The Deck - Linda "Lulu Ree" Caesar (9 of Spades, Connecticut)

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Our card this week is Linda "Lulu Ree" Ceasar, the 9 of Spades from Connecticut.Linda "Lulu Ree" Ceasar's story is not all that different from so many others. She was a victim of her circumstances, and then she was a victim again when, in the summer of 1983, her life was taken in the most brutal of ways. Over 40 years later, the police still need help to close her case.If you know anything about the murder of Linda “Lulu Ree” Ceasar, please contact the Hartford Police Department’s Major Crimes Division at 860-757-4000, or the Cold Case Tip Line at 860-722-TIPS (8477). You can also email tips to  [e-mail], or contact the Connecticut Cold Case Unit at 1-866-623-8058.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/linda-lulu-ree-ceasar 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.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!

Our card this week is Linda Lulu Reece Caesar, the Nine of Spades from Connecticut. At 18, Lulu, as she was affectionately known, was not your typical teenager by Hollywood standards. While many young people her age were thinking about what to do next in life, Lulu was just trying to survive each day in a time and place where that wasn't always so easy. And what's so sad about Lulu's story is that it's not all that different from so many others. She was a victim of her circumstances,

and then she was a victim again, when in the summer of 1983, her life was taken in the most brutal of ways. Over 40 years later, the police are still looking for help to close her case. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. It was 6 a.m. on July 13th when a pair of guys rode their bikes through Keeney Park in Hartford, Connecticut.

They were on their way to another town to look for jobs, but before they even got where they were going, they stumbled across a horrible scene. Here's Detective Andrew Jacobson of the Hartford PD. Superviolent. She was a young, small woman, and she had been stabbed brutally, and she was wearing next to nothing." Despite her extensive injuries, the woman was still alive, although it sounds like barely. She wasn't able to tell them what happened or even really speak at all. She was just moaning.

And because this is pre-cell phone days, one of the men had to hop back on his bike and ride to find a telephone in order to get police. The first officer on the scene found her lying with her head and face in a large pool of blood and vomit. Paramedics arrived and started administering first aid, but this was not something they could handle right there. They rushed her off to the hospital as fast as they could, but despite doctors working on Lulu for over a half hour, the damage from the stab wounds was just too extensive, and so she was pronounced dead just after 7 a.m.

But they still didn't know who she even was. There were no belongings found with the victim, definitely no ID. Naming her was going to take some work, so while they were on a mission to do that, they also began processing the crime scene. And the scene itself told them a disturbing story. One of the crime scene detectives, he goes out to the Kinnipark where the crime scene is. He observes a large pool of blood in the middle of the road,

also a small pool of yellow fluid next to the blood. She vomited. Detectives also observed a short distance away, middle of the road, also a small pool of yellow fluid next to the blood, she vomited. Detectives also observed a short distance away, a path leading into the woods, a pair of ladies red short pants, which were blood stains. A few feet further, a pair of ladies white pump shoes. Further into the path was a large amount of blood on the ground. Next to the blood was a pair of ladies underpants and a white headband, and there was a pair of ladies underpants and a white headband. And there was a trail of blood leading from this area to the road to where the victim

was found. Looking at the crime scene today, it's not difficult for Detective Jacobson to theorize what might have happened. So you know, she's in there and all hell breaks loose and her clothes are coming off and who knows what else is happening in there. They're stabbing and beating her up and her pants and everything else are being ripped off of her body. She's running away and whoever this is is like stabbing her.

Detective Jacobson goes on to say that it sounded like Lulu was being tortured and suffered. Except for a car tire print that they found, nothing else pointed them to a potential killer. There's no mention from Detective Jacobson or anything in the police reports about them finding a murder weapon that day. And in the early 80s, fingerprints, not DNA, were what police relied on. So considering the attack took place outdoors and not much was left behind, it made things difficult. And to top it all off, whether the killer knew this or not at the time, Keeney Park was the perfect spot to commit a crime and go undetected.

There's a beautiful golf course, and it was really nice at the time, but at nighttime, it becomes very, very dark, really, really quick. It's thick with woods. Could be potentially a scary place. Nobody would know that you were in there at night. That's how dark it is.

If you want to be involved in stuff that you don't want others to know about, if you don't want to be caught, you could go into the woods, into the park, and nobody would ever know. Especially back then in the 80s, there were no surveillance cameras. This isn't just something Detective Jacobson knows

about Keeney Park in hindsight. Detectives at the time were familiar with the sketchy underbelly of the park. You see, just the year before, the naked body of 28-year-old Sylvia Baker was recovered from a pond inside Keeney Park. You might recall her case from a previous episode of The Deck. But her hands were found bound and she was strangled to death. Now, Sylvia was found a little ways away from their new crime scene, but there was concern.

I mean, they were still in the middle of trying to solve her murder, and now they had another one on their hands. They were wondering if there were any dots to connect between these two murders. Now there weren't, unfortunately. This was just a pattern that would plague the city of Hartford throughout the 80s and 90s, with several brutal murders of black women, a historically marginalized group going unsolved. However, detectives hoped that this case would be different.

I mean, they were already getting a big break in the first few hours of their investigation. That determination they had to ID their victim paid off. They had taken some Polaroid photographs of her. One of the detectives at the time recognized the woman from being from the Barber Street area. He actually went out to the community and was able to eventually make a positive identification of the victim. And they figured out where she lived.

18-year-old Lulu Caesar rented a room in a house on Sergeant Street, just a few miles from Keeney Park. And just an FYI, Lulu's cold case playing card says she was 17, but we believe that's inaccurate. Her obituary, which appears to have been submitted by her family, our detective reviewing the case, and several sources put her age at 18, so that's what we'll be going with. But anyways, the landlord told police that Lulu would often stay out all night and not come back until morning. The landlord's son told police that he would often stay out all night and not come back until morning. The landlord's son told police that he had seen Lulu at the house just before midnight the night

before, which would have been July 12. She was alone then, and she told him she wouldn't be home until 10 a.m. the following day, though it doesn't seem like she told him what she'd be doing all night or who she'd be with. When detectives searched Lulu's room, they didn't find anything earth-shattering. But they did find some pieces of paper with telephone numbers on them. And in hopes that the people connected to those numbers might at least know more about Lulu, they took those with them. As they started making calls and tracking down people who knew her, Lulu's autopsy was conducted.

And the findings helped to inform the detectives on what exactly happened to her. The attending doctor who performs the autopsy said that she received numerous stab wounds to her body, nine stab wounds to the rear of her head, one stab wound to the upper right shoulder area of her back, a stab wound to her chin, four defensive type wounds to her right hand, and one stab

wound to the left side of her chest. The doctor said that there were a total of 16 stab wounds to the victim and that the manner of death was ruled a homicide." The medical examiner also revealed something surprising. Despite the fact that Lulu was found wearing little to no clothing, there was no indication that she had been sexually assaulted. Now that doesn't mean she wasn't, there was just no indication she was. No semen found either.

And toxicology reports would later reveal something else. She had no drugs in her, she had no alcohol in her, she was completely sober. The medical examiner eventually pointed out one other thing. The stab wound to Lulu's heart would have resulted in Lulu dying rather quickly. And this was important because Lulu was found alive, remember, so it's possible that she was stabbed shortly before those two bikers found her. Her killer could have very well still been inside the park then. But who that person was eluded police

in those early hours and days, until a tip came in that put a potential name to the killer. An anonymous tipster told police that a guy named Eric had killed Lulu in Keeney Park. They actually gave Eric's full name, but were not publishing his last name. After giving his name, the caller then hung up. They didn't leave their own name or a way to reach them, so police had no way of contacting this tipster again.

Instead, they ran a check on Eric. And they found out that he actually had more than one last name on file and multiple different birth dates. But what police did with this information is unclear. This is where Lulu's case becomes like reading a book but skipping every other chapter. Not uncommon when dealing with old cases like this. Whatever the police found out about Eric, they clearly didn't deem him a serious suspect, because he has never been mentioned again.

So that very first tip they got wasn't moving the needle. Still, over the next few days, detectives interviewed family, friends, acquaintances, and people who saw Lulu in the hours before her murder. Some of the names of those people they tracked down were given to them by one of Lulu's sisters. It's also possible, but unknown, if some of those phone numbers detectives found in Lulu's room were used to track potential witnesses down. Either way, several of the people interviewed indicated that Lulu was involved in sex work. A few known sex workers told detectives that she had been working the area for around three weeks. Although it's worth noting that Detective Jacobson points out that she was

never arrested for sex work, so without hearing from Lulu herself, it's not completely known if all of this is true. It sounds like she was a little bit of a party girl and she was taking rides from different people to go to different houses for parties, and so she was in and out of a few cars. One witness who contacted police claimed that Lulu had gotten into a fight with a guy named Michael at around 1230 in the morning on the 13th at this bar known as Jerry Maxx. It was kind of like a local neighborhood bar in that area. At that time, everybody went there. The bar owner told police that Lulu was in his place, but he didn't know who she was

with. And while the owner did state that some kind of fight with a female happened outside, he didn't seem to say who was involved. And much like the tip police received about Eric, there's no more information on this Michael guy and how serious of a suspect he was. There was another witness who told detectives that he was sitting on his front porch when he saw Lulu walking north on Vine Street, which is like a block from Keeney Park, and she was with an unknown woman.

This would have been around 12, 15 in the morning. He then saw Lulu and that same woman again on Vine Street between 2.30 and three o'clock in the morning, and he was able to describe exactly what she was wearing, which matched clothes found at the scene. So detectives knew that this tip was credible. But it's possible that the witnesses' times are just a smidge off. Lulu could have gotten in that fight at the bar and then left,

and that's when she's seen for the first time on Vine Street. But where she was for the next two hours or so before she's seen again on Vine Street, that's unknown. Throughout the summer, they continued to interview people about Lulu's murder, but it wasn't until September 13 that things took a significant turn. Robert Graham contacted the Hartford Police Department, stating that he wanted to talk to detectives

who were investigating the Lulu-Caesar homicide. So they met with him at the corner of Capon Street and Anfield Street in the city's north end. Robert stated to the detectives that he knew killed Lulu. If anyone else had said this, detectives might've thought they had another dead end tip coming their way. But because it was Robert Graham, they were all ears.

And that's because Robert himself was known to be a violent sex offender. In 1975, Robert had been convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in her home, a crime for which he served eight years before being released in February of 1983, only a few months before Lulu's murder. And so the story he came forward with, and one that he told police was a wild one. He said that on July 13th, 1983, between 2 and 2.30, he was at the Jerry Mack Cafe and that he was talking with a girl that he knew as Lulu Caesar.

He further stated that Lulu Caesar was wearing a cranberry top and cranberry shorts and also a white headband. So he's putting himself with a victim. He stated that they left the calf at about 2.30 a.m. and they stood outside for approximately 20 minutes, and that he and Lulu then walked south on Sigourney Street towards Homestead Avenue when Lulu saw Jennifer and her boyfriend Roger in a dark blue Buick driving by. And that the car pulled along the side of them and that Jennifer and Roger got out of the car and chased Lulu up the street. Jennifer and Roger were acquaintances of Lulu's, and Robert told police that they were chasing

her because she owed them money. $40 to be exact. Roger caught her and forced her in the backseat of the car and that they made a U-turn, and that's the last time he saw Lulu alive. Robert even told police that he had talked to Jennifer later and she admitted to killing Lulu. But the police didn't seem to believe Robert, so much so that after investigating his story,

they arrested him for making a false statement. And while it's a little unclear, like many things in this story, it sounds like the false statement charge was eventually dropped or Robert was exonerated. Which is not totally surprising. It's often a difficult charge to prove, according to Detective Jacobson. But that didn't mean Robert was off the hook. It was possible.

At least part of his story was true, like him talking to Lulu at the bar or even him leaving with her. I mean, the part about him seeing her had to have been true because he had described precisely what Lulu was wearing that night. But his admission to seeing her is all they had on him. Nothing else connected Robert to Lulu's death, so all they could do was keep tabs on this guy. And months later, detectives were reminded just how dangerous he really was. According to an article in the Hartford Courant by David Owens, in January of 1984, Robert was charged with beating and stabbing a woman in his apartment.

He was convicted of first-degree assault and sentenced to 15 years, but still nothing tied him to this case. A whole other year would go by before police got their next break. In December of 1985, a woman named Shirley was at the police station reporting a sexual assault when something that would become key to this case happened. — While she's getting ready to get a ride home, she said, hey, can I look at pictures of black males? Because I want to see the guy who killed Lulu.

She was asked if she meant Lulu Caesar, and she stated that she did. She was further questioned as to whether or not she knew the name of the killer, and she stated that it was a man she used to date by the name of Robert. Lisa O'Hara Yeah, that Robert. Robert Graham. Adam Hickman She began by saying that she was friends with the victim, and in the summer of 1983 she was driving in Graham's car. Graham was driving up Sigourney Street approaching Albany Avenue.

When they stopped at a red light, Shirley saw Lulu walking up the street. She called her over to the car and asked if she wanted to party with them. Lulu agreed and hopped in the back seat, and she claimed that this happened at around 2 o'clock in the morning, and she could describe what Lulu was wearing accurately. According to Shirley, they all went back to Robert's sister's house where he was staying, and they hung out and partied until the sun started to come up. And that's when Lulu decided that she wanted to go home, so Robert agreed to take her while Shirley stayed at the house.

She waited for Graham to return. It took about an hour or so before he showed up that he came into the house and said nothing to her but appeared to be acting shaky and his eyes were fire red and he was trying to be calm. Shirley told detectives it was between 6 and 6 30 in the morning when Robert got back. Several hours later Shirley asked him what was wrong and he told her that he had killed Lulu. At first she thought Robert was joking, but then she realized he wasn't. And when she asked Robert why he killed her, he told her that he had planned on paying Lulu for sex, but then Lulu allegedly pulled a fast one on him.

The victim had grabbed his money from him and fled the car, grabbed and chased her and caught her. And after that, he raped her and he stabbed her. Then Shirley said something that stunned the detectives, something that right away told them at least part of this story, if not all of it, had to be true. No one, not outside the police, not the media, not the public, no one knew this yet. I haven't even told you. But on July 18th, this would have been five days after Lulu was found stabbed, detectives

had returned to the crime scene. They did this because they had received information that some Styrofoam cups left at the scene could be evidence. Now, who this information came from and whatfoam cups left at the scene could be evidence. Now who this information came from and what role these cups could have played is unknown to us, but I know that they went back, they did find those cups there along with a coffee stirrer, but they also found something far more important. In a pool of blood, there was the tip of a knife, most likely from the murder weapon. So all of that they had kept under wraps all this time.

And then walks in Shirley two years later, and in the middle of her statement to police about Robert, she says this. Graham told her that while stabbing her, the tip of the knife broke on her head. Again, this was huge. She shouldn't have known this unless she had information from Lulu's killer. But not everything about Shirley's story added up. For one thing, Shirley claimed that they had picked Lulu up at around 2 a.m., but that other witness put her on Vine Street between 2.30 and 3.

Doesn't mean one or both couldn't have their times wrong, but, you know, just something to point out. Also, if you remember, the autopsy revealed that there were no drugs or alcohol in Lulu's system, so Lulu wasn't doing any partying that night. Detective Jacobson theorizes that it's possible that Lulu didn't partake in anything. She could have just hung out. And Shirley does end up changing her story. In her second version, she said that when Robert left to take Lulu home, she actually

went with him. So now, she's gone from a secondhand account to a first-hand account, which is huge. According to her, they end up parking in Keeney Park. Robert wanted to have sex with both of them, but surely wasn't interested. Lulu said she would do it for money, but then took the money and fled the car. And like the first version, Robert chased her down, and that steak knife he had in his sock was what he used to kill her. With Shirley now as a key witness, they felt they had enough to finally go after Robert. So in April of 1986, while still doing time for the assault that took

place two years prior, Robert was arrested for Lulu's murder. But that didn't last long. Because even though this was the most that police had ever gotten on Robert, who they'd been suspicious of since he inserted himself into the investigation, it still wasn't enough for prosecutors. A one witness case is the worst case you're ever going to bring to court, especially without science, and admission, anything." Eventually, Robert's charges were dismissed without prejudice, which at least left open the chance that he could be charged with her murder again down the line.

It had to be a bitter pill for all those involved in Lulu's case and her family to swallow, especially when in 1990 Robert was arrested after shooting a woman in the face. He was convicted of first degree assault in January of 1993 for that crime and sentenced to 20 years. And while Robert continued his violent ways, Lulu's case lingered. According to Detective Jacobson, there have been no new leads or other suspects

they've considered since Robert's initial arrest for Lulu's murder. Robert was released in 2005 after that 1993 conviction, but 10 years later he was arrested yet again, this time for the 2015 murder of Tashauna Jackson. She was last seen getting in her car and her body was found a week later behind a building. While the medical examiner couldn't determine the exact cause of death, there was enough circumstantial evidence to convict Robert of her murder. In 2016, Detective Jacobson took over Lulu's case and decided to test some of the evidence, since the science has come such a long way since 1983.

We asked for a cross-reference between Robert Graham and any DNA that they found. These were swabbing from fingernail clippings, swabbing from waistbands of underpants into your front of the underpants. So it was clothing and fingernail scrapings. But when Detective Jacobson got the test results back, he was a little surprised. Anywhere they had a single profile, it came back female. And who that female profile belongs to is still unclear today. Detective Jacobson is pretty sure it came from Lulu, but because her blood type was never noted during her autopsy, he can't say for certain.

So we asked, could it have been Shirley's? Is it possible that she was more than a witness to all of this? But Detective Jacobson finds it very unlikely. He said based on the force of the stab wound, there has been no doubt in his mind that Lulu was killed by a man. And because of this, they never collected samples from Shirley, as she was never considered a suspect. And as far as anything that came back in the test results as a mixture profile...

He was not on anything. He was not on any of the evidence. His DNA was not there. Now, that didn't mean that Robert couldn't still have been involved, especially when dealing with decades-old evidence. That's really old, and the way things were packaged in the 80s might not have been conducive to maintaining DNA structures. And it could just be the areas that they tested if he was involved in it.

Just it wasn't there. In 2021, Robert died of COVID-19 complications while serving his life sentence for Tashawna Jackson's murder. But that hasn't deterred Detective Jacobson from pursuing him as a suspect. Kind of fits with the way he treats women. Even though he's passed, I'd still like to kind of close this one out for Lulu. To finally close it though, he may need some help because what DNA evidence they do have, so far, it isn't eligible for CODIS. Whether it was Robert who committed the crime or someone else, Detective Jacobson knows

that a case this old will need some help from the public. I would like to kind of ask anybody who's listening to this, anybody who knows Lulu Caesar knows what happens to her, any family members or friends to please contact us. Detective Jacobson would also like to talk to Lulu's friend Shirley, who he's never had a chance to interview, and he believes that she could be in South Carolina. Maybe Shirley holds the final piece of the puzzle to put this case to rest and to give Lulu and her family what they all deserve, which is some form of closure. So Shirley, if you're out there, Detective Jacobson has a message for you.

Shirley, call me. Here are the numbers to call if you are Shirley or anyone else who knows about this crime. The Hartford PD major crimes number is 860-757-4000. Or the anonymous tip line is 860-722-TIPS. You can also submit tips through email and that email address is in our show notes. The Deck will be off next week, but we will return the following week

with a brand new episode. 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? Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo