Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
No tears for black girls when they disappear.
No tears for black girls like they were never here.
But we remember. We'll speak their names, their
stories matter. We'll break these chains.
(00:23):
No tears left to cry. Today, we travel.
The twilight margins of Atlanta,searching for the names, faces
and stories. The city.
Would rather forget stories thatflicker briefly.
Through the news ticker, then disappear.
A missing woman, a murdered daughter, a mother's grief
echoing unanswered through emptystreets.
(00:45):
In Atlanta, as in so many cities, the numbers are
staggering and the silence deafening.
According to the Black and Missing Foundation, more than
64,000 Black women and girls arecurrently missing across the
United. States their cases.
Are more likely to go unsolved or unreported, less likely to be
covered by media and too often dismissed by law enforcement.
(01:08):
In Georgia and Atlanta in particular, the problem is
acute. Black women account for a
disproportionate percentage of missing persons cases, and their
families are left to fight for answers alone.
Let's start in the present, witha family still waiting for
answers. Destiny Gunnison is. 30 years
old. And like so many Black women,
(01:31):
her life has been shaped by bothvulnerability and resilience.
Destiny. Lives with disabilities.
Cognitive and medical conditionsthat require assistance.
She's soft spoken, shy in crowdsand fiercely.
Attached to those she trusts. In May of 2024, Destiny was last
(01:51):
seen leaving her father's home in East Point A.
Suburb just outside. Atlanta, just another day, a
routine walk, a visit to a friend.
She never came back. For Destiny's family, the
anxiety and fear began the moment she didn't return.
Her parents and siblings called everyone they knew, organized
(02:13):
search parties and posted Flyersat gas stations, laundromats and
corner stores. They begged for the city.
To pay attention, but Destiny's.Story was largely.
Ignored by the broader media, her disappearance was.
Relegated to the back pages of local.
News or quick mentions on neighborhood.
Facebook Groups. The days stretched into.
(02:34):
Weeks, police issued. A missing person alert
describing her as endangered because of her health concerns.
But the urgency never materialized.
No Amber Alert, no citywide canvas.
The community rallied, but theirefforts were piece meal, some
volunteers, some church groups, a few neighbors who remembered
(02:55):
seeing Destiny at the bus stop. But most people were too busy,
too numb or too far removed. Destiny's case is not unique.
In Atlanta, an estimated 40% of all missing persons cases
involve Black women and girls, according to Community.
Advocates, yet you're far less likely to see their.
(03:15):
Faces on the news. Far less likely to hear a
police. Chief at the podium asking for
help. The National Crime Information
Center estimates that in 2023 alone, over 14,000 black women
and girls were reported missing in Georgia, with Atlanta at the
center of the. Crisis.
But those are just the reported cases for every.
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Destiny Gunnison. There are untold others whose
families? Lack the resources.
The language. Or the legal.
Status to demand a formal investigation.
Cases that never make it. To a database.
Let alone the public's eye. That is the reality.
Of Atlanta, a city shining bright but haunted at its.
Edges by ghosts. No one is willing to name and so
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Destiny's family. Waits every.
Time the phone rings Hope and. Dread rise together.
Every time a new story. Pushes hers off the feed.
They tape the. Flyers back up.
And whisper prayers into the night.
Months have passed. As of December 2024, Destiny
Gunnison is still missing her. Mother told reporters.
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My daughter would never just disappear.
She needs help. She needs to be seen.
But the city? Keeps moving and her.
Story slips deeper. Into the shadows, that silence
is a violence all its own. Before destiny, there was
Bridget Shield, a name barely spoken now outside her family's
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grieving circle. But once she lit up Atlanta's
possibilities, Bridget was only 19.
Raised by her grandmother, Beverly Toole, she was ambitious
and creative, pouring herself into music and modeling,
planning photo shoots with friends on weekends, scribbling
song lyrics on the backs of napkins and receipts.
(05:05):
People talk about her laugh first.
How it? Would fill a room, chase away
whatever heaviness you brought to.
Her door. She wanted to make it, to be
seen to turn her gifts into something bigger than herself.
But even for the Dreamers, the city's dangers are real.
May 30th, 2016 was a balmy nightlaced with the scent of
(05:27):
honeysuckle and car. Exhaust, Bridget told.
Her grandmother. She'd be back soon.
Just a quick trip. Nothing to worry about,
Atlanta's. Streets are always.
Alive at night, humming with music and possibility, but also
with the dangers that black women are taught to sense.
To avoid. To never ignore surveillance
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cameras later caught. Bridget at a.
DeKalb County gas station buyinga Sprite.
She wasn't alone. Two men flanked her, one at her
shoulder, another by the car. In the grainy footage, she
looks. Closed off.
Her face tense, body language wary.
She wasn't driving her own. Car hours later, Bridget.
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'S car was seen heading into Oakland City Park in southwest
Atlanta around midnight. Gunfire.
Shattered the quiet. Someone called 911, but the
responding officers found nothing out of place.
Maybe they didn't look hard enough, or maybe they didn't
want to see. When the sun rose on May 31st, a
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jogger passing through the park stumbled on a horror.
Bridget's naked body lay in the grass.
By the basketball court, riddledwith bullets.
Her clothes were nearby, her cargone.
It was later found abandoned farfrom the.
Park A. Silent witness to a crime no one
wanted to claim for her family, the nightmare began all over
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again. Beverly, who had raised Bridget
from a little girl. Was swallowed by grief.
And disbelief. The community responded with
vigils, marches and prayers. They lit candles, posted Flyers
and. Pleaded for justice.
Not just for. Bridget.
But for all the missing and murdered black women.
(07:14):
Whose cases filled? Atlanta's Unsolved Files The
pain was immediate, consuming, but the investigation soon lost
momentum. At first, detectives collected
DNA from the crime scene, interviewed witnesses and
scoured camera footage. There was even hope A.
Sprite bottle with. DNA, fingerprints, Leads.
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But as time passed, so did the city's attention.
Weeks became months. The vigils faded.
The posters curled. At the edges and fell away.
Why did Bridget? 'S case stagnate.
Why, Her grandmother wondered, did it never?
Get the resources. That seemed so.
Quickly devoted to. Other young women, Other
neighborhoods, according to the Black and Missing Foundation.
(08:02):
Black women's cases. Are less likely to receive media
coverage or. Law enforcement urgency and
families are often left to investigate on their own.
Statistics paint a grim. Picture nearly 40.
Percent of all missing persons in Georgia are black women or.
Girls, but their stories? Rarely.
Lead the Evening News A break finally came, but not from
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tireless police work on Bridget's behalf.
In October of that year, police investigating an unrelated
double homicide arrested Christopher Spencer and Vernon
Beeman. When Spencer's DNA was entered
into the system, it matched evidence collected at Bridget's
crime scene. But even this answer.
Was elusive. Spencer was already serving a
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life sentence for the Stone Mountain murders.
He denied ever knowing Bridget. He has never been tried or
convicted in her case. The second man, the one seen
with her on the gas station cameras, was never identified.
Police say they don't believe Bridget's death was gang
related, but they can't explain why she was.
(09:07):
Targeted or whether. She was simply in the wrong
place with the wrong people at the wrong moment.
Today, Bridget's story lingers unresolved, unhealed, a wound in
Atlanta's beating heart. And always, the silence for
every mother who stands in frontof the news cameras.
(09:29):
There are sisters. Cousins, friends who mourn in
the shadows, forced to grieve without answers.
This is the pattern repeated again and again, the silence
feeding on itself, swallowing voices that the city never
learned to listen for. Joe Keisha Keisha Brown's story
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is another chilling echo, a chronicle of resilience and
terror, love and betrayal. Born in Florida, Keisha moved to
Atlanta to chase her dreams as an actress, model and small
business owner. She was a loving mother to her
teenage son, Jack, a boy whose world revolved around the
certainty of his mother's love. Keisha's friends and family
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describe her as someone with a magnetic smile, a generous heart
and an unbreakable. Spirit.
But her life was marked by a relationship that turned from
passion to nightmare. Keisha's ex.
Boyfriend Alfredo Capote was notjust.
Abusive. He was a predator.
In April 2016, he broke into Keisha's Duluth home while her
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son was there, then kidnapped and.
Sexually assaulted. Her In a campaign of terror that
spanned multiple counties, she finally escaped by leaping from
a moving car, flagging down a stranger for help.
Court records reveal a history. Of violence, intimidation and
psychological torment. Keisha filed restraining orders,
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worked with police and pleaded for protection.
Despite the evidence and her compliance, Capote remained
free. Friends remember how Keisha
confided in them her certainty. That Capote would kill her her.
Exhaustion from fighting for herown safety on July 1st, 2016.
Just hours before her 36th birthday.
(11:18):
Keisha sat in her. Mercedes SUV.
Outside a strip mall on North Druid Hills Rd. waiting to go
into a studio. For a photo shoot.
It was a familiar place and she may have felt a brief moment of
peace, but someone was watching.Keisha was ambushed, shot
multiple times through the window.
Witnesses saw a man running fromthe scene.
(11:40):
Atlanta police interviewed bystanders.
Reviewed security footage. And quickly named Capote as a
person of interest. But he had vanished.
For months, Keisha's family and community members waited,
organized vigils and demanded action.
Keisha's mother, already grieving the loss of another
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child just months earlier, became a fierce.
Advocate for justice, both for her daughter.
And for all women trapped in cycles of intimate partner
violence. Capote was finally arrested in
Louisiana nearly a year later, in April 2017 on unrelated.
Charges He was extradited to Georgia to face a list.
(12:22):
Of felonies, including kidnapping.
Rape. Aggravated assault.
And more. The legal process has been.
Slow stretched on by. Capote's efforts.
To delay and challenge the. Case as of. 2022 the family is
still waiting for a final measure of.
Justice what? Connects destiny, Bridget and
Jokisha. Their.
(12:44):
Stories are not identical. Each woman's life, each
disappearance or murder is unique in its heartbreak and
hope. Destiny is still missing.
Bridget's killer remains unnamed, her family left with a
tissue of half answers and shadows.
Jokisha's murderer is known, buther family still waits.
(13:04):
For the court to deliver justiceyears.
After the crime. But beneath the differences runs
a common truth. These were women loved deeply by
their families, remembered fiercely by their communities,
and all were let down by a system that was.
Supposed to protect. Them the silence around their
cases is not just neglect, it isa form of violence, a reminder.
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Of whose lives? Are considered urgent Whose?
Grief is prioritized. And whose stories are allowed to
linger in the public memory? And what?
Of the stats. Black women make up about 13% of
the US female population, but represent more than 1/3 of all
missing women in the country in Atlanta.
(13:48):
The crisis is reflected. In every neighborhood, every.
Vigil every face. On a flyer.
Most experts believe the. True numbers are much higher as
so many cases go unreported or are misclassified.
For every name we say aloud, there are dozens more whispered
in private, mourned in silence. That is why no.
(14:10):
Tears for black girls exists. To bring these stories.
Out of the shadows to bear. Witness and fight.
For a future. Where silence never wins at
Queen's Crown Salon, every stylecomes with a story, and some
stories are dangerous to tell. When women start vanishing and
the city's most powerful police family closes ranks, salon owner
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Quanda and her. Circle of stylists refused to
stay quiet as secrets. Unravel and danger creeps.
Closer Tasha Roxy. And their found family must risk
everything to protect one another and to.
Expose the truth. Behind the Rivers family's
legacy of corruption, Detective Vega and.
Officer Rodriguez are. Determined to.
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Break the cycle. But justice in Atlanta comes at
a price. For every woman who dares to
speak, there's another forced into silence.
For every. Survivor, a story the city would
rather forget. In a world where silence is
survival, breaking it might be the only way to save them all.
The. Price of Silence is a gripping,
lyrical novel. About sisterhood survival.
(15:16):
And the power of community. For the women of Queen's Crown,
the fight isn't just. For justice, it's for the right.
To be seen, heard and free. The novel.
Is available for. Free download today on Amazon
June 22nd and will be free to download on Amazon Kindle
starting June 23rd. Don't miss your chance to
(15:39):
experience this story, one that honors the voices and the
courage of women like Destiny Gunnison, Bridget Shield, and
Jokisha Brown. And as a.
Special tribute. The song Atlanta Sees You from
the Price of Silence soundtrack will play in its entirety at the
end of this episode. Thank you for listening, Stay.
(16:00):
Loved, stay blessed. And stay safe.
These streets hold stories that never make the front page.
(16:23):
Another black queen lost just a statistic, just her age.
Joe Keisha Brown, model, actress, just 35, shot through
the windshield the night before her birthday arrived.
April kidnapped. July murder.
But where's the outrage? My concrete veins run deep with
names that fade from the stage. Dynasty was her name in the
Atlanta rap scene, but when she reported her assault, the system
failed to intervene. We've been fighting to survive
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in the world where the pain is. Men of us, Atlanta sees you.
Atlanta knows when the cameras turn in the spotlight goes
Community's got no immediate fails telling the stories behind
the headlines. 51 murders unsolved in a single year Brown
hayden's shield 3 Queens disappeared.
Channel 2 might flash their faces for a moment or two while
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white victims get updates the whole week.
Through my skyline stands witness to this double standard
where melanin determines if yourdeath is worth the camera.
The same neighborhoods they calldangerous at 11 are filled with
mothers creating sanctuaries like heaven.
From Oakland City to Vine City, East Point to Decatur, community
builds what the headlines won't favor vigils held by street
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light, names written on balloons.
Just as the latest justice denied coming to soon, I watched
mothers organ, not search. Parties at dawn, when police
resources stretch too thin are simply gone.
My billboards should bare their faces, their stories, their
names, instead of the luxury cars in the fortune of fame.
Can you hear? Them calling through the
concrete and steel, the voices of my daughters too real to
(18:00):
conceal. The prayers at new birth, the
rallies at five points. The truth between the headlines
that the city snooze be headlines don't.
Tell a story the missing pieces the untold glory of black women
fighting to survive in the worldwhere the pain is in the bus.
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Atlanta sees you. Atlanta knows when the camera.
For Joe Keisha, for Taylor, for Bridget, for all the daughters
of Atlanta whose stories still call for justice, for witness,
for someone to see that behind every headline, that's humanity.