'Still Searching Project' focuses on often overlookedmissing Black women

Artist Damon Lamar Reed was just a child in Phoenix when his aunt and two cousins, ages 6 and 8, were killed: an unsolved murder to this day.

Sometime in the past year, Reed’s mother created the spark for his latest project when she reposted the story of his aunt’s and cousins’ deaths. As Reed went online researching their case, he came upon more information about unsolved murders in Chicago. There were 51 women murdered near Washington Park in the last 20 years, including a large number found burned in an alley or a trash can. Could it be a serial killer?

“Sometimes you say you got a good idea and sometimes a ‘God idea,’” Reed said at an October 22 panel during the opening of his “Still Searching Project” at 345 Gallery in East Garfield Park.

“I am thinking somebody is going to see my paintings, call the police; someone will get found and we are going to change the world,” Reed continued. “I am very optimistic. As they say, ‘Shoot for the moon and land on the stars.’”

Reed chased conspiracy theories and truth as he listened to podcasts and viewed Facebook groups. Finally, he inboxed one group’s administrator about providing him a list of people he could paint, which became the “Still Searching Project”: 16 portraits of well-known and lesser-known women who have been missing for as long as 40 years. A Kartemquin documentary collaboration is also in the works.

Reed at work in his studio

Photo from stillsearchingdocumentary.com.

The first portrait he painted was of mail carrier Kierra Coles, who was three months pregnant when she disappeared in 2018. The second was of Diamond and Tionda Bradley, ages 3 and 10, respectively, when they disappeared from their mother’s home 20 years ago. Yasmin Acree and Sonya Rouse are among the other portraits.

Reed's first portrait of mail carrier Kierra Coles.

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

There are still women for whom Reed can only find names, weight, height and date missing. They may not have much family left. They may have been on the street, so that perpetrators assume no one will look for them, he said. Human trafficking can take three forms: labor, sex trade and organ harvesting.

“All the cases are equal to me. No woman is more important than any other,” Reed said in a telephone interview. “[But] If I started out with the more high-profile cases, it would help raise the profile of the less known.”

"As long as people are still missing and crimes are being committed, there’s still a lot of work to do," Reed said, which he will continue with separate paintings of unsolved murders and cold cases. “I told my wife, 'This is something that could be part of my legacy. That’s why I call it ‘Projects.’”

Reed's portrait of Diamond and Tionda Bradley.

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

Reed sees “Still Searching” less in terms of sales than as a traveling exhibit to museums and colleges, to raise awareness. All his art is about uplifting and spreading love, he said, but this project has more focus. “It’s like Gabby Petito’s face. Everyone knew her face and we knew this case was going to get solved, whether she was alive or not. The news was not stopping until something happened with that case. The more we talked about it, the more people knew, like the ripple effect of a stone in the water.”

Reed received his bachelor’s in fine arts from the Art Institute of Chicago and has made a career out of freelance mural painting – for LISC Chicago, Lawndale Christian Development Corporation, Dev Corp North, Sears, Allstate and Children’s Memorial Hospital – as well as illustration, graphic design, fine art and teaching. Kerry James Marshall selected him to take part in his exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Reed is also a hip-hop artist, with a nationally distributed album, “He Heard My Cry.”

La Toya Flowers, director of the documentary film, “Still Searching,” produced by Kartemquin, connected with Reed through his music. Her brother had gone to Morgan Park High School with Reed’s wife, Nicole, and they connected on Facebook. Kartemquin partnered with Hulu, which will get a first look at the finished product.

“Still Searching” aims to flip the narrative on missing Black women, so that they attain the same degree of local, national and global attention as women like Natalee Holloway, Elizabeth Smart and Petito.

Panelists and surviving family members alike at the event agreed on the importance of getting the word out – early in the investigation and even now, to revive cold cases.

Shirley Hill, second from left, flanked by her daughters, Sonya Rouse’s sisters; Tracey Bradley, mother of Diamond and Tionda; and Shakenna Banks, Yasmin Acree’s cousin

Photo by Suzanne Hanney

There was a balloon release July 6 on the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of Diamond and Tionda Bradley. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children also released ageprogression photos showing what they would look like today.

Tracey Bradley, the girls’ mother, went to work at 6 a.m. on the morning they disappeared. They were preparing for an upcoming camping trip with Tracey’s boyfriend. When Bradley arrived home at 11 a.m., she easily opened the door with her key. But the girls were gone.

Bradley found a note written by Tionda saying they had gone to the nearby Jewel. Bradley said in an interview that police said it was Tionda’s handwriting, but that Tionda would have called her mother instead.

Did it look like the house was broken into?

“No, because I actually put the key in the door,” she responded in an interview. Police came and took samples from the girls’ toothbrushes and hairbrushes.

Police and detectives conducted nationwide searches on the ground and with helicopters. There were candlelit vigils and wide media coverage. Bradley has also placed her DNA on file with a national registry.

Bradley says she has a mother’s intuition about the case. “I feel in my heart that they're alive because nothing comes up saying that they found anything or they’re dead.”

Sonya Rouse

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

Shirley Hill has also submitted her DNA to a registry, so that if her daughter Sonya Rouse is found after her death, she can be linked back to her family.

Sonya went missing in 2016, “a mother’s worst nightmare,” Hill said, and since then her family has been searching for her and even had her face printed on T- shirts to bring awareness to her disappearance.

Sonya Rouse’s cousin, Jerod Rouse, wears a T-shirt with her photo to the exhibit opening.

Photo by Suzanne Hanney

Sonya studied communications at Illinois State University and in her second year, she became Miss Black ISU. After her daughter Raven was born in 1996, she suffered postpartum depression and then bipolar disorder. She had been in rehab and was seeing a psychiatrist.

Leading up to her disappearance, she was in an abusive relationship and living in a basement with her boyfriend’s parents. He said Sonya had gone out for the night and never returned. Shortly afterward, her family contacted the police and filled out a missing person’s report.

Shirley Hill, Sonya Rouse's mother, being interviewed by StreetWise reporter Paige Bialik.

Photo by Suzanne Hanney

Hill said that police went to the basement apartment and couldn’t find anything. She insisted they return. They found Sonya’s purse.

Because she had to work so hard to get police attention, Hill resents the coverage given to Petito, yet she says Petito and Sonya were both vulnerable. Hill wanted her daughter to leave the boyfriend, but she responded, “Mom, I’m not as strong as you.”

“Yes, you are,” Hill would say. “You have my DNA.”

Reed contacted Sonya’s family about the exhibit through her Facebook page. Having Reed choose Sonya’s story and portrait gives Hill hope that God is sending a sign that things will come together and shed more light on Sonya’s case, dead or alive.

“I don't think things just happen. I do know that. So He'll [God] bring her back. Look at the three girls that were missing in Ohio.” Ariel Castro in Cleveland had kidnapped Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight between 2002 and 2004 and held them until 2013, when Berry finally escaped and called police.

“My only wish is that whatever way God's made for her to come back, let her come back before I leave,” Hill said.

Yasmine Acree

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

Yasmin Acree, 15, was living with her aunt at the time she disappeared sometime between Tuesday night, January 15, and Wednesday morning, Jan. 16, 2008. Yasmin’s aunt has since died and her cousin, Shakenna Banks, who was roughly the same age, maintains her Facebook page. In 2016, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age progression photo of Yasmin.

The lock on Yasmin’s room had been cut and the door jamb broken, yet police did not initially take the lock with them to dust for fingerprints, Banks said. Yasmin’s room appeared untouched and her glasses were left behind, according to The Charley Project.

Police initially treated Yasmin like a runaway, Banks said, based on interviews with schoolmates, later discounted by police. In addition, the aunt’s home was well furnished, so “police thought Yasmin was too privileged and she ran away because she was not getting her way. She was not taken seriously,” Banks said.

In 2011, the Chicago Tribune said its reporters found Yasmin’s diary, in which she mentioned a 35-year-old man living in the aunt’s building who had served time for attempted murder. Police did not learn about him until 2009, when the aunt saw on TV that he had been arrested for a series of kidnappings and rapes.

“You don’t really want to put a finger on someone and risk falsely accusing them,” the aunt said at the time. Many people in the neighborhood had prison records, Banks said, so the lightbulb didn’t go off until the man was arrested on the sex charges.

Banks describes Yasmin as sheltered and naïve, crushing on the man in her diary, on rappers and singers, but still considering them off-limits. “She always had

her nose in a book, writing a song or writing in her journal. She was a very mental person, extremely smart.”

Yasmin was overcoming past abuse, “but she wasn’t just some child in the system, lost and sad,” Banks said. “She was happy too. She was loving, too. She could give love and she was forgiving as well. Even though she had darkness come around her, she was always light.”

Yasmin’s case got a lot of attention, but too late, Banks said. Her disappearance was discovered Wednesday morning and she didn’t attend school that day. Her aunt called 911 at 5:31 p.m. and police arrived at 7:04, according to city records cited by the Chicago Tribune. “I feel if it would have gotten attention immediately, it could have gotten the ball rolling,” Banks said.

Alexis Camry Scott

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

What Banks hopes the Still Searching Project will do is “reopen everyone’s eyes that these women are not forgotten. People still miss them, care about them and have hope they appear years later.”

Demetrice Brown

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

Pablo Foster, a private investigator on the Bradley case for 20 years, said during the panel that we change the narrative for Black women by jumping on the case immediately and by being persistent. “Demand from law enforcement officers that they take that report. It’s up to you to notify everyone in your Rolodex, know where your children’s phones are. You have to be the frontrunner. By the time police come to you, you are already behind.”

Lashayla Sanders

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

During an interview, Foster was pragmatic about the headlines given to Gabby Petito.

“You have to get the story out there regardless if they’re black, if they’re white, Hispanic or any other nationality. If it’s hot, you have to get it out there. The more you get it out there, people open their eyes and give notice. Just like Diamond and Tionda’s story, even though it is 20 years ago, [their aunt] kept that information out there as if it happened yesterday in the news media, in the public eye.

“The key thing is, law enforcement doesn’t solve crimes,” Foster said. “The public solves crimes, the citizens of the universe solve crimes because the citizen has that information. The only way the police department can prosecute or do a detainment is that the public needs to come forward with information that they are holding onto.”

Lativia "Tivi" Johnson

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

Authorities have been watching people on the Bradley case and need that missing link, he said.

Sooner or later the pressure might get to someone?

“We hope so,” Foster said.

Liliana Boyd

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

Linzer Franklin- Murray

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

The Best Defense is Self–Defense

What missing Black women have in common is predators, said artist Damon Lamar Reed, which is why the “Still Searching” exhibit opening featured tips on self-defense.

“There are predators out there, that this many women are missing,” Reed said. “There’s a large possibility somebody is riding around late at night looking. It’s not safe."

“We walk with our heads down, with headphones,” said Pablo Foster, a private investigator for 20 years on the Diamond and Tionda Bradley case. “As an individual, you have to be aware of your surroundings. Someone is watching you all the time. They get your schedule and wait for the right time. It’s not when you’re ready, it’s when they’re ready. If you’re dating a guy, call your friends and say, 'I am going out with XYZ and this is what time I am getting home.'”

Marquinn McDonald, who has a self-defense business at 800 S. Wells, said men are better fighters, but women are better at violence and, “the key is being creative:" wielding a stiletto heel, for example. McDonald demonstrated a two-handed swing to an assailant’s right side. Since 90 percent of people are right-handed, you could likely break his grip and flee, he said later. He also taught dancer Laura Barclay to thrust a knee to his groin.

Sometime you might be walking past a man as he’s opening his car trunk, McDonald said. If he comes up behind you, pivot and use the two-handed swing and the groin move. “Always face the problem,” he said.

Marquinn McDonald demonstrates self-defense

Photo by Suzanne Hanney

Marquinn McDonald demonstrates self-defense

Photo by Suzanne Hanney

Maliyah "LeeLee" England

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

CPD responds

Chicago Police Department Deputy Director Ahern had this statement about the Diamond and Tionda Bradley case: "The investigation remains open by Area One detectives. Detectives have and will continue to follow up when tips are received. At this juncture, there are no new leads."

CPD said also, that the Sonya Rouse investigation is currently classified as suspended. A suspended status means the case cannot proceed further at this time. That can happen for a variety of reasons, including detectives exhausting all leads currently available. This status can change when more information becomes available.

Yasmin Acree remains an open investigation.

Mercedes Crumpton

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

by Suzanne Hanney & Paige Bialik

StreetWise Vendor Paula recalls a history of abuse and the fear of becoming a missing Black woman.

by Paula Green

It all started when I became homeless due to family circumstances, how I came to realize being homeless made me vulnerable and helpless by not knowing the predators that lurk in the dark.

My three sons and I were living on the streets, going from house to house trying to get someone to assist us. I had men walking up to me and driving in cars telling us they would take us in.

When you are vulnerable, people are just mean, even your family members. Young Black women need to communicate with each other, share our feelings, like therapy, whether or not we have children.

I was raped a few times, thinking that these individuals would help me. They started out nice and kind, helping me with my sons, feeding them, putting them in the bed, yet abusing me sexually, mentally and physically. Although we were able to get away from them, the cycle continued until one day I said, “enough is enough.” One gentleman I will not name took me in. We lived in a vacant building and continued to be abused. It all started as I lay there on the couch with one of my sons, thinking, “how did we get into this situation?” The gentleman got one of my sons hooked on drugs. He tried to make me compromise my body. I carried everything, went and got his alcohol while he was stealing my money and trying to break me down mentally, taking advantage of a learning disability that I have to this day.

I thank God for saving me, although I can tell you other stories. One of my mother’s boyfriends took advantage of me at an early age. I believe this is when everything started happening. After my mother and grandmother passed away 20 years ago, other family members took advantage of my learning disability and lack of knowledge, cutting me out, taking all my money. This is how I became homeless. After about 10 years, my dad got off the street, got a job, got housing, stopped drinking and drugging and took me in and moved me into an apartment the floor above him for about a year. But again, I was vulnerable to advances by someone in the building, so I went back on the streets until I met the man who got my son hooked on drugs.

A few months later, I met two StreetWise vendors who wanted me to come and sell the magazine. As I got to know more vendors, 14 months ago, I started as a vendor myself.

I am ashamed to admit that I have done these things and I choose not to think about it no more. I thank StreetWise, the vendors who are now trying to help me, and those customers who are supporting my magazine sales.

Nijeria Hunter

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.

Vinyette Teague

Image provided by Damon Lamar Reed.