The Deck - Anna Hliaras (10 of Clubs, Ohio)

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Our card this week is Anna Hliaras, the 10 of Clubs from Ohio.Anna Hliaras was a vigilant fixture in her Dayton, Ohio, neighborhood. She was essentially neighborhood watch before it was even a thing. And her mission was to make sure any and all disturbances in her community were called out. But investigators fear her tenacious behavior could’ve led to her demise… If you have any information about the 1981 murder of Anna Hliaras in northwest Dayton, Ohio, please call the Cold Case Unit at the Dayton Police Department at 937-333-7109. View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/anna-hliaras Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo apply for a Cold Case Playing Card grant through Season of Justice, please visit www.seasonofjustice.org The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AFText Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

I'm sure you noticed two episodes in your feed today, and that's because they're both a little shorter. But despite their length, we wanted to tell you both of their stories. Our first card this week is Anna Hilaris, the 10 of clubs from Ohio. Anna was no doubt a fixture in her neighborhood. Some called her watchful, protective, and fierce, while other neighbors viewed her vigilance as grumpiness, the get-off-my-lawn type of person to stay away from. But Anna was never deterred by how her neighbors perceived her.

She dedicated her time to keeping an eye out on the neighborhood, determined to investigate every sound or commotion she heard outside. And detectives think that may have made her a target for someone. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. It was a little after midnight on August 9, 1981, when Mary Adams got to the house that she shared with her younger sister, 57-year-old Anna Hilaris. Mary had just gotten back from a vacation with friends, and by this time of night, she fully expected her sister to be sound asleep in her room. Here's retired Detective Doyle Burke describing the night. Mary Adams, her sister, she lived with her sporadically, mostly on weekends. She was

gone between August 3rd and August 8th and was not at home. She comes home and finds the front and rear doors to the residence locked. So she starts banging on the doors, looking in the windows, no answer." Unable to get into the house, Mary walked a block over to the nearest payphone to call their brother Angelo. She wasn't just calling him because she was locked out, she was worried. Her instincts told her that something was wrong and she needed reinforcements. It was close to 1 a.m. by the time she made that call to her brother. Mary worried that he might be asleep, but sure enough, he picked up. She told him that Anna wasn't answering the door, and she had a bad feeling about it. He lives in New Lebanon.

He arrives 30 minutes or so, which is about right, and he starts checking the yard and the garage. He finds the garage open. Angela walked the short distance to the back of the property where Anna's small detached garage sat backed up to the alley behind the house. It was there, inside the garage, that Angela found Anna. As quick as he could, he grabbed a light to see what was going on. There was no car, just Anna, lying on the garage floor.

There was a gag in her mouth, and her nightgown was bunched up revealing her underwear. But it was obvious to Angelo that there was no saving their sister. She's been decomposing for two to three days, which didn't make her look any better by any means. So the untrained eye, I mean, clearly she was dead. And so he comes and runs out and says they raped and killed her." I imagine Mary, who had not entered the garage, was in complete disbelief. But Angelo told

her that he was certain Anna was dead and they needed to call for help right away. Angelo ran over to the same payphone Mary had used to call him earlier, and he phoned police. By 2 o' 4 a.m., Dayton, Ohio police officers had units dispatched out to Anna and Mary's house on the northwest side of town. The disheveled state of Anna's clothes made it look like she'd been sexually assaulted, and her nighttime attire made detectives believe that she might have been attacked at night. They just weren't sure if it was that night. And that's because Mary hadn't been home since August 3, so there was no one else around

who could account for when Anna had last been seen alive. At least, not yet. Along with the nightgown, Anna also had on a blouse-type shirt, shoes, and a red headband. The gag in her mouth was actually just a piece of cloth, and upon closer inspection, police noted bruising around her neck, which made detectives think that she had been strangled. Detectives took in the rest of the scene. There was a single piece of mail, an electric bill, and a set of house keys laying next to Anna, but nothing else in the garage looked out of place. The only thing that indicated a crime had occurred

was Anna's body itself. We asked Detective Burke if police back then went inside the house to look around, but he couldn't say for sure. He said if they did, they didn't note that they found anything of interest. Anna's autopsy was completed later that same day, and the assistant coroner concluded what everyone who saw her body at the scene had already presumed — that she had actually died a few days prior to being found, probably around August 6. They also confirmed more assumptions detectives had early on. The autopsy showed what we would expect.

She got some abrasions and contusions on her neck. The hyoid bone is typically broken in a manual strangulation, and it was fractured. There were retinal or particular hemorrhages in the eyes, fractured on the back of the skull with a subarachnoid hemorrhage, and she's on her back on a concrete surface. That could have been when she fell or it could have been during the strangulation, but she was strangled, caused the death of strangulation." One thing the autopsy report wasn't conclusive on was whether Anna had been sexually assaulted. She had what appeared to be bruising around her vaginal area, but not much else other

than that, so they sent off vaginal swabs to test for semen. In addition to the forensic evidence collected at the autopsy, law enforcement also sent off the few things they'd found in the garage for testing, including the mail and the piece of cloth found inside her mouth. I couldn't find if they sent the keys off for testing, though." Now, while they waited for the analysis on those items to come back, investigators interviewed Anna's siblings and neighbors to try and zero in on her last movements and a possible motive for the crime. They talked to Mary first, and she walked them through the same story

she told police at the scene, and Angelo did the same. They also told detectives that it was Anna's habit to lock the house doors when she went out to check the mail, or even just to take out the trash. So the fact that Mary found the house locked tight when she got home was no surprise. But the siblings didn't have much else to add. They said Anna didn't have a partner and didn't have a car. Detectives gathered that she wasn't known to socialize or ever even have visitors.

It seemed that her whole life was kind of kept to their house and the occasional walking trip to the grocery store or nearby church. It was clear from talking to Mary and Angelo that the means, motive, and opportunity just wasn't there for them to kill their sister. So they were quickly cleared and police moved on to speaking with the neighbors.

No one seemed to take note of Anna before she died, except a mom and daughter who told detectives that they'd seen her out in the yard at around 7 30 p.m. on Thursday night, which would have been August 6, the day that she's believed to have died. Now, the frustrating part of looking back on all of this all these years later is that there's nothing to indicate whether they specified any details about what Anna was wearing when they saw her. Was she in her nightgown with her red headband already? Something else. Those details are lost to time if they were ever collected to begin with. But that sighting at least helped detectives narrow down her time of death to somewhere around the evening of the 6th. But the window of time was still pretty wide because Anna wasn't someone with an early bedtime. Neighbors said they see Anna all hours of the night and day, and one of them even elaborated, two, three in the morning meant nothing.

Picking up trash in the alley, looking at her garage, working on her yard. When detectives talked to more of Anna's neighbors, no one seemed to have heard a thing. No screams, no strange noises, nothing. And honestly, that's understandable if she was murdered in the middle of the night or even subdued quickly. Or neighbors could have ignored anything And honestly, that's understandable if she was murdered in the middle of the night, or

even subdued quickly. Or neighbors could have ignored anything that had to do with Anna because as detectives talked to more people, they were finding out that she might not have been the most well-liked person in the neighborhood. And the newspaper said she was a fiery person, got a fiery temperament. She liked everything to be in order. She was kind of the precursor of a neighborhood watch. She called on everything. She would chastise her neighbors. One neighbor said he hadn't talked to her for a few days because she was mad

at him because he put a window air conditioner in and it was too loud and she would constantly tell him that it was too loud and she would constantly tell him that it was too loud and he needs to do something about it. The houses on Anna's block were pretty close together. Looking at photos, I'm not surprised Anna could hear someone's window air conditioner unit from her house, especially if this guy lived right next door. I put those photos up on our blog post for this episode if you want to take a look as well. Anyway, detectives were getting the sense that no one heard anything from Anna for a few days that week, and no one thought to pop in or call in a wellness check when they

hadn't seen her. They were very clear that Anna would chastise them about the least little indiscretion. And I don't think they liked that, but I don't think they cared. She was the fiery old lady who ran the neighborhood. To detectives, the neighbors definitely seemed to have some animosity toward Anna. But in a Dayton Daily News article published two days after Anna's body was found, neighbors who were interviewed didn't show that same concern. More like a little bit of shock. But the one thing that has remained

really clear about Anna, no matter who we've talked to or what we've read, she was tough as hell and didn't take sh-t from anyone. And neighbors were quick to theorize when speaking to the Dayton Daily News that maybe that had something to do with her murder. Here are some of their quotes to the newspaper. She was the kind of person who was aware of her rights as an individual and would always stick up for them. I just hope she didn't blow up one too many times. She was always hearing noises. I've seen her walk to that garage at three o'clock in the morning with nothing but a flashlight to check things out. She was a tough old lady.

She was very protective of her property. She had a quick temper and didn't let anyone take advantage of her. I honestly believe she went out back and surprised someone. It's really kind of ironic. Anna was always saying how inhumane people were becoming in the world. I guess she really was right. I remember she was out trimming her front lawn one day a couple months back. While she was out front, three kids went in her house through the back and stole her TV

set and ran down the back alley. But she never gave in to fear. She stuck to her guns. I always found her to be a nice lady. So yeah, Anna wasn't necessarily beloved in her neighborhood. But she wasn't outright hated by everyone either. And by the way, that incident a neighbor mentioned about some kids stealing Anna's TV? We asked Detective Burke about it, and he said the department never could

confirm if that actually happened or not. Because you see, Anna made a lot of complaints to police. She called them frequently about things like potential breaking and entering, aggravated burglary, even if someone appeared intoxicated in the alley behind her house. She saw it all and she called everyone out. And that kind of backfired. Because the more frequent Anna's calls became, the more officers became frustrated with her.

If the story about kids stealing her TV is true, though, it doesn't seem like her concerns were completely unfounded. Nonetheless, officers at the time started warning other officers about Anna. They even created an internal complaint memorandum for Anna that said, quote, much discretion should be used in the future in accepting any complaints from this lady, end quote. This was created on May 31, 1980. So essentially, a little over a year before Anna was murdered, officers made a note for other officers to take her calls with a grain of salt. And that's not to say that a call from Anna was ignored the night she was murdered. As far as we know, there were no documented calls from her that evening. But it

begs the question, even if Anna had called police to report someone in her garage, would they have even shown up? I don't know. I can't help but wonder if there were instances before that August evening where she'd contacted police that could have offered up potential clues now if they had all been well documented and taken more seriously. But it was too little, too late, and that made it harder for detectives to nail down a suspect.

Our biggest clue, to be honest with you, here's a lady that, well-intentioned or not, called about everything and everybody. And it's hard to say if that's what caused her death or not, but somebody killed her, took nothing, and put a gag in her mouth. I don't know if that, and maybe I'm reading too much into it, but is that to say, tired of you calling on everything,

tired of you being the neighborhood watch lady? I don't know, but I don't know that there's a reason to gag her otherwise. If she's yelling or she's in the garage, who knows? We think two or three in the morning, not that many people are going to be listening or looking anyway. So I don't know, that's just a thought. Was someone trying to send a message to Anna to shut her up for all those complaints?

Or was she just out to get the mail and interrupted someone in the process of trying to break into her garage once again? I mean, this could be something as simple as she may have gotten that letter, started to get the mail and interrupted someone in the process of trying to break into her garage once again. I mean, this could be something as simple as, she may have gotten that letter, started walking to her house, said something to somebody that she saw doing something in the alley,

and they decided enough's enough, and lost control of themselves, killed her, stuffed the gag in their mouth, and went on about their way. You look at these things and you go, is this targeted? I mean, I don't think so. I mean, what did she do other than, you know, just call people out for doing things she thought was not appropriate? But then you could also have someone that

you struck a chord with them for one reason or another, they're having a bad day, or they were just tired of it. But it's almost like eventually something was going to happen. For every last person I talk to, did you hear anything? Did you see anything? No, but she yells at me because of my hair conditioner. No, I haven't talked to her in a while because she's mad at me. No, but she's out all the time yelling at people. When there's a consistent theme there, you gotta pay attention to that. That maybe that has something to do with her death.

I'd like to think not, but you can't ignore it. So despite that internal memo a year earlier warning officers to proceed with caution, if you will, there were still some documented incidents from reports Anna had made. Whatever was done or not done back then with those incident reports, it seemed like police moved on. And while neighbors could have had a motive to want Anna gone, no one in particular was

on detectives' radar. So it was time for them to think outside the box, look a little deeper into Anna's past, and figure out what led to her constant vigilance. Best investigators could determine it seemed like Anna's behavior could have been triggered by her changing neighborhood. She lived in Northwest Dayton with primarily other adults around her age. But in the late 70s and early 80s, the demographics started to change. Younger people moved in, and a new group home opened up nearby, about three miles from Anna's

house. Anna was so concerned that she went out of her way to speak with a woman running one of the organizations about her concerns over these new people coming into her neighborhood and the surrounding area. Now we couldn't find if Anna had any documented altercations with the people from the home, but their new presence seemed to amp up her perceived need to keep a watchful eye on the neighborhood at all hours of the night.

Detective Burke said Anna's fears were unfounded because despite the new group home, crime in Northwest Dayton wasn't increasing. He actually said there wasn't any serious crime documented until Anna's homicide. Now, some people saw Anna as a stubborn homeowner who didn't like to see her neighborhood change. And I'd be remiss if I didn't call out the fact that her fears were likely because she was classist. In fact, Detective Burke said as much. But when Anna turned up dead, her neighbors were very forthcoming.

If they thought someone from the group home came to harm her, they would have told police. But there's nothing the detectives could find to even remotely link her death to that possibility. Police had hit a dead end when it came to finding a suspect or even a motive in Anna's death. Almost a month into the investigation, detectives again looked at police reports around Anna's neighborhood, but there was nothing of note. Everything was pretty quiet in Anna's little neighborhood, except, of course, for Anna herself, and it quieted down even more after her death. Finally, on September 3, not quite a month after Anna's murder, lab results from the swabs taken at her autopsy came back.

The report stated that no significant foreign material was found from the fingernail scrapings, and the other results weren't more promising. No steam was detected. No evidence of rape was detected. So that left us with the gag that was in her mouth. And it was not part of the homicide. She was strangled.

And it was placed in there. There's no way to tell if it was placed in there before death, after death, during death, but it was placed in there. It was ripped. It was a piece of fabric that was ripped from one of the shirts she was wearing. And the lab pieced that back together

to show it was the same material. I want to note that while investigators don't believe Anna was sexually assaulted, I don't think it can be ruled out definitively because the autopsy noted multiple bruises. When we asked Detective Burke about that, he said he asked a pathologist today what their expert opinion would be on a case like this,

and they just didn't have a good answer. But just because Seaman wasn't found and she was still wearing her underwear, we can't say for certain. With no other investigative breakthroughs on the horizon, detectives were at a dead end once again. Unfortunately, as the years went by, there were fewer and fewer people left to advocate for justice for Anna. Her sister Mary passed away in 1988 after battling a long-term illness, and her brother

Angelo, the final member of Anna's immediate family, passed away in 2005 at the age of 80. For over 40 years, Anna's case sat cold, not being investigated. That is until one of our reporters brought her case up to Dayton, Ohio detectives. Last year, Detective Burke agreed to look at the cold case ahead of our reporter's interview with him. He admitted he hadn't even heard of Anna's case before that. So we asked about any potential evidence that might still be intact today, because I'd

assume there would be DNA on the cloth that was put in Anna's mouth. But we were met with more bad news. Apparently, within a couple of years of Anna's case going cold, all the evidence associated with it, so the rag, her fingernail clippings, biological swabs, that piece of mail, everything, all of it was stored off-site along with evidence for other inactive Dayton PD cases.

And then sometime around 1983, someone stopped by there and realized that the roof had collapsed and pretty much everything inside was ruined. That included every single item associated with Anna's murder. Ruined. Waterlogged. Lost. Gone forever. As much as this felt like a hopeless case, it wasn't the end of the road for detectives, though. They went back through the incident reports reports placed by Anna, and one of them stuck out more than the rest. A report from many years prior to Anna's murder. The complaint that caught everyone's attention was dated January 9, 1963, so it was pretty old, but in the complaint, Anna said she was hit in the face by a man. Now, unfortunately, that's all we know.

In fact, we have a copy of the complaint and here's what it says verbatim. 1963, at 6.30 PM, suspect Ted Beckner, white male 35, had attracted the complainant's attention, then struck her on the right side of the face. Will prosecute. We asked Detective Burke what his agency knew about this, and unfortunately, his answer was nothing.

We asked if they looked up this Ted guy to see if he had any kind of criminal record or anything to indicate how he knew Anna, but he couldn't find anything. He said if there was any follow up done on that incident, the reports no longer exist. So, yet another dead end. But Detective Burke had one last hope for a Hail Mary. The idea came when he was looking at Anna's case file once again and found the name and phone number of an officer that he knew over in Preble County.

I called him up and he remembered. I mean, that's astonishing to me, but his dealings with the family was, he'd never met Anna or anything, but Angelo had a little, like a storage area or outbuilding in Preble County and he was accused of selling stolen property out of it. It was by a truck stop. And so they did a search warrant there and found some things and also found some drugs and suspicion fell on Angelo that maybe he was selling amphetamines

to the truck drivers to stay awake, but it was all suppressed at court. So he was never charged with anything. This all occurred the same year that Anna was murdered. And while it seemed suspicious, there really wasn't anything that could tie Angelo to his sister's murder. So that phone call was interesting, sure,

but it was a bit misleading. Despite the renewed investigation, there was still nothing that could indicate who murdered Anna. Anna's case is one that will only be solved if someone comes forward and speaks. Even if it's simply some stories that you've heard from family or a friend about Anna down the road who complained a lot, detectives want those tips.

Sometimes it's the smallest details that can lead to the biggest discoveries. Anna didn't have kids, and both of her siblings, Mary and Angelo, have passed. So there's not really anyone left to advocate for her. I mean, seriously, Google Anna's name. You won't find much beyond a few really old newspaper articles and now this episode. It's a little heartbreaking. And you know what's even worse?

Whoever strangled Anna in her garage got away with it. What if they went on to hurt or kill more people? What if they still can? Anyone with information about the 1981 murder of Anna Hilaris in northwest Dayton, Ohio should call the cold case unit at the Police Department. That number is 937-333-7109. The Deck is an AudioChuck 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?