Did Teresita Basa avenge her own death?

Months after the murder of Teresita Basa, her former coworker began falling into trances, a voice identifying itself as Teresita issuing from her mouth. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, these statements turned out to be true, leading to the conviction of 32 year-old Allen Showers. But what's the real story? Was this justice beyond the grave or beyond the law?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,

(00:20):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Hi,
I'm Noll and I'm Ben. You are you and if
you are listening to this show, then hopefully you are
not Tera Sita Bassa. We'll get to it today. We're
going to talk about crime. Every once in a while

(00:41):
we do a show about criminal behavior, whether that's financial corruption,
whether that's a grizzly series of unsolved murders. Um. But
we're talking today not about a type of crime, but
a very specific crime, a tale of murder and on
some level justice perhaps just this from beyond the grave grave? Now,

(01:04):
how many times I have to tell you I can
do that in post. You don't have to do your
own effects. I know, I just like it. So our
story begins in Chicago, nineteen seventy seven with a forty
seven year old respiratory therapist named Terra Sita Bossa. Now, now,
she was from the Philippines. She was well regarded by

(01:25):
her neighbors. Her her neighbors liked her. She was fluent
into glic and she was employed at a place called
the Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, which is at this time closed.
On February twenty one, nineteen seventy seven, firefighters arrived at
Terra Cita's home, which was Apartment fifteen B on the
fifteenth floor of forty North Pine Grove Avenue, where they

(01:51):
discovered her corpse. Her corpse have been burned and likely
to filed kitchen knife protruded from her chest. It was
one of the lives that she had owned. While she
was alive. Someone had thrown her mattress on top of
her and you know, attempted to burn the evidence. As
homicides to go with. This case was particularly horrific. There

(02:12):
were no leads and after a few months the case
went cold. And while this is unfortunate, it's also disturbingly common.
You guys, let's pause for a second from this story
and and take a look at some of the statistics
involving homicide so we can get a better get a
better grasp of this. One of the things that we'll

(02:32):
find when we look at statistics for murders, you know,
identified homicides, is that there are a lot of qualifications
and members of the same government sometimes don't always agree
on the numbers. For example, the Bureau of Justice, which
is an arm of the Department of Justice here in
the US, has a nuanced definition, very precise definition of homicide,

(02:59):
and that would include would murder and non negligent manslaughter,
which is the wilful killing of one human being by
another right. But the data is based solely on police
investigation as opposed to the determination of a court or
a medical examiner, a coroner, or another judicial body. So

(03:20):
if there's a suspect death and then there's a trial
later and they say and the cops didn't think it
was a murder, but a jury does rule something that
says that, then it still doesn't count. So it also
excludes some deaths, and some of those are um deaths
caused by negligence, suicide, or accident. Justifiable homicide seems like

(03:44):
a misnumber since it actually has the word homicide, and
but I digress and attempts of murder right, and justified
carries its own yeah, and justifiable homicides are based on
law enforcement agency reports, and that's a whole another episode. Uh.
Interesting side note here, deaths from the terrorist attacks on

(04:05):
September eleventh, two thousand one are specifically not included in
the analyzes. And that's a that's just an example of
the sort of definition that will look at here. But
good news because of according its not just the Bureau
of Justice, but also to other reporting agencies. Despite what

(04:25):
you might hear on your local mainstream news, uh and
and all the terrible things you're here on the radio,
it turns out that murder is actually declining. Yeah, that
is an extremely surprising thing to hear, especially after these
past couple of weeks of the two conventions for our

(04:45):
primary parties, and there's a lot of scare scare stuff
going on, right, And then you look at the actual
statistics and you see that the homicide rate in the
US has declined by nearly half, from nine three homicides
per one hundred thousand residents in nine two to four
point seven out of one hundred thousand in two thousand eleven.

(05:09):
That's the lowest level since nineteen sixty three. But as
we said, not all of the sources will agree. So
if we look to the FBI, we find their handybook
Crime in the United States, and they found some interesting
numbers from Yeah, they found that there were an estimated

(05:29):
one million, one sixty five thousand, three hundred and eighty
three violent crimes, which would consist of murder and non
negligent homicides, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. These statistics were
called from various law enforcement agencies, and that's that's pulling
in a whole lot of different crimes, right. Um. So yeah,

(05:50):
like you said, Ben, when looking at these different sources
that are trying to keep good statistics on all of
this stuff and good numbers, it gets money. Yeah, But
but there's more here. Many of these homicides that occur
do go unsolved. Sadly. We've got a great quote from

(06:11):
a article in The Economists on this America's homicide clearance rate.
The percentage of solved crimes that lead to arrest has
fallen considerably in the past fifty years, from around in
nineteen sixty five to around sixty According to federal statistics,
this means more than two hundred and eleven thousand homicides

(06:33):
committed since nineteen eighty remain unsolved. Every year introduces nearly
five thousand more. So journey back with US, ladies and
gentlemen to Chicago in nineteen seventy seven. According to the
sources you check, whether it's maybe a compilation from the
Tribune or municipal compilation, you'll find that there were between

(06:57):
eight hundred and twenty three to eleven hundred nine documented
homicides in the city in that year alone. Uh Teressee
Gavasa was by all accounts, set to remain a tragically
unsolved crime, at least that is until her ghost returned
and hunted down her murderer. But first a word from

(07:19):
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you came from us. So we left you with a

(09:33):
bit of a cliffhanger there. We mentioned that possibly the
ghost of terrasee To Bassa came back from the grave
and got a little revenge. According to the story, several
months after the murder, the detective Joe Statula, he received
a lead from the Evanston Police Department nearby, and they

(09:55):
instructed him to contact Dr Jose Chua. Seems random on
on the detective's end, like, Okay, I guess we'll go
see this person. Well, apparently jose Chua's wife, Remibios Remicua,
claimed to be possessed by tarase To Boss's spirit. That's

(10:15):
that's a weird call to get right sitting in the
police department, Hey, you need to go talk to this lady.
She's possessed by the spirit of your victim. So, according
to Dr Chuai, his wife had actually begun entering into
these trances, these trance states, and while she was in them,
she would speak and claim to be the ghost of Tarasee.

(10:37):
To bass, according to the original Chicago Tribune stories that
were written about this, he goes into detail about um
laying on the bed and just speaking, and he was
he would just go up to her and I mean,
you can imagine going, what are you doing as a doctor,
like you're gonna be skeptical, right, what is happening to

(11:00):
my wife? Right? That's that's a reasonable thing. That's an
assumption most of us would make. We do not naturally
live in horror movies. So Dr Chua's wife were arguably
the ghost of terrace To bassa named the murderer given
name to this murder, and that name was Alan Showery
or Showery, And the doctor still, you know, of course,

(11:23):
was not convinced these are not very specific things us,
so he still cautiously looked into it. And turns out,
according to the story, there was an Alan Showy in Chicago.
He was also an employee at Edgewater Hospital, and it
seemed that he had visited Terraceta's home on the pretense

(11:46):
of repairing either a television set or an electrical problem. Additionally,
the voice claimed that Showery had taken jewelry from the
deceased and given it to his girlfriend. The jewelry, the
voice continued, could be identified by several individuals, and it
named those individuals. Despite the extraordinarily unorthodox nature of the lead,

(12:10):
detectives found, Yeah, there really was this Alan Showery working there.
He's an orderly who he was a thirty two year
old orderly. So they visited his home and they found
that he did have a girlfriend and he lived with her.
And upon investigation, they found boss's jewelry in the possession
of this girlfriend. So Alan Showery was arrested on August eleven.

(12:35):
So initially Showery confessed, but then he were canted his confession,
saying he was coerced into confess him because of police
threats to jail his pregnant common law wife as an accessory.
And this means that the first attempt at conviction ended
in a mistrial. But eventually he was convicted and he
was sentenced to i think fourteen years for the murder itself,

(12:57):
and then a couple other consecutive sentences of four years
for the murder arson and robbery. It was. It was
nearly twenty years altogether, right, he served less than five
of that was released in three which means Mr Showery,
you may well be listening to this podcast today, and

(13:17):
if you are, I would love some clarity on this
because everything we've researched on this, you know, it's it's
images of papers from the nineteen seventies, it's people in
the nineteen nineties talking about the unsolved mysteries. You know,
movie that came out. There was an Unsolved Mysteries movie
that came out about this case. We'd love to hear

(13:39):
directly from you if you're listening a case of possession,
if that is the story is true. As Matt mentioned earlier,
the original reports come from the Chicago Tribune, which is
which is a respected paper, but the story itself has
several holes. First, remedia Chua was also an employee at

(13:59):
the hospital and may have used the claim of possession
as sort of a safety net to bring Showery to justice. Um,
this is a biggie because it's very very plausible that
Chua had other information that was not made available to
law enforcement through official channels. She also, though, like Tara Sita,
spoke to golog and in this This to me is

(14:22):
fairly plausible, this idea that somehow or another, Miss Chua
had information about what had happened. Maybe she had been
speaking um with Miss Bassa about who knows whatever was
going on between the two Alan Showery and Tara Sa Bassa,
and knew something that she wanted to get justice, but

(14:44):
she didn't know how to do it, and she was
afraid maybe of this guy. I'm this makes a lot
of sense, uh, not that I am poo pooing the
idea that she was actually possessed. I don't know. I
have no evidence either way of this, but that makes
sense to me. And there's also another option here that
the police may have assisted in fabricating this story, or

(15:06):
at least played along with it, in order to obtain
what they needed to make the arrest. So, in the
case of catching a murderer, could we blame them for
bending the circumstances a bit because it is quite possible. Unfortunately,
in the legal system, it's quite possible to have inadmissible
proof that someone committed a crime, and because the proof

(15:29):
is inadmissible, be unable to prosecute them or bring justice
for the family right for sure, but you can't do anything.
And this goes into a larger concept here to psychic
powers applied to law enforcement in itself. It's problematic because
we've always seen the tropes who have always heard the

(15:50):
stories of claim success. Right where there's a cold case
and often something grizzly if it's fiction, like a child
murderer or what not, and a medium or a psychic
is able to, based on their impressions, arrive at information
that could not be found any other way. But are

(16:13):
they doing this or they just confirming stuff investigators already
knew but was somehow inadmissible. You know, in the case
of Tersea Boss It it does seem that justice was
ultimately served at the killer was legally convicted, we can
call him mcgillar. But was this by a ghost or

(16:35):
was this by bending the rules of an investigation. I'll
you know, the uh the shield or the wire or
any of those other crime shows. Yeah, it feels like
a slippery slope to me. I haven't heard. I can't
think in my head of a case that used a
psychic to get a conviction in the recent past. And

(16:59):
maybe that should be just because I'm not looking for it.
You know, I haven't seen it pop up on any
of my news threads that I subscribe to. Perhaps that's it, um.
I can't imagine that it's happening with much frequency. That's
an excellent point. And this brings us to another thing
of For those of you listening who are involved in

(17:19):
law enforcement, I'd like to hear your your thoughts on this.
There's a phenomenon that I've heard occurs, which is that
sometimes when a crime or the hunt for a criminal
gets too much recognition in the public, precincts become inundated
with people who are alleging that they have inside knowledge

(17:42):
of it, or that they committed the crime, or that
they have received information about the crime in a dream
or in a trance or some spiritual revelation. And this
you know, this is depicted sometimes in fiction, but it
does actually happen. Maybe not all that often, but it
has happened. So we'd love to hear some real stories

(18:02):
about those kinds of experiences. And most importantly, of course,
if uh there was something you couldn't explain, if somebody
really did have something that seemed to be esp that
assisted in the cracking of a case, and it doesn't
have to be homicide. Of course, it can be you know,
stolen goods, yeah, anything, or if you you worked with

(18:26):
a psychic or a medium and nothing came of it
or the information was wrong. I'd love to hear either way.
And of course every time that we asked for the
best part of this show, which is your stories, your emails,
your ideas for future topics, we like to show improve
that it's not all just a bunch of malarkey, which

(18:46):
means it's almost time for shot at Kinners. But first,
a teeny, kindy little sponsor break. Today's first shout out
goes to Ned Kelly's Revenge from Twitter. Just listen to

(19:10):
your political conspiracy episode and half of that episode is
now fact you guys have to be psychic or nostre
damast two point oh or something. This. I love this,
this tweet because it's shortened all of the letters. It's
letters and numbers and not actual words for most of
it because you had to shorten it. I love it. Yeah,
thanks so much for writing to us on Twitter. You

(19:33):
know that I always initially hesitant about that one because, uh,
talking about politics on the internet, which I would kunt
of podcast as as well, can so quickly become incredibly unproductive.
So I, for one, I'm really glad that you found
it worth your time and thanks so much for checking
out the show. The next shout out goes to Alex Willits,

(19:53):
who wrote to us on Facebook. Alex wants us to
cover some more unsolved crime topics. He's interesting it specifically
in cropsy, which isn't really an unsolved crime topic. It's
it's a legend, It's an urban legend, but it's still fascinating. Yeah,
there's a there's a great documentary on cropsy um that
I think one of you guys may have turned me onto.

(20:16):
But how how great your timing is, Alex. So we
hope that you enjoyed today's episode on Tara Cita Bassa.
And our last shout out for this episode comes from
Christopher Rogers, who says, can you delve into the topic
of water? The local and state governments make farmers in
my region pay tax on the water that falls into

(20:37):
their dams and creeks. The bloody state Housing Authority has
stopped installing rainwater tanks onto state housing because rainwater is dangerous.
Why does it seem like someone wants control over the
water supply and what authority do they have to make
me pay for this stuff when it falls from the sky.
You know, that's a question we've heard before, and it's
still a good one. Christophers from Australia. I don't know

(20:58):
exactly what region he's from, but that is fascinating and
he wants us to cover water. I'm down, yeah, I
think that's I think that's a great idea. We did
an earlier series on water wars and we also looked
at contamination there in Flint, Michigan. So this concludes our gosh,

(21:20):
we hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to
learn more about the case of Tara Sea Bassa, head
on over to archives dot Chicago Tribune dot com and
you could do a search for a tarrasee to Bassa.
You can do a search for some of the dates
that we talked about in the episode, and you can
find copies of the actual original reports, the physical papers

(21:41):
that came out in the seventies, eighties, and nineties and
really kind of follow the paper trail, which is what
we did to make this episode. I would say it's
exciting and it really gets your mind going. You can
find an article from two thousand in the Weekly World News,
which is something our coworker Josh Clark has talked about
for a publication about some of them less than reputable

(22:05):
things you'll find in that publication. But in this story,
it talks specifically about about Remy Chua's actions while she
was at work, uh and you know, take them with
a grain of salt if you want, but it talks
about how she would sit at the same place at
the lunch table where where everyone would gather to have
lunch there at the hospital. She would sit in the

(22:25):
same place that Tara Sea Bassa used to sit, and
she would sing quietly to herself the way miss Bassa
would do. And this was all leading up to the
stories of that her husband was giving about her going
into trances on their bed at home. And you know,
it's fascinating to read this stuff. It reads like a
Hollywood film, and you know, perhaps there's a reason for that,

(22:49):
or perhaps it's true, and it's just hard to imagine.
And that would once also ask for people to don't
don't feel like you can't write to us just because
you're not uh, you're not a member of law enforcement.
People run into allegations of psychic activity all the time,

(23:11):
and many of us listening or even creating shows like
this or investigations like this, do so because we have
found things that we cannot at this point explain, and
it may be just as presumptuous to make the mistakes
a lot of people who I guess confuse themselves for

(23:31):
skeptics make by automatically saying that you know something is
because something is strange or currently inexplicable, that it's automatically
bunk with this. With this case, there's not any There's
not any case I could find in my research of
terasea basa um or excuse me, remi chua being investigated

(23:55):
or tested for any kind of extrasensory perception or so on.
And the truth of the matter is that had that
testing occurred and presuced produced some sort of statistically significant result,
then we probably would have heard of it, and you
probably would have heard of this case before. Still, ultimately,
and this is only my opinion here, the most important

(24:17):
thing is that the killer was apprehended, and finding the
real murderer instead of someone who's falsely convicted or instead
of just someone who gets away, is something that is
um extremely important, and I'm not, you know, at all

(24:37):
condoning bending the rules of the law, although I'm sure
statistically that happens as well. You know, Ben I, I I
can't agree with you more. And I to kind of
give some context with this case, I'm going to read
a quote that comes from the Chicago Tribune says we
asked detective Statue, who broke the case, if he believed

(24:57):
the US He said, quote, I would not call anyone
a liar. If they had said they heard a voice
from God, I would listen. It would be wrong for
me to cut off in informant. I talked to pimps, prostitutes,
drug addicts in the Belmont area. Doctor and Mrs Chewa
are educated, intelligent people who live in a ninety thousand
dollar house. It's a distinct change for me. I wanted

(25:20):
information on this murder. I listened and acted on what
they told me. We went after Alan Showery. The case
was wrapped up within three hours. End quote. Thank you
so much for listening. Everyone. We would like to hear
your stories if you have similar stories of experiences like
this in law enforcement or not in law enforcement, in
any kind of forensic investigation. UH and maybe any thing

(25:43):
you encountered that you thought was just beyond the bounds
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(26:06):
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