Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Owachige Osceola

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

Recently divorced and living on her own in a new city, 27-year-old Owachige Osceola’s life was in a season of transition before she was killed in the bedroom of her Norman, Oklahoma apartment in September 2013. While the medical examiner who performed her autopsy concluded her cause and manner of death were “undetermined,” a detective who remains on the case today insists a killer has been allowed to walk free for nearly a decade.Please join us in writing a letter to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office calling for a formal independent review of the methodology used during Owachige’s autopsy. Below you will find a prompt you can use and the address to send the letter to. (WHERE TO SEND)Mr. John O'ConnorOklahoma Attorney General's Office313 NE 21st StreetOklahoma City, OK [e-mail] To Whom It May Concern:I'm writing in regard to the criminal investigation related to the mysterious death of Ms. Owachige Osceola in September 2013, which is being conducted by the Norman Police Department.As you may be aware, Ms. Osceola's cause and manner of death were classified by the Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner as "undetermined" despite credible evidence that she was intentionally strangled to death in the bedroom of her apartment.After hearing concerns expressed by Norman Police Department investigators working this case and closely listening to details about the criminal investigation into her death as reported by Audiochuck Podcast Network's "The Deck," I'm deeply troubled that the medical examiner's office has been unwilling to reconsider its original ruling — directly hindering further investigative efforts to pursue justice for Ms. Osceola and her loved ones.I implore the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office to reexamine evidence in this case and to insist that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner consider that Ms. Osceola's death was the result of a homicidal act. I also kindly request that this office publicly publish its conclusions in the matter.Respectfully,[YOUR FIRST & LAST NAME] To learn more about The Deck, visit: https://thedeckpodcast.com/ Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-owachige-osceola/

Hi, crime junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I am dropping in your feed today to share a story with you. A story that has already proven how powerful our audio chuck community is. Just a couple of months ago, we released an episode about a Wachigi Asiola on my other weekly true crime show, The Deck, and the impact has been incredible. Now this is a story where if your blood doesn't boil, you might need to get that checked, because the lead detective is positive she was murdered, and positive he knows who murdered her, but he can't move forward with an arrest because of a technicality.

When we originally aired this episode, we asked our deck listeners to contact the Oklahoma Attorney General's office, specifically asking them to do a formal, independent review of the methodology used during a Wachigi's autopsy. And get this, within a week of airing, the lead detective told us that the Attorney General's office received a flood of contacts, and guess what? The AG's office reached out to the detective to learn more about the case and then requested the entire case file for review. Our deck listeners did that, but our work isn't over, and that is where you come in.

This case needs your support, and we need our crime junkies to continue putting pressure on the Oklahoma Attorney General's office to encourage them to move forward with this case. So that's why I'm sharing a Wachigi's story with you here in the crime junkie feed. I know so many of you already listened to the deck, maybe you forgot to write in. This is your reminder. And if you haven't heard a Wachigi's story before, please listen close. And also know that every week on the deck, we share cases just like this one.

Cases that deserve your attention and truly are in desperate need of it. So again, crime junkies, listen closely, and then take action. Everything you need to know will be at the end of the episode, and it's also in the show notes right now. This is the story of a Wachigi Osceola, the aid of diamonds from Oklahoma. On September 25, 2013, Toni Brown was hanging out at home in Anadarko, Oklahoma, when she saw a Facebook status from her friend, a Wachigi. It had been posted earlier that morning and read, quote, Moose is Trina K.M.

Toni knew a Wachigi was dating a guy named Moose, but she wasn't sure what K.M. meant. Just then, Toni's phone alerted her to a text from a Wachigi that said the exact same thing as her Facebook status. Moose is Trina K.M. A Wachigi wasn't answering any calls or texts, and Toni was freaked out, so she rounded up three of their friends to go check on her. The group made the roughly hour-long drive from Anadarko to a Wachigi's apartment in Norman, Oklahoma, and when they pulled up, their feelings of unease only grew.

They saw that the door was slightly open from having been kicked in. They could tell because there was a shoe print on the door and the frame was splintered. So Toni and the group didn't even go in. They called police instead. As soon as Norman police officers got inside, they saw cabinets and drawers left open and stuff everywhere, but when they called out to see if anyone was home, no one answered. It was in an upstairs bedroom that police found a Wachigi. She was laying on the floor, face down with her sheets and comforter tossed over her head.

They checked for signs of life, but she had clearly been dead for a while, though it wasn't entirely clear how she had died because there were no visible wounds. In her room, the bed looked as if someone stripped it in a hurry. The mattress was bare except for three pillows, one of which had blood on it, and there were clothes and stuff tossed all around the room. In fact, the rest of the house was a mess as well. It looked as if the living room, kitchen, and bedroom had all been ransacked. They found another bloody pillow stuffed in a dresser in the bedroom, but when they went

searching for a Wachigi's cell phone and stuff like her cash and cards, they couldn't find any of that in the apartment. So they were obviously wondering if someone had robbed the place. Officers secured the scene and went outside to tell a Wachigi's friends what they found. But it was what they didn't find that concerned Tony and her friends the most, because police didn't mention anything about finding anyone else in the home. And Tony knew that a Wachigi lived with her five-year-old daughter. Immediately officers started looking for the young girl.

They weren't sure if they were dealing with an abduction or what, but the first place they checked, the first place any investigator checks when a child is missing, is with their living parents or guardians. And Tony and a Wachigi's other friends said that her dad lived back in Anadarko. Sure enough, when officers tracked him down, they found the young girl and determined that she was safe. Still, they weren't sure what involvement a Wachigi's ex could have had in her murder since they knew the two had recently divorced and had gone through custody hearings.

So they brought him in for an interview. The ex-husband cooperated and said that he had been in Anadarko all week, and he had no idea who might have killed a Wachigi. He said she actually had full custody of their daughter, but it just so happened that week their daughter had been with him. Police had no reason not to believe the man's alibi, so they moved on to see what else they could find out about a Wachigi's personal life. When it was her turn to give a statement, Tony filled police in about the weird text

and Facebook status about Moose. Tony said it didn't sound like a Wachigi, who usually texted in full sentences and didn't use abbreviations. Tony also told police, since moving to Norman, a Wachigi had been online dating and not too long ago she had started seeing a man who went by Moose, and that guy lived in Oklahoma City. Studying a Wachigi's Facebook status, Moose is trying to KM. Police deciphered it as Moose is trying to kill me.

So it was imperative that they find Moose ASAP, which they did. He was in Oklahoma City about a half an hour north of Norman. Moose was shocked to hear about a Wachigi's death, and he was willing to talk to police, telling detectives the two hadn't known each other very long. When he was shown the Facebook status that mentioned him by name, Moose immediately gave an alibi. But just as investigators started working to verify Moose's whereabouts over the last few days, they became aware of a weird call that had been made from a Wachigi's apartment

the day she was murdered. It was 2-9-1-1 and made by a Wachigi herself. It's difficult to make out what's going on, but obviously something was wrong. And minutes later, a Wachigi called back, but this time her tone was different. The dispatcher never routed a police officer to her apartment. And officials didn't put two and two together until the next day when they realized that there was a murder investigation underway at the same location. Norman police detective Jim Parks, who's working the case today, has analyzed those

phone calls over and over. That tells me either she or the male that you heard in the first call was afraid that the cops were going to show up because 9-1-1 was called. So she was forced to make a second call saying, hey, everything's okay, it was an accidental call, yada, yada. The fact that nobody had been called to at least do a welfare check at the apartment surprised police. It was protocol to alert patrol officers of an emergency call.

And they couldn't help but wonder if they had been dispatched, if they would have interrupted the attack. Of course, no one can say for sure that a Wachigi would still be alive if police had been dispatched, but it's an element of the case that's always frustrated her family. In fact, Detective Parks said that there ended up being an internal investigation and the dispatcher was actually let go because of the whole thing. The 9-1-1 calls made police lean further into their theory that whoever tore up a Wachigi's apartment likely killed her.

The calls also provided a decent jumping off point for the investigative timeline because now they had confirmation that a Wachigi had been alive and not alone at her apartment around 6 a.m. the morning of September 24th. That detail also helped police confirm Moosa's alibi, which checked out. He was in Oklahoma City when a Wachigi called 9-1-1. Around this time, officers in Norman made arrangements for another police department to notify a Wachigi's mom, Roberta, of her death because she lived in Florida. I was getting ready to leave my house and I walked out the front door and that's when

I saw two seminal police cars coming into my driveway and I thought to myself, oh no. Which one is in jail? I wasn't thinking murder and my life, my life stopped right there when I was informed. The Seminal Police Department assured Roberta that detectives in Oklahoma were working hard to find her daughter's killer, but it didn't matter, Roberta was on the next flight out. My tribe offered to send me out there to be with her body. So I landed in Norman when I got to her apartment. Her front door was kicked in.

The place was a shambles. So looking around and seeing what I saw after the police had gathered evidence and whatnot, I felt terror, I felt mourning, I felt anger. After talking to Roberta, police learned that a Wachigi was born and raised on the Seminal Tribes Big Cypress Reservation, which is in the Florida Everglades about two hours northwest of Miami. Everybody knows a Wachigi. She had that kind of personality.

She was, a Wachigi means star in Seminole language and that's exactly what she was. She was a shining star. She was a bright star to where everybody knew her, recognized her. Not only that, but Osceola is a prominent name in the Seminole tribe. They're descendants of Chief Osceola, who's a famous tribal leader. Police and relatives wondered if a Wachigi's killer knew that she received a monthly stipend from the tribe because of her prominence and if she had been targeted because of that. Roberta kicked in her door, was there to get something.

I had to replace the ignition keys to her Cadillac, so apparently maybe he tried to take her car, but that didn't happen. Her purse, her bank account was emptied out, so there was aggression, whoever did that had one thing in mind was to get what he wanted and leave her like trash, like she was nothing. Pretty soon, detectives made some progress by backtracking a Wachigi's bank records. They discovered that she had used her ATM card to withdraw $500 on September 23rd at a gas station near her apartment. And just to double check that it was her using her card and not someone else, detectives

got surveillance video from the 7-Eleven, which clearly showed a Wachigi going in and getting cash and leaving. Detectives also noted what she was wearing in that video because it was the same clothes that she was found in. Bank records showed another almost $500 was taken out of her account on September 24th from an ATM in a nearby casino. As police worked the ATM leads, they were still waiting to hear from the medical examiner. The autopsy was taking longer than usual, so at this point they still didn't know how

she died, though they did learn that a Wachigi had either had sex or been sexually assaulted recently because there was semen present. Unfortunately, examiners couldn't tell if she had been sexually assaulted or if the sex act was consensual. They just knew that it had happened within the last few days. Through more interviews, investigators learned that a Wachigi was a cocaine user, and her friends said that the reason she moved to a college town like Norman, at least in part, was to be closer to a dealer that she knew out of Oklahoma City, whose name was Rob Ross,

better known by his customers as just cocaine rob. Police looked up Rob and saw that he was a felon with a long history of drug-related charges. So with that intel, they made moves to track him down, and they also worked to get his phone records along with the Wachigis, and what they found was very interesting. Cell records showed that a Wachigi and Rob had been texting and talking on the phone up until the morning of September 24th, and as they suspected, the last text sent from a Wachigi's phone was the one to her friend received about Moose trying to kill her.

But they learned that that text wasn't sent from her apartment. It was sent from the Riverwind Casino, which was a few miles away, and it was the same location where her ATM card had been used the day that she was killed. Detectives headed straight to the casino to review surveillance footage, and sure enough, they spotted Rob at the casino the morning of September 24th. The videos showed Rob at a slot machine talking to a man, walking through the casino with a woman, and at 7.23 a.m. he was at the ATM machine. Rob used a debit card to withdraw just under $500, which perfectly matched a Wachigi's

bank statements. Bingo! By the way, we made several efforts to try and get in touch with Rob for this episode, even leaving messages on a working cell number that we obtained, but no luck. So police were really closing in on Rob, but they wanted to be sure that they had all the information possible before arresting him, so they identified the two people that he was seen with at the casino, and they brought them in for questioning. The man that Rob was seen chatting with at the slot machines cooperated and told police

that he just happened to be at the casino that morning and ran into Rob. He said that the two had served time in jail together in the past, and Rob had tried to actually recruit him to sell drugs. The man said he didn't know anything about a murder, and that Rob hadn't mentioned anything about it. So next, police interviewed the woman Rob had been with in the casino. The two were actually spotted on surveillance together in her car in the casino parking lot too, and what she had to say basically sealed the deal for police.

The woman admitted to police that Rob was her dealer, and sometimes she would give him rides in exchange for drugs. She said that Rob had asked her for a ride early on the morning of the 24th, and she took him to an apartment complex in Norman. She told detectives that per Rob's request, she dropped him off across the street from the apartment that he needed to visit. The woman said that Rob asked her to wait for him, so she did. But at least an hour went by, and finally, Rob called her and said to pick him up at

a nearby stop sign, like a completely different location than where she dropped him off. You can actually see a map marking these areas on our website, thedeckpodcast.com. The woman said that when Rob got to her car, he was quote, sweaty and nervous. She also said that he had some items with him, but she couldn't tell what because he stuffed them under the passenger seat. Then he asked her to take him straight to the casino, so she did. Detectives reviewed surveillance footage that showed Rob and the woman getting to the casino around 7.15 the morning of September 24.

Then two minutes later, at 7.17 a.m., the Facebook status was posted to a Watchagie's page, Moose is Trina K.M. After they parked, Rob was seen on surveillance throwing something into a trash can in the casino parking lot. After going in and visiting the ATM and playing those slots, Rob and the woman can be seen on video leaving the casino parking lot in her car at 8.08 a.m. The woman even agreed to take detectives to retrace their route the morning of the 24th. She pointed out the apartment complex where she dropped off Rob, which was a Watchagie's

building. But because she parked across the street, she didn't see which apartment he went into. Detectives figured it was a Watchagie's phone that Rob tossed into the trash in the casino parking lot, but unfortunately by the time they went looking for it, the trash had been emptied and the phone was long gone. But that didn't mean that they couldn't connect him to the phone. Along with placing him at the casino where the text and Facebook status were made from, Rob found messages that Rob had sent to other friends on his phone where instead of typing

out trying to, he wrote Trina, T-R-Y-N-A. It's the same spelling as a Watchagie's Facebook post and group text. By this time, there was little doubt in the minds of detectives that Rob was their guy. They needed to find him and quickly, but it wasn't easy. Rob didn't have a house or apartment or any address of his own. He was known to stay with friends and family in Oklahoma City, but he bopped around to different couches all the time. They finally were able to track him down several days later, and on October 5th, investigators

sat him down for an interview. And to their surprise, he was willing to talk. Sort of. Do you understand how all this looks to us? You get that, right? Yeah. And how does it look to us? I'm not so sure, but I know who y'all want.

Our reporting team got copies of Rob's interrogation, and he's super hard to understand, but he said something to the effect of, I'm not who you all want, but the detective wasn't having it. If you're not the person that killed her, which I think you are, I'll just be straight up with you. And I told you there's different levels of homicide. Really, with all this evidence and people, and the 911 call, and you making her call 911 back, this to me looks premeditated.

To that, Rob just kind of groaned in response. He didn't actually say anything. Then the detective asked to see Rob's shoes, because he wanted to compare the tread to the shoe print that was on Awachi Ghee's front door. Rob was like, okay, fine, but that won't prove anything because I have like 10 pairs of shoes. But detectives could see on surveillance that the shoes that he was wearing on the morning of the murder were the same, but they didn't have to reveal that to him.

Next, the detective asked Rob about Awachi Ghee's Facebook status, and Rob said that he hadn't seen it, but the detective just lays it all out there. I know that you typed that on her phone. I know you hit the Facebook icon on her phone, and you're able to type that to make it look like Moose wasn't long. The investigator was like, listen, everyone is talking. We have so many witnesses, and all the fingers are pointing in your direction. So this is your moment to give your side of the story.

And finally, Rob said, okay, fine. I was at Awachi Ghee's apartment that morning, but we just got drunk on Patron and had sex. Rob said he did not kick down the door. He said that Awachi Ghee let him in and that he knew nothing about her calling 911. Rob said after they had sex, Awachi Ghee let him borrow her debit card and even gave him her PIN number because she owed him money for cocaine. And that's when he went to the casino. Was it premeditated or not?

That's the main thing. I don't know. So it's not premeditated. I can tell the DA that it's not premeditated. He didn't plan on going over there to kill her. That's a big difference in this case. And she deserves justice and they don't want to look at her photo. That's fine.

Maybe trying to forget about her. But it's, you know, she's a good person and I know I didn't do it. If you couldn't understand him, Rob said she was a good person and I know I didn't do it. Rob told police that after he left the casino, he went back to Oklahoma City and met his cousin and they went to their aunt's funeral. Police confirmed this funeral story, but what Rob said after didn't make sense. He said it was after his aunt's funeral on the 24th that he learned a body had been found in Norman.

At first he said the information came from the internet and later he said a friend called and told him. But police knew that both stories were BS because her body wasn't discovered until the night of the 25th. When asked what happened to a Wachigi's debit card, Rob said that he had tossed it out the window on the way home from his aunt's funeral because he was worried the cops were after him over a drug deal. So you might be wondering if police arrested Rob right then and there, but they didn't.

They released him after he asked for a lawyer, but before he was released, Rob allowed police to inspect his shoe tread and he provided a DNA swap. Detective sent off Rob's DNA to see if it matched the semen found in a Wachigi and they even sent off the shoe markings to an expert to see if they matched the print on the door frame. And at about this time, finally the autopsy findings came back and the results baffled detectives. The autopsy showed a Wachigi had injuries to the back of her neck, which police said were

consistent with strangulation. But the medical examiner listed her death as unknown. The cause of death being undetermined wasn't the surprising part. It was that the examiner also categorized her manner of death as unknown. Manner of death is the category where they're supposed to say if the victim was murdered or if the death was accidental or what. So here they were ready to charge cocaine Rob with murder and now they couldn't because they had no homicide ruling.

That basically meant the ME didn't see enough physical evidence to prove one way or another how a Wachigi died. It was more than clear, at least to investigators, that the last moment of a Wachigi's life was met with violence. Cuts and bruises were noted on different places of her body as well as traces of blood on her pillow. There wasn't enough blood left at the scene to be helpful though. Investigators did collect it and they tried to have it tested to see if it was a Wachigi's

or not. There just wasn't a big enough sample to get any results. But thanks to toxicology findings, now they knew that there was no way a Wachigi overdosed because there was no alcohol in her system and there was very little cocaine detected like trace amounts that were barely even measurable. A Wachigi's mom, Roberta, was devastated over the ruling. I don't know what else to say about that except I'm not going to accept undetermined. Something has to happen or somebody has to say something to change that.

To make the case even stronger, DNA came back confirming Rob had had sex with a Wachigi, but he had admitted that much. So police asked Rob if the sex had been consensual, why did a Wachigi end up bleeding and dead on her bedroom floor shortly after he left her apartment? He said he didn't know and that she was alive when he left to go to the casino. But that wasn't good enough for the Norman Police Department. So they asked the local district attorney to charge Rob with a Wachigi's murder anyway. But prosecutors wouldn't because of the undetermined ruling.

So there was nothing else detectives could do. They truly felt as if Rob had gotten away with murder and years went by and nothing happened. That is until 2017 when Detective Parks reopened the case. He reexamined all the evidence and in 2019 he decided it was worth getting a second opinion on a Wachigi's manner of death. One of his FBI contacts helped him recruit the assistance of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office in Maryland. They agreed to take a second look at the case and its original findings.

And in April 2019, six years after a Wachigi's death, the federal ME was like, yeah, there's no doubt she was murdered. The manner of death was homicide. The cause of death was homicide by unknown means and they provided a several page report on why homicide by unknown means can be a justifiable ruling of homicide. With the other ME's determination in hand, this was Parks' shot, his hail Mary. And so I presented that to the district attorney's office and they were pretty excited at first and then later decided, no, we're going to, we have to, we have to work with the state

medical examiner's office and all of our cases, we're going to stick by their ruling and we're not going to file. We reached out to the Oklahoma's office of the chief medical examiner to try and better understand their findings in this case, but they declined to be interviewed. In a letter to Detective Parks in response to his asking them to at least re-categorize a Wachigi's death as a homicide, the chief ME said, quote, whereas the circumstances of death are indeed suspicious. I find it inappropriate to insert any reference to manner of death into the cause of death

statement. The cause of death in this case is undetermined. The manner is best classified as undetermined, end quote. In the early days of the investigation, police interviewed everyone in a Wachigi's orbit. Her friends and ex-husband, her boyfriend, her family, all of whom had alibis that checked out. Only one person could be placed at a Wachigi's apartment on the morning of September 24th. Do you have an opinion as to who may have taken your daughter's life?

I'm going to say that according to my detective, he indicates that all evidence leads to one person. I want justice for my baby. In November of 2020, the Seminole tribe wrote letters to the Oklahoma Attorney General's office and called for a formal, independent review of the methodology used during a Wachigi's autopsy. But as far as Detective Park's nose, nothing came of it. At the end of the day, he wants to see charges brought against Rob, even if it's for second

degree murder. You know, I can point the finger, didn't own the police department, fall down on this case a little bit, yeah, we should have sent a patrol officer on that first 911 call, there should have been somebody there within a few minutes. But we did what we could to rectify that problem. Should the medical examiner's office have better supervision over their pathologist? Absolutely. They have done nothing to reconcile their mistake.

Should the district attorney file a case against Robert Ross for the death of a Wachigi? Absolutely. Because it's the right thing to do, leave it up to a jury to decide whether he's guilty or not guilty. But it's the right thing to do, it needs to be done. To this day, no arrests have been made in connection to a Wachigi's death. Her missing phone and debit card have never been found. Roberta told us she hopes to one day see the whites of the eyes belonging to the person

who stole her daughter's future. I would say that there are measures that have been put in place with the Lord. And he will seek justice for me and a Wachigi. And whoever did this to her, he's going to answer to the Lord. He's going to have to answer to God. If you're walking away from this case as unsettled as I am, the family and the tribe encourage you to do what they did, send more letters to the Oklahoma Attorney General's office and call for a formal independent review of the methodology used during a Wachigi's autopsy.

We will put the contact information for the Oklahoma Attorney General's office in the show notes and on the website. We need to show them that people are paying attention and that a Wachigi deserves justice. If you have any additional information about the murder of a Wachigi Osceola, you're asked to call the Norman Police Department in Oklahoma at 405-366-5208. The Deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?