[theme music]
[tense music, sirens]
[helicopter whirring]
BARBARA KOZLOFF: In 2014, there were over 300
murder cases in Detroit.
It's hard to keep up with.
[ON] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: It's so bleak.
It's from that type of environment
you have some of the most brutal crimes rise
to the surface.
There was trash everywhere.
Swarms of flies.
They found pieces of a human body.
Another victim
is found in a nearby abandoned basement.
A woman wrapped in plastic.
So we've got two bodies
found in close proximity.
[ON] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: Police are
looking at a serial killer.
- He just disappeared into thin air.
[OFF] BARBARA KOZLOFF: She didn't
show up for her older daughter's
kindergarten graduation.
Everybody is operating
at, like, 100 miles an hour.
[OFF] BARBARA KOZLOFF: State police
were able to get old-fashioned fingerprints
for a direct comparison.
- He may have had something to do
with both of these deaths.
- His home address is only 8 miles away
from where the body was found.
- What's the worst thing that could happen?
You get life, right?
[ON] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: We know
that he was prone to violence.
- There was an argument turned physical.
The smell was so bad that he burned his clothes.
What is she not telling us?
Did he just vanish, or is
it something more sinister?
[water running]
[car engines]
[guitar music]
BARBARA KOZLOFF: For a long period of time,
the automotive industry had a huge impact on Detroit.
Then, the economy changed, plants closed.
A lot of people just left their homes behind,
and they were left vacant.
And then, they just deteriorated.
[OFF] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: You have this kind
of desolate landscape.
Roofs are falling in.
You've got these beautiful old homes.
Now they sit around and decay.
Nothing violent is off of the table in this environment.
BARBARA KOZLOFF: We get narcotics, overdoses, murders.
Either way, bodies are found.
[dramatic music]
[birds chirping]
Late May, 2014, the weather
is starting to warm up.
People are wanting to do work around their homes.
- Terrance Hayes was doing yard work
and couldn't find his garden hose.
And he recalled that he had lent it to a neighbor.
So he decided just to go ahead and look
inside the neighbor's detached garage to see if it was there.
Next to his hose, he noticed there were two plastic totes
like footlockers.
He detected a foul odor, so he went and lifted the lid.
There are swarms of flies.
Inside of the totes, there was actually concrete,
and protruding out of the concrete is a human foot.
[dramatic music]
- He backs out and decides that it's
time to call the police.
[dramatic music]
BARBARA KOZLOFF: When homicide detectives arrived
at the scene, there was a foul odor that you
would associate with death.
[clicking]
BARBARA KOZLOFF: They observed two containers
filled with concrete.
There appeared to be body parts protruding
through the concrete.
[ON] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: They opened
the other container and, to their shock, it was a head.
[dramatic music]
- State of decomposition was advanced.
And given the size of the containers,
we thought there may be more than one victim.
I had seen a lot of weird [bleep] in Detroit,
but that was one of the weirder ones.
Because the remains were found dismembered,
we have no idea how this person or persons were killed.
No idea who this body was buried in cement
in a backyard garage.
[dramatic music]
- I live in New York a long time.
It's a good neighborhood in Brooklyn.
It's beautiful.
It's quiet.
I was a single mom raising three
kids, two boys and a girl.
Deisha was the oldest, Shaun is the middle,
and Sheldon is the baby.
SHAUN PRAWL: My mom, she was born in Jamaica.
She had all of us kids here in New York.
So I said we got both sides.
We got the Caribbean, and we also got the American.
BEVERLY DALEY: I'm always there for all three of them.
I worked.
I'm a single mom who's struggling through life,
but I'm making it.
- When my sister was older,
she became basically like my second mom.
It was my sister who always do for me and Sheldon.
We was always together.
We eat together, fight together.
We just always had that bond.
- In '09, my daughter Deisha, she has
a sudden massive heart attack.
When she passed away, that was a devastation for me.
Sheldon was the baby.
This affectionate kid.
He don't talk much.
Very low key, but he shows love.
SHAUN PRAWL: Me and Sheldon,
we had a relationship where sometimes we bump heads,
sometimes we don't.
That was always my baby brother.
Anything I got, you got.
[OFF] BEVERLY DALEY: My children.
They love their mom.
I love them.
We stay in touch.
Make sure I know everything about them,
where they're at, where they go.
Sheldon graduated from Sheepshead Bay High.
He went down there to North Carolina
to work for a military contractor.
In the beginning, Sheldon stayed with Christopher,
his childhood friend.
[dramatic music]
Months later, Sheldon met
this young lady, Cheri Davis.
She was working at the same company.
She was so in love with my son.
He felt comfortable around her.
He moved in her apartment.
For some reason, on October 31, 2013, Halloween,
I don't hear from him.
I was worried.
And I said, not like Sheldon.
Usually, he keep in touch with his mom.
Because every day, if he don't text, he call.
And we talk, and, you know, he said, Mom, I love you.
Then, the next day, I was calling.
No answer.
Keep calling and texting.
No answer.
It wasn't sitting right with me for some reason.
Good thing he gave me Cheri Davis' number.
I called her.
She said, he's not here.
She said, we get into an argument, and he went up north.
I said, up north?
She said she didn't know where he is.
Not like him not to keep in touch with friends and family.
It just did not feel right.
[dramatic music]
SHAUN PRAWL: On November 2, my mom called me so upset,
saying that nobody knows where Sheldon is,
that he's not answering his phone.
And I'm like, that's not right.
So I just called all the hospitals
in North Carolina and here in New York,
but nobody got a record of him.
Where else can he be?
BEVERLY DALEY: I called Cheri again.
She was crying and worried that he's still missing.
I said, I think you need to go to the precinct
to make a report.
Because, at this point, we all know something
was definitely wrong.
November 4, 2013,
Cheri Davis comes to the Jacksonville Police Department
to file a missing person report for her boyfriend,
Sheldon Prawl.
They met each other in February of 2013 and began dating.
I believe Sheldon moved in to Cheri's house in June of 2013.
She said, on Halloween, they had an argument.
He told her that he was going to move away,
and she never spoke with him again.
That same day that the report was taken,
Sheldon's mother called the Jacksonville Police Department.
She hadn't heard from her son in about five days.
BEVERLY DALEY: I said, Sheldon didn't drop
off the face of the earth.
Something is wrong.
Every effort was
done to find Sheldon Prawl.
Detectives went door to door in the entire neighborhood looking
for anybody that might have seen him
or vehicle that he was in around the time
that he was leaving.
They were unable to find anybody that saw
anything or heard anything.
SHAUN PRAWL: Cheri and I made some missing posters.
Still no word of Sheldon.
It was like one big mystery.
BEVERLY DALEY: It's horrible.
I was just all over the place.
I told the police officers in North Carolina,
something is clearly wrong.
I'm going to come down here to Jacksonville.
I want to know where my son is.
There's a foul odor
emitting from under the door.
They see the head of a woman.
- It's no longer a missing person.
It's a homicide.
[dramatic music]
Sheldon Prawl
disappeared on Halloween 2013 after arguing with
his girlfriend, Cheri Davis.
His family never believed for a second
that he would just get up and leave.
- I go down to North Carolina
to find my son.
Cheri Davis picked me up at the airport.
She's very nice to me.
She's going to help me figure out where Sheldon is.
On November 13, 2013,
Beverly Daley and Cheri Davis came to the Jacksonville
Police Department.
BEVERLY DALEY: Oh my god, Cheri
Davis, she was tearing up.
And I told her that, as a mother,
I was thinking all the worst things.
DANIEL KARRATTI: Both Beverly and Cheri Davis
had told us that this is not something that Sheldon
normally would do.
If he were to leave, he would contact
somebody almost immediately.
Both of them coming in and saying that this
is out of the ordinary raises more concern
for this missing person.
Detectives called every bus company around.
Didn't have a bus ticket in Sheldon's name.
Called cab companies.
Nobody had a pickup from that address within the time frame
that he would have left.
There was just nothing.
He just seemed to have left without a trace.
At that point.
Sheldon's brother, Shaun, called the Jacksonville police
to provide information on the best friend of Sheldon
Prawl, Chris Frazier.
SHAUN PRAWL: I had called Chris.
Chris said that he was with my brother on October 31
in the morning.
Sheldon was going to give Chris a ride to the house.
Chris said he was sitting in the car.
He said he saw my brother Sheldon and his girlfriend,
Cheri, in the house arguing.
Later on that same day, Chris sees
a text message from Sheldon saying,
oh, I'm going out of town.
He found that strange, but he didn't question
it because he's a grown man.
So days went by.
Chris didn't even think that Sheldon was missing.
DANIEL KARRATTI: So Chris Frazier
came into the department to be interviewed.
He confirmed everything Sheldon's brother said.
But then, Chris tells us that on October 31,
he sees Sheldon outside Cheri's house
banging on the front door, asking to be let in.
Also, that morning, he sees Cheri Davis's brother, Carleton
Davis, at the residence.
This is new information, because when asked about who
was at the home, Cheri doesn't mention her brother
being there at all.
For Chris Frazier to add this starts to raise red flags.
What is Cheri not telling us?
Detectives go to Cheri.
Cheri says, no, her brother Carleton wasn't there.
He was there the week prior.
We reached out to Carleton.
He said that he was in Jacksonville the week before
and got a bus ride from Jacksonville back to Detroit.
He provides the investigative division with the ticket.
The detective then goes back to Chris and Chris insists,
no, he was there.
Neither one of them were changing their story.
So we're back to square one.
We still don't know anything.
Could possibly have something happen to Sheldon?
Yes.
But can we prove it right now?
No, we can't.
We do reach out to the cell phone company
and request Sheldon's cell phone records.
That takes time.
So at this point, we don't have evidence or proof
to say that there's foul play.
December 2013.
The cell phone company finally get a result back.
There is no information after October 31
when Cheri and Sheldon had their last text conversation.
It doesn't appear that his phone
had been turned on at all in the two months following that.
At this point, it doesn't look good at all.
You typically don't see zero activity, no text messages,
no phone calls for two months.
At this point in the investigation,
we just-- we don't have anything.
Sheldon just disappeared into thin air.
March 2014.
It's been months since anybody's
heard from Sheldon Prawl.
So now we have nothing further to investigate.
We finally closed the case.
Leads exhausted.
We don't know where he's at.
It's not a good feeling.
It's almost like a failure on your part
that you can't help the family.
BEVERLY DALEY: I was devastated.
I get sleepless nights.
It's horrible.
SHAUN PRAWL: I told myself he was dead.
I think everybody looked at me, oh, he's strong.
It's rough.
[dramatic music]
- Late May 2014, the Detroit Police
Department received a call from Terrance Hayes, who reported
that he found what he believed to be
human remains in a neighbor's detached garage.
This particular house was obviously vacant,
and they detected a foul odor.
There was trash everywhere.
There are swarms of flies.
They look inside of plastic containers.
They find pieces of a human body, and they see a head.
Now, this is a full-on murder investigation.
A crew from homicide,
along with the Wayne County medical examiner,
retrieved the remains.
The search was conducted of the interior of the vacant house.
There were some firearms that were recovered,
but there wasn't any signs that a crime happened there.
Due to the advanced state of decomposition,
we didn't know who the remains belonged to.
We didn't know how they got there.
This was not an accidental death.
[dramatic music]
- Remains belong to a male, likely
between 25 and 35.
The police have no idea who
would kill someone like this.
So the police questioned Terrance Hayes, who
actually found the remains.
Mr. Hayes says that he hadn't seen his neighbor, Danny Ervin,
in a week or so.
Mr. Hayes says that Danny Ervin had actually been squatting
in this abandoned house.
[ON] BARBARA KOZLOFF: When he was
questioned about the remains, Terrance Hayes
wasn't overly upset.
[OFF] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: Maybe an argument
developed between these two.
Maybe Terrance Hayes had called this in himself
after having perpetrated this heinous crime.
Danny Ervin might be the one in the concrete.
[dramatic music]
BARBARA KOZLOFF: Late May 2014,
the dismembered body found in the garage
is still unidentified.
[clicking]
BARBARA KOZLOFF: Crime scene services are swabbing
the tote for potential DNA and for fingerprints,
but detectives have no solid leads.
Several residents in the neighborhood
could very well be persons of interest.
Danny Ervin was residing in the house.
Investigators at the scene
didn't know where Danny was, how long he had been missing,
and how long this body had been in the garage.
This whole house is a crime scene.
And Danny Ervin suddenly shows up in this location
just outside the tape.
- He inquired what was going on
and why the police were there.
He denied any knowledge of how these remains
appeared in his garage.
We informed him that we took the firearms as evidence.
Being a convicted felon, he wasn't
allowed to possess firearms.
He was immediately placed into custody.
We didn't have any solid evidence linking him
to this homicide, but he had control over the garage
and the house, and he didn't report that there
was remains in his garage.
So Danny Ervin was our prime suspect.
Danny Ervin was interviewed by homicide detectives.
He adamantly denied having anything
to do with human remains found in his garage.
We found that he was in and out of jail for some low level
narcotic crimes.
And Danny expressed concern that he
was being set up or framed for this crime
because of his rap sheet.
And he said that the neighbors knew
he was absent from his house and that they
could have used it to their advantage
to hide evidence of a crime.
Anyone could have had access to this garage
and dispose of the remains there.
We interviewed Danny Ervin's neighbors.
And Richard Jackson, his house is backed up
to the garage, where we found the remains,
but he didn't indicate he had seen anything unusual.
In fact, we didn't have anyone report that they knew
anything about this crime.
[dramatic music]
BARBARA KOZLOFF: At this point in the investigation,
we didn't have enough to say Danny Ervin
was definitively the killer.
But since he was charged with felony possession of a firearm,
that kept him incarcerated while we
were doing our investigation.
[ON] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: On June 9,
another disturbing discovery was made--
a woman, wrapped in plastic, found in the basement of a home
in an adjacent Detroit neighborhood.
- Uniformed police officers responded.
They were directed to the basement.
They discover an old, warped door
on top of a bunch of blankets.
There was a foul odor emitting from under the door.
[dramatic music]
They see the head of a woman,
another partially dismembered, decomposing body.
- Now Detroit Police is facing
two bodies found in vacant homes in close proximity
in a close time frame.
JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: Police have a huge task
on their hands here.
Within a month, two bodies have been
found partially dismembered.
And with both of these deaths, the bodies are obscured.
So, given the close proximity, are police
looking at a serial killer?
[dramatic music]
[ON] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: We know
that he was prone to violence.
DANIEL KARRATTI: It goes from being
a cold case to murder.
- How did a man missing from North Carolina
end up in Detroit?
[dramatic music]
- Detroit homicide detectives are still
attempting to identify the man found dismembered
in a backyard garage.
But then, another victim is found
in a nearby abandoned basement, buried under a rotting door.
Homicide detectives collect DNA and biological evidence
and completely document the crime scene.
There was evidence
of partial dismemberment.
Unlike the body that had been found back in May,
this body was more recently deceased.
BARBARA KOZLOFF: Since the state of decomposition
wasn't as advanced as our male victim,
the identification was more immediate.
Family members identified her clothes.
She was identified as Alicia Fox.
She had been shot multiple times,
including twice in the head.
On June 6, 2014, when she didn't show up for her older
daughter's kindergarten graduation,
her family had filed a missing persons report
for Alicia and her children.
Her children, who were six years old and eight months old
at the time, were not found.
Homicide detectives were able to develop
a suspect in Alicia Fox's murder, her estranged
husband, Erin Justice.
Alicia's family members reported that he had a temper
and he had a lengthy criminal history.
And then, suspiciously, he didn't report her missing.
JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: Given the close proximity
in time to our earlier dismembered body,
Detroit detectives theorized that Erin
Justice may have had something to do
with both of these deaths.
We've got a woman found deceased in a basement.
Husband that can't be found anywhere.
Police sent out a multi-state bulletin.
All law enforcement, nationwide,
should be on the lookout for Erin Justice.
[traffic passing]
- While homicide investigators
search for Erin Justice, the medical examiner's
office contacted me.
They're taking pictures of the remains.
And the male victim had a tattoo
that was very distinctive, and it was still visible.
The fact that the offender used concrete to conceal
these remains ironically aided in preserving the tattoo.
The tattoo read "RIP Deisha."
It had a date 4/7 of '09.
It appeared to be a memorial tattoo.
We were really lucky we had it.
We gave the tattoo to a member of a task force
so they could do a search.
We also took a photo of the tattoo
and gave it to the media, who broadcast it on the internet.
[traffic passing]
SHAUN PRAWL: Time went by,
and it was over six months since my brother being missing
and no word of Sheldon.
And then, Sheldon finally resurfaced.
My brother, Sheldon, had a tattoo on his forearm,
and it was my sister named Deisha with her date of birth.
Our friends from Detroit called us and said,
I think we found your son.
I don't know how he got here, but I think we found him.
So I call the police
officers there in Detroit.
[dramatic music]
[phone rings]
- I received a call from a woman
from New York, said that she believed the tattoo belonged to
her son, Sheldon Prawl.
He had been missing since Halloween from North Carolina.
This was the first time I had a name, and it was huge.
So we had to work quickly to confirm that that,
in fact, was Sheldon Prawl.
I obtained fingerprints from North Carolina that confirmed
our victim was Sheldon Prawl.
[dramatic music]
BEVERLY DALEY: I was so devastated and hurt.
How could you cut up my son?
There's so much evil out there.
There's so much evil.
I can't grip it, like what these people are made of,
you know?
[sniffling]
[sad music]
It's just too much.
I asked Sheldon
Prawl's mother if Sheldon had any connection to Detroit.
She said none that she knew of.
The question was, how did a man missing from North Carolina
end up buried in cement in a garage in Detroit?
[dramatic music]
[OFF] BARBARA KOZLOFF: Identifying
the victim's tattoo, with this advanced
state of decomposition, was really
key in this investigation.
The victim is identified as North Carolina
resident Sheldon Prawl.
Sheldon's mother, Beverly, relayed
that she had constant contact with him
prior to his disappearance.
She knew something was wrong.
She was wondering who would have killed her son,
and how did he end up in Detroit?
- So while Sheldon Prawl's case
is being investigated, the police
were hot on the lookout for Alicia Fox's
former husband, Erin Justice.
We know that he was prone to violence.
Given the close proximity in time to finding our earlier
dismembered body and the discovery of Alicia Fox's body,
Erin Justice may have killed Sheldon Prawl.
The Detroit Police got a break in regards to Alicia Fox.
Erin Justice had been arrested in Atlanta.
- He was extradited back to Michigan.
Erin Justice told us that he killed Alicia Fox.
The Detroit Police continued to interview
him to see if he had any kind of connection
in the murder of Sheldon Prawl.
- What's the worst thing that could happen?
You get life, right?
[ON] JOSEPH SCOTT MORGAN: They're
not able to elicit anything else from Erin Justice.
But through the diligence of the detectives involved
in investigating both of these cases,
the police were able to state affirmatively
that there were no connections between these two deaths.
BARBARA KOZLOFF: Our focus is now on the fact
that Sheldon went missing from North Carolina.
[dramatic music]
Jacksonville Police Department
receives a phone call from the Detroit Police Department
informing us that they found our missing
person, Sheldon Prawl.
The case is reopened.
Everybody is operating at 100 miles an hour.
It's no longer a missing person.
It's homicide.
It goes from being a cold case to a murder.
[dramatic music]
DANIEL KARRATTI: He's found in Detroit.
He's never been to Detroit.
Never told anybody about going to Detroit.
We believe he was killed here in North Carolina.
It's up to all of us to figure out how he got to Detroit.
You've got Cheri Davis saying they got into an argument.
Sheldon just left.
The best friend of Sheldon Prawl, Chris Frazier,
saying, I saw Cheri Davis's brother, Carleton Davis, there.
We start looking into Carleton.
When a background check was done on Carleton Davis,
we find out that his home address in Detroit
is only 8 miles away from the location
where Sheldon was found.
[dramatic music]
- That raises a huge red flag to us.
Carleton Davis is the only connection between Sheldon
Prawl and Detroit.
- This is a big lead for our case.
We interviewed one of Carleton Davis's ex-girlfriends.
She informed us that a mutual friend of Carleton and hers
requested that she purchase some footlocker-type totes,
and that was key to our investigation
because, obviously, Sheldon's remains were found in totes.
She reported that she had heard rumors that Carleton had gotten
into an argument with Sheldon, and that Carleton
had killed Sheldon and that he had broken his neck.
Based on that information, Carleton Davis was
emerging as our prime suspect.
- Now that we've got information
tying Carleton to this murder, we have to look back
at Carleton's sister, Cheri.
What is she not telling us?
In June of 2014, a month after Sheldon
was located in two totes in a garage in Detroit,
we execute a search warrant on Cheri's house,
ripping up carpet and looking on the underside
to see if we can find blood stains.
We collected pieces of carpet, electronics,
coveralls you would wear when you're painting.
The evidence is sent to our evidence desk.
Unfortunately, there was nothing on the coveralls
or on that carpet.
However, I knew that something happened.
Sheldon did not just walk away.
As the case progressed,
we got a call through our tip line
saying that Richard Jackson, the man we previously
interviewed who lived in the house behind the garage
where the remains were found, was involved
in the disposal of the body.
Looking at Richard, we were able to connect
Richard to Carleton Davis.
They were seen together in that neighborhood
just after Halloween when Sheldon disappeared.
And we discovered that they had been in prison together.
[dramatic music]
[OFF] BARBARA KOZLOFF: Detectives
have found the connection to Detroit, Detroit
resident Carleton Davis, the brother
of the victim's girlfriend.
He was in North Carolina at the time Sheldon disappeared.
Now they've linked him to the location where the body was
discovered by his association with next-door neighbor
Richard Jackson.
At police headquarters, Richard Jackson continued
to deny his involvement.
But when confronted with the knowledge
of his specific actions from a witness,
he began to make admissions in his role
in the disposal of Sheldon's remains.
DANIEL KARRATTI: After speaking with Detroit Police,
we learned that Richard Jackson had
a friend named Jerry Dorris.
Jerry Dorris helped move Sheldon's body to the shed
on the other side of his yard.
The smell was so bad that he burned
his clothes because he didn't want
any questions about the smell.
I mean, that breaks the case.
That opens it wide up for us.
And then, we got the arrest warrant for Carleton Davis.
BARBARA KOZLOFF: Carleton was charged
by North Carolina authorities.
He was arrested in Detroit about 8 miles from our scene.
[birds singing]
- The pain of knowing people are so evil.
I cried day.
I cried night.
How could Cheri lie to me, knowing
that my son was already dead?
But I was like, thank you, God.
I'm going to get some justice.
- After this month-long investigation,
we learned that on Halloween 2013,
there was an argument between Cheri Davis and Sheldon Prawl
that turned physical inside that house.
Due to the very close relationship
that Carleton and Cheri had, it seems
Carleton Davis just snapped.
Carleton came out of her room and choked
Sheldon Prawl until he died.
Carleton Davis contacted Richard Jackson in Detroit
for help disposing of the body.
In order to transport the body, it's
dismembered in Jacksonville.
They put it in the Quikrete and traveled all the way back up
to Detroit and put the totes in what he believed
was an abandoned property.
[dramatic music]
BARBARA KOZLOFF: In 2018, Carleton Davis
went on trial for the murder of Sheldon Prawl.
- We had to prove to the jury
that there was nobody that could
have committed this murder other than Carleton Davis.
It's nerve wrenching when you're
waiting to see if everything you've done
over these past years finally accumulates to the verdict
that you want.
At the end of the week-long trial, it went to the jury.
Five hours later, they come back.
Guilty on all counts of second-degree murder.
His sentence was 38 years in prison.
- Richard Jackson was charged in Detroit
with accessory after the fact.
DANIEL KARRATTI: Richard Jackson didn't go to trial.
He decided to plead on his own and was
sentenced to seven years.
[dramatic music]
DANIEL KARRATTI: Cheri was subsequently arrested
for accessory after the fact.
She pled guilty, and she was assigned probation
and community service.
[dramatic music]
DANIEL KARRATTI: I'm very satisfied that after almost
five years, not only was Sheldon located,
but there was some sort of closure for Beverly Daley.
[sniffs] Every day I
have to grieve my son.
There's always that part of me that just thinking of him.
His smile, the way he said, Mom, I miss that part.
SHAUN PRAWL: There was only one Sheldon.
At the end of the day, I miss my bro.
[sad music]