Domaine Richards (Queen of Clubs, Connecticut)

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Speaker 5 Our card this week is Domaine Richards, the queen of clubs from Connecticut.

Speaker 5 I know it's a bit of a trope to say a victim could light up a room, but if you look at a picture of 25-year-old Domaine, there is one thing that stands out. His smile.

Speaker 5 A smile that could in fact be infectious. But all that light Domain had to bring to the world was taken away in November of 2007.

Speaker 5 And almost 17 years later, while police have at least one suspect that they've been circling, they still need help bringing Domain's case to a close. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Speaker 5 One day in mid-November 2007, Deion Richards got a call from her stepson's girlfriend, Sherry Jones.

Speaker 5 A call from Sherry wasn't out of the norm, especially when Sherry and Deion's stepson Domaine had gotten into a fight. And it sounded like this call, at least at first, was no different.

Speaker 5 Sherry said she had repeatedly called Domaine, but he wasn't picking up his phone. Here's Dion recalling that conversation.

Speaker 6 She had called to say, could you call Domaine? Because I'm calling and he's not answering my calls. Now, whenever they have their little falling outs, she would call.

Speaker 6 Yes, he wouldn't answer, but if I called, He's gonna answer. If his dad called, he's gonna answer.

Speaker 6 So she was so sure this is one of of those times where I guess wherever he was going, he didn't take her or didn't want her to be a part of.

Speaker 6 So she thought that he was upset with her, so he wasn't answering her. But if I called, then he would answer.
And I called, didn't answer.

Speaker 5 Knowing this was a bad sign, on November 15th, Sherry reported Domain missing to the police. Now, there is a reason she jumped on this so quickly.

Speaker 5 She knew something that his stepmom, Dion, wasn't aware of.

Speaker 2 He was a contractor for FedEx, and he found some marijuana when he was doing that, and then started getting involved down in Brooklyn.

Speaker 2 And he eventually utilized those contacts and FedEx to purchase and deliver marijuana. And he was doing it all over the United States, California, Arizona, Virginia, Florida, Massachusetts.

Speaker 5 That was Detective Drew Jacobson, who's been working this case since practically day one. He points out that Domain didn't have a criminal record.

Speaker 5 At the time, he wasn't even on their radar for selling drugs before all of this. And honestly, he wasn't on their radar for anything related to drugs, even after he was reported missing.

Speaker 5 And that's because initially, Sherry left that part out. I'm sure in the back of her mind, she had those what if thoughts.
What if I'm overreacting? What if he just shows back up?

Speaker 5 He's not gonna be too happy that his girlfriend had outed him as a drug dealer to the police when they didn't even know he existed.

Speaker 5 What she did tell police was that she last saw Domain on November 13th at around 1.30 p.m.

Speaker 5 He said he was headed to Waterbury, about a half hour southwest of Hartford, though there's no mention of why he was going there or who he might have been meeting in this initial report.

Speaker 5 She described the car he was driving as a Maroon Nissan Maxima, which, while registered in her name, was technically owned by Domain.

Speaker 5 And she described what he was wearing when she last saw him. Blue jeans, a vintage turquoise t-shirt, high tops, and a black jacket.
Now, Sherry wasn't the only one who went to the police.

Speaker 5 Dion went too, and they basically told her that he's an adult and he would probably come home when he was ready. So there wasn't much they could do at that point.

Speaker 5 But Dion was persistent and she went back a second time.

Speaker 6 I said to him, can I ask you a personal question? He said, go ahead. I said to him, had this been your son, what would you have done? Because I'm doing what I know.

Speaker 6 Had this been your son, what would you have done so that I can go do what you would have done?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 like that touched his heart. And then from there, people started taking us seriously.

Speaker 5 But by the next day, there was still no sign of Domaine. He'd been missing for three days now, and no one even knew if he was missing from Hartford or Waterbury or somewhere in between.

Speaker 5 Domain also had another girlfriend in New York where his mother lived. Though it's unclear if Sherry knew about this girl, but that could complicate locating him even more.

Speaker 5 But there was a moment, at least briefly that day, where police thought Domaine had been located, because the Waterbury police got a call from Sherry claiming that she believed her missing boyfriend could be at an address located on Washington Street there in Waterbury.

Speaker 5 Now, it's unclear where she got this information, but we know that Sherry was calling all of Domaine's friends and acquaintances to try and locate him.

Speaker 5 So maybe that information came from one of them at some point. Either way, when the Waterbury police got to that Washington Street address, there was no sign of the car that Domaine was driving.

Speaker 5 And they couldn't just look inside because it was this locked multi-unit apartment building. But more leads were coming in fast.

Speaker 5 And an acquaintance of Domaine's, who we're going to call Nick, went to the Waterbury Police concerned for his own safety.

Speaker 5 He told them that recently he was introduced to Domaine Richards, who he also knew as Ray J. And he was also introduced to another guy named Kevin.

Speaker 5 Now, at the time, Nick was out of work and a mutual friend thought that he could help sell marijuana to make some money.

Speaker 5 So Nick met with Domaine and Kevin and agreed to try and help them find buyers for their product in Waterbury where he lived.

Speaker 5 So he said that on November 12th, Domaine came out to Waterbury to see Nick and Nick had a potential buyer. But when they tried to make the deal, it didn't happen.

Speaker 5 Domain left, but he returned the next day on the 13th at around 2 p.m.

Speaker 5 which lines right up with what Sherry said about Domaine leaving at around 1.30 to go to Waterbury.

Speaker 2 He was pretty upfront about what was going on, what happened, the timing of when he had seen.

Speaker 2 He was trying to sell five pounds in Waterberry, but he still had another 15 pounds of weed in the trunk of his maxima.

Speaker 5 There are conflicting sources about exactly how much weed Domain had with him. But once again, Domaine and Nick couldn't make a deal happen.

Speaker 5 So Nick says that at about 4 p.m., Domaine received a phone call. And before he and Nick went separate ways, Domain mentioned a meeting that he was going to have with someone from Massachusetts.

Speaker 5 Now, presumably, that's where he headed off to next. Nick said he tried to call Domain later that night but didn't get an answer.

Speaker 5 Then Kevin reached out the next day on the 14th and said that he hadn't been able to get a hold of Domain either. And then on the 15th is when he started getting scared.

Speaker 5 He said he started getting calls from a blocked number but every time he would answer, whoever was on the other end just wouldn't speak.

Speaker 5 And then the following day is when he got a call from Sherry asking about Domain and that's when he realized that Domain was missing. But the real kicker came about 20 minutes after Sherry's call.

Speaker 5 That's when his phone rang again, and a man on the other end began threatening him, telling him that the stuff was his and he wanted it back.

Speaker 5 Though, to be fair, some of the information says that the caller was making threats and asking where Domain was.

Speaker 5 But either way, Nick assumed that this had to do with the weed that Domain had, and he was concerned that someone might come for him or his family. And that's why he went to the police.

Speaker 5 So finally, knowing what Domain was doing on the day he went missing and who he'd gone to meet, that gave police a real solid place to start.

Speaker 5 It helped them build out a more detailed timeline that was filled in even more when police got a hold of Domaine's cell phone records, which had quite the story to tell.

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Speaker 5 On November 21st, police formally requested Domaine's cell phone records. Nick had said that Domain had two cell phones the last time he saw him, and Sherry would later confirm that.

Speaker 5 Although it appears that this initial request was just for one of those phones.

Speaker 2 When we start going through his cell phone records, there are several telephone numbers and some cell tower hits of his cell phone that go from New York up the 84 corridor.

Speaker 2 He ends up in Waterbury, and then he starts making his way towards Hartford. So we're able to kind of do like a geolocation of about where his phone was.

Speaker 5 The police determined that a little after 6 p.m., Domaine made his last call from the Hartford area. And that call was to a guy named Leon.
the brother of Domaine's New York girlfriend.

Speaker 2 And he had recalled Domain calling him, like his phone was on and Leon was saying, hey, Domain, Domaine, what's up? Trying to talk to him.

Speaker 2 But Domain must have just dialed him and put the phone down or just hit it while he's talking to probably his killer. Domain was talking to another guy and it was definitely Domaine's voice.

Speaker 2 And Domaine said, hey, big man, hey, big man, it's not going down like this. It's not going down like this.
And then it gets disconnected. Right.

Speaker 2 So he obviously was trying to get Leon to hear so maybe they would know what was going on.

Speaker 5 It's also possible that Domaine just accidentally called Leon.

Speaker 5 But knowing what Leon heard was likely some kind of confrontation right before Domaine went missing, it seems like more than just a coincidence to me.

Speaker 5 Leon probably didn't realize what he'd been hearing at the time, which is maybe why he never reported it and might have only realized it was important once the police came to him.

Speaker 5 And it sounds like he only recognized Domaine's voice on the call, so he couldn't even tell police who to go looking for next.

Speaker 5 So they had to try doing that on their own, specifically by asking Sherry if Domain knew anyone in Massachusetts. And Sherry said that there was this girl that Domaine knew from there.

Speaker 5 It could be her. But she then told them that she could access Domaine's voicemail and there had been a message from a male on the evening of November 13th telling Domaine that he was running late.

Speaker 5 And Sherry said she even called the guy who identified himself as Madhouse. Now, Madhouse was an old friend of Domaine's from New York who now lived in Massachusetts.

Speaker 5 And according to Sherry, when she called him, he had confirmed that he was supposed to meet up with Domaine, but that when he called Domain, it went straight to voicemail.

Speaker 5 So it sounds like the meeting never took place. Police left Sherry's on a hunt now for Madhouse.

Speaker 5 But before police left, they also took a toothbrush and a hairbrush that Domaine had used for possible DNA comparison in the future. An ominous sign to those who loved Domain.

Speaker 5 When his family was already grappling with the unknowns of his disappearance and this whole other part of his life that they knew nothing about.

Speaker 5 To have to come to terms with the idea that he might be dead, it was just, it was all too much, especially for Domaine's father, who had immigrated to the U.S.

Speaker 5 with his son from Jamaica seven years prior. Here's Domaine's stepmom, Dion, again.

Speaker 6 That's his boy, his only son, his first child.

Speaker 6 He was a mess. I've never seen my houseman like that.

Speaker 2 So soft,

Speaker 2 so melted.

Speaker 6 It was a mess. It was a mess.
Because Domaine, he was everybody's boy. You know, everybody's boy.
Just smile, jovial.

Speaker 6 Everybody's boy.

Speaker 5 While Domaine's family settled into their new reality and waited on news, police were still trying to locate Madhouse.

Speaker 5 But in the meantime, a tip came in that added a little more detail to their timeline.

Speaker 5 The call was from a woman who'd seen the news report of Domaine's disappearance, and she claimed to have seen Domaine on November 13th at about 4.15 p.m.

Speaker 2 She was going from work in Springfield going down I-91 south approaching Hartford.

Speaker 5 Apparently, at some point, Domaine's car almost sideswiped her.

Speaker 2 She hit her horn, he caught in front of her, and started breaking to harass her. She memorized the license plate.

Speaker 5 The license plate she gave matched Domaine's car, although in the report, it does sound like she had gotten the color wrong. But her description of Domaine and what he was wearing did seem to match.

Speaker 2 The driver was a black male with dark complexion, dark jacket, maybe leather with a collar. He looked taller, maybe six feet because the way the seat was in the back.

Speaker 2 Late 20s, early 30s, knit cap, Bluetooth headset, and left ear. Male then cut across all lanes of traffic and got off the I-84 West Main Street exit.

Speaker 5 While this woman's information wasn't cracking this case wide open, it was continuing to confirm the timeline and the whereabouts of Domaine on the day he went missing for police, which in turn validated a theory that Detective Jacobson had, that Domaine was rushing back to Hartford to meet someone for a sale.

Speaker 5 And perhaps that was before he was set to meet with Madhouse in Massachusetts, who, by the way, they were able to find an interview.

Speaker 2 He was nervous, and he had basically said that Domaine was supposed to be bringing an envelope with, he called them birth papers.

Speaker 5 Detective Jacobson thinks that the birth papers might have been some kind of birth certificate.

Speaker 5 This envelope came from Madhouse's son in Jamaica, but it doesn't sound like Madhouse was any more helpful than that.

Speaker 5 I mean, he wouldn't give police his real name at the time, but all indications are that whatever this was had nothing to do with Domain dealing drugs or his disappearance.

Speaker 5 But just when it seemed like the search for Domain was starting to run out of steam, things changed on December 13th.

Speaker 2 There was a heavy snowstorm coming in and officers were assigned to do a snow tow where they remove cars off the road so that they can plow and city buses and everybody can get through.

Speaker 5 It was around 10 p.m. when one of those officers came across a parked car on Ashley Street in Hartford.

Speaker 5 When he ran the plate through NCIC, it came back that it was part of a missing persons incident out of East Hartford. They had found Domain Richards' car.

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Speaker 5 A towing company, or a wrecker, as Detective Jacobson calls them, was called in for the initial tow and they ended up helping police get inside Domaine's car.

Speaker 2 They instructed the wrecker to unlock the doors. The record guy had unlocked the doors to see if Richards may be in the vehicle.

Speaker 2 Once the vehicle doors were open, nothing was located in the front or the rear seats. Then an attempt was made at opening the trunk, but it was unsuccessful.

Speaker 2 One of the cops was able to climb in the back seat, and he pulled the rear seats down and observed that there was a lifeless body of a black male in the trunk area.

Speaker 2 The body was observed to be wearing a blue shirt and a pair of jeans, and his arms were tied in the back, but could not be confirmed confirmed until access to the trunk was made.

Speaker 2 The face of the body could not be seen as the trunk's carpeting had been bunched up towards the rear of the trunk.

Speaker 5 The car, which neighbors told police had been sitting there for about a month, was towed to a secure holding base so that the crime scene unit could process it.

Speaker 5 And they kept the body exactly where it was to preserve evidence. The CSU then pried open the trunk to reveal that the victim's hands were bound together with duct tape and electrical wire.

Speaker 5 And almost his entire face and head area was covered with duct tape.

Speaker 2 They take the tape off and there's a rag in his mouth or it's like a piece of a t-shirt or something.

Speaker 5 The medical examiner would determine Domaine's cause of death to be traumatic asphyxia and the manner of death was homicide and he had no drugs in his system when he died.

Speaker 5 This is where Detective Jacobson came into the picture because he was part of the Hartford Police's major crimes division back then.

Speaker 5 And he immediately noticed a couple of things specifically about how Domaine was found. He was barefoot, his jacket was missing, and he was only wearing a t-shirt on top.

Speaker 2 November to December, you're not going to be outside in a t-shirt. He's inside somebody's house, and it must have been relatively close to where that is.

Speaker 2 It had to have been, because you're not going to drive around with a dead guy in the back. You're just going to pull around the corner.

Speaker 5 Detective Jacobson was also confident that whoever did this to Domain couldn't have done it alone. I mean, Domaine was listed as 6'1, 190 pounds, not a small guy.

Speaker 5 I mean, just getting him into the trunk would take more than one person.

Speaker 5 And he was also confident in the motive. Domain was making up to $10,000 per week, though it's unclear how much of that he actually kept for himself.

Speaker 5 But considering the people he had to deal with, that made him vulnerable, especially because he wasn't known to carry a gun.

Speaker 2 Right away, you're going to say, well, He had loads of marijuana on him, some cash. He's by himself.
He has no gun. He was robbed.
And it was a couple people that did it.

Speaker 2 And I think that conclusion is appropriate and probably correct. This is not like a domestic thing where a jealous husband caught him sleeping with his wife or something.

Speaker 5 For Domaine's family, his murder and the circumstances around it were a tough pill to swallow, not just because of the horrible nature in which he died, but because it painted a picture of Domaine that was far from the truth.

Speaker 5 And I'm like, looking at drugs, is that just helped him to pay his car note.

Speaker 5 Police had spoken with several of Domaine's friends or some family before they found his body.

Speaker 5 And while normally after a drug dealer-related death, police would start hearing things on the streets, that wasn't the case here.

Speaker 2 The strange part about this one is that when there are murders or shootings that are in the city, there's a word on the street.

Speaker 2 So we kind of have an idea, or you know, we kind of have the general sense. With this one, we didn't have that because I've never heard of him before.

Speaker 2 He had no criminal history, so why would the cops even know who he was?

Speaker 5 But someone had it out for him. And detectives hoped that his car would hold physical evidence that told them who.
So the crime scene unit swabbed portions of the exterior and interior for DNA.

Speaker 5 And several pieces of evidence, for instance, like the duct tape that was found on Domain's body, were all sent out for latent print examination.

Speaker 5 They even went and collected a DNA sample from Madhouse, just, you know, in case to cover all their bases.

Speaker 5 Because it looked like if this case was going to get cracked, it would be through some kind of testing. But it wasn't until late spring and early summer of 2008 that those results started to roll in.

Speaker 5 And Detective Jacobson was underwhelmed by the results. The latent print examination offered nothing useful.
And the DNA was about the same.

Speaker 2 My lab reports are maddening to me because really the only DNA that I could possibly get that I thought was going to be good was the duct tape. I don't know if you've ever tried to rip duct tape.

Speaker 2 You really have to use your thumbs. So I'm thinking, oh, there's gonna be tons of epithelial cells all over.
It's gonna be loaded.

Speaker 2 And what I got back was a mixture, or it was overwhelmed by the victim because it's touching his face.

Speaker 5 It does sound like they got some unknown DNA off something.

Speaker 5 But it was put into CODIS and it didn't turn up any hits.

Speaker 2 This one, I got nothing. A bunch of of duct tape, no trauma, and I'm getting no DNA.
I'm getting very, very small mixtures.

Speaker 5 The one thing they were able to determine was that whatever DNA they did have, Madhouse was eliminated as a contributor. Even more confirmation that his story was true.

Speaker 5 Whatever happened to Domain likely happened before he was ever supposed to meet with Madhouse that night.

Speaker 5 So the question becomes, who was Domain so in a hurry to see between meeting with Nick and meeting with Madhouse? so in a hurry that he was cutting people off in traffic.

Speaker 5 I mean, that was still the big unknown in their timeline all these months later. And no one all this time was offering up any names.

Speaker 2 I became really, really concerned that names weren't popping up because usually you kind of get an idea, even if they're wrong.

Speaker 5 But one name did finally pop up sometime in 2008. And it looked like for the first time in this case, Detective Jacobson might have his first real suspect.

Speaker 5 The name came from an informant that we're going to call Martin. He told a friend of Detective Jacobson's that another dealer, someone we're going to call Kenneth, he was the one who killed Domain.

Speaker 5 While there are no details on where Martin got his information, it was enough for Detective Jacobson to take a closer look at Kenneth. And what he found was promising.

Speaker 2 He had a residence on Sergeant Street, which is half a block away from where we found the car. He's like right there.
He's in the area. I talked to some other detectives that were aware of him.

Speaker 2 They knew that he was selling drugs out of a certain address on Sergeant Street. I even remember them telling me that he would keep the drugs in the push tile ceiling.

Speaker 2 He would keep it up there and he'd take it out and they were looking to try to arrest him and they ended up getting tied up on something else and it never happened.

Speaker 5 Detective Jacobson's problem was that he couldn't connect Kenneth to Domain in any way. All he had was was an informant saying that Kenneth was the murderer.

Speaker 5 But he also points out that Kenneth's DNA is not in a system, meaning that he hasn't yet been ruled out through DNA. Detective Jacobson feels strongly that Kenneth could be his guy.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty comfortable that he's probably involved because no other names have ever popped up about it and he lives in the area.

Speaker 5 But it's not like Detective Jacobson can just walk up to Kenneth's door and accuse him of murder. And he didn't have enough enough evidence to get a warrant to obtain a DNA sample.

Speaker 5 So while Kenneth stayed on his radar, the case itself went cold. Nothing else substantial happened until 2011.

Speaker 5 That's when a tip came in from a DEA agent working on a case down in Corpus Christi, Texas. Several guys had been arrested down there for having a bunch of weed.

Speaker 5 And while they were sitting in jail pre-trial, They began talking to one another while the DEA was listening in.

Speaker 2 They're sitting in jail jail talking about Domaine being dead in the trunk of the car and how who set him up and all this other stuff. None of the names are connected to anybody else I have up here.

Speaker 2 So it's just weird that they're talking about that case, but it's up in Hartford.

Speaker 5 This tip, which sounded so promising to Detective Jacobson at the time, went nowhere because he was never allowed to interview these guys.

Speaker 5 And it sounds like the DEA's case was prioritized over little old Hartford's. So what, if anything, these guys knew about Domain's murder is unclear.

Speaker 5 And frustratingly for Detective Jacobson, this was the last big tip in the case, even though over the years, he has continued to push for answers and help.

Speaker 2 I spent time during this period of time poring over cell records, speaking to other agencies like the DEA, the U.S.

Speaker 2 Attorney's Office, even the Chief State's Attorney's Office, asking them for more resources and any other information that they may have.

Speaker 2 And it just kind of spider webbed and just gave me more names and more possibilities of all the reasons why somebody would want to kill him.

Speaker 2 It really didn't lead me back to a suspect, so it was just kind of stuck out there.

Speaker 5 Stuck is exactly where this case currently sits. For Domaine's stepmother, that is not something she can live with.
She has questions that need to be answered.

Speaker 6 I'm just hoping they catch up with whomever

Speaker 6 and want to know why.

Speaker 6 You know, why?

Speaker 5 Those aren't just questions for Dion.

Speaker 5 They're for all of Domaine's family trying to make sense of this. Most importantly, a son that Domain left behind.

Speaker 5 For Detective Jacobson, this case has been a long road, but he is confident that it can be solved despite its issues.

Speaker 2 If we never found Domaine's body and we only had his car, there's no blood in his car because it didn't happen in there. It happened in a house that we'd never know about.

Speaker 2 So they were not very bright by putting him in there. That's what leads me to believe that I'll catch the guys.
Eventually I'm going to get them. We just got to get there.

Speaker 2 And the science is what's going to help me.

Speaker 5 Detective Jacobson is interested in independent labs willing to come forward and get involved, even if it's just giving advice on how best to proceed with testing.

Speaker 2 I'm open to anybody who's willing to help.

Speaker 2 Another investigator, another somebody from the science community, friends or family of the victim, or maybe somebody knows the suspect, knows that he did it, and is too afraid to kind of come forward.

Speaker 2 Maybe now they're like, hey, listen, I think I know who did it.

Speaker 5 Jacobson is not afraid to ask for help, a quality I greatly admire.

Speaker 5 His priority is to close this case, no matter where that help comes from, because at the end of the day, Domain and his family deserve that.

Speaker 2 He wasn't a bad guy. He just made some bad decisions and it got him here.
He never hurt anybody. I've never heard of Domain being violent.

Speaker 2 He comes from a decent family and I hope we can put this together.

Speaker 5 If you know anything about the murder of Domaine Richards in November 2007, please call the Hartford Police Department's Major Crimes Division at 860-757-4000.

Speaker 5 Or you can call the cold case tip line at 860-722-TIPS. There's also an email, which we will put in the show notes.

Speaker 5 And for any labs interested in helping Detective Jacobson out, we've got his email in the show notes and our blog post too.

Speaker 5 The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

Speaker 5 So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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