THE SELF-SOLVING MURDER OF TERESA SILVA: Inspired By a True Crime Case #MurderNoir
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They've been here for thousands of years, making their presence known in the shadows. They might be seen by a lonely motorist on a deserted road late at night, or by a frightened and confused husband in the bedroom he's sharing with his wife. Perhaps the most disconcerting part of this phenomenon boils down to this question: has the government been aware of their presence all along and is covertly working with them towards some secret end?

In the audiobook, Runs of Disclosure, what once was fringe is now reality. While listening, you'll meet regular people just like you who have encountered something beyond their ability to explain. You'll also hear from people of great faith and deep religious belief who continue to have these strange and deeply unsettling encounters. Author L.A. Marzulli explores these ongoing incidents to discover the answers to these questions.

Who are they? What do they want? And why are they here? Can you handle the truth? Listen to this audiobook if you dare. Rungs of Disclosure Following the Trail of Extraterrestrials and the End Times by L.A. Marzulli Narrated by Darren Marlar Hear a free sample on the audiobook's page at WeirdDarkness.com The February wind cut through the city like a razor blade through silk.

And I had the feeling this case would cut just as deep. It started with smoke. Always does in this business. Smoke and mirrors. Smoke and fire. Smoke that rises from the ashes of lives cut short. The boys from Engine Company 47 in Chicago had responded to a call on Maple Heights Avenue, 15th floor of one of those concrete tombstones they call apartment buildings.

What they found in Unit 15B would haunt them longer than the stench of charred fabric. Teresa Silva, that was the name on the case, though she'd gone by many names in many places. A respiratory therapist at Lakeside Medical, 48 years of breathing life into others until someone decided to snuff out hers. They found her beneath a mattress, nude as the day she was born.

with a kitchen knife buried in her chest like some twisted exclamation point at the end of a sentence nobody wanted to read. The fire had been an afterthought, a desperate attempt to erase the evidence, to turn flesh and bone into ash and memory. But fires are chatty things. They tell stories if you know how to listen. This one whispered of arson,

of a killer who fled into the February night just minutes before the smoke detectors started screaming their metallic warnings. They called me in to help with the investigation. They call me a lot of things in this town. Gumshoe, Flatfoot, those are the kinder names. But my name's not important. I'm a private eye. I'd worked my share of cases where the dead stayed dead, where justice came wrapped in handcuffs and served for the side of cold revenge.

But Teresa Silva's case was different. The dead, it seemed, weren't quite ready to rest. The apartment looked like a hurricane torn through it. Drawers pulled out like broken teeth. Cushions scattered like autumn leaves. Yet nothing was missing. No jewelry box emptied. No cash drawer cleaned out.

Just a woman's life snuffed out between 7.50 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. on a night when honest folks were settling in with their evening papers and hot coffee. The only clue was a scrap of paper in her journal. Two words that might as well have been written in invisible ink. Get tickets for A.S. In a city of three million souls, finding A.S.,

It was like looking for a particular raindrop in Lake Michigan. I spent months chasing leads that evaporated like steam from a cup of joe. Interviewed the boyfriend, a nervous type who jumped at shadows and had an alibi tighter than a banker's fist. Talked to friends who described Teresa as quiet but social, a woman who collected stamps and stories from around the world.

a woman who didn't deserve to die alone on a cold February night. The case was going as cold as a morgue slab when the call came in August. Detective Murphy, a good cop with tired eyes and a permanently wrinkled suit, rang me up about a couple in Riverside who claimed to have information about the Silva murder, the kind of information that would make a sane man reach for the bourbon bottle. But I'm not a sane man.

and I'd already had bourbon that morning. What I mean is, when something goes weird, I'm usually the guy they call in. Dr. Antonio Rosa and his wife Carmen were their names, though Carmen preferred to go by Carla. Both worked at Lakeside Medical. He was a doctor. She was a respiratory therapist who'd known Teresa Silva from the halls where life and death played their eternal chess game.

What the good doctor told me would have sounded like the ravings of a madman if it weren't for the details, and my past experience with the weird. Details that only the killer could know. Details that Carmen Rosa, by all accounts a rational woman with both feet planted firmly on the ground, couldn't possibly have known. It started with dreams, Dr. Rosa explained.

his hands shaking like autumn leaves as he lit one cigarette after another carmen would fall into trances deep unsettling states where her voice changed where she spoke in the lilting cadence of the philippine islands where she claimed to be someone else entirely someone dead according to the doctor his wife would speak in the voice of theresa silva herself

pleading for justice, begging for someone to catch the man who'd driven steel into her heart and fire into her home. The voice had a name for the killer, Albert Shaw, inorderly, a lakeside medical who fixed things that weren't broken and broke things that couldn't be fixed. Shaw was a thin man with nervous eyes and had hands that never seemed to stay still.

When we brought him in for questioning, he spun a story about being scheduled to fix Teresa's television set the night she died, only to be cancelled at the last minute. Said he spent the evening working on electrical problems in his own apartment. Ironic, considering his girlfriend later told us he couldn't wire a guitar, much less a lamp, if his life depended on it, but it was the jewelry that sealed Shaw's fate.

The voice speaking through Carmen Rosa had mentioned stolen valuables, pieces from France, gifts passed down through generations like family secrets. She even provided names of people who could identify the items, phone numbers that checked out when we followed up. Shaw's girlfriend, Yvonne Kane, wore Teresa's pearl ring and jade pendant, like trophies, belated Christmas gifts that had arrived in February. Gifts

that Shaw claimed to have purchased, though he couldn't produce receipts and his bank account told a different story. The walls closed in on Shaw like the smoke in Teresa's apartment. Faced with evidence that seemed to come from beyond the grave, he finally confessed. Said he'd planned to rob Teresa, convinced she kept large sums of cash in her apartment. When he found nothing but a modest teacher's savings, rage took over.

He stabbed her, staged the scene to look like a sexual assault, then set the fire to cover his tracks. The trial was a circus. Reporters called it the "voice from the grave" case, though I preferred to think of it as justice delayed, but not denied. Shaw's own defense team called the Rosas as witnesses, maybe hoping to make the whole thing sound so fantastical that the jury would dismiss it as the ravings of a grief-stricken woman.

Instead, the jury deadlocked, couldn't decide whether to believe their eyes or their common sense. Before a second trial could begin, though, Shaw confessed again and took a plea for 14 years. He served less than five, walking free in 1983, while Teresa Silva remained forever 48, forever silent, except for those whispered conversations in Carmen Rosa's dreams.

Some folks questioned Carmen's story, wondered if she'd had her own reasons for pointing fingers at Shaw. Hospital politics can be uglier than a politician's promises. And word was, Shaw had complained about Carmen's work quality. Maybe she saw an opportunity for revenge wrapped in supernatural packaging. But I've been in this business long enough to know the truth comes in many flavors. Some bitter, some sweet,

some so strange they defy explanation. Whether Teresa Silva really spoke from beyond the grave, or Carmen Rosa's subconscious mind assembled puzzle pieces that others had missed, justice was served with a side of mystery that still keeps me awake some nights in this city of broad shoulders and narrow alleys, where the wind carries whispers of the past and the dead sometimes refuse to stay buried.

I learned that some cases solve themselves. Sometimes the victims become their own detectives, their own witnesses, their own voice crying out in the wilderness of human indifference. I still walk past that apartment building on Maple Heights Avenue sometimes, when the cases are slow and bourbon isn't helping with the memories. I look up at the 15th floor and wonder if Teresa Silva finally found her piece.

Or if she's still out there somewhere, helping other detectives solve other cases, whispering secrets that only the dead can know. In his business, you learn that the line between the living and the dead isn't always as clear as the morning headlines make it seem. Sometimes justice wears a supernatural mask. Sometimes the truth comes wrapped in mystery so thick you need more than a magnifying glass to see through it.

And sometimes, late at night, when the city sleeps and the shadows grow long, I can almost hear her voice on the wind. Teresa Silva, the dead woman who named her own killer, reminding me that some stories refuse to end, even when the last page has been written.

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The Kaleidoscope, 20 Terrifying Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by A.P. Royal, narrated by Darren Marlar. Hear a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com.

Do you like my horror-able humor episodes called Mind of Marlar? If so, and you'd like more, it now has its very own podcast. Comedic creeps, sarcastic scares, frivolous frights, macabre madness. Every week I dive into strange history, twisted true crime, and paranormal weirdness. All the stuff you'd expect from me on Weird Darkness, but delivered with dark comedy, satire, and just the right amount of absurdity.

Monsters, myths, mysteries, mirth, and more every Monday with Mind of Marler. I like alliteration, can you tell? You can find a list of where you can subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com under the menu tab for podcasts.