The Binge Cases: U R NEXT - What She Buried | 1. The Pen Pal

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

In March 2019, Justine starts exchanging letters with Kwaneta Harris, a woman serving a 50 year sentence for murder. The two grow close, but the more Justine learns about Kwaneta's story, the more complicated it gets. Want the full story? Binge every episode of What She Buried ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. What She Buried is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evening, buyer's remorse. Buy a new car, I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.

So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana.

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You know that quote quote, well-behaved women seldom make history? You've seen it on bumper stickers, mugs, Instagram grids. It means, unless a woman boldly breaks convention, she's going to fade into oblivion, just folding laundry until she dies. I like it. I get it. But I'd counter that badly-behaved women also seldom make history.

You can't actually break too many rules, especially if you're the wrong type of woman to begin with. I've been reporting on women in prison for eight years now. I have a new book out on the topic. It's called Unreasonable Women, a slightly sarcastic title. It's about how many so-called murderers were actually making quite sensible decisions, often to defend themselves or a loved one from abuse.

And yet they're painted as cold-blooded killers. Because these women, they ventured into a field traditionally reserved for men. Violence. And for that, they've been severely punished, disappeared far away, wiped clean from history, usually. All right, so did you, are we started? We've been rolling. Okay, we're good. This is our beginning.

Hi. Hello. So, how are you? tired. Making it, making it every day, one day at a time. Not long ago, I found myself with my producer Eric

in the visiting room of a vast women's prison in central Texas. Across from me, speaking into a telephone receiver from behind a wall of bulletproof glass was a woman I'd been corresponding with for five years. Her name

is Quenetta Harris. So, okay, I mean, obviously, I'm so glad I get to finally meet you in person. Finally. I didn't think it was ever going to happen. But now here we are. Here we are. And I wish that we had more time

and could have a more natural conversation. I know. We'd press for time down and give us like an hour? Yeah. So instead of what I would like to do, which is... Sit in gossip. Sit and relax and talk. I'm going to be asking a little bit more

in terms of just like some questions. I know. Quenetta was dressed in prison whites. She's a black woman in her 50s, taller than I had anticipated, more commanding. And her hair was long, wavy, past her shoulders. She was wearing this pair of gigantic state-issued sunglasses. She's losing her vision.

Texas prison health care is notoriously lacking. I couldn't see her eyes. This is kind of going to be your story. this whole thing that we're looking at. This whole, I don't even, I don't know. It's so complicated, I don't know if you know about this. It's so complicated. It's so, just multi-layered, complex.

Confusing? Yeah, very confusing. Are you confused? I've been confused. Confused. That was an understatement. I first got to know Quenetta as a pen pal of sorts, and through our years-long correspondence,

I learned about her past and what brought her to prison. Like so many women I've reported on, she had a history of abuse and trauma. For such women, killing can mean an end to their torment, and I'd wanted to make this podcast because I thought that story deserved to be told. And Quenetta agreed. But the more I dug in, the more people I talked to,

the more I realized that my initial concept of Quenetta, of what she'd been through and what she'd done, it flattened her. At first, I thought Quenetta's narrative would move from point A to point B pretty easily. But soon, I learned that with Quenetta, there were no straight lines, only a labyrinth, elaborate and disorienting.

When they meet her, it's like they're on a high, and they're slowly but surely, you know, that high comes down. Holy cow, she's just, I said, this is not true. This, it didn't happen like you said, did it? Did you think it was a good idea? No, I told, no. I told them why it was a good idea.

Sometimes when you're a light, you attract, you know, darker entities. They had guns in the kitchen, in everywhere. One time she shouted me. Did she? Hey, listen, there's a lot going on back. Turned out, there were many versions of Quenetta's story. And almost every single version contradicted the one before. He's loving, he's a mentor.

How am I in trouble? I didn't have no teenagers, did no home. We had our computers and our cell phones. You know, how to kill someone without leaving a mess. How to clean blood off a couch. And he scribbled the signature on it. And there goes the money. I thought that was rather clever.

I kind of, I kind of thought, wow, that's pretty good. By the time I was sitting across from Quenetta, in that Texas women's prison, I was thoroughly perplexed. Prosecutors and the state depicted Quenetta as a ruthless killer and worse. I had known someone very different, someone smart and insightful. someone I considered almost a friend. But when I really dug into her past, I was confronted with far more complexity than I ever anticipated.

And now, I was trying to make sense of a person and a story that was all wrapped up in the deepest truths and the thorniest lies. So what do you do when you don't get the story you're planning, the story you thought would adhere to a relatively clean narrative? What do you do when you come face to face with somebody who simply won't fit into any mold? Well, I was about to find out. So what happened? Because you never really told me.

I don't know if you can, but if you are comfortable, I would ask if nobody asked. I mean, but I prefer you, if you're not going to tell me it accurate. I prefer you don't. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm thinking back to let me circle back around. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is what she buried. I'm Justine Vanderloon.

Episode 1. The Pen Pal. Evening, buy his remorse. Buy a new car, I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what?

Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana.

Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. One of the first things I did when I set out to write my book on Reasonable Women was to create a survey. 16 questions, which I sent out to 10,000 women in 55 facilities across 27 states. More than a thousand completed surveys made it back to me. Not a bad batting average. There were stories of neglect and poverty,

of enduring assaults, of having no home and no food, of domestic and sexual violence, of the system failing people again and again. And there was one response that really stood out. It was a letter saying why the writer, Quenetta Harris, wouldn't participate. Quenetta, who had been accused and convicted of murder,

she had no interest in the questionnaire, but she was interested in corresponding with me. She began. I don't usually reply to reporters. I find that they're only concerned with the salaciousness of the story. I got where she was coming from. I can't always trust a journalist. She wasn't going to respond to my question, she said.

but she had some things she wanted me to know. Women in prison were always characterized as monsters. But, she wrote, I've yet to encounter these monsters, although I've met plenty of women with mental illness, untreated, and undiagnosed. She ended her letter telling me she simply hoped I'd portray women in prison humanely.

I wanted to hear more from her. We started writing regularly. It was all we could do. Prisoners in Texas solitary weren't allowed to make phone calls, except to family. And even those calls were few and far between. So we wrote back and forth, a lot. But we never heard each other's voices. But then one day in March 23, almost exactly four years after our very first correspondence,

I was sitting at my desk and my phone buzzed with an unknown number. It was Quenetta. overnight, she and everyone in her unit had gotten the right to make calls. They could do it on prison-issued tablets. Rumor had it, the men in solitary had been hunger-striking, and the administration had bent. I didn't think I'd ever be able to talk to you. We're not in this lifetime. So how do you start a conversation with someone that you've been in a conversation with for, like, years, but never heard their voice?

Oh, yeah. I'm going through that a lot. Awkward. I said, like, I already know you. No, you don't sound. You sound exactly like I thought you would sound. Yeah, yeah, I felt like I already know you. We chat it pretty regularly after that, but our kids, our lives, my daily life in Brooklyn, hers in a Texas prison.

But also about writing. By then, Quenetta wasn't just writing to me. She was getting published. First, in underground pamphlets of prison writers. But soon, in national outlets, the Boston Globe, Teen Vogue, we'd commiserate about applying for fellowships. Justine told me this shit was cutthroat. Justine told me, I didn't believe it. I said, this is like the damn drug gang.

What is this? Her stuff was legitimately good. Quenetta's really got away with words. She's also a great storyteller, which is another part of what this show is about. Quenetta's stories. Her work was important. She wrote about sexual violence, about forced labor, about incarcerated people dying from the heat,

about parenting from prison. She was on the inside, with this special view of everything our systems try to keep hidden. How are you not scared? Oh, scared? Yeah, people are, yeah, because they're scared of, I mean, people, a lot of people won't, right, anything out, right?

Oh, oh, I don't care. Oh, oh, of retaliation. Yeah. What's more they going to do to me? Oh, what's more they going to do to me? They've already taken my phone for months, taking up e-messages for months, taking everything for months. They got to feed me.

And if they want to act a fool and don't feed me, guess who needs to lose weight? Me, I'll be all right. I just don't let it bother me. I've lived so long being afraid. I had told Quenetta, I want to write about you. make a podcast about you, the real you.

I want to tell your story like it's never been told before. And she was on board. She said she didn't want some Pollyanna version. Just the human one. And that's what I wanted, too. So I would be looking into her life, all the places and people who shaped her. And there was one person who had shaped her above all others.

Roberta Powell. Quenetta's mom. In late September, 2023, I flew to Detroit and headed to a red brick bungalow off seven mile. Robertha's house, the house where Quenetta grew up. Quenetta and Roberta have, in many ways,

a typical mother-daughter relationship. They love each other, need each other, irritate the hell out of each other, talk all the time, and like to complain about each other. Nobody in the world knows more. about Quenetta than her mom does.

More about what's been done to her. More about what she's done. I'd been to Robertha's place before, but this time I was going in with a lot more background on Quenetta. It felt a little apprehensive. We pulled up to the curb. The house had a small porch overlooking a patch of trim green lawn. Roberta came to the door.

Hi. Good to see you. Good to see you too. Oh, bless yourself. We sat down on a couple of love seats in Roberta's cozy living room. There was a photograph there of Quenetta, back from when she was free. A young woman in her 20s, her hair in a little bob, red lipstick, a crisp nurse's cap. Roberta took out her iPhone.

She also had some recent photos of Quenetta to show me. A few weeks earlier, a magazine photographer had been allowed into the prison to take portraits of Quenetta. Roberta was admiring her daughter, mostly. Only think she has a, she said, Mama, you would notice that. I say your elbows are so dark. You ever had any fun? She said, I've had any sunshine since 2015.

I said, that's an article. I ain't no sunshine. Why won't you smile? I don't know. In the photos, Quenetta is, as always, across that glass. I like the one with the handcuffs, but... You don't like that? I do like it.

I think it says something. And she's always cuffed when she's around. Oh, yeah, they don't let them off. Well, that's amazing that you got pictures. How did you feel when you got them? Tiri-eyed. Because we want to come see her. She said, you're not coming down here seeing me through no glass.

For the whole of Quenetta's stay in solitary, all eight years, Roberta had only been able to speak with her daughter for five minutes every two to three months. But now that Conetta had a tablet, they could be in regular contact. How has talking to her been? I sleep so much better

because every night, you know, I rock her to sleep, basically. You know, I pretend like she's in my arms. And I rock her like I rocked her when she was a baby or when she had anxiety. So I say, you know, I got you. I know you got me, mama. So I just hug a pillow and pretend it's her. Roberta was only 17 when Quenetta was born.

Quenada's dad was a man in his late 20s, a one-time thing, not really in the picture. That's how Roberta wanted it. She had watched how it went, when her mom and her aunts had been stuck depending on men. They had to do as they were told and take whatever they were given. Roberta decided to go it on her own. And all alone, she would make sure that Quenetta, a black girl with a single teen mom, would never have to submit to a man or to anyone. I wanted her to have the advantage of grabbing everything that other children had.

I wanted Quenetta to have her own bedroom and be able to walk to school and be in an area where she could have a good education. Roberta pulled long shifts at the Wonderbread factory, the post office, the bowling alley, sold sweet potato pies to the union folks at Chrysler, even landed a job as a correctional officer at men's jails. She bought her house, the one we're in now, and she found a way to send Quenetta to the local Catholic school, Our Lady, Queen of Heaven. A good school that taught you not so much that I meant to the Catholic religion, but they taught you wrong from right. It was a ticket to a better life, something different than Roberta's. Martha's parents, born to Tennessee's sharecroppers had, something different than Roberta had. Something very uncommon in our family. She was one of the first to go in a school uniform.

She went in a school, Catholic school, a uniform. She didn't notice the difference to other people pointed it out. But that was like a point of pride. For me, you know, she didn't notice. I didn't want her in public schools. And you feel like the public schools? schools failed you. Yes. Roberta hoped that, armed with her natural smarts and a good education, Quenetta would do great things. At the very least, she'd get out of Detroit. Quenetta wanted that too, but not on Roberta's timeline. Quenetta wanted out fast. Right after high school, she ran into a guy at the

mall. His name was Antonio Harris. Tony, for short. Soon after meeting, Tony decided to join the Air Force. If Quenna wanted to come along, they'd need to get married. I just didn't think a 19-year-old is ready for marriage with anybody. I discouraged it to the day. Why? I felt she was not ready. What do you think of him?

He was not ready. They were too young. But, oh, he's in the Air Force. She can go to school. I really didn't want her leaving me out to stake. But she left. Do you wish she hadn't? Sometimes I wish she hadn't this whole thing wouldn't come up.

Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. It was a lovely SUV, an inexplicably. queenly offer, they're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we feast! An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, ma'amify. This whole thing that Roberta was talking about, it's what landed Quenetta in prison. For now, what you need to know is that it revolved around a man Quenetta met during her years as an Air Force wife.

His name was Michael Giles. The first time Quenetta mentioned him to me was in our fifth letter. She wrote that they met when she was a young, dumb, 21-year-old. She didn't elaborate much at first. Over time, she'd tell me a lot more about Michael Giles. He was a very good friend of mine. He was somebody who was there when I needed him, and I'm thankful for that. At the same time, you know, two things can be true at once.

Michael was 12 years older, a master sergeant a few years away from his full benefits retirement. He'd been stationed around the world for two decades, often on the move. That was before cell phones and all that. I would write like a book to him, and I would get back like a quarter of a page. Gwen Haney is Michael Giles' younger sister. And when Michael finally left the Air Force and came back home to Dallas, Texas in 1997, Gwen found that he was still basically a buttoned up military guy. I'm talking with the rules and just, you know, the way.

way he dealt with life in general, was all everything at her, you know, place and everything. So, yeah. Mike used that military focus to get his degree, and he quickly landed a job in tech support for the local phone company. He saved scrupulously and realized this long-standing dream. He bought a home of his own. It was a meticulous ranch house on Wood Creek Lane in the working-class Dallas suburb of Garland, 20 minutes from his sister.

Oh, my goodness, he used to always be at our house for food, for eating. And I made these poppers and their hollipina peppers with cream cheese wrapped in bacon. And Mike had a shaved head, so he'd be sitting there and that pepper would be so hot, he'd be sweating. He'd be like, oh, that ain't hot, that ain't hot. And you just see sweat hanging now sweating down. That was what everyone had come to expect of Mike. Steady, dependable, rule following. and always up for a good meal.

Which is why what happened in the summer of 2006 was so peculiar. Mike loves Gwen's cooking. Mike's dependable. He shows up when he says he will. And then, suddenly, on the morning of July 4th, Independence Day, Mike just bows out of the family barbecue. My mom said she talked to him,

and he said he was going to cook at home and wasn't coming over. So they have the barbecue without him. Then he's scarce. Like, nowhere to be found. I had been calling his home number and cell phone number and leaving messages, and I didn't get a return call. Gwen says to her husband, I think we should go over and check in on Mike's house.

See what's going on. And my mom overheard me, and I really didn't want her to go because I didn't know. But Gwen's mom wouldn't take no for an answer. They go over to Wood Creek Lane together, Gwen, her husband, and her mom. They park in the back of the house, and the first thing they notice is Mike's blue Honda. It's there. They knock on the back door. No answer.

They peer in the dining room window. You could see all the way to the hallway, everything was gone, all the furniture and everything. Gwen's husband walks around to the front of the house. He saw the sign in the window that said the house was for rent and that had his cell phone number to call. Mike's cell phone number. They're standing there, wondering what's going on, and right then, Gwen's phone pings. It's a text from Mike. That said, I'm okay.

I just needed some time away. Gwen shows the text to their mom, and their mom's like, no, no. Mike wouldn't just leave. The Honda's still here. He goes everywhere with that car. But Mom has recently begun to show signs of dementia. She's also having mental health problems. It's a tough time.

Gwen's like, Mom, you're confused. Let's get you back home. And then my mom's birthday is August 19th, and Mike never missed sending her car. So I'd text or I'd send an email, and I'd be like, you know, Mama's birthday, we didn't get a card. and I would get a... And I said, you really need to call her, you know,

because she wants to talk to you, blah, blah. A lot of communication with his cell phone and email address. But never a phone call. No calls? A forgotten birthday? Just as Gwen's starting to wonder what's really going on, her phone finally does ring. She sees Mike's number, and she picks up.

But it's not Mike. It was a lady on a cruise ship, and she said that she was... calling because she found his phone. He had dropped it exiting at a port. And so at that time, when the lady that called me, you know, I'm thinking, and she said that him and his bride is bride is what she said. So I'm thinking, you know, in my head, Mike and ran off and got married, you know what I mean,

and they're on the cruise and stuff, you know, so on and so forth. So that's just, you know, what I thought really and truly at that time. In the summer of 2006, Michael Giles was 47 years old. He'd never been married and he had no kids. He'd recently lost his job at the phone company. Gwen thought, okay, maybe he really did run off and get married? Admittedly, she was often in the dark about his romantic life. She wasn't alone in that.

He wasn't going to talk about what he called foolishness because he didn't curse. So his words were, oh, I don't, I'm not going to get into that kind of foolishness. Karnita Smith is one of Michael Giles' first cousins. They were close. And she wasn't going to take, I'm not going to get into that foolishness for an answer. I said, well, I'm just checking, Michael. I mean, as old as you are, you've got your house, you don't, you know, things like that. I think he just wanted to stay on the playful side of life, that innocent side, that

I'm going to describe it as the boyish side. The boyishness worried, Karnita. She noticed that when Mike did talk, he'd engaged in what she called gentle bragging. He could come off a little naive. He'd say he'd saved so much money. He had two cars. He owned his own home.

If a person can recognize that side of him, then he's an easy, how can I say? I'm just going to put it this way. He can be an easy take. I never wanted anybody to take advantage of him, ever. So when Mike seems to withdraw from everyone in the summer of 2006 and will only give updates with cryptic texts and emails,

Karnita goes into nosy cousin mode. She's calling and sending him news about her life. She's basically begging for more information. In September, she writes him an email. She's trying to be peppy, kind of inviting. No drama. I left a message on your cell phone today. How is everything going for you?

She gets no response. A few weeks later, she's getting desperate. Please, don't leave me and not tell me anything. You know we are glued at the hips. Crickets. She hears, through the family grapevine, about Mike's mystery cruise ship elopement. She's getting panicked.

Who is this woman? Do we trust her? Just before Thanksgiving, Hernita writes her cousin again. We had to read this one to us. I think about you so much because I love you, and I want to so bad hear your voice again. Most of all, you make me laugh.

I guess now you're making someone else laugh. I guess that's okay. I want to laugh too. Email me or call me, darling. Your Cah's favorite, Carnita. It's a plea. Even if you found a new life,

keep me in it. Fifteen months pass. The emails have totally stopped. Cornita is at a loss. So is Gwen, Mike's sister. They don't know if Mike will ever come back. That's where everything stood on Friday, October 12, 2007. That morning, Gwen gets a call.

It's not from Mike, but it's about him. Two investigators from the Department of Veterans Affairs are looking into the foreclosure of Mike's home. They want to speak with Gwen in person. They meet in the parking lot of a Lowe's home improvement store. And they told me that they were looking for him and asked questions about the house. last time I talked to him and all that.

And I told him, I said, hey, I just have, you know, text messages and emails. I said, but I haven't talked to him in a very long time. And so they suggested that I go to the city of Garland. And so I went over there and filed a missing person report. Several hours later, and 10 miles east, a detective named Gary Sweet is at his desk at the Garland Police Department. Our supervisor comes in, Lieutenant Van Cleave. And he said, there are two ladies at the front desk that want to speak to a detective. The ladies, as Gary Sweet calls them, were the VA investigators that Gwen Haney, Michael Giles' younger sister, had met with in that Lowe's parking lot.

Well, it's almost quitting time. It's like you can hear crickets chirping in the office. How many people are going to jump up and volunteer at quitting time to go out and talk about it? because it's going to take a while. I didn't mind overtime. And I was the senior guy in there at the time. I was the oldest, been in there longer than anyone. So, yeah, I'll do it. They gave me the story that this guy had been paying on his house.

He had a VA loan, paid perfect record on it. And then all of a sudden, about a year ago, he just stopped making payments. And the ladies told me, they said, and there was something else real funny. There was a weird-looking concrete slab in the backyard. And we don't really know what to make about it. So my partner and I kind of look at each other and say, let's go out there and take a look. So we head out there.

And the minute I see that slab, I think, this does not look right. Coming up on this season of what she buried. One thing I was told right off the top is, don't fall for her because she got a ray of dealing with me. with the men. I said, where the fuck you get all this money from? Giles gave it to me. I said, why would he give you that much money? I had guns all over the fucking house.

One time, she shouted me. She had scratches on her face, and her eye was swollen. I can tell she's been in a fight. You know, how to kill someone without leaving a mess. How to clean blood off a couch. One-way tickets out of Dallas around that time. You know, just the craziest searches. He admitted to everything. What do you mean he admitted to everything? And she was like, yeah, I did this. I was like, girl, you're going to go to jail.

you're going to go to jail, you're going to go to jail. There were so many different sides of her that she tried to play. I never knew which Quenetta was coming out that day. He had gotten a letter or something about Quineata Harris had been killed in an accident and that now Trecian Knight would be taking over. She's going to get her story out. Even if she had to get it out by hijacking the podcast, she's going to get the exposure to her story. Don't you feel like she's got a gun to her head and she's like a deer dressing?

Yes. You know? Yeah. I think hostage video is the very. vibe of that email. You want me to tell you today he's dad? I tell you today he dad. Yes, I do. Evening, buyers remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like

buyers rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. What She Buried is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media. This show was reported and hosted by me, Justine Banderlune. Eric Benson is the executive producer. Ashley Ann Crigbaum is the managing producer. Production assistance from Lane Rose, Josie Duffy Rice, Mosy Secret, Emily Martinez,

Sheba Joseph, and Michael Meyer. The story editor is Matthew Scher. The series was mixed in sound design by Garrett Tiedemann with support from Ewan Lai Tramune. Fact-checking by Matthew Giles. A special thanks to our operations team, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dingle. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriatus, and Matthew Cher. If you enjoyed what she buried, please rate and review the show.

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