is assigned
to the case. When another person is murdered, Usually a
(27:05):
different detective is assigned to the case. If there are
commonalities to the two murders, those commonalities are not recognized
unless those two detectives have a conversation over the water cooler.
If those killings occurred in a neighboring jurisdiction, that conversation
never happens. Experts in the field, we're saying that most
(27:29):
connected murders go unrecognized. The links are very rarely made,
and I kept that in the back of my mind.
Hargrove didn't know it yet, but this simple insight about
linkage blindness, that connections between murders are often missed by police,
That idea would become an obsession and completely alter the
(27:52):
course of his life. But his next clue wouldn't come
until decades later, when he was halfway across the country.
Hargrove had climbed up through the ranks, and in two
thousand four he was living his teenage dream. He was
working as an investigative reporter in Washington, d C. And
(28:12):
he was using the programming skills he learned in college
to write big data driven stories. In two thousand four,
I was assigned to do a really interesting story. He
just started a piece on prostitution when he stumbled across
another clue. In some cities, anti prostitution laws are vigorously enforced.
(28:36):
In other cities, the laws are virtually ignored, and in
other cities just the men who higher prostitutes are arrested.
So it was all across the board, who gets arrested,
whether anyone gets arrested. To study this, I needed the
uniform crime report because prostitution is something the FBI counts,
(28:56):
So hart Grove ordered a CD with FBI records about crime.
He was planning to compare prostitution arrest between different cities
when he discovered something else. Included on that CD at
no extra charge was a file I had never heard of,
called the Supplemental Homicide Report. Being paid to be curious,
(29:20):
I opened it up and what it was was line
after line of individual murders. It showed the age, race,
sex of each victim. Victim is a blackmail eighteen years old.
It had the weapon that was used. He was shut
with a handgun. It had the police theory as to
why the homicide occurred. The murder is thought to be
(29:43):
due to an argument over money or property. It had
the month and year and the jurisdiction January two thousand,
Los Angeles, Long Beach, California. I had never seen the
individual crime data before, and I don't know where all
these connections occur in our minds, But the first thought
(30:04):
I had upon opening the s HR the Supplemental Homicide
Report was could we teach a computer to identify connected
cases to find serial killings? Hard Grove had a feeling
that an algorithm could find patterns within that data and
detect serial killers. And maybe you could even be used
(30:27):
to detect active serial killers who had not yet been caught.
This idea started hard Grove down a winding path that
eventually led him to discover a trail of bodies, bodies
that he says, we're left behind by the man who
killed Africa Hardy. But this isn't just a story investigating
Africa Hardy's killer and cold cases that might be connected
(30:51):
to him. If there's one thing that will become clear
from this story, it's that Africa Hardy didn't need to
die next time on algorithm. Serial killer Gary Ridgway was
convicted in a court of law of murdering forty eight
(31:11):
girls and women. The question was could we teach a
computer a process that would tell us that something god
awful happened in Seattle. My editors recognized that this could
be something very cool, but it's hard to commit to
a project you don't know up front whether it's possible.
The stereotypes about the profile of a serial killer or
(31:34):
profile of the victims is not really very consistent with
the facts. This is really one of the most frustrating
experiences of my life. Your only hope is to get
Jackie to talk. I think the Gary Police Department should
be looking at some of those old cases. They still
may have a killer out there. Episode two of Algorithm
(31:57):
is out now. Listen to subscribe on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
This episode was written and produced by me ben Key Brick.
Algorithm is executive produced by Alex Williams, Donald Albright, and
Matt Frederick. Production assistance in mixing by Eric Quintana. The
(32:18):
music is by Makeup and Vanity Set and Blue Dot Sessions.
Thanks to Christina Dana, Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, rema El Kaili,
Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes.
Also really thanks for listening. Um, it means a lot.
Like I was saying, this is my first time hosting
(32:40):
a podcast like this and I love to know what
you think. So if you have a moment, please subscribe
and leave a review.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
represent those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees.
This series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener
discretion is advised, whether we want to or not. We're
(00:25):
constantly creating records of our lives. Phone calls, emails, even
credit card purchases can be used to pinpoint where we
were at a certain time. When we touch a door knob,
the oil from our hand leaves fingerprints and her skin
sheds DNA, and if we drive by a security camera,
our license plate can be scanned and entered into a database.
(00:50):
But despite all of this information we're creating all of
this power that we're giving the government and police, the
United States isn't getting better at saul being serious crimes
like homicide. In fact, we're getting worse. Murders were solved
in today. That number has dropped dramatically. One of every
(01:13):
three murders goes unsolved. One reporter found those stats unacceptable.
Every day in America, people die who did not need
to die, because every solved murder reduces the occurrence of
murker from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is
(01:34):
Algorithm and I'm ben Key Break, just to introduce myself
really quick. Normally I don't host podcasts. I'm a producer,
which means I normally just do stuff behind the scenes, research, writing,
setting up interviews. Almost a year ago now, I was
working on another show called Monster DC Sniper when I
(01:55):
got an email from a friend. It was a link
to a story about the murder of this young woman
named Africa Hardy. The story was fascinating. It seemed to
flip everything I knew about crime on its head because
it wasn't just a story about trying to solve a murder.
It was also a story about what could have been
(02:16):
done to prevent the murder in the first place. And
there were aspects of the case that we're still unclear.
But if they checked out, then they could fundamentally change
the way homicides are investigated in the United States and
maybe all around the world. Obviously I was intrigued, but
at the time I was busy working on the DC
(02:38):
Sniper podcast, so I put it on the back burner.
I tried to just forget about it, but I couldn't.
I'd find myself on my phone late at night, searching
for articles about Africa's case when I should have been sleeping,
And I was frustrated because I had big questions about
the murder investigation that it seemed like no one was asking. Eventually,
(03:02):
I realized my curiosity wasn't going away. If I wanted
these answers, I was going to have to find them myself.
I decided to start researching the case in my spare
time and documenting things as I went. But before I began,
I wanted to reach out to Africa's mom, Lorie Townsend. Hello,
(03:25):
Hi Lori, Yes, Hey, it's been Is now still a
good time? Yes? I think I wanted her blessing to
embark on this project to make sure I wasn't just
opening up old wounds. If this was in person, i'd
see if you had a water to drink? Do you
have something like that around I? Do I have a
(03:45):
bad rich grape juice? Great juice? Yeah? And I didn't
just want to write a story about why Africa's case
is so important that treated her solely as a victim
or crime statistic. I wanted to learn earned more about
who Africa was and how would you describe Africa. Just beautiful.
(04:06):
She she really was beautiful. And I'm not just saying
that she she's my daughter. She was beautiful. She had
a very bright smile. My daughter was with African American
in Caucasian, so she had tight, curly hair and her
smile just she radiated with a smile. Is there like
(04:27):
a particular memory that stands out when you think back
about her everything? Um, she was Saffy WHI. She was
a little shows She's try to bully her older brother.
She would put her hands on her hips to say,
I'm not considering you, I'm not considering you. Yeah, she
(04:47):
was like one or two wish. She was so that
all the time. She loved Disney movies like Toy Story
was one of her favorites. You know, William Buzz, We'll
see one of those people that knows the words to
all of the songs. Yeah. She could hear song once
and pick it up and never leave you alone about it.
She would sing it until her place out. Yeah. Yeah,
(05:17):
she's my best friend. She really was. We went through
so much together. To me adding that mother and daughter
don't usually go through. When you say it's like going
through odd stuff, do you have an example, um, I
was a little abusive relationship. My daughter was there with me.
(05:38):
She helped me get out of it. We were homeless,
We lived in hotels together. You know, I wasn't financially
capable of taking care of my children. Lori was a
young mother trying to rebuild her life, and she felt
she couldn't provide Africa or her son the stability they needed.
(05:59):
But she didn't want to put them in foster care either.
Instead of losing my children to the system, I placed
them where I would be a part of their growing
up and where I knew they would be safe. Lorie
enrolled her kids in Moose Heart, a charity run boarding
school west of Chicago, and then she worked to get
(06:19):
both feet back on the ground. Lorie started a new
life in the suburbs of Denver, and once things spelt stable,
she brought her kids out there. As a teen, Africa
had plans to go to college and study to become
an audio engineer or maybe a nurse. But when Africa
graduated from high school, Lorie was working at a seven
(06:41):
eleven and struggling financially, and Africa wasn't sure she could
afford tuition. As she tried to figure out next steps.
Africa decided to move back to Chicago, where she still
had a lot of family. Dun A four teams. She
were back to Chicago. She went back with my ex cousind.
(07:04):
She's nineteen, so not like she was a little kid
or anything like that, but her cousin wanted to get
her a job like the post office. I don't know
what happened. Was that exactly why she moved his unclear.
Laurie says she was nineteen and looking for independence. Other
(07:24):
relatives wonder whether she was trying to avoid putting financial
strain on her mom. Regardless, Chicago was expensive but exciting,
and there were so many possibilities, so many things to do,
people to meet. There was a bigger city than when
she used us to about her in Denver. It was
hard to get around. You know, she had a car,
(07:47):
so you know, getting on the boat with you know,
a little scary horror. But she was trying to figure
things out for herself out there. Was that scary for
you or did you feel like she could handle it?
It was definitely scary, not being close enough to know
exactly what's really going on. So it was definitely hard
(08:08):
when we did talk. She was okay, and you know,
she had the two friends and she was going out
to eat nice places and she had nice polls. I
had no idea anything was going on. When I think
back now, I wonder maybe I could have prevented this.
When we were talking and she was telling me where
(08:30):
she was going out to eat or whatever, they never registered.
In my mind, I still beat myself up. Why didn't
the register to me? But maybe she was throwing the signs.
I don't think that you know everything about child, because
there's something that they're not telling you. They're either scared
to tell you, but there is a shame to tell you.
(08:53):
If I knew that this is going on, I would
have stopped it. I would have went out there my
child back home. Do you remember the last interaction you
(09:26):
had with Africa? It was through Facebook. He has sent
me two pictures and she said she was getting fat
and I said, no, you're not. And then I got
off of work on Thursday and I thought I had
misplaced my phone. So I had message through Facebook and
(09:47):
told her I think I may have lost my phone.
So if you need me, messaged me on Facebook. That
was Thursday night going into Friday. I didn't hear anything
back on around Friday. Then the following days when I
found out. It was the making of my fiancing birthday.
(10:09):
So we had went out to eat earlier that day
and we were just at home. Lest you walking dead,
I received a message from my ex husband's girlfriends. She
messaged me oundkasebook and she said, you need to call Tasha.
It's about Africa. I just thought Africa might be trying
(10:30):
to contact me through Patasha too, that's her cousin. I mean, so,
did you really pay any attention to it? She messaged
me back Abound ten minutes later, she said, you really
need to call in regard to Africa. So I called
Tashay are you doing She said, we were up at
the corner's office. We have to identify Africa's body. Nothing,
(10:54):
she said, pick my brain. I'm like the corner for
what And she said, or we had to identify African's body.
She said my daughter's name, and it hit me and
I black out. When I came to I just looked
(11:17):
up at my fiancee that Africa is dead. Cashould call
me back and she told me what happens, and um,
it just unreal to me. She was trying to give
me details in phone numbers that I had a call,
(11:38):
I had a contract. The leading detective on the case,
Detective Forward. Detective Forward informed me that I'd probably hear
some things about my child that I don't want to believe,
but to know that it was true. On Friday, October,
Lori was waiting for a response to message she had
(12:00):
sent her daughter Africa, but Africa had already left Chicago.
In fact, she had already left Illinois. She was forty
five miles southeast in Indiana, living a life that she
had never told her mom about. She'd gone to meet
up with a man who she had only spoken to online. Originally,
(12:23):
she was going to meet him earlier in the day,
but he'd pushed things back because he said he couldn't
find a babysitter. Africa knew it was risky to meet
strangers from the internet, and she wanted to be safe,
so she let her friend Shimika know where she was
and what she was doing, and then texted her when
she met up with the man. Shimika was expecting another
(12:45):
text from her when things wrapped up, but hours passed
and the second text never came, so Shimika texted Africa's
phone to check in. After a delay, she got a response,
but the message seemed strange. She didn't think it sounded
like something Africa would right. Shamika started to worry that
(13:08):
something was wrong, so she tried calling Africa, but she
couldn't get through. Shamika kept calling over and over, but
Africa wasn't picking up. So Shamika called another friend, Eduardo,
and they drove out to investigate. They arrived at the address.
It was a motel six just off Interstate nine. Eduardo
(13:32):
and Shamika found Africa's room and knocked on the door,
but no one answered, so they got someone from the
motel to let them in. They didn't see anyone inside
the motel room, but the shower was running. They called
out to whoever was there, but got no response. As
(13:53):
they walked into the room, they saw the bed was
at a strange angle. One of Africa's shoes, a platform stiletto,
was lying on its side. They saw a shirt button
on the floor, a broken fingernail, and a torn condom wrapper.
They crept slowly toward the bathroom and knocked on the door,
(14:16):
but again there was no response. Maybe someone had just
left the shower running, so they cracked the door open.
Shamika screamed and ran out of the room. Africa Hardy
was lying in the tub, the shower water beating down
on her. There was a thin red bruise going all
(14:38):
the way around her neck. Just above that literature mark.
Detectives notice that Africa had a tattoo. It was a
Bible verse. It read, no weapon that is formed against
me shall prosper it tap the floor informed me that
(14:59):
I you hear some things about my child that I
don't want to believe, but to know that it was true.
She was an escort, prostituting, however you want to word it. Yeah,
definitely something you don't want to know about your fine
teen year old, beautiful child who could have had anything,
(15:20):
done anything that she wanted to. Detective Forward had learned
that Africa was working as a call girl and that
was how Africa came into contact with the man she
met at the motel. He was a client. I can
definitely a hundred percent day that my children will not
raised that way. But my children no struggle and they
(15:43):
know how to overcome struggle. And maybe at that time
Africa may have up that was the way to overcome struggle.
I don't know. I think a lot of it has
to do with the older female that she defriended. Him
was twenty six. Was you that my daughter? My daughter
was nine too, and I think she kind of primmed
(16:06):
in prop Africa. You know, the new girl on the block.
She's beautiful and you can make some money off of her.
M Still to this day, I don't know why she
decided to do what she did. I don't know, I
don't know. I will never get that answer. Did you
ever talk to that friend? Yeah, so I did speak
(16:27):
with her, Like one time, we were on the phone
for about a good hour and she mentioned that Africa,
but hey, it's best money, put money, easy money, that
Africa wanted to come back to Denver. She wanted to know,
to help take care of her mom. So I'm going
to assume that that's why, you know it happened. Yea.
(16:51):
You know, it's hard to put myself in your shoes.
But I imagine that that's kind of confusing to hear
because in some ways it's like, you know, that's a
great thing, she wants to to help you, But then
it's also like hard because it's you know, like kind
of connects you to it or something like that. Does
that make sense exactly? Yeah, Like I feel guilty. I
(17:14):
mean I feel guilty about the whole scenario, but the
part that she wanted to help me, you know, since
Africa was little, I guess she's always looked up to me,
and I have little letters and know if that she
write me, and so when I get famous, I'm not
going to have to worry about anything anymore. I think
in her mind, you know, she thought that she really
(17:37):
had to take care of me because now that she
was grown, it was her turn. You know, mother takes
care of child, nor child had to take care of mother.
It was just something in her that she thought she
wanted to do to me. That speaks to you know
that you guys were close and that she wanted to
help you. When I've talked to people, lots of people
(18:00):
talk about guilt, even in situations where it doesn't really
make sense. I think that that is also sometimes just
like part of losing someone you're very close to, you
always kind of wonder. Yeah, if there's a lot of
things I wonder about. Did she begged for him to stop?
She begged him for her life? You know, I was like,
(18:22):
I wonder these things. I don't know if I'm wrong
for wondering that. I just want to know what my
daughter's wife words were when we first reached out to me.
You said something about old wounds. This is not an
old wound. This is a daily wound, you know, and
um to adjusted things, but it never goes away, It
(18:47):
never ever goes away. UM. I was telling my girlfriend
that I was getting ready to do this interview, and
her father passed away a year ago, and you know,
a very different situation. And but she feels like other
people get uncomfortable when she talks about it, like they
don't want her to feel bad, but she wants to
(19:08):
talk about him. Very true, very true, very very very true.
People think that you're like completely broken, and they don't
want to say anything or mention anything. But in order
for me to keep my daughter's voice going, I have
to talk about it. Let me talk. If I have
to cry, and let me cry. If I wanted to laugh,
(19:29):
let me laugh. So people are really like that. They're
still like that with me today. So it is what
it is. So before you were saying that you're like
kind of curious about this, like you wanted to figure
out a lot about what was going on after this happened. Yeah,
I still have some curiosities, and there's still some things
that I think me to be done and could be done.
(19:52):
Like I get angry because he killed my daughter and
my daughter was found enough freaking hotel m naked in
a shower. Why you know, I get her? You know
why angry myself. Here's another thing. I wonder why this
(20:14):
guy we've left loose because here's the crazy thing about
Africa's case. Well, Africa's death was senseless and seemed utterly random.
It wasn't random. It was part of a pattern. And
years earlier, a man named Thomas Hargrove had tried to
(20:37):
warn police. He said he had evidence that a serial
killer was on the loose, strangling young women in the area,
women just like Africa. Hardy. So, who was Thomas Hargrove
and what was his evidence? Unfortunately, Bury, Indiana is a
good place to be a killer because you're probably going
(20:58):
to get away with him. Hey, Ben, can you hear me?
(21:19):
I'm speaking with Thomas Hargrove over zoom here. Hold on
one second. I have to warn my wife. I'm doing
an interview. Harkerve's the guy who warned police in Indiana
that they might have a serial killer and the loose
Hargrove sixty four. He's got a white beard and wear
thin rimmed glasses. He wasn't the sort of guy I
(21:40):
imagined would be investigating serial killers, so he's curious how
he got into all this. I don't know where these
things come from, but when I was seventeen, I decided
I had to be a reporter, and investigative reporter, an
investigative reporters, somebody looking into a truth that somebody is
trying to hide, Like Africa. Hardy Hargrove grew up outside Chicago.
(22:07):
He was inspired by journalists there who came up with
a creative way to expose the city's corruption. Reporters kept
hearing about the bribes that business owners had to pay
city inspectors, but it was hard to prove any wrongdoing,
so the journalists decided to go deep undercover. The reporters
fought their editor into opening a bar. They called it
(22:29):
the Mirage. Journalists were actually becoming bar keeps, and they
were running this bar for months and months. They were
specifically looking for indications of public corruption. And they found it.
With hidden cameras running, the reporters caught inspectors taking bribes
and ignoring code violations. It was a remarkable project, and
(22:54):
it just seemed like it was so much fun. I
wanted to be like these people. After high school, Hargrove
studied journalism at the University of Missouri. It's actually one
of the country's top programs for journalism at that time.
In the early seventies, a new field was emerging called
computer assisted reporting. The idea was that reporters could use
(23:18):
computers to analyze data like government records. Hard grow quickly
grasped that computing had the potential to revolutionize investigative journalism.
It allowed reporters to step back and look at issues
with a wider lens. From this new perspective, sometimes previously
invisible patterns would come into focus. If you didn't ask
(23:40):
the question in exactly the right way, your program would fail.
And it was very frustrating, but it was astonishing what
computers could do. After college, Hargrove landed a job as
a crime reporter for the Birmingham Post Herald. Being a
police reporter in the Deep South was a remarkable way
(24:01):
to get started. I came as a Yankee and really
wasn't expecting to like that experience, but I did. Her
Grove loved the work experience he was getting, but being
a police reporter wasn't always easy. It's one thing to
think I want to write exposes about crooked politics. That's
another thing to see what happens because of bad policies,
(24:25):
poverty and desperation and violence. Hard Grove kept a police
scanner running all the time, even at home. If he
heard a dispatch that sounded newsworthy, he'd immediately drive out
to the scene of the crime. Sometimes, if he happened
to be nearby, he would beat the cops there. One
(24:47):
was at a convenience store in Hoover, Alabama. I opened
the door and didn't see anybody, and then found the
cashier behind the counter. The cashier had been shot. He
was lying on the ground leading out. He didn't say anything.
(25:08):
He wasn't especially conscious, but he breathed his last It
is an experience to see someone die. I didn't really
think when I was a teenager what it was like
to cover the news. I guess I didn't realize that
(25:30):
when you experience the news rather than just right about it.
It really is a life changing process. Hard Group's time
as a crime reporter was also when he first learned
about serial killers and a phenomenon called linkage blindness. In
the late nineties seventies, the term serial killer did not exist.
(25:55):
That was invented in the eighties. The term did not exist,
but the idea that someone could kill over and over
again was becoming common among Americans at that time. Just
to the east of Birmingham, Atlanta was experiencing the Atlanta
child murders, and those murders were not being solved. It's
(26:18):
unusual for children to be murdered. It's very unusual for
child murders to go unsolved, and there was criticism of
the Atlanta Police Department for not recognizing the patterns sooner.
I started attending academic symposiums that looked into the question
of the Atlanta child murders, and I heard from criminologists
(26:42):
that this is a well known problem called linkage blindness,
that when there are connected cases, often the connection is
not made by police because of the nature of how
homicides are investigated. If someone murdered, a detective is assigned
to the case. When another person is murdered, Usually a
(27:05):
different detective is assigned to the case. If there are
commonalities to the two murders, those commonalities are not recognized
unless those two detectives have a conversation over the water cooler.
If those killings occurred in a neighboring jurisdiction, that conversation
never happens. Experts in the field, we're saying that most
(27:29):
connected murders go unrecognized. The links are very rarely made,
and I kept that in the back of my mind.
Hargrove didn't know it yet, but this simple insight about
linkage blindness, that connections between murders are often missed by police,
That idea would become an obsession and completely alter the
(27:52):
course of his life. But his next clue wouldn't come
until decades later, when he was halfway across the country.
Hargrove had climbed up through the ranks, and in two
thousand four he was living his teenage dream. He was
working as an investigative reporter in Washington, d C. And
(28:12):
he was using the programming skills he learned in college
to write big data driven stories. In two thousand four,
I was assigned to do a really interesting story. He
just started a piece on prostitution when he stumbled across
another clue. In some cities, anti prostitution laws are vigorously enforced.
(28:36):
In other cities, the laws are virtually ignored, and in
other cities just the men who higher prostitutes are arrested.
So it was all across the board, who gets arrested,
whether anyone gets arrested. To study this, I needed the
uniform crime report because prostitution is something the FBI counts,
(28:56):
So hart Grove ordered a CD with FBI records about crime.
He was planning to compare prostitution arrest between different cities
when he discovered something else. Included on that CD at
no extra charge was a file I had never heard of,
called the Supplemental Homicide Report. Being paid to be curious,
(29:20):
I opened it up and what it was was line
after line of individual murders. It showed the age, race,
sex of each victim. Victim is a blackmail eighteen years old.
It had the weapon that was used. He was shut
with a handgun. It had the police theory as to
why the homicide occurred. The murder is thought to be
(29:43):
due to an argument over money or property. It had
the month and year and the jurisdiction January two thousand,
Los Angeles, Long Beach, California. I had never seen the
individual crime data before, and I don't know where all
these connections occur in our minds, But the first thought
(30:04):
I had upon opening the s HR the Supplemental Homicide
Report was could we teach a computer to identify connected
cases to find serial killings? Hard Grove had a feeling
that an algorithm could find patterns within that data and
detect serial killers. And maybe you could even be used
(30:27):
to detect active serial killers who had not yet been caught.
This idea started hard Grove down a winding path that
eventually led him to discover a trail of bodies, bodies
that he says, we're left behind by the man who
killed Africa Hardy. But this isn't just a story investigating
Africa Hardy's killer and cold cases that might be connected
(30:51):
to him. If there's one thing that will become clear
from this story, it's that Africa Hardy didn't need to
die next time on algorithm. Serial killer Gary Ridgway was
convicted in a court of law of murdering forty eight
(31:11):
girls and women. The question was could we teach a
computer a process that would tell us that something god
awful happened in Seattle. My editors recognized that this could
be something very cool, but it's hard to commit to
a project you don't know up front whether it's possible.
The stereotypes about the profile of a serial killer or
(31:34):
profile of the victims is not really very consistent with
the facts. This is really one of the most frustrating
experiences of my life. Your only hope is to get
Jackie to talk. I think the Gary Police Department should
be looking at some of those old cases. They still
may have a killer out there. Episode two of Algorithm
(31:57):
is out now. Listen to subscribe on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
This episode was written and produced by me ben Key Brick.
Algorithm is executive produced by Alex Williams, Donald Albright, and
Matt Frederick. Production assistance in mixing by Eric Quintana. The
(32:18):
music is by Makeup and Vanity Set and Blue Dot Sessions.
Thanks to Christina Dana, Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, rema El Kaili,
Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes.
Also really thanks for listening. Um, it means a lot.
Like I was saying, this is my first time hosting
(32:40):
a podcast like this and I love to know what
you think. So if you have a moment, please subscribe
and leave a review.
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