You think you know true crime podcasts? Wait till you hear Tonya's story.
BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
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LUSE: And a warning - this segment touches on a violent death.
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LUSE: Does your family have secrets that they just won't talk about? Tonya Mosley's family had a few, and the silence around them was heavy until one day in 2004 when one of those secrets called her up.
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TONYA MOSLEY, BYLINE: He said, my name is Antonio, and I am your nephew.
LUSE: A surprise nephew was just the start. Antonio's mother was a half-sister Tonya never knew about. They had the same father who kept his family separate.
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MOSLEY: What were you searching for when you contacted me?
ANTONIO WILEY: My aunt. You.
LUSE: And then Antonio told her his mother, Anita, disappeared back in 1987 when she was in her late 20s. And all those years, Antonio never stopped searching for his mother. Antonio called Tonya because he thought she might be able to help, but Tonya didn't have a clue. Then, Antonio signed up for Operation United, a forensics program that aims to match DNA from unidentified bodies to family members. In 2020, he got a phone call saying they'd matched his DNA to a murder victim in an unmarked grave.
WILEY: My mom's remains being recovered really gave us a platform for healing and reconciliation in our lives, too.
LUSE: Antonio and Tonya turned their search for answers into "She Has A Name," a documentary podcast series that unravels the mystery of Anita's disappearance and how her family has picked up the pieces without her. You might recognize Tonya Mosley as the host of FRESH AIR, but today we're talking to Tonya and Antonio Wiley about how their documentary series breaks away from the tired true crime stereotypes.
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LUSE: Antonio, Tonya, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
MOSLEY: Thank you for having us.
WILEY: Thank you. Yeah.
LUSE: Oh, it's my pleasure. The show's title is "She Has A Name." What was the significance of matching a name to Anita's story?
MOSLEY: Well, I'll say, first off, it meant the family knowing where she was all of these years. You can only imagine what it is like to hold the pain of uncertainty and confusion over the disappearance of a loved one and not have any answers at all.
LUSE: Yes, and we even hear some of that confusion from Anita's other sisters, Theresa (ph) and Valerie (ph).
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THERESA: And she stopped coming by. And I didn't know what had happened, but Dad told me that she had - came up missing.
VALERIE: My last words to my sister was, don't go. Please don't go.
MOSLEY: She mattered in a real way for people that knew her, knew of her and never had a chance to even reconcile her disappearance. You know, it's why we have obituaries. It's why, when people die, it's put in the paper - because you want to say, like, this person lived. This person mattered to people, and this person actually lived. And so being able to put her name out there and allow people to know that she was someone to someone is really important.
LUSE: Hmm. What about you, Antonio? What's been the significance of matching a name to your mom's story?
WILEY: It's been a long time coming. And to finally be able to lay her to rest in an honorable way has been the biggest gift to me. Recently, we laid a headstone at her grave, and now we have a place and a space to honor her.
LUSE: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. It's very massive that that's something that y'all have been able to do now in recent years. In the second episode of your series, titled "Natural Born Hustler," you share memories of younger Anita from friends and family, and you took a real break from the - finding out what happened and really learned who she was instead.
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VALERIE: She was outgoing and, you know, know how to put on her makeup - and a dresser. She was a dresser. I mean - stayed sharp every day.
LUSE: I mean, obviously, Antonio, you know, you knew her as a child, but it was interesting to hear from other people how she was as a child. Antonio, I'd love to hear it from you. Like, talk to me about what it's been like for you to find out so many lovable things about your mother and include them in this project.
WILEY: When I think of my mother, you know, it was as a child. She was my protector, best friend. She was everything to me - caregiver, tutor, teacher, style coach.
LUSE: (Laughter).
WILEY: I mean, you name it, you know, she was it. But to hear that from other people touches my heart in a real way because it validates who she was as a person. We've been getting some replies and correspondences from people since the podcast has launched, kind of echoing that sentiment. So to learn that about her, it just really is the wind in my sails.
LUSE: You know, I've gotten so much out of listening to this series, and it's so thoughtfully done. But parts of it are challenging to listen to - you know, you're finding out things about each other and yourselves and your family for the first time while also processing details about, you know, the disappearance and death of a loved one. Eventually, you find out that Anita was the victim of a shocking and violent murder, and the podcast goes into detail about that. And there are still, to this day, a lot of unresolved questions about who killed her and why. I imagine, on some level, you both knew that working on this could take an emotional toll, and yet you still did it. What drove you to turn your family's story into an investigative series?
MOSLEY: So I start off the series talking about how, as a journalist, I cover missing persons cases throughout my career. Then there's always been this other component of that - like, how we underreport Black missing people, specifically women of color. But really, it wasn't until finding Anita's remains that I thought about, OK, if we're going to tell this story, we have to almost, by laying ourselves bare, lay out why other Black women's stories aren't being told. You know, in the media, we want a perfect victim. We want someone who was - oh, she's a wholesome family woman who was married and two kids and went to college, and she just disappeared one day.
LUSE: Right.
MOSLEY: So to say that Anita also has a name is also to acknowledge that she's human. And to acknowledge her humanity in a way that allows you to understand what ultimately led to her disappearance and death, it felt really gratifying for Antonio and I to have this ability to be able to unpack that for ourselves, too.
LUSE: I think there are so many families who have some of these subjects we can't talk about or things that we don't want to get into, and that gets passed down. And it's really interesting to see how you all went there and shared some of the experiences that Anita had gone through. She had been a teen mother. She had been involved in the drug game. She got mixed up with the wrong guy. I mean, these details - when you put them up against the definition of society's perfect victim, it can be incongruent. But in real life, almost everybody has either been that person or has known and loved that person.
MOSLEY: Absolutely. Yep.
LUSE: I think that that also was very interesting - the way that you all embraced the reality of the family history that you were trying to explore.
MOSLEY: To do anything less would have been a diminishment of the story itself. I had one woman who contacted me and said, I just want to tell you about my sister. She was a sex worker, and she disappeared in 1980. And I've never seen her since, and I carry this with me. And when I heard Antonio say, you can't really tell people this thing, but this is the thing that actually guides your life and directs your path, but yet you can't talk about it because it changes your relationships with people when they know - she saw herself in Antonio. And so how are we able to get to the truth and actually really tell the story if we didn't go there?
LUSE: You spend significant time also placing her life and death in a wider context of Detroit. You spend time exploring how the city of Detroit both made Anita in so many beautiful ways, but also, the city failed her and her memory in so many other ways. Things that were happening in Detroit during her life contributed to the conditions that led to Anita going missing - you know, like the crack epidemic, the struggling auto industry, continuing white flight to nearby suburbs and a lack of investment in the Black people who stayed behind.
You know, in an interview in Vanity Fair, Tonya, you said Detroiters feel displaced in it all. And part of why they feel displaced is because they haven't had a chance. No one has actually stopped and acknowledged what happened to them - the survivors. How do you see this series as addressing that lack of acknowledgement that you described?
MOSLEY: This is the topic that really does make me emotional, so bear with me here. But just recently, we had an event in Detroit where we had the community come together, and we recorded a live show. And in the audience, there was a whole row of women - actually, two rows of women - who were Anita's age. They were her friends and some of her family members, and there were some of my family there, and then there was some of my mom's friends. And they're all, like, in their 60s and 70s, 'cause that's where Anita would be now.
And all of them have told me how much they feel seen - how much they feel seen by this series. And the people that we were able to interview for this - at the end of every conversation I've had with every one of the Black women I've interviewed, they've said, thank you for letting me tell my story. And I think we're talking a little bit about Anita, and we're talking a little bit about you. But wow, that's more than you've ever had the opportunity to talk about the things that happened to you. And I think it's healing, too. And that's just the gift of being able to talk about it.
LUSE: Hmm. Hmm. I want to talk more about some of that healing - specifically from your perspective, Antonio. I mean, one thing that stood out to me about this series that's different than other documentary series that I've heard that have covered similar topics is the way that you all address Black men's mental health and wellness in the wake of tragedy.
WILEY: You know, I see myself in the youth of today dealing with a lot of that. They may not share the same experience that I do, but growing up in urban areas, you know, you're faced with the same circumstances, either personally or know someone who have been, right? Where do you turn for help or for guidance? That's what's missing. We wanted to bring that aspect of our experience into the conversation. Tonya held my hand the whole way (laughter), which was big to me because that's the stigma - you know? - of young Black men in urban areas, if not the country. But what we hope to show is that there is, if you can confront your own challenges in a way where you're sincere about not only finding solutions, but then also finding a way forward.
LUSE: Now that the podcast is out, I wonder - what does healing continue to look like for your family, and what have you learned from each other about healing in the wake of tragedy?
MOSLEY: You know, the No. 1 thing that has come out of this podcast for me is opening up the conversation with my family about really tough things - and also forgiving ourselves for some of the choices that we made. It really shows me that there is so much power to storytelling beyond just the gratification of entertainment - like, you know, just being able to sit in someone else's story for a moment. There's a real chance to be able to reflect on one's own life through other people's stories that allow us to heal for ourselves.
LUSE: Hmm. What about you, Antonio?
WILEY: That it's OK to be vulnerable. It's OK to confront your past. We all have a story, right? And no one's perfect. So, you know, it's given us all courage to confront these things that we've carried with us for a long time. And now we're starting to finally put them back in their place, take the lesson that it gave us forward into the future and put stops in place so these things won't happen again.
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LUSE: Oh, my gosh. Tonya, Antonio - thank you so much. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this. This was really, really special.
MOSLEY: I appreciate this, too. Thank you so much.
WILEY: Thank you.
LUSE: That was Antonio Wiley and Tonya Mosley. You can listen to "She Has A Name" wherever you get your podcasts.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hey, Brittany.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hey, Brittany.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey, Brittany.
YAMARI: Hey, Brittany. My name is Yamari (ph). I'm from Brooklyn, N.Y., via Trinidad and Tobago. And my song for the summer is Freetown Collective's "Rainy Mornings" because the whole song is just beautiful love vibes.
LUSE: Yamari, thank you so much for calling in with such a beautiful suggestion for a song of the summer - Freetown Collective's "Rainy Mornings." I will tell you this - if you haven't heard this song, one day if you're feeling a little good, get up in the morning, throw open those curtains. This is a song I feel like that would be perfect to wake up to. I guess that's why it's called "Rainy Mornings" (laughter). It just has this, like - a beautiful, little vibey groove to it.
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FREETOWN COLLECTIVE: (Singing) I want to be your only one, yeah. Lightning and thunder, well, she have it now. She never make me wonder if she love me, though.
LUSE: Yeah, I definitely, definitely see why you have been feeling this for your song of the summer. Oh, good choice. But as far as I'm concerned - I think I might have mentioned this on a previous episode. Right now, my early pick for song of the summer is "Nasty" by Tinashe. Now, let me back up by saying I'm a big Tinashe fan. And if you don't know who Tinashe is, allow me to enlighten you. She is a phenomenal American pop singer. She, to me, is, like, a quadruple threat. She can sing. She can dance. She can write and produce. If you don't know Tinashe, you probably have heard this song somewhere.
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TINASHE: (Singing) I've been a nasty girl - nasty. I've been a nasty girl.
LUSE: You've heard it somewhere scrolling on social media. You've heard it out of a car window as it's buzzing past you in the street. And right now, I think that it is the best shot we have at a song for the summer in 2024. And I'm going to tell you why. No. 1, it's got a little bit of repetition. Repetition works really, really well in songs of summer. That repetitive background kind of thrum that drove its way through the entire song - Tinashe singing, I've been a nasty girl; nasty - OK? - over and over and over again. That line has hooked into half of America's ears at least. OK? And it's not coming out.
Another thing that makes this song, I think, just a perfect summer song, is that it's really easy to dance to. It's got, like, a perfect little, kind of, like, syncopated beat with a little attitude to it. And I'll say one of the best parts about this song becoming so popular are the videos that I've seen online of people either dancing to this song or of people taking dance videos from other social media clips, from movie scenes, from television shows and taking out the original sound and replacing it with Tinashe's "Nasty." OK? I could go on and on and on about all of the virtues of Tinashe's song of the summer, "Nasty," but I'm going to leave it right there. And whatever you think the song of the summer is, I hope that you get to hear it this weekend and dance to your heart's content. Thanks again so much for calling in.
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LUSE: Now, if you submitted a question or response to a segment for Hey, Brittany in the past few weeks, you are in luck. Next week is a special Hey, Brittany mailbag episode where I respond to listener letters from all of you. If you'd like to be featured in a future Hey Brittany mailbag, send us a voice memo at [email protected]. That's [email protected].
This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
COREY ANTONIO ROSE, BYLINE: Corey Antonio Rose.
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LUSE: This episode was edited by...
JESSICA PLACZEK, BYLINE: Jessica Placzek.
SARA SARASOHN, BYLINE: Sara Sarasohn.
LUSE: Engineering support came from...
KO TAKASUGI-CZERNOWIN, BYLINE: Ko Takasugi-Czernowin.
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
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