Anatomy of Murder - Evil Eye

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Voodoo dolls, candles and a hit list. Will these items answer the questions of who killed a young couple in their home, and why?For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/ Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

Behind a painting in the house, they found what you could almost describe as a hit list of detectives' names in the case. They then were able to go into the storage unit, and then there they found something that was far creepier. Detectives were certain that this was crazy. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. So this episode highlights a couple's American dream, which quickly flipped into a homicidal nightmare.

I mean, if homicide wasn't dark enough, this case involves a much deeper dive into a world that you won't believe. For today's interview, I spoke with former prosecutor Christine Murphy. And from the beginning, we have to start with who this case is about, which is a couple, both of them originally from the West African country of Ghana, who at the time of this case, 2009, were deeply in love. Seth Adu was born in Ghana, moved to the United States, and became a citizen here. 40-year-old Seth Adu already had a successful career in IT, which is information technology.

Seth was trying to advance himself. He was enrolled in advanced college studies for law, and he was embarking on a new love story. Eunice was also from Ghana. She came to the United States and lived in Connecticut when her and Seth met there at a family function of some sort. Because of their relationship, Eunice moved from Connecticut to Maryland. You know, I love when reading some of the Guyanese media accounts that they refer to her as not only literally an African beauty queen, which she was back in Ghana, but that she was a role model as a legal immigrant who had worked so hard to succeed. So just to give you a sense, that is the type of people that we're talking about today.

Both her and Seth were preparing for a new life together, moving into an upscale gated community in Prince George's County, Maryland. It was an affluent community filled with people who either lived or worked in either Prince George's County or in the greater Washington, D.C. area. When you look at a picture of these two, which I'm looking at now, and you can also see on the AOM website, the thing that stands out to me is their smiles. I mean, we are talking about genuine happy smiles, the type that you know it when you see it. This picture really captures, I think, a moment to me that they're facing each other and they're kissing. They're not looking at

the camera. Someone is capturing a very loving moment. And that means a lot to me. I think even, was this 12 years later? It still stands out to me for a number of reasons. When this case began, it began with a missing persons call. In order to unfold this mystery for you, you'll want to pay close attention to the timeline of events. You know, we always talk about the timeline of an investigation, but it's really important to follow the dates in this case.

And it all begins on Saturday, January 10th of 2009. They were planning to throw a big party at the home they shared together. They normally had a tenant who lived with them, but since he went out of town, their house was going to be the best place for some big announcements. So both had a lot to celebrate. I mean, Seth had just turned 40 years old. They were engaged, and that was a huge moment for the couple.

And then there was another surprise. It's at that party that they announced that Eunice was expecting their first child. We all know that starting a family is a huge step in a couple's life. You know, I always think there are these various milestones for people, and it depends what is important to you. For some, it's a dream job. For some, it's that partnership, a marriage.

And for some, it's having a child. And for some, it's all three. And for them, they really for some it's all three. And for them, they really had at that time all three. But let's go sideways for a second here. Scott, I'm going to ask you a question. Have you ever heard of the evil eye? I mean, I have in various different ways and meanings. To me, it means the way you may look at somebody, like a sort of a side eye, so to speak. So when I first think about the evil eye, I always think about that little piece of jewelry.

I mean, I'm sure I have in a couple places, too. It's that little eye that you wear and that it hopefully keeps you safe. But that's really all I could have told you about it until I started to read up on a bit. And it really is all about an actual spiritual belief. There was a study done in 2015, specific to Ghana, that they were looking at this phenomenon that when things were looking so rosy again for women who were pregnant, that when things went wrong with that pregnancy, that many people were actually attributing it to this spiritual belief

about a look they had received from someone, the evil eye. I mean, the way I see it is a basic superstition. You know, people are superstitious about so many things. Don't walk under a ladder, don't wear a watch, because the time may work against you. I mean, that's a basic superstition, but it seems that in this country they may take that a lot further. So a day after Seth and Eunice had that fantastic party making all these great announcements was Sunday, January 11th. And that was a typical day for them, cleaning up and continuing to enjoy life together.

The next day was Monday, January 12th. That, too, began like any other day. Both Eunice and Seth had gone to work as normal. Seth had talked to a friend on his way home on Monday after work. So it was just after midnight, Monday night into Tuesday, that a neighbor would tell police that early Tuesday morning, just after midnight, he hears glass breaking inside his home. And he had called the security for Oak Creek.

They had private security. And they came by, but nobody saw anything amiss. Now it's Tuesday, January 13th. And things got more unusual that morning because Seth Adu, who was always punctual and was where he was supposed to be when expected, didn't show up for work. And then another unusual twist in this case. Just about 10 miles from Seth and Eunice's home, police find a car at a convenience store. The car was left with the windows down, with the keys in the ignition. Eunice's purse had been left in it. It looked to be left for somebody to try to steal it.

Seth had a friend who actually went over to the couple's home. And it wasn't a social call. It was because he was concerned that he hadn't heard from Seth. Seth's friend actually went to their house. And that's when he was able to see that Seth's car

was in the driveway. So to him, that would indicate that Seth should be home. But when he knocked, no one answered. When he had tried Seth's phone, no response. And he actually called tried Seth's phone, no response.

And he actually called the police from outside of their home. When officers arrived, they noticed that the doors were locked and it seemed that it was no forced entry anywhere around the house. But let me take you inside the crime scene for a moment because it's going to explain how this case unfolded, really. The police entered the home, and when they walked in, you could tell the first floor of the house where you enter, something had happened there. There was bloodstains. It looked like there had been a crime of some sort. Picture walking to the home, and inside a hallway is a door to a basement.

And as you head downstairs, you can see lying at the bottom of those stairs, Seth Adu's body. And the crime scene suggested a violent struggle, a copious amount of blood, not just pooling beneath the victim, but all over. It appeared very quickly that Seth had been stabbed a number of times. The number, as you hear it later from autopsy, is going to be staggering. So investigators quickly determined that the initial stab wounds were probably at the top of the stairs because they could see a trail of blood, not only a blood spatter, but that he apparently was dragged to the bottom of the steps. They can also tell from cast off is when someone is waving their arms and blood spatter is moving on walls, moving on the floor, moving on the stairs, that he was swinging his arms and fighting for his life.

You know, a crime scene tells you more than even just the evidence. It really starts to tell you the story so often. What it paints about Seth's final moments are something you soon won't forget. And then you moved again into the living room area. There was blood there. And then there was blood near the alarm panel that was by the front door. And as you kind of walked that path, you could almost picture someone trying to get to either the front door or to the alarm panel to press a button to try to get help. And he never made it. The blood is only a part of the story. I mean, he had so many defensive wounds on his hands that they were able to tell that he was in a tremendous struggle.

It talks about someone desperate to get away. Based on everything we see about this couple, someone desperate to find his soon-to-be wife carrying his unborn child. They had an alarm system in the home, which he never got to. But the couple often went into the home from the garage, and it really looks like everything started right there. As officers moved deeper into the lower level of the home, they would find Eunice, dead on the floor from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Eunice's body was not even just at the bottom of the stairs.

It had been dragged further into that room. While there's so much to say about Eunice, her unborn child, I really think we could leave it that it isn't anything I haven't said before, that you haven't heard before. I think we all can already see the devastation. Now, you may be asking yourself, we've got two victims, and they're both killed in two very different ways.

One victim stabbed more than 40 times, and the other victim, Eunice, shot in the back of the head. Why two different types of weapons? Perhaps there were two killers. I think it's a great point, Scott, that maybe it's not one. Maybe it's two, just like you said. But if it is one or even two, could it be that the gun jammed? Could it be that they planned to use a gun, but the gun ran out of bullets?

Could it be that this was a bungled job of some sort? And this all was really just happenstance? Or that it was something personal, maybe as to Seth? Remember, he's stabbed and so many times, but less so as to Eunice. So while still horrific, the way she was killed was less brutal. Crime scene investigators use a substance called luminol, and they spray it on walls or on the floor. And what it tests for is to see if there's the presence of blood. When they turn out the lights, you can see if the luminol picks up any blood. And in this particular case, the luminol lit up like crazy.

It looked like a nightclub when you turned out the lights. It was so bright, showing how much of Seth's blood had been spilled from him and his fight to get away or to survive. With all the blood that they found, it appeared to them that someone attempted to clean up that crime scene. You never really know until all the pieces come together in these homicidal puzzles. But when I look at it, it does seem that maybe Eunice was killed first. And here's why. She's killed with a gun. There's no sign of struggle. She doesn't have any defensive wounds, which you would expect if all this had been going on with Seth at the same time. She would have been trying to save him or at least run away. Maybe she would have gotten away.

I believe it's clear this was a targeted attack, right? Both Seth and Eunice were the targets or either were collateral damage. I mean, killed when they arrived back home. And let's stay at the home for a second because this, remember, was a gated community, which you would think would give residents there some enhanced feeling of safety. This was a high-end gated community. This happened in 2009. At that time, the homes were worth probably close to a million dollars. They'd be worth a lot more now. Oak Creek, which is where the couple lived, was just that. It was a gated community, so someone had to have had access to be able to go in and out undetected.

But there really was also no sign of breaking and entering into the residence itself. So without any evidence of any forced entry, and when the officers got there, the front door was still locked? So with that, this case is really going to come down to who it was that had access to the house. And now let's remember who lived in the house. Seth, Eunice, and a renter who at least supposedly was out of town. Only two people were home when the killers entered Seth and Eunice's home that night of the murder. But as it turns out, they were not the only two living at the home at the time. The basement had been rented out prior, and police wanted to know a lot more about that tenant. They just had one renter living in the basement who was out of town prior to the party. So the tenant was gone before the 10th and had not returned clearly by the 14th.

However, there was much more than the renter connected to this house. Early on, police realized that both Seth and Eunice had been married before. Seth and Eunice had ex-spouses. And would they be considered suspects? I say absolutely. I mean, obviously, either would need to be talked to. That's a given. But would they have a potential motive or even have access to the house at that time? I mean, obviously, being an ex-spouse doesn't even come close to equating murder. So let's just look at the way these relationships ended. Eunice's ex-husband was not in the area. There didn't seem to be any animosity in their divorce. But they realized that Seth was still married to his estranged wife, Sheila Cully Adu.

So now when it came to her, investigators, of course, needed to look more closely. But more than that, they needed to speak to her because technically she was next of kin. The one thing that really stood out when they talked to his estranged wife was her demeanor. When she was told about Seth's death and also Eunice's, she showed no emotion whatsoever. There was no crying, no screaming, nothing like that. Now look, you all know that I'm going to say that there's never one size fits all and that you really can't make too much out of anyone's reaction of getting terrible news. However, of course, you are going to turn somewhat sideways.

I mean, I do too when I hear this, because even if the breakup was bad, this is someone who she had at least one time apparently loved. Sheila very much had supported Seth as he made his way through college, as he started a career in IT. You would expect some sort of reaction, but with her, there was none. So does that say something about her as a person, or is it somehow telling of something more? She said she had no idea who might have wanted to kill Seth and Eunice. So let's get right to it. Where was Sheila at the time of the murder?

Sheila ran a daycare at that time and that she was with a number of employees and definitely had an alibi all through the 12th. So now, Scott, having looked at a lot of these cases, you know, when you hear that, to you, does it eliminate her completely? Not really. It's good information to have. It's good threads to investigate. Good information to then separate a bunch of different people and say, hey, are her statements truthful? We've seen it. I've had it multiple times that because the person can prove they weren't there doesn't mean they weren't part of the crime. I mean, she could have hired someone. Maybe she just knows something. Maybe she was involved in a more tangential way.

So while it doesn't place her as being one of the actual killers holding that knife or that gun, that doesn't in any way to me yet absolve her of culpability. So as investigators dug deeper into Sheila Adu, they learned about her brother, Samuel Cully. Now, investigators began to look into Cully and they learned that he was recently released from jail and Seth offered him, according to reports, a place to stay because Sheila wouldn't let him stay with her. She was concerned about him stay with her. She was concerned about him being with her. And those reports also talked about in the days leading up to the murder,

Samuel and Seth had a falling out. Samuel and Seth had a number of arguments, some of which were severe enough for the police to be called. So there was some history of animosity between Samuel and Seth. Samuel still had a key to the house and occasionally still came to the house to pick up mail for his sister. They obviously had some questions for Samuel. Scott, just hearing that on its face, Samuel certainly sounds like a good suspect. I'm putting aside the fact that he was recently released from jail. That piece of information is not as important to me as the fact that we have somebody who is having a falling out with our victim shortly before that victim is murdered. So for me, that rises Samuel to the top of my list. And I need to really find out more about the relationship that they had and where was he on the day of the murder. He was nowhere to be found.

Sheila indicated that he was out of town doing some sort of medical research project. And by no means is this over yet, but certainly if we're talking about this case as the picture made by a puzzle, every piece that is clicking together so far makes that guy one of the big pieces. The police go back to Oak Creek. They are trying to figure out how someone entered the property on the night of January 12th. And in order to get access to the Oak Creek community, you would need to either go to a guard to be let in, or your vehicle would need what they call a transponder. Think of it as a garage door opener. And here's an important factor. Each transponder has an identifying code when it's used, and they can be matched up with a vehicle and the resident it's assigned to.

Each homeowner in Oak Creek is assigned three transponders. They knew that one was in Seth's possession, one was in Eunice's possession. But that third transponder, despite searching Seth and Eunice's house, they didn't find it. Who had access to the third one? And that is the question. The first thing they did is realized that the transponder was used on the night of January 12th to enter Oak Creek. It was used by a minivan. They couldn't see the minivan's tag, but what they could see is that the minivan entered Oak Creek using that third transponder. Although they couldn't identify who was in the car, they could see it was a driver and at least one passenger. Within 10 minutes, that van was leaving Oak Creek.

And at that point, it looked like there was only a driver. So detectives believed that whoever drove that van dropped off the killer or killers at Seth and Eunice's house. It also then showed Eunice Baugh's car entering the Cated community. And later on that night, on January 12th, Eunice's car with a driver and again, at least one passenger. But from the surveillance footage, neither people could be ID'd. They then went back to Oak Creek and looked into when that transponder had been used before the night of January 12th.

And it had been used either right at the end of 2008 or in the beginning of 2009. And it wasn't the minivan. It was a different vehicle. And that information led to many things. A name, someone they had known of even before these murders, a hit list of people, and the most unusual thing of all, voodoo dolls.

Looking through the security footage at that white car, investigators were able to determine a license plate. And it was a car registered to someone by the name of Delford Barnes. The detective in this case, Ben Brown, remembered the name Delford Barnes. He knew the name because Delford's business partner had been murdered years before. It was actually the first case that Detective Brown had gotten when he went to homicide. There was never any information that Delford was necessarily involved in that murder, but it's just a name that Detective Brown remembered. But investigators can now tie Delford Barnes to Oak Creek.

But the question is, what connection does he have to our two victims? They asked Sheila Cully-Adu if Samuel had any friend by the name of Delford Barnes, knowing that at some point, a car owned by Delford Barnes had entered Oak Creek using the transponder. And it was then that Sheila told them that Delford Barnes was her boyfriend. And his home is actually where at the time both Sheila and her brother Samuel are living. I mean, that right there to me, big red flag, as Scott likes to say. They had Delford brought to the police station. Delford refused to speak to the police that night.

Outside of just talking to subjects, there are other methods to get information opposed to just doing interviews. And while Delford wasn't talking, his house would end up giving investigators some of the biggest clues in this case. They knew that Samuel Cully, when he was in the area, resided at Sheila's house.

So they asked for a search warrant for Sheila's house and Delford's DNA and fingerprints. Inside the room that Samuel Cully, Sheila's brother, was staying, well, it didn't look like he'd been out of town. It looked like his clothes were still in his dresser, his clothes were still in the closet. It didn't look like he had been gone for the month or so that she said he had been gone for. They also found paperwork for a storage unit owned by Delford and Sheila. And in the most unlikeliest of places, they found something not only startling, but troubling. Behind a painting in the house, they found what you could almost describe as a hit list of detectives' names in the case, and Detective Ben Brown was one of them. And it had hopes that he would die or bad things would happen to him. And they were on kind of little scraps of paper

found behind this painting. There's nothing expected about tiny little scraps of paper literally stuffed into a wall. So, of course, seeing that, I want to know more. I mean, Scott, have you ever heard of anything like this before? Listen, a hit list of detectives, yes. But the fact that the list was hidden is more proof to me that there was more of a danger. I mean, we've seen cases where cops and prosecutors receive threats all the time as a scare tactic to have them back off.

But now let's turn to that paperwork about the storage unit owned by Sheila and Barnes. They then got a search warrant and were able to go into the storage unit of Delford and Sheila's. And in there, they found something that was far creepier. They found a number of what we would, I think, frequently call voodoo dolls with pins in them. No names on them or anything like that, but they found a number of those. And they also found a candle. Now, it wasn't just a regular pillar candle that we might regularly see at the store. This candle was dark green.

It had very, very soft wax. And inscribed in it, handwritten, was, Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die. That's a do. I hope you drown. I hope you burn. All the different ways someone could be killed. It listed on it his home address as well as his work address. You know, I've had this in two of my cases before.

Exactly this, with the dolls, with the pins. And I remember it so well because it really is something that makes your head just flip very quickly. And let's just talk about those dolls a little bit. You know, in Louisiana, they term it voodoo. In Ghana, those that practice term it vodum. But there are certain segments of certain populations that believe in this monotheistic spirituality that these dolls are part of that.

And these dolls are literally supposed to connect spirits and mortals. Well, sticking those pins into the dolls, well, that only can mean with common sense and obviously those that believe one thing, that you want something very not good to happen to the mortal who that doll is supposed to be. It became apparent to the detectives that someone who potentially practiced voodoo was putting curses on the people whose names were on the list and clearly on Seth Adu,

since it's his name that, you know, had die written 12 times before it, that his address was listed, the different ways someone could die, all of that wished upon Seth. So right there, there is something really deep going on here. However, is it evidence of murder? But to detectives, it was less about the fact that it could be voodoo

and more that here this candle was talking about Seth's death in a storage locker that Delford used. Investigators know that both Sheila and her boyfriend, Delford Barnes, had access to this storage facility. So they are right there on the list of people who could have done or planted or put these things within that facility. At the moment, the evidence already is poking holes in Samuel Culley's alibi and Delford Barnes' alibi. And while investigators knew that Sheila's alibi may be solid on the night of the crime, it didn't mean that she wasn't involved in some way. So right now, the low-hanging fruit is Delford Barnes and Samuel Culley. While those dolls are interesting, they're not going to get you over that line to make an arrest.

I mean, just imagine presenting that as the main evidence to a jury. Well, they had these dolls. That clearly must have meant that they killed them. Well, no, if you have other pieces, maybe this is the icing on the cake. But by itself, no, it isn't going to be enough. They had a lot of pieces, a lot of interesting pieces of a puzzle, but they didn't have enough to charge Delford. They wholeheartedly believed he was involved with the murders of Seth and Eunice, but that didn't mean it was enough to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

So at this point, the big question, the question that's out there that investigators really need answered to try to move this ball farther along is, where's Samuel Cully? Police want to know what Samuel knows. It was in his home, too, that the hit list was in that wall. So police needed to find Samuel. So how are they going to go about that? Well, one avenue that I think I would clearly start with is his sister, Sheila. While

she's not saying where he is, look at her phone records. And they didn't get anywhere with her phone records, so they now started to expand that circle around her. They ended up talking to some of the daycare employees of Sheila's, one of whom told them that they had received a phone call from Samuel from a number they didn't recognize. And thankfully, they still had the number. So the police were able to track the phone that Samuel Cully used, and they found him in Newark, New Jersey. There's digital forensics right there, able to track that phone to a rooming house in New Jersey.

And here's the interesting thing. When investigators found Samuel, he appeared to be relieved that they were there because he was ready to talk. He told the detectives what happened on January 12th, 2009. That afternoon or evening, Delford came to Samuel, told Samuel he wanted to go pick up the mail. And that was something that Samuel typically did for Sheila. Instead of them just driving there, though, they drove to a local area, a local store, and met Delford's brother there who was driving a minivan. They got into Delford's brother's car, and he brought them to Eunice and Seth's house and dropped them off there.

They entered the house, and Samuel said he normally would just go into the house, get the mail, and head on out. But on this time, Delford said they were waiting. After they had been there for a little while, the kitchen door opened, and Eunice came in. And she was screaming, and she was hysterical. And Delfford shot her he then had samuel help him take the body down the stairs and drag eunice's body into the basement of the home and they stayed there until seth came home and samuel said that delford immediately started to stab him. With a little bit more questioning, Samuel finally admitted that he did also stab Seth.

When you're looking at these statements, so many things go into determining whether someone is being truthful or not. And I always use that common sense. And also, does it have the ring of truth? And so many things that he says have just that. First of all, the scenario just sounds real. It's very specific. More importantly here, it tracks multiple pieces of evidence that investigators have that there would be no way for Samuel to know those things unless he was in fact there, as he claimed.

Samuel then said that they cleaned as best they could, which corresponded with what the police had found, what that luminol had discovered. They left in Eunice's car. They pulled it over on the street just by a local convenience store and walked away from the car. When they lay out the story and the story begins to really match up with all the forensic evidence in the case, I believe he's telling the truth. And in starting to put the pieces together, one thing started to make more sense, which is about the shooting and the stabbing. That Eunice was shot first, two bullets. Whether one just missed, and it was the second, more likely,

that got her in the back of the head, that then there was just no bullets left. And that now explains why Seth was stabbed. But in addition, there's also another explanation that makes that why more clear. If you remember, we talked about the neighbor calling security because he heard glass breaking in his house just after midnight. What the police later found was that there was a bullet

that had entered into the neighbor's screened-in patio, and the bullet had entered the wall there. So that was the sound of glass breaking that he heard. For some reason, either they missed the first time they tried to shoot Eunice or she moved, but that first shot went into the neighbor's glass and then into the side of his house. And I think it's at that point that the killers decided

that they couldn't risk shooting the gun again. And that's why they changed what they were doing and stabbed Seth. For me, a big question right now is, well, why is Delford still at home, yet Samuel is out of state. Within a day or so, Sheila and Delford took Samuel out of the area, brought him to this rooming house in New Jersey where he stayed for months. And as soon as he came back, as soon as he was found, he confessed everything to the police. I believe they were concerned that he would be the first one to crack, the first one to talk. They wanted to create a distance and put him somewhere that he may not be accessible to investigators. Yes, he did seem personality-wise that he may be the softest, if you will,

if such a thing can be said about someone who participates in homicide, but the softest of the three. He also had had some mental health struggles that maybe played into why they thought he ultimately might be the first to say something if confronted by police. But, you know, it really begs the question, if you're worried about someone's ability to keep a secret, why use them in your master plan? Perhaps Samuel wasn't supposed to survive the attack at all. There was one moment that almost broke him. We were able to show Samuel a copy of a life insurance policy taken out on him. Sheila was the beneficiary. Samuel said he never signed that. So upon her brother's death, Sheila would have stood to inherit money or make money. when we found this policy, especially since Samuel said he knew nothing about it,

was that it's possible that although two people entered the home of Seth and Eunice, both Delford and Samuel, that only one of them was supposed to leave. It really starts to seem as maybe Samuel's supposed to be the scapegoat on this, and maybe it was supposed to look like more of a murder-suicide. Just think about how, in a way, how perfect it would have been, right? You have Seth and Eunice murdered in their home, the brother of Sheila, his wronged sister, now dead at their feet.

It would have tied a bow on the case and made a neat little package if Eunice, Seth had both been found dead, and that maybe Samuel had been too. But by him leaving with Delford, and maybe everything went very wrong by that inadvertent shot into the neighbor's house, now they have a liability on their hands. If you're not going to take him out at the murder scene, remove him from the investigation and place him somewhere you believe he won't be found. So what investigators are now left with is they highly suspect Sheila likely has the mastermind out of all this, but that's not going to get her into a courtroom. So you can't charge her. Samuel Cully, her brother, is the best evidence against them in this case. That night he's charged with both murders.

He later enters a plea and agrees that he will testify against Delford. Delford was arrested, charged with both murders, and Delford refused to speak to the police at all. Another piece of strong information besides this confession would end up in prosecutors' hands, and it is scientific evidence. Remember months before had gotten Delford's DNA, and Delford's DNA came back as being underneath Seth's fingernails. In Maryland, you can ask for a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. And that's what we asked for for Delford. But for Samuel, because he agreed to cooperate, he got a sentence of life.

While Delford is on trial for these homicides and Samuel is up on the witness stand, it begs the question, where was Sheila? Well, during the trial, Sheila was home. And we remember, while estranged, her husband is the victim of a brutal homicide. Her brother is now a witness, having pled guilty as one of the participants in the crime. And her boyfriend is now on trial for the double homicide. And she's nowhere to be found. To me, again, it's just another thing that to me points to her involvement in this all and in a way quietly emphasizes her guilt. And while Sheila was not in the courtroom, Seth Adu's family was every single day in the courtroom listening to every piece of evidence.

It wasn't just their immediate families. Family came in from Ghana for both the trial as well as the sentencing to be there to provide support to the immediate family. But the courtroom was packed with loved ones of Eunice and Seth every day. I think it was devastating for both families to find out that Eunice was robbed of the chance to become a mother, that they were robbed of the chance to celebrate Seth and Eunice's baby. And I still remember the jury, how disturbed they looked when they found out as the medical examiner was testifying that

Eunice had been pregnant at the time of her murder. Delford Barnes was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and other lesser charges, and his sentence, life without the possibility of parole. And while the story seems like it's coming to an end, for Christine, she just couldn't let it go. And she knew Sheila was involved

and wanted to make sure that she was brought to justice. And the issue is this. While there's never a statute of limitations for homicide, there is for lesser crimes. And Christine was looking at conspiracy to commit murder. And so when she looked at the case against Sheila, she really had these smaller pieces,

but she really needed more. And so she decided to go back to that candle. We still had the one piece of evidence that was in many ways the most interesting piece of evidence, the candle. We had a handwriting expert from the FBI test Sheila's handwriting. They have the person that they're checking the handwriting of write an article or a paragraph from a newspaper article. So something that's innocuous, something that has nothing to do with the crime at all. And then they also have them write some of the words in the thing that they're testing, in this case, the candle. Sheila had defense counsel there, and they were in the room with her. And we were just sitting there waiting. And the handwriting

examiner came back in. And when he entered the room, he just broke into a a smile and he said, I'll be able to testify that that's her handwriting. And the interesting thing within the writing is it said, I hope you die. And because of the fact it said hope, that would be the difference between charging her with first-degree murder or conspiracy to commit murder. Her writing, I hope you die, is different than her saying to Delford or Samuel, go kill them tonight. Is that what we believe happened? Probably that Sheila orchestrated everything? Yes. But were we able to prove that? No. What we were able to prove is that Sheila orchestrated everything? Yes. But were we able to prove that? No. What we were able to prove is that Sheila was a piece of the puzzle.

Now this case would come full circle and three people would be held responsible for the murders of Seth and Eunice. Sheila pled guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years. When you hear that number, 20 years, which is much less than the other two, of course you hear it and you think, well, that's light. But the evidence that they had against her really goes towards the number of years she ultimately was sentenced to.

As prosecutors, that's sometimes what we're left with. We can only work with what we have, what's obtained by legal means. And so they had enough for the conspiracy, and that's how they were able to get the 20 years, but not more. I mean, to me, the word relentless comes to mind, Anna Seega. She was relentless in her pursuit to get justice for these two victims. You know, when a police officer dies, you hear other officers say sometimes, we got it from here. You know, in this particular case, when Seth died, that's the message we wanted to tell Seth.

You died fighting for your life, probably fighting for Eunice and for your unborn baby's life, and we got it from here. We took it the rest of the way. You know, when you think about where Seth and Eunice were in life, their love for each other, all the celebrating about marriage and their soon-to-be child, their friends celebrated that with them, wanted it for them. But there was one person who stood in the way of all of that. And when she saw the smiles on their faces and the joyousness in their news, she said no, not only with her words, but in the resulting actions.

Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production. Sumit David is executive producer. Thanks for watching!