Broccoli.

Broccoli florets, specifically.

When the results of my Mother’s autopsy came back it was notated with the fact that her stomach contained broccoli florets.

For all the non-medical examiner, non-forensic scientist, non-crime scene investigator people in the room… let me explain what that means:

The digestive acids processing the food that comes into your body are very strong. They do some amazing things to breakdown what comes into your system.

When you die, one of the ways that the medical examiner is able to pinpoint your time of death, aside from temperature, rigor mortis, and other physical attributes, is by observing the contents of your stomach.
One of the things that stood out in my Mother’s autopsy was that she had full and undigested broccoli florets in her stomach.

That gave them a timeline.

My Mother was killed within 15-45 minutes of eating.

That was on the extreme side. More than likely she was killed within 30 minutes of eating. According to the medical examiner.

Check this out…

My Mother had dinner with the lady that murdered her.

They went out to eat. The lady drove.
After they’d finished dinner they went straight back to my Moms house. There was an over 15 minute ride from the restaurant.

My Mother got it in the house and made a call to check on us. She spoke with my sister and brother. I was avoiding her call. I didn’t want her to tell me that I had to go to church the next morning. She was on the phone with them for less than 10 minutes.

That was the last time we heard from our Mom.

She was murdered not long after that phone call. She may have been allowed to make that phone call to us, with the knowledge that she was about to be murdered. That part we may never know.

Broccoli.

When the detectives arrested that lady and began to interrogate her they asked her where’d she been the night of my Mom’s murder. Her response was that her and my Mother had went out to dinner. She didn’t deny it. They felt they had her then.

When they told her that they knew she had been with her and that they were prepared to charge her with murder she told them that she had an alibi. They knew that was impossible because of the time frame. The broccoli.

Her alibi was a phone call.

She told the police that she didn’t do the murder. In fact she told them that she talked to my Mother after she dropped her off. The detectives knew with the evidence they had, the ride from the restaurant, the evidence of no forced entry, and the missing money (I’ll explain that in a second), that an alibi was not possible.

She told them that she made a phone call from a pay phone across town and talked to my Mom. The detectives asked her why she would have made a phone call, from a pay phone, to someone that she had just left, from a place across town, out of the way and off of the route to her home where she said she was going?
She told them that she made the call to thank my Mother for going out to dinner and to tell her that she had a nice time.

When the police checked phone records, there was a phone call from a pay phone to my Mom’s house at the time that she was probably dead.

The police have always suspected that the lady had an accomplice. She had someone who made that phone call. Someone that knew of her plans.

Let me tell you about her plans…

The dinner they had that evening was my Mother letting her know that there was no chance of them getting back together. My Mother had chosen to get back with my Dad. My Dad is the lady’s uncle.

I know. This is some real Sally Jesse Raphael, Ricky Lake, Geraldo sh¡t.

My Mother was planning to marry my Dad. They had decided to get back together and become the family that they felt they should have been the whole time. We were excited about that happening.

We (my Mother’s children) didn’t know about the relationship that the lady and my Mom had going on for all of that time. My Mother hid that from us. She hid their relationship from a lot of people. Most people, just like us, believed that everyone in that house was family. That’s the way it was presented. That’s what we were always told to acknowledge. And that is what- for the most part- was true. Because, as I’ve explained: the lady and her children are actually blood related to my younger sister and brother by their biological father. The man that I refer to as Dad.

I know. This sh¡t was so messy.

Crazy part is that it has taken almost 30 years for some people to acknowledge and say certain things about what was going on then. A lot of things had to be pieced together because everyone was so broken. And confused. And hurt.

And in denial. Because of what was actually going on in our home. It was crazy how crazy all of this was.

And at the same time, my Mother made it work. Our home wasn’t ran in a messy way. She demanded, commanded, and required an order and respect that did not allow for so many of us to see what was going on in their lives.

Back to that dinner…

That dinner was the night my Mother- we assume- communicated to that lady that it was really over and that there would be no going back. I believe that the lady had a plan for such an announcement. She had already made up her mind as to what she was going to do if my Mother refused another plea from her for them to get back together, and for her and her children to move back in with us.

How do I know that much?

Well, over the last 3 years of living in that house, my Mother had begun to bring me into more of what was going on in that house. Although she never told me that they were in a relationship or anything close, she started having me stay home on weekends that they were “into it” and telling me some of the “crazy” stuff the lady was doing outside of the house. I was there for many of their fights. I was there for many of the police visits. I was there the night, 8 months prior to my Moms murder, when the lady pulled a gun out and threatened us. The night she told my Mother that she wouldn’t get away with putting her and her children out.

It had gotten so bad between them that at one point my Mother had gotten a temporary restraining order against the lady. My Mother had begun to tell people around her that things between them had gotten really bad.

EVERYONE WAS IN DENIAL.

Because no one wanted to accept that my Mother was gay. She had been with that lady for 8 years. She hid it. She covered it up. She misled a lot of people about it. Yet, so many people guessed, assumed, gossiped, and felt that it was what it was. But, like they have all said: It was 1994, homosexuality was just not something you talked about. Especially in black households. Especially black Christian households. blah blah blah.

I didn’t know they were gay. We were family. That’s what I knew. That’s what I was told. That’s what I believed. Even if I didn’t like it, I acknowledged and accepted that we were family.

And over the last 3 years of us living there, our family member, that lady, had been wilding out. She’d started hanging with and bringing around some people that my Mother did not like being around our house. They fought about that. She’d started having a couple people come over, every now and again, that did drugs and had suspect lives and behavior. They fought about that. The lady attempted suicide in the summer of 1993. I was there that weekend. She drank gin and downed a bunch of pills. My Mother saw that as a cry for help and it drew her into accepting some other crazy behavior. There was an incident where my Mother had a party and the lady came by and bent up all of the cars outside windshield wipers and spray painted their head and taillights blue. TRUE FVCKING STORY!

It was a lot going on. Most of it was unknown to so many people though. Because my Mother and that damned “what happens in this house stays in this house” philosophy that has been destroying black homes and families forever.

Anyway.

“Broccoli”.

And by this “broccoli”, I mean money.

A few months before my Mom was killed she told me to come into her bedroom. She said that there was something that she wanted to show me and it was important.

She walked me over to her dresser where she opened a drawer and pulled out a black stocking that was balled up. She unballed it and pulled a purple Crown Royal sack out of it. She opened the Crown Royal sack and produced a roll of bills that were held together by a rubber band. She held it up for me to acknowledge.

“This is my emergency fund. It is for emergency purposes. Only 3 people know about it: Me, You, and _ (she said the lady’s name). If it’s ever gone, you know who took it.”

I didn’t really understand why she was telling me that. Not at that time. I’ve known this entire time since though.

The morning I found my Mothers body, nothing in that room was out of the ordinary. The room, just as the house, was normal. No signs of a struggle, or a fight, or forced entry, or anything like that. The only thing that was out of order: the drawer on the dresser was opened, the stocking was hanging over it, and the Crown Royal sack was on the floor. Empty.

I knew when I found my Mothers body, who had killed her. That money missing was a sign my Mother left me so that I didn’t spend the rest of my life wondering. I’ve always known who did this. So all of this time, though difficult, has not been spent wondering about that part. I am grateful for that much.

Back to finding her…

When the police arrived and they started surveying the house, I let them know about the money. Before I did that though, the Chief, Joe Falica, had already instructed officers to go and pick the lady up. When he walked in the house and saw my Mothers body, he knew who had done it. He and his officers had been there on many occasions to address issues with that lady. The different things that she had done.

This was all documented stuff too.

That “broccoli”.

So, when they got the lady in custody and she was explaining away all of the questions that they had, they got to a point where they asked her about what she had done on Sunday March 27, 1994. That was the day after my Mother was murdered. It was the day before I found her body.

The lady said that she went shopping. She took a trip to the Swap-O-Rama indoor/outdoor flea market in Alsip, Illinois. She told the police that she spent the morning and afternoon shopping for clothes and other items for her children. She spent over $250 dollars at the Swap that day. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $519.01 today. For context.

They asked her where she got the money from to go on such a random shopping spree. Because, by that time, they’d already interviewed her boss at the liquor store she was working at. Payday was the week before. It wasn’t from income tax money. No one had lent her the money that she had at the time. She told the police that she’d been saving up the money to go shopping that weekend.

They didn’t tell her about the stocking and Crown Royal sack at that time. They wanted to wait on forensics, fingerprints and other evidence to come in before they confronted her with that.

Ultimately forensics did come back. With her fingerprints on EVERYTHING. The problem with that: she lived in the house with us for 8 years. Even with me telling them about the money, I’d also told them that my Mother told me that she knew about the money too. The States Attorney told me that everything they had was circumstantial. Because of that he didn’t want to put the case in front of a jury and risk losing, allowing a murderer to go free.

Fvcked up, ain’t it?

©️Cornelious “See” Flowers