Teresita Basa Murder: The Case Of Filipino Nurse In US That Baffled All

Teresita Basa was found dead under a burning mattress in her Chicago apartment in 1977. It was her 'voice from the grave' that reportedly helped the police reach the killer.

Most Shocking Crimes: In February 1977, the Chicago police was left shocked by a case involving the brutal murder of a middle-aged healthcare worker, Teresita Basa. She was found dead under a burning mattress in her apartment in Chicago. Born in the Philippines, Basa was a respiratory therapist at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago. A music enthusiast, Basa loved to play the piano, and her love for music brought her to Chicago, where she pursued an MA in music.

With time, Basa’s love for music took a back seat, and gradually she had shifted her attention towards medical studies, and later she joined Edgewater Hospital in Chicago as a nurse, as per reports.

On the day of the incident, Basa went to work just like any other day. According to her friend Ruth Loeb, she reportedly left the hospital at 5:30 PM and spoke to Loeb for about 30 minutes before she ended the conversation to receive a male guest, as per the Philippines edition of American Men’s magazine, Esquire. Notably, she had not revealed the identity of the friend. What unfolded later left everyone shocked and baffled.

It all started after people noticed smoke coming out of Basa’s apartment, which prompted them to call the fire brigade. The fire department received an early morning call from residents at the Pine Grove Avenue apartments and reached the spot.

As the firemen unearthed the source of the fire, they found the lifeless body of Basa. After her body was discovered, police were immediately alerted to the spot. Teresita Basa's nude body was found under a pile of smouldering clothing in her fashionable apartment, with a butcher knife stuck in her chest, as per a 1978 report in the Washington Post.

Nude Body Raised Suspision Of Sexual Assault, But... 

Basa’s body was covered with a mattress, and it did not have any clothes on. While the authorities assumed the accused had the motive of sexual assault, the suspicion was short-lived after her autopsy results came to the fore, as per Esquire. During investigation, the police got very few clues, barring one — a note that read: “Get theater tickets for A.S.” 
However, there was no clarity on whether the initials stood for the name of a person or a company.

The police quizzed Basa’s family and friends, but to no avail, as it did not provide the cops with any leads that could take them close to her killer. After much effort, the police closed the case.

The Case Reopens

It had been almost six months since Teresita Basa’s case was kept in cold storage as the police failed to generate leads. But just when all seemed to have been over, a small lead came their way. The police said they had interviewed a doctor named Dr. Jose C. Chua, who claimed that his 38-year-old wife Remibias Chua had gone into trances three times, saying she was Basa, as reported by The Washington Post.

The doctor said his wife Remibias when "entranced" would speak in a strange voice and accent, and that she identified one Allan Showery as the man who stabbed her in the chest and set her body on fire.

During a pre-trial hearing in Circuit Court, the doctor quoted his wife's voice as saying: "Doctor, I would like to ask for your help. The man who murdered me is still at large," as per the Post report. The doctor and his wife, Remibias, were also from the Philippines, like Basa. Remibias Chua was Basa’s colleague at Edgewater Hospital, where Showery was a respiratory technician.

According to the Washington Post report, the doctor stated that Remibias, when in trance, spoke in Tagalog with a strange Spanish-sounding accent. Tagalog is the national language of the Philippines.

"I was really surprised and scared when I asked her name and she answered, 'Ako 'y (I am) Teresita Basa.' But she told me I had nothing to be scared of. She was really pleading for me to help solve her murder," Chua testified, as quoted by The Washington Post.

How Dead Basa 'Revealed' Her Killer

As the case unfolded, the police saw a bizarre turn of events. According to what Basa said after allegedly possessing Remibias’s body, a friendly visit took a really ugly turn when Showery decided to steal an expensive pearl ring from France, passed down from her mother, Esquire reported. Showery had allegedly gone to her place to fix her broken TV. 
Not only that, the ghost even gave them the phone numbers of those who can help identify the jewellery, according to the report.

Despite the fact that the police could not find logic in all this, they thought there was no harm in following up with whatever was coming their way. After reaching the suspect’s home, they found his girlfriend, Yanka Kamluk. The stolen jewellery was reportedly found in Yanka’s possession. As per Esquire, the police were able to confirm this with Basa’s cousin, just as the voice had said. Showery soon confessed to the crime.

The Court Trial

Showery was put on trial in October 1978. During the pre-trial hearing cited above, his lawyer William Swano had requested for the murder charge to be dropped, stating that the police arrested him on nothing more than the Chuas' story. 

"Never to my knowledge has a man been arrested because of a supernatural vision," Swano said, as quoted to  by The Washington Post. "Police have never before been informed of a criminal's name by a voice from the grave."
Police homicide investigator Joseph Stachula also acknowledged that the doctor's story was the only lead they had when they questioned Showery.

Judge Frank W. Barbaro, however, denied the defense motion to dismiss the murder charge and went on with the trial. "I see no reason to restrict the investigatory power of the police," the judge said, as quoted by The Washington Post. "Whether they believed the voices or not, they had to check it out," he added. "It's not like we're going to cross-examine the voice or anything of that nature," a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office told The Washington Post. "We're really not interested in the supernatural aspect of this trial. The voice was an initial tip, but the evidence was developed independently."

Once the trial started, however, Showery retracted his confession, saying the police had threatened to arrest the pregnant girlfriend Kalmuk if he did not confess to the crime. Eventually, the jurors couldn’t agree on the verdict, and the court declared it a mistrial. A new trial was to begin around a month later. Ahead of that, Showery changed his plea all of a sudden to guilty. He was handed out a 14-year sentence for murder, robbery and arson, as reported by the media. 

Chua’s Wrote Book On Teresita Basa

The Chuas wrote a book, A Voice From The Grave (1994), co-authored by their friend Carol Mercado. "All of us want to believe in life after death," Dr Chua had been quoted as saying. The case was turned into a tele movie, Voice From The Grave. The movie's executive producer, John Cosgrove, said Chua's life had returned to normal in the years following the murder and trial.

"There are no more psychic or paranormal events in her life," he told the Chicago Tribune. "She's living a quiet life. She hated the media glare of 1978 and '79." As for Showery, they released him from jail in 1983 on parole, just six years after Basa's death.