SURVIVED: Cyntoia Brown from Nashville

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Speaker 12 Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

Speaker 12 I'm not going to spend too much time on the overview of why I'm in your feed on a Thursday, even though, don't worry, still going to have your weekly Monday episodes.

Speaker 12 If you want to know, I highly recommend you go back and take a listen yourself. I've left you something in each episode.
But this one is another stop in my own Crime Junkie Eras tour.

Speaker 12 And this next stop is one that I don't get to often, even though it's not too far from my home state.

Speaker 12 It's home to some of the greatest greatest musicians of all time, specifically country musicians and iconic places like the Grand Ole Opry, which I visited as a child once, but I would love to come back to as an adult.

Speaker 12 But we know no matter the extent of the glitz and the glamour of a city or state or country, it doesn't make the possibility of experiencing absolute life-changing and devastating circumstances.

Speaker 12 Just like the one I want to retell you about from this past episode. Hi, Crime Junkies.
I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

Speaker 16 And I'm Britt.

Speaker 12 And actually, I want to try something a little different with this episode. So, Britt, I'm going to pass it over to you to tell the story.
One that began nearly two decades ago in Tennessee.

Speaker 12 This is the story of Zentoya Brown.

Speaker 13 Okay, so the story I have for you today starts on August 7th, 2004 in Nashville, Tennessee. It's a little after 7 p.m.
that day when a call comes in to 911 Dispatch.

Speaker 13 The dispatcher asks the usual, what's the address of your emergency? And the caller, a woman, gives them a street address on Mossdale Drive. The next question, of course, is, what's the emergency?

Speaker 13 What's going on over there? And the caller responds with just one word, homicide.

Speaker 13 And according to court documents, the operator tries to get more information, but the caller hangs up before answering any more questions. This has got to be one of those like, is this a prank?

Speaker 13 Is it not moments? But the operator dispatches first responders right away. When police arrive, they get no answer answer at the front door, but are thankfully able to get in through the garage.

Speaker 13 And it doesn't take them long to find what they're looking for. There in the bedroom, lying naked, face down on the bed in a pool of blood, is a man.

Speaker 13 It looks as though he's been shot, and his hands are kind of laced together under his face, almost like he'd been sleeping. And when the paramedics arrive, they confirm what officers already knew.

Speaker 13 The man is dead. Police identify him as 43-year-old Johnny Allen, and right away they get to work searching the home for evidence.

Speaker 13 They find one shell casing onto the bed, which is really all they expected to find since there seemed to be only one bullet at play here that went straight through Johnny's head and into the wall.

Speaker 12 Was there like any kind of gun too?

Speaker 13 No, they don't find a gun, which along with the position of the body is what makes them pretty confident that they're dealing with a homicide and not a suicide.

Speaker 13 Now, I wasn't able to find a ton of detail about the investigation, except to say that something leads them first to Johnny's truck, which they find abandoned in a Walmart parking lot, and then to a motel just down the street.

Speaker 13 Now, by now, it's the wee hours of August 8th, like full-on middle of the night, and they're standing outside room 302, knocking on the door.

Speaker 13 A man swings the door open and police immediately pull him outside. And within seconds, a young woman, a naked young woman named Sintoya Brown, comes flying out the door saying, Cut didn't do it.

Speaker 13 I'll tell you everything.

Speaker 13 Cut is Sintoya's boyfriend, and I know you can't see me right now, but heavy air quotes on the word boyfriend.

Speaker 13 In her book, Free Sentoya, she writes about Cut at that time in her life when she was essentially homeless, aimless, using drugs and hustling to get by. He was every single kind of abusive.

Speaker 13 I mean, physical, emotional, sexual, but also she was pretty much dependent on him too. Anyway, police bring them both in for questioning, but the person they really want to talk to is is the woman.

Speaker 13 She tells them that her name is Sintoya Denise Mitchell and that she's 19 years old. She tells them that she'd met the man for the first time two nights before on August 6th at about 11 p.m.

Speaker 13 when he pulled up next to her in his truck at a Sonic and asked if she was hungry.

Speaker 13 She tells police that she was hungry and this guy looked safe, like a businessman, someone who had an actual job, a career. So she climbed into his truck and they headed to the Sonic drive-in.

Speaker 13 She says Johnny bought her a burger and offered to let her stay at his place and she agreed.

Speaker 13 And during the drive to his place, Centoya says he told her he was a real estate agent and he volunteered in the community and was, you know, kind of this man about town.

Speaker 13 He seemed like a nice enough guy and everything seemed fine. That is, she tells police, until they got to his place.
That's when things started to get a little strange.

Speaker 13 And I get the sense that what she means is that his demeanor changed.

Speaker 13 She says he started showing her all the rifles he has in his place and tells her how he used to be a sharpshooter in the military, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 12 Is this like happening in like an intimidating way?

Speaker 13 Yeah, totally. And she says they finished their food and then watched TV for a bit.
And then she told him she was really tired and asked if he would mind if she slept for a little bit.

Speaker 13 And he was like, sure, that's fine. She tells police that what she was really hoping for is that he would fall asleep so she could sneak out without making any sort of scene.

Speaker 13 But according to Centoya, while they were laying in bed, the man started touching her and whispering to her.

Speaker 13 And at first, she was just like kind of shifting around in the bed, pretending to be asleep and kind of uncomfortable and annoyed. But then she says he grabbed her hard between the legs.

Speaker 13 And when she turned around to face him, she saw this terrifying look in his eyes, an aggressive look. She says her first thought was, oh my God, he is going to hit me.

Speaker 13 But instead of hitting her, he rolled away in the opposite direction, which is when it dawned on her that, no, he's not going to hit me. He's going to kill me.

Speaker 13 She says she was sure he was reaching for a gun.

Speaker 13 And in a split second, Sensoria says she reached into her purse on the nightstand, grabbed the gun she'd started carrying just a couple of weeks before, pointed it at Donnie, and pulled the trigger.

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Speaker 5 Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.

Speaker 3 With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.

Speaker 2 Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place.

Speaker 5 Sign up for GreenLight today at greenlight.com slash podcast.

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Speaker 15 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 13 There are parts of Sentoya's story that aren't really adding up to police. It's not that they think that everything she's saying is a lie.

Speaker 13 They can see these nuggets of truth in it, but what she's telling them is basically that she shot Johnny in self-defense. But that's not what it looked like to police at the scene.

Speaker 13 To them, remember, it looked like he'd been asleep when he was shot.

Speaker 12 So if they're not seeing it as self-defense, what's their theory at this point? Or do they still not even have one?

Speaker 13 No, they do. Police think that Sentoya is skipping over an important detail, that she's a sex worker and that she killed Johnny Allen while he slept so she could rob him.

Speaker 12 Well, I mean, is there anything missing from the house besides his truck?

Speaker 13 So when they arrest Sentoya at the motel, they find his wallet and some guns, both of which have been stolen from the house. And eventually, she says that she ended up taking $173 for him.

Speaker 13 So with this, police feel they have enough to charge Sentoya with first-degree murder, which they do.

Speaker 13 And according to court documents, it's only after the arraignment that police learn that this 19-year-old Sintoya Denise Mitchell is in fact 16-year-old Sintoya Denise Brown.

Speaker 12 Okay, so, I mean, now we're talking about a minor, which I would imagine changes the charges or even a theory of what happened. Like, does it for them?

Speaker 13 No, not at all.

Speaker 13 In fact, the prosecution is planning to ask the judge to transfer Centoya to adult court, which would mean the minimum sentence if she's convicted on the charges is 60 years with no possibility of parole for 51 years.

Speaker 12 And I assume that life is probably an option too, then, if she's being looked at as an adult.

Speaker 13 Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 13 In the Netflix documentary, Murder to Mercy, the Centoya Brown Story, they actually say that Tennessee has the harshest mandatory minimums in the country when it comes to juveniles being tried in adult court, which actually happens way more frequently than I think we even acknowledge or know about, even for those of us in the true crime community.

Speaker 13 And Sentoya is one of them. Her case is transferred to adult court, and when the time finally comes to put it before a jury, she's 18 years old.

Speaker 13 And while that's still so, so young, the Sentoya the jury sees is not the 16-year-old in actual legit pigtail braids who was arrested back in 2004.

Speaker 13 It's a slightly older, slightly more mature-looking Sintoya.

Speaker 13 And the story she tells about the night of August 6th is actually not markedly different from the one she told police during that first interrogation.

Speaker 13 What is different though, is what she shares about everything that led up to the night of August 6th.

Speaker 9 Which is...

Speaker 13 Like, for example, how Sintoya was born when her biological mother was just 16 years old. And even at 16, she was drinking heavily every day all throughout her pregnancy.

Speaker 13 Her bio-mom kept drinking after Sentoya was born, but then she discovered crack cocaine and soon found herself with a full-blown substance use disorder on top of the alcohol use.

Speaker 12 This whole time, is like Sintoya living with her? Like, did she actually keep custody of Sentoya this whole time?

Speaker 13 Yeah, she did, off and on until Sintoya was adopted at age two.

Speaker 13 But her adoptive mother, Ellenette, said on the Murder Drew Mercy documentary that she and her husband had been caring for Centoya since she was only six months old.

Speaker 13 And even though her mom and dad provided a loving home for Centoya, by the time she was a teenager, her life was already off the rails. It seemed like she was always getting in trouble for something.

Speaker 13 By the time she pulled that trigger in Johnny Allen's bedroom, she'd already been kicked out of school, arrested, and served time in juvenile detention.

Speaker 13 And so when she met that guy, Cut, the one she was living in the motel with, and he convinced her to start exchanging sex for money, she was like, honestly, sure, whatever.

Speaker 12 Yeah, but again, 16, no one's a sex worker. Like, she herself is a victim of trafficking, whatever role Cut played in that, I mean.

Speaker 13 Totally, totally. But back in 2006 at Sentoya's murder trial, that's not the way the jury sees it because that's not the way the prosecution presented it.

Speaker 13 So after only six hours of deliberation, the jury comes back with a guilty verdict.

Speaker 13 Guilty of first-degree murder, guilty of felony murder, guilty of aggravated robbery, and Sentoya is sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 51 years.

Speaker 13 And to say that Sentoya changed in prison would kind of be the understatement of a lifetime, Ashley. While there, Sintoya finishes high school and starts working towards an associate's degree.

Speaker 13 She earns another degree, a bachelor's this time in organizational development, graduating with a 4.0 GPA. She starts writing the book, the one I mentioned earlier, called Free Sentoya.

Speaker 13 I mean, she's literally a new and completely different person.

Speaker 13 But despite all that work, it was never enough to get Sentoya anywhere with appeals. The courts rejected every request her team made.

Speaker 13 But then, in 2017, a reporter happens to mention Sentoya's case in a story about a new Tennessee law, one that prohibits minors from being charged and sentenced as sex workers.

Speaker 13 And it is exactly what Sentoya's defense didn't even know that they always needed. So, on the heels of that story comes an absolute flood of support.
Rihanna posts on social media about Sentoya.

Speaker 13 Kim Kardashian does too. LeBron James, T.I., Lana Del Rey.
And all of a sudden, hashtag free Sentoya Brown has a million tweets and is growing by the day.

Speaker 13 And just to give you a flavor of the tone shift, like culturally in the 13 years since all this started, can you just read Rihanna's post for us?

Speaker 12 Sure, she writes: quote, Imagine at the age of 16 being sex trafficked by a pimp named Cutthroat.

Speaker 12 After days of being repeatedly drugged and raped by different men, you were purchased by a 43-year-old child predator who took you to his home to use you for sex.

Speaker 12 You end up finding enough courage to fight back and shoot and kill him. You're arrested as a result, tried and convicted as an adult, and sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 12 This is the story of Sentoya Brown. She will be eligible for parole when she is 69 years old.
End quote. Oh, that's heavy.

Speaker 13 Yeah. And laying it out that way, that she won't even be eligible for parole until she's almost 70 because of about five seconds of time that happened when she was 16.

Speaker 12 There's actually a picture of Sintoya on Rihanna's Instagram post. And again, she looks so.

Speaker 12 young.

Speaker 12 And that's what she would have looked like on that night Johnny Allen picked her up outside at the Sonic for the express purpose of taking her back to his house for sex, which is, again, the prosecution's theory all along of what happened and eventually what Centoya admitted to.

Speaker 12 Again, like the actual like black and white events don't change. It's all about this context.
She was a child. She looks like a child.

Speaker 12 It just seems bananas to me that anyone would look at this girl and think anything other than that. They like, how can you look at her and call her an adult?

Speaker 13 I know. And I think some of that had to do with the life that Centoya had been leading up to that point, like before she was arrested for the murder.

Speaker 13 Not to mention the way she acted when she was first locked up, which you can probably guess was super aggressive, defiant, violent.

Speaker 13 But I mentioned before the change of law in 2017 relating to human trafficking, the one that kickstarted the whole free Centoya Brown movement.

Speaker 13 Well, there's another important way public sentiment is at least starting to shift.

Speaker 13 First came a Supreme Court decision in 2010 that said, guys, juveniles can't be sentenced to life without parole for non-homicidal violences.

Speaker 13 And then two years later, in 2012, Kaylin Ford reported for ABC News that a second Supreme Court decision said, we take that back.

Speaker 13 Actually, life without parole for any juvenile, for any crime, including homicide, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Speaker 12 Do either of those actually apply to Satoya? I mean, I know that technically she isn't serving life without parole. She can get paroled at 69, but isn't that effectively life in prison?

Speaker 12 Like, what's she supposed to do with her life if the first time she steps into the world? She's 69 years old.

Speaker 13 Right. So first thing, small correction to the Rihanna tweet you read before.
She would actually be 67 because she did get some credit for time served, but honestly, that's neither here nor there.

Speaker 13 But neither of the rulings apply to Centoya because, technically, like you said, her sentence isn't life without parole.

Speaker 13 But that almost doesn't matter because by this time, she's got all this momentum building behind her. Centoya has changed.
The world has changed.

Speaker 13 So, Centoya and her team decide to ride this wave of support and make their one final Hail Mary pass, which is to ask the governor for clemency.

Speaker 13 And when I say Hail Mary pass, this is truly a Hail Mary pass, the very, very last possible opportunity for someone to look at Centoya's 2004 crime and 2006 conviction and consider how appropriate the punishment really is given all that has changed in the meantime.

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Speaker 13 In May 2018, Sentoya goes before the Board of Pardons and Paroles in Tennessee to essentially plead her case.

Speaker 12 And just for clarity, her going before the parole board isn't really necessarily about proving guilt or innocence, right?

Speaker 12 Like, my understanding is parole board is you have to show that you've changed and you should be considered release, even though her sentence wouldn't necessarily allow for it.

Speaker 13 Right, exactly.

Speaker 13 So, what her team is asking the board to recommend to the governor is that Sentoya's sentence be commuted from first-degree murder to second-degree murder, which means that even if they're successful, she may still have to serve time, whether behind bars or on parole.

Speaker 13 She'll still have a record, all that stuff. But even within those confines, a commutation to second degree murder would give Sintoya a second chance.

Speaker 13 One of the people who testifies on her behalf at that hearing is actually a Tennessee state prosecutor, the one who argued against Sentoya's appeal and was ultimately successful because the verdict was upheld.

Speaker 13 But he tells the board he had no idea that the person he just argued should stay in prison for 51 years was the same person sitting in his classroom making straight A's.

Speaker 13 And once he knew that, he realized he needed to do something about it. Ultimately, the board is essentially split.

Speaker 13 Two of them vote for clemency, two vote against it, and two say that she should be eligible for parole after 25 years.

Speaker 12 So what does that even mean?

Speaker 13 Well, it means the governor has a lot to consider making his decision. I mean, these recommendations go to him, and in theory, the board weighs one way or the other.

Speaker 13 And he can say, oh, like everyone's in agreement on this one. Let's do this.
He's got a completely split vote.

Speaker 13 But it's actually not until January 2019, eight months after that hearing, that Sintoya finds out that the decision has been made.

Speaker 13 The governor has decided to commute Sintoya's sentence to 15 years, which doesn't mean she's free to go right then and there. She still has seven months to go.

Speaker 12 Yeah, but there's a big difference between seven months and 51 years.

Speaker 13 I mean, not to mention a big difference between being released from prison at 67 or 31, which is how old Sentoya is when she walks out of that Tennessee women's prison for the first time since she was 16 years old.

Speaker 13 And to say the time in prison changed Sentoya is, again, almost not the right word. She is transformed during those years.
She had always been smart.

Speaker 13 A psychologist who evaluated Sentoya way back in 2004 and testified that her IQ was in the 90th percentile of the entire population, but prison had given her the time and space to focus that intelligence.

Speaker 12 Hang on, are you actually saying like for once that I've never heard this, but prison actually worked?

Speaker 13 Okay, do not put words in my mouth. I would say that time worked.

Speaker 13 I mean, who's to say what kind of impact the right kind of trauma-informed counseling and treatment would have had on Sentoya's life if she had been given those opportunities, you know, right from the start?

Speaker 13 If she'd been recognized as a victim of human trafficking, facing an impossible situation every day of her life, rather than as an adult who knowingly and intentionally committed murder.

Speaker 12 You know, I think it's easy for us to like look at Sintoya's story, hear her story and think like, wow, things have really changed.

Speaker 12 We're acknowledging that things were more complex than the system allowed for at the time, whatever. But it's important to remember commutation is not exoneration.

Speaker 12 Sentoya is still technically a convicted killer. And there's a lot that comes along with that job she can get, whether or not she's able to vote.

Speaker 12 Like, again, she's out of jail and that is a huge step, but it is not, you know, giving her 100% of her life back that she lost.

Speaker 12 Again, certainly something, but I wouldn't call it a clear win for advocates of human trafficking survivors.

Speaker 12 I do think it illustrates really well how much things can change in a pretty short amount of time, though. Public sentiment towards victims, but also laws and the way that they're implemented.

Speaker 12 It also, again, you guys show you the power that you have. Those million tweets, like that's what got people paying attention to those cases.
And I think that's where all of our crime junkies come in.

Speaker 12 You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

Speaker 13 And be sure to check out our Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast.

Speaker 12 Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

Speaker 1 Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach?

Speaker 5 Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.

Speaker 3 With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.

Speaker 10 Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place.

Speaker 5 Sign up for Greenlight today at greenlight.com slash podcast.

Speaker 19 Have you ever experienced something truly unexplainable?

Speaker 19 A moment that felt almost like a vivid dream, leaving you with a lingering sense of wonder, leaving you questioning everything you thought you knew?

Speaker 20 Perhaps it was a fleeting glimpse of something extraordinary, a chilling whisper in the dead of night, or an undeniable premonition that comes to life.

Speaker 20 I'm Yvette Gintile, and I'm her sister, Rasha Pecarrero.

Speaker 19 Each week on our podcast, So Supernatural, we partner with the one and only Ashley Flowers, host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie, to take you on a journey of the world's most mystical mysteries.

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