Snapped: Women Who Murder - Tikisha Upshaw

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

A beloved father and driven entrepreneur is fatally shot at a busy California intersection.Season 32, Episode 18Originally aired: Aug 27, 2023Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Grab a coffee and discover Vegas-level excitement with BetMGM Casino. Now introducing our hottest exclusive, Friends, the one with the Multi-Drop. Your favorite classic television show is being reimagined into your new favorite casino game, featuring iconic images from the show. Spin our new exclusive because we are not on a break. Play Friends, the one with Multidrop, exclusively at BetMGM Casino. Want even more options? Pull up a seat and check out a wide variety.

of table games from blackjack to poker or head over to the arcade for nostalgic casino thrills. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling

or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. What if I told you that the crime of the century is happening right now? From coast to coast, people are fleeing flames, wind, and water.

Nature is telling us, I can't take this anymore. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet. Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups, and the things we're doing to either protect the earth or destroy it. This is Lawless Planet. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app. or wherever you get your podcasts. A fatal ambush leaves a young father dead.

It was broad daylight. The shooter ran up to the car and fired shots into the car and then ran away. A mysterious suspect emerges. We're thinking, that's the guy. But there's no identifiable connection between the two of them. A motive eludes officials. Does he have any of any?

And they were like, no. You'd have to at least look at the former relationship. But suspicions shift when risky business relationships surface. He was in the process of trying to open a dispensary. He was the partner sort of behind the scenes and she was the public face. He said, I have all this money out there, but she could just walk away with this whole thing. Give me a million bucks and I'll back out. She made a calculation.

And the drive to commit a crime like this comes back to your deadly sins. Greed. July 13, 2016. Less than 30 miles south of San Francisco in Hayward, California, it's just before 1 p.m. when an onslaught of 911 calls start pouring into the Alameda County Sheriff's Department. There were multiple callers. That was broadcast over through dispatch to report that a man was shot in a busy intersection.

It was broad daylight in the middle of the day. There were people everywhere. First responders rushed to the corner of Meekland Avenue and Blossom Way. The first person on scene, I believe, was a motorized. I believe was a motor officer. Onlookers point the officer to a Dodge truck with an unconscious male inside. He was in the driver's seat, and he was slumped forward. He had a gunshot wound to his side.

His foot was still on the brake, and the car was still on drive. The responding officer has to reach in, shut the truck off. The first officer checked for a pulse, and there was no pulse. He was pronounced dead very quickly. Homicide detectives begin questioning witnesses. Everyone heard the gunshots and looked up in the shooter and then immediately took off running.

He had a gun in his hand. He runs west towards the railroad tracks. He was African-American male, white shirt, blue jeans, tan boots with ball cap on. Some people said it appeared he was wearing clubs. Investigators launch a manhunt using helicopters, canine units, and officers in squad cars and on foot. At the crime scene, the coroner arrives. The corner's office was able to grab his wallet, and then somebody ran his plate on his car,

pulled his name up in the driver's license registry. We looked at his picture and, yes, this is who it is. The victim is 38. year old Adon Katami, a resident of nearby Antioch. We didn't know if this was road rage, and certainly with somebody getting out of a car and shooting, that theory was floated. Adon was born on April 13, 1978, and raised along with his brother and sister in San Francisco. Adan was a very confident, a very bright child.

He did very well in school. Adan's father, he was a grocery owner. If you knew him, you knew why Adan was such an incredible, strong person because his father had those similar traits. From a young age, he always pushed himself to, like, strive to be more and strive to be better. As a teenager, Adon was ambitious, but knew his path wouldn't be an academic one. His mother signed off so that he could take his GED, and he passed with flying colors, got very high marks on the GED.

We started working for the Sears Company in the washing machine, refrigerator department. Within like three months, he was their top seller, and he was only 16 years old. So he was already a little entrepreneur. at that age. Years later, the 20-year-old salesman reconnected with a childhood friend named Selena. They dated and soon had a baby boy on the way. I don't think he was looking to be a parent at that age,

but once it happened, it was just a whole new world for him. He definitely did love his son very much. He always wanted to show him, like, best things ever in his life. The relationship didn't last, but the young couple worked together to raise their son, Adon Jr. Everything was pretty amicable. They were very good at co-parenting. Throughout his 20s, Adon kept his nose to the grindstone.

By the time he was 21, he was very interested in real estate, and he and a group of friends purchased a strip mall. I mean, he was his own man, even at that very young age. He was very busy out in the world. He wanted to be financially independent, so he worked very hard to get there. By his early 30s, Adon had reconnected with a childhood friend,

29-year-old Monica Palau. When I first met him, it was just strictly friendship. We had met up again, like, years and years later, and then that's when we kind of, you know, clicked. They fell in love and welcomed a daughter. After I had her, we were, like, together, but then we would go off and on. It was definitely, like, a co-parenting. We would just share her, like, every other weekend.

Our daughter was, like, kind of, like, a little spitting image of him, and they just kind of had their little bond. It was really nice to see Adan and the relationship that he had with his daughter. It just kind of softened certain edges around him when he was with her. And she just loved her daddy. He was just like a very, like, loving, caring person. He would always wanting people to, like, strive to be, like, their best. He would just, like, kind of like, go, go, go.

He didn't ever want to, you know, rest. In 2016, when California legalized cannabis for recreational use, Adon saw the business opportunity he'd been waiting for. Dispensaries were popping up left and right, and he had wanted to open the cannabis dispensary. Avan was involved in researching medical marijuana and how he could bring something like that to his community. in San Francisco.

However, breaking into the wildly popular dispensary business was no easy task. He had to go through the state, like the city of San Francisco, having to get signatures for the people that were in the surrounding areas. But Adon was excited about putting in the work to, like, get it open. Then he spoke of how it would be so, you know,

beneficial because his children would be well off. But less than a year into planning his future business, Adon's dreams come to an end in a hail of midday gunfire. It's shocking. When it happens in the middle of broad daylight, literally in front of families, it sort of escalates it for the police as well. As far as crime scenes go, there were shell casings across that area.

Everything was contained to the truck, besides the shell casings. Even for the seasoned detectives, a shooting this brazen is unusual. It was not a robbery because nothing was missing, nothing was taken. The shooter ran up to the car and fired shots into the car and then ran away. The question is why, right? And so everybody immediately thought, oh, this is road rage.

Like, right? Guy got mad and just lost his temper and shot the guy. It was all over the news that day. As the manhunt continues, detectives pull surveillance video from a business near the intersection. The liquor store that's right at the corner, I knew from previous experience of working in that area that they have fantastic surveillance. So I went into the liquor store and went into the liquor store and went into the, to the back and watch the video to try to get a better description as a shooter. We literally had a front row seat to see exactly how it happened.

As the Don's truck pulls in that left-hand turn lane, we see a red jeep. Guy get out of the passenger side, passenger front, literally walk up to the back window and just begin shooting into the car. Investigators issue another Bolo, this time for the Jeep. We could not see the driver. It was a red jeep wrangler, so it was a pretty distinct vehicle. Then, detectives get word that a potential shooter has just been spotted. Detectives were coming down one of these, you know, meandering streets.

He sees this black male kind of lightly jogging down the sidewalk. The guy matched the description. He's wearing blue jeans and jogging down the road. road and looking over his shoulder. He was nervous. That guy looks like he's sweating. We're thinking, okay, maybe that's him. That's the guy. Coming up, a tight-lipped suspect makes a bizarre request. He asked if he would go straight to death row. He didn't want to spend a lot of time in prison. Later, detectives uncover a high-stakes business venture. Instead, I see. I see. I I think I'm going to get screwed in this deal.

Less than an hour after 38-year-old Adon Katami was gunned down. The Alameda Sheriff's Department gets their first potential break when authorities apprehend a man meeting the description of the shooter a mile and a half away. One of the detectives first just asked him, you know, where he was and what was going on. The man identifies himself as 46-year-old Johnny Wright. The officer kind of does a teary frisk on him. He feels like a ball of something in his pocket. And he goes like, hey, man, what is this?

He said it's gloves. That's when some of the witnesses start showing up. He was detained at that time to identify him. Witness said the suspect, he was wearing clubs. Johnny was handcuffed and he's detained so that we could either include him or exclude him as being a possible suspect. The officers request eyewitnesses complete a field lineup.

We can't move the suspect, but he can be detained temporarily. There was a few people that did field showups that day, identifying him. I remember those boots, that's him. That's like, that's the guy. With several witnesses, IDing Johnny as the shooter, police prepare to take him in. But then, the officer overhears a conversation in the back seat.

And an officer runs around the car. Johnny hangs up the phone, he's like, hey man, you can't be having your cell phone talking back here. He takes the cell phone from him. At the station, the officer hands the phone over to detectives as evidence. They questioned Johnny to find out who was on the receiving end of that phone call, but he quickly takes their interview in an unexpected direction. He asked if we had the death penalty,

and if there was a district attorney present that could essentially write up a plea agreement at that time where he would go straight to death row. because he didn't want to spend a lot of time in prison waiting to be executed. We said, well, this is California. We don't use the death penalty here, so that's not gonna happen. He's like, if you can't do that,

I'm not doing anything. I'm done talking. It's not like you interview people on the regular that are just like, oh, I'll sign a full confession and yeah, I want the death penalty. It's like, where did this come from? Johnny Wright is the only person I've ever interviewed, that has asked for the death chamber on day one.

We told him he was under arrest for murder, and Johnny, he invoked his rights to an attorney. The fact that Johnny offered to sign a confession appears to detectives to be an admission of guilt. But his interview leaves investigators with few, What in the world does this guy have to do with this guy, Adon Katami? There's no identifiable connection between the two of them. While looking for answers, detectives suddenly get word

that the red jeep has been spotted three miles from the crime scene. Another detective happened to see a red jeep wrangler, Wrangler, and a woman standing outside smoking a cigarette. He stopped and asked her if that was her Jeep. She said that it wasn't her Jeep, but it was her boyfriend's Jeep. And when asked what the boyfriend's name was, she said, Johnny Wright. She was very polite. She was very cooperative, and she talked to them, where are you from?

Oh, I'm not from around here. I'm from Tennessee. The woman identifies herself as 25-year-old chair. Cheriot Burks of Memphis, Tennessee. We told Chariot that Johnny was detained, and we asked her to come back to the station and give us a statement. At that point, we knew that Johnny got out of the car

and shot Adon, but we didn't know if Chariot knew that Johnny was going to do this, or what Chariot's overall involvement was, other than she drove the Jeep. She said that she and Johnny were pretty close. and Johnny asked her to drive to California. Johnny had a family member that lived in the Sacramento River Delta. She says they arrived a week ago.

We asked her, since you came to California to right now, tell us everything that happened. Chariot tells them that morning, Johnny asked her to drive the Jeep to the intersection of Meekland and Blossom. She told us that Johnny started putting on rubber gloves and that she heard the slide of the gun rack as he chambered around before he got out of the Jeep. She said that she did not see the shooting,

that she was driving when she heard the shots. She says Johnny ran off and she drove away. Essentially, she got tired of driving around and pulled into a commercial lot where there was businesses and was just waiting on a call from Johnny. We asked her if it was road rage. We asked her if they had followed Adon.

At first she said that it could have been road rage, but then she said that it wasn't road rage, that they were not following him. Her explanation as to why Adon, why this intersection didn't make any sense. We were trying to explain to her that what she was saying did not add up. She insists that she has no idea who Adan Khatami is.

She was adamant at a certain point that that was all that she knew. I really didn't know what to believe of what she said. She didn't do a very good job explaining to us what happened. After the interview with Chariot, we believe there is probable cause to place her under arrest for the homicide because she was a driver, which would fall into the felony murder rule. Despite two arrests within hours of the murder, investigators have more questions than answers.

We had the people that were responsible for the act of shooting it on. Two people drove across the country from Tennessee and shot a man in a busy intersection, and the man that they shot had no connection to them. It didn't feel random anymore. We didn't really know why they made the choices that they made. Hoping to find a link, investigators request a search warrant for Johnny's cell phone records.

They then turn their attention to the victim, Adan Khatami. We immediately do a victimology. Who is this guy? Where's he from? Like, what has he done in his past? He was working and taking care of his daughter, and he was a family guy. Investigators consider whether Adon's personal life played a role in his murder. Most people that are victims of a homicide know they're assailant. When the parent or co-parent of a kid gets murdered,

you'd have to at least look at a former relationship. In this case, Monica, who's the mother of his daughter. Until you're not a suspect, everyone's a suspect. You start at a dawn and you're going to start working your way out on most crimes like this when you have an ex they're always going to be suspect number one right

because there's a motive already laid out for you the town of Agda in France is famous for sun sand sea and sex but lately life on the coast has taken a strange turn turn. The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption. His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.

Then there's a mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting. I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos. As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all. Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson and journalist Leo Sheik for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption, and magic. Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mayor exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondry Plus.

Start your free trial in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or the Wondry app. How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere. When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our time. And crimes like that, they don't just happen. We call things accidents. There is no accident. This was 100% preventable.

They're the result of choices by people. Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet. Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Within a few hours of the murder of Adon Katami, Investigators have two suspects in custody, driver, Chariot Burks, and alleged shooter, Johnny Wright. It seemed like what happened to Adon wasn't random. There's some sort of connection to the assailant. So then we started to look into connections to Adon. Detectives reach out to Monica Palau, the mother of Adon's four-year-old daughter.

I drove to where it happened, the police just said, go home, and then we'll come to you, like, later. We wanted to see where she was at that time, and to see how she reacted to our interview. So we went and we talked to her at her home. Monica shares a chilling revelation about the day of a Don's murder. When we interviewed Monica, she was the one that told us that he was on the way to, to, to, their daughter. That morning that he passed, I got a call from one of his friends. And they were just like, have you talked to Adon?

I think that he got an accident or something. I said, is he okay? And then they were like, no, it was like fatal. The time frame of how close it was to Adon picking his daughter up from school was like literally like so scary. It was like a complete shock. I just gave them whatever information that I had, but I wasn't very helpful.

Outside of the family, he really didn't involve me much with other things that had to do with his own personal life. That definitely paid even more credibility to the fact that she was just completely blown away at this whole thing. If she's hiring somebody to kill, kill her ex, right? Do you want that to be done while he's going to pick his daughter up from school?

You're not put your child in danger. Through her interview, we were able to rule out Monica. Police also look into Selena, the mother of Don's son. There was no custody dispute. None of the things that you would typically see in a former relationship, homicide. Sue were able to eliminate the mothers of both of his children very quickly. Investigators reach out to Adon's loved ones.

We had the conversation early in the investigation with Adon's family to say, you know, does he have any enemies? And they were like, no. The police questioned a lot of people. His mother, his sister, but the family really didn't know how this had happened. They tell investigators that the only trouble Adon had recently was in his professional life. Adon was in the process of trying to open a medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco. He was with some guys that were from Los Angeles and had started this business.

They wanted to open a little cannabis dispensary business. There was a location that had been picked out in the Excelsior district in San Francisco. But Adon found the highly competitive industry more difficult to navigate than he'd imagined. The laws in California are very strict, and you have to really know what you're doing. In San Francisco and in other counties, you need to get a conditional use permit to open a marijuana dispensary. After Adon sunk money into renting the space, he and his L.A. partners ran in a to issues. The property owner of the building that they wanted to use

got screwed out of some money from the gentleman from Southern California. He knew Adon was tied to them, so he wasn't really eager to do business with Adon. Soon, Adon cut ties with the LA group and began seeking a new partner. Adon then says, well, hey, let's see if I can make a go with this, right? In comes to Keisha.

comes to Keisha. Takesha Upshaw was born in 1979 and raised in the Bay Area. She has half-brothers. Her dad got divorced or separated from the boys' mom. And then he got remarried to Takesha's mom. And then obviously, Takesha's a product of their marriage. As a young woman, Takesha set out to forge her own past. She wasn't going to take no for an answer.

She was a person that wanted to get something done. She should make it happen. When medical marijuana was legalized in California in 1996, Takesha wanted in. I would classify Ms. Upsha as an ambitious entrepreneur. She was going to be the first black woman to have a dispensary in in San Francisco. I couldn't help but rally behind it. Takisha worked hard toward her dream.

Takisha would always look for different ways to work together. A company launched as a first telemedicine company to serve medical cannabis patients. Networking would be key to her success. Tika seemed to be very close with the president of the NAACP in San Francisco. There's some pictures out there with her with like the interim chief of San Francisco PD. She was very charismatic, whether it was at the police stations, talking to the constituents and people, the neighborhood, addressing their concerns. Takesha had the connections. Now she just needed a business partner. Adon and Takesha Upshaw had met at a club, according to some of his friends, and started talking about the cannabis business.

When Adon met Takeda, she talked about her political connections, and so that's where that sort of marriage for this business was sort of constant. Adon told Takesha that if she could secure the permit, he would take care of the product. I think Adon had a lot of the marijuana connections, and Adon had the lease on the piece of property that they wanted to open the dispensary. With a handshake, the two became partners in Green God's Compassion Dispensary in the fall of 2015. Takeda's role was to get the community to embrace this dispensary. He was the partner sort of behind the scenes and she was the public face of it. A lot of the money that's coming from behind is actually atons to pay for, you know, renovations and lighting and painting and, you know, all the business permits.

They thought that the San Francisco Planning Commission was going to approve their conditional use permit to open this dispensary. After almost a year of working together, the hearing for their permit was scheduled for July 17th, just four days after Adan was killed. But Adan's family tells detectives he'd begun to have doubts about Dekisha. When Adan and Keisha started this venture,

he was the sole owner. At some later point in time, he put her name on the business. But then she wanted more. and he was not willing to just hand over the business. So things started to deteriorate. They were 50-50 partners on a handshake, and they were supposed to get it memorialized by a lawyer. And as he's repeatedly requesting these meetings,

she wasn't returning his calls. He felt I think he was being sort of iced out. Adon's family explained that his distrust turned into fearing to Keisha's every move. Adon later went to his uncle and said, like, I think I'm going to get screwed in this deal. I have all this money out there, but she could just walk away with this whole thing. His uncle said, well, if she does that, we'll sue her, because we can prove that you have this much money invested in it. By the summer of 2016, tension between the partners had hit a boiling point, and Adon told to Keisha he wanted out.

Adon demanded to be bought out of the business for a million dollars. Now, investigators are determined to find out, could the falling out have anything to do with Adon's murder? Once Adon's family talked to the police, the investigators about Adon's business partner, the questioning became, well, who is this person? Where does she live? What is she all about?

And they started to look at her. Investigators now question if there's any connection between the shooter Johnny Wright and Takesha Upshaw. One week after Adon's murder, the warrant on Johnny's cell phone finally comes through. Johnny's phone is a burner phone, and it's not registered to anybody. It appears like it was just activated like 10, 15 days earlier. There's very, very few text messages. And the person that they're texting is this 530 number. 530 is area code from Northern California.

So, write a search warrant for the 530 number, and this is also the burner phone. Investigators trace the location of the calls made from the second phone. So when you make a phone call, send a text message, your phone reaches out, and you use the and uses a cell tower, and that creates a record. They were looking at the location that these calls were made to. It became obvious that this burner phone was making calls from where Shkisha Upshaw lived in the Bay Area. So it became, well, let's look in to see who Johnny Wright was in touch with him.

And do they have any connection to Mr. Katami? And that came down to only one person, which was Ms. Upshaw. Coming up, detectives suspect to Kisha has a more. illicit business venture. I don't think it was her groceries that he loaded in the duffel bag, right? Willis Sting finally yield answers. Laying all will be in and then the electric team. Investigators have just discovered that days before Adan Katami was gunned down, alleged

alleged shooter Johnny Wright was communicating on a burner phone near the home of Adon's former business partner, Takesha Upshaw. Johnny's burner phone was very close from the cell towers from Ms. Upshaw's house, sometimes zeroed in on her house. On August 1st, investigators obtain a warrant to surveil to Keisha's home. For the next several months, They keep a close eye on the budding entrepreneur. There was duffel bags that came out from her house and put into a car.

At that point, we can only speculate. I don't think it was her groceries that he loaded in the duffel bag, right? And we thought most likely probably drugs. But we were dealing with a bigger crime here than drugs. They have a murder here. Conspiracy to commit murder. As the surveillance continues, detectives find a possible connection

between Takesha and Johnny Wright. What I found out is that Takedisha's dad, portion of the family, was based out of Tennessee. Johnny was also from Memphis. Connecting Tika to Tennessee was a big moment. That was definitely an aha moment,

like, okay, now it's making sense. When you have all of these factors, there's ample probable cause to get her phone records. So that's when the real work began with the cell phones. Ultimately, it was establishing that she may have had a motive to commit this crime. Now let's do an investigation to see what it was. With remaining questions on motive,

detectives use cell records and spot a clear connection between Takisha's personal cell phone and the burner phone used to communicate with Johnny Wright. We know this person on the other end of this 530 number is directly involved. So once we got the phone records for Takesha's real phone, we were able to see that the cell site usage matched up with the burner phone, this 530 number. Detectives determine that for nearly two weeks prior to Adon's murder, Takesha's personal cell phone and the burner phone traveled in. in lockstep. Then, 12 days before Adon's murder,

Takesha took a trip. So both phones traveled to Berkeley. We were able to figure out that those phones traveled to a very close friend of Takesha's to his home. The person whose house she went to was a guy named Wesley Brown. Later, Tekeesha's phone went back home, but the burner phone remained in Berkeley with Wesley Brown. The burner phone calls Johnny's phone from Berkeley.

They have a very brief conversation, and then the burner phone is powered off. But immediately after that conversation, Wesley's real phone calls Takeda's real phone, and they have a conversation. West was sort of the middleman taking calls from Johnny Wright and relaying potential information back to him. Three hours before the murder, the burner phone. makes a final call. There's a return call from Wesley to Takesha, and then the burner phone goes off the network forever, and that sets in motion Adon's murder.

Almost six months after Adon's murder, detectives go to Tekeesha's home, armed with an arrest warrant. There was probable cause to say that this phone belongs to Tekeesha, So, Takesha, and these records will likely show that a felony was committed, and this person committed it. When Takesha was arrested, we've obviously performed a search warrant at her house. In the basement of her home was a sophisticated indoor marijuana grow. She was growing it illegally and selling it illegally. At the same time, Wesley Brown is arrested at his home on felony murder charges for his role in Adon's death.

They arrested Wesley Brown and Takesha Upshaa Shaw simultaneously because they didn't want one to get arrested and tell the other and get their story straight. At the station, Takesha refuses to talk. She, like, just stone, cold, sat there and just like, okay, I want my attorney. Investigators find Wesley Brown only slightly more forthcoming. He gave us a little bit of, like, hey,

we've been friends since we're kids. he played around the subject game and avoided everything. It wasn't until we brought the cell phone records out and kind of told him like, hey, look, we know you're lying because of X, Y, and Z. Working off a hunch that Wesley and Takeda might talk to each other, detectives place them in neighboring cells along with a recording device.

Neither Wesley nor Tekisha knew there were recorders. We were hoping that he would talk to her. Are they home? Yeah. So what's going on? I have no idea. That got me on murder. Why?

The use my cell phone and check out. They ain't know what to be there. They ain't my life they do. Wesley's asking her, like, what the hell's going on? She says, don't say anything. I'll get us both great attorneys. I don't say nothing. I mean, I ain't going to, but they're already not.

I don't think you should be talking right. Telling someone, maybe you shouldn't be saying that, the criminal implications become pretty clear. Prosecutors move forward, charging them both with premeditated murder. Johnny Wright and Chariot Burks remain behind bars. Even in light of Takisha's arrest, Takesha's arrest, Johnny's lips remain sealed.

Johnny Wright, the one thing he never did was admit in any way that Ms. Upshaw had hired him to do it. Coming up, will a jury be swayed by Takesha's charms? Submitted pictures of her with a lot of who's who of San Francisco. And a tragic twist comes out at trial. She had Adon killed over a business that was worth nothing. By 2019, authorities plan to hold Takesha Upshaw and her co-conspirators accountable for the murder of Adon Katami. But in the end, the prosecution is forced to make a difficult decision. There was a strong suspicion that Wesley Brown helped aid and abet the murder,

but ultimately the murder charges as to Wesley Brown were dismissed. I didn't feel comfortable proceeding on a murder charge against him because I did not believe I could prove his involvement beyond a reasonable doubt. When he was arrested and his house was searched, there was some illegal parts of firearms, I think some ammunition, so he ended up pleading guilty to that charge and being released before the trial. Takedia's trial begins in October of 2019. Prosecutors allege that the tension between Takeda and Adan escalated as the hearing date for the dispensary permit grew closer.

Adon was asking her like, hey, I don't like where this is going. Why don't you just buy me out of this thing? Give me a million bucks and I'll back out. Why Adon wanted to be bought out for the amount that he did. Both Adon and Ms. Upshaw thought they had something that if they were allowed to open, they would have made lots of money. But that number wasn't something she could come up with, and it was cheaper for her to hire a hitman to kill him.

She made a calculation. So the drive to commit a crime like this comes back to your deadly sins, greed. Convincing yourself that you're going to have this successful business and not wanting to share it with anybody. Prosecutors argue that Takesha turned to her connections in the Memphis drug world to find a hit man. Takesha was communicating with somebody in Memphis, and that person was heavily in touch with Johnny's phones. So there was somebody in Memphis that was a connection between Takesha and Johnny. The single biggest part of this case that linked Takesha to Johnny was the phones.

It was the burner phones along with her real phone. Then, prosecutors drop a bombshell. They reveal that just days after Adon's murder, Takesha got news about the much-anticipated permit. The Planning Commission ended up ruling 7-0 against opening this dispensary. This particular location literally was two doors down from a neighborhood where young kids go to school and at the Planning Commission meeting,

I mean, the neighborhood came out in force to speak out against this dispensary. The toughest part about this whole case is the fact that she had Adon killed over a business that was worth nothing. With Wesley Brown's involvement never proven, Takesha's defense tries to pin him as the real mastermind. The murder charges as to him were dismissed,

conveniently allowing Ms. Upshaw to say, it was him, it was the guy you dismissed. She never took accountability for any of this. She has held out herself as innocent, even when so far testifying during the trial that she loved Adon and she was sad by this whole thing. When the trial is complete, the jury adjourns to deliberate to Keisha's fate. Ms. Upshaw was convicted of first-degree murder

with an enhancement that she did it for financial gain. Ms. Upshaw was sentenced to life in prison. As for Takeda's co-conspirators, both accept plea deals. Johnny Wright pled guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. Chariot Burks pled guilty to accessory to murder. and was ultimately sentenced and released after the trial. Alon was taken from his family, from his children,

from his friends, his community. For what? There was nothing to gain by it at all. It just changed our lives, like in such a big way, and it was just so unnecessary. It's just been devastating, you know, but he's still here with us. It's okay. We feel him, and he's a strong source, so he definitely has been with us. In 2002, Takesha Upsha's appeal was denied.

She is currently housed at Central California Women's Facility. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast. Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched. Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group. With a touch of humor. Shout out to her. Shout out to all my therapists out of years.

There's been like eight of them. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. That motherfucker is not real. And if you're a real, a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tail of the paranormal or you love to hop in the way back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes you should tune in to our podcast morbid follow morbid on the wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts you

can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining wondry plus in the wondery app or on apple podcasts