The Suspicious Death of Kasha Blount (Massachusetts)

Dark Downeast

This episode examines the unsolved 1990 death of Kasha Blount, a pregnant teenager found on a Dorchester dead-end street with unexplained injuries and missing belongings. The investigation stalled as Boston police and

Key takeaways

• Kasha Blount was found pregnant and wrapped in a blanket on Bernard Street with facial trauma noted by first responders but not confirmed during Dr. Gerald Feigen's autopsy
• The Suffolk County Medical Examiner approved cremation before toxicology results returned, citing assumptions about drug involvement that Phyllis Johnson strongly disputed

Main topics

• Unsolved homicide investigation
• Medical examiner protocol and controversy

Notable quotes

"The medical examiner was unable to determine the cause of death. Evidence indicated that death was consistent with suffocation or strangulation. Strong circumstantial case that defendant killed the victim."

Conclusion

The episode underscores how procedural delays, ambiguous forensic findings, and systemic tensions

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Along the New England coast, you learn to watch the horizon because not every light in the sky has an easy explanation. On So Supernatural, sisters Rasha and Yvette investigate UFO sightings, alien encounters, and stories that challenge everything we think we know about our world. If you're drawn to mysteries waiting just beyond the stars, listen to So Supernatural wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:30) On a Saturday morning in 1990, the body of a teenager was found on a dead-end street in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The scene raised immediate concerns, but the autopsy did not answer the question everyone needed answered most. How did Kasha Blunt die? Police waited on the medical examiner, the medical examiner waited on police, and Kasha's mother pushed for answers while a reporter started asking questions. Finally, the investigation turned toward Kasha's final plans, the boyfriend she expected to meet, and the belongings missing when she was found. The case would reach a jury, but the question at the center of it all never went away. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Kasha Blunt on Dark Down East. Speaker 1 (1:27) Just after 7.30 on the morning of Saturday, February 17th, 1990, Boston police and EMS were sent to Bernard Street in Dorchester, across from St. Mary's Cemetery. The call brought them to the end of a dead-end street, where a young woman was lying on her back, wrapped in a blanket. By the time police and an ambulance reached her, she had no signs of life. Her extremities and jaw were stiff and cold. A Department of Health and Hospitals report notes frozen blood and fluid coming from her nose, an apparent cut on her forehead, and possible bruises to her face. Under suspected diagnosis, someone circled cardiac arrest, simply meaning her heart had stopped. It didn't explain why. There was no identification to give this person a name. She was a young black female, visibly pregnant. She was wearing a cream-colored knit sweater pulled halfway up her torso, a black shirt, partially unzipped gray pants, black shoes, white socks, white underwear, round gold bracelets on her left wrist, and a white hair tie. Two responding Boston police officers also wrote in their report that the woman was bleeding from the nose and mouth area and had a bruise on her head. They, too, noted that her pants zipper was down and her underwear was exposed. A preliminary field report from the Suffolk County District Attorney's Homicide Division described the scene in even sharper terms. It said the victim was found with apparent multiple trauma to face. The report also noted that the area was known for sex work and that spent condoms were recovered nearby, about 30 feet from the body. Investigators didn't know what or who they were dealing with yet. Meanwhile, across the city, the person who knew her best was just beginning to realize that something was wrong. Speaker 1 (3:20) The last time Phyllis Johnson heard her daughter Kasha Blunt's voice was the morning before the body was found. In a written statement provided to Boston police, Phyllis said she woke up around 7.30 on Friday, February 16, 1990, and heard the kids downstairs. Her two nephews, one a teenager, one younger, who she raised as her own, and her daughter, Kasha. Around 7.45 or 8 that morning, Kasha came into her bedroom to borrow some perfume. Phyllis didn't see her, but she heard Kasha say she was going to work. Phyllis got home from work at 10.30 that night. Her nephews were there, but the older one, Michael, said Kasia wasn't. And he hadn't heard from her either. Kasia was 19. She worked. She had friends. Phyllis assumed she would call, so she went to bed around midnight. When Phyllis woke up Saturday morning, Kasia still wasn't home. But because Kasia usually worked from 10 to 5, Phyllis thought she might have already left for work. The day passed. and still Kasha did not come home. By Sunday, the worry set in. Around noon that day, Phyllis called Kasha's workplace. She was a sales clerk at Cherry Web and Terrain, or CWT, a clothing store in Dedham, about an hour away from home by public transportation. The CWT employee Phyllis spoke to said Kasha wasn't there yet. When Phyllis called back later, Kasha still hadn't arrived. Then the employee told Phyllis that this was the second day Kasha missed work without an explanation. Phyllis tried to reason through it. Maybe there had been a delay on the bus or train. Maybe something had held her up. Phyllis called Kasha's father in New York. He was supposed to be having a party, and Phyllis wanted to know if Kasha decided to attend. She hadn't. Speaker 4 (5:16) By Monday morning, Speaker 1 (5:17) February 19th, Phyllis went to see Kasha's on-again, off-again boyfriend, 19-year-old Lennox David James Jr., who went by David. According to Phyllis' written statement, David said he hadn't seen Kasha in two months and had last talked to her about a week and a half earlier. After checking with area hospitals to see if Kasha had been admitted and not finding her there either, Phyllis reported her daughter missing. The next morning, Phyllis met with a Boston detective who suggested that maybe Kasia was with a friend or boyfriend and didn't want to call. But Phyllis rejected that. Kasia always let her know where she was, and she was more than five months pregnant. She wouldn't just go off-grid without telling anyone. While Phyllis was still at the police station, an officer told her they'd located a person who matched Kasia's description. Phyllis went to the morgue and viewed an image of the person on a television screen and at first, she didn't think it was Kasia. But back at the police station, she was shown a Polaroid of the same person. That was when she realized she was looking at her daughter. Speaker 1 (6:32) Kasha's full name was Kasha Lateech Akita Michelle Blount. Phyllis told Alice McQuillan of the Boston Herald that she gave Kasha so many names because she was her only child at the time. The mother and daughter were extremely close. When Phyllis went on vacation, Kasha slept in her mother's bed because she missed her so much. She also loved talking on the phone and called her mother several times a day, every day, even while at work, just to say hello. Kasia was an honor roll student at St. Gregory's High School when she graduated in 1988. She was also co-captain of the cheerleading squad and played on the volleyball team. She wanted a lot out of her life, and she intended to get it. Her mother insisted that she didn't drink, she didn't use substances, and she didn't party, especially not while pregnant. Kasia had been seeing her boyfriend David on and off for about five years. According to multiple witness statements contained in the case file documents I have, Kasia identified David as the father of her child. She was very excited to become a mother. She kept up with her prenatal care, and at her last appointment on February 3rd, she had a normal blood pressure and heartbeat. Witnesses told police that she also had a shopping trip planned to pick up. clothes and toys and maybe a stroller on the night she was last seen alive. Speaker 1 (7:58) According to the case file documents I received from the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, Kosh's case was treated as a sudden death, not a homicide, until evidence suggested otherwise. However, a report from Detectives Paul McDonough and Donald Brown notes that while the medical examiner's ruling was still pending, detectives were interviewing people who might be helpful if the medical examiner later classified Kosh's death as a homicide. Phyllis told a detective that one of Kasha's friends told her Kasha talked about going shopping with David after work that Friday to buy things for the baby. Detectives spoke to the friend of Kasha's directly and she said she saw Kasha around 1.30 or 2 p.m. on Friday, February 16th while Kasha was working at CWT and that Kasha said she was going shopping with David after her shift. Kasha said she would call the friend when she got home. but that call never came. On or around February 28th, detectives interviewed Kasha's co-workers. One co-worker said that sometime before noon on February 16th, Kasha received a phone call at work. The co-worker initially answered it before handing the phone to Kasha and said the voice on the line was male. After Kasha hung up, she told the co-worker it was David. and that he was going to meet her after work so they could go to Child World to buy things for the baby. The same co-worker said that sometime around 5.15, Kasha finished work and left the store, but came back just a few minutes later saying she had forgotten her check. According to the report, co-workers asked if Kasha would miss her bus, but Kasha said that David was outside waiting for her. At the time, she was wearing light gray checked pants, a cream-colored sweater, a blue and white scarf, and a black ankle-length leather coat. Now, Phyllis had also told police that when Kasha left her work on Friday morning, she was wearing a long black leather coat, boots, and a black and brown purse. Phyllis hadn't actually seen Kasha leave that morning, though. She later said she heard what sounded like Kasha's leather coat hitting the stairs as she walked down them. The black leather coat and purse were not among the items found with Kasha's body. This story repeated itself across other witness interviews documented in the case file. Witnesses kept saying Kasha was meeting up with David, and more than one witness said she was wearing her full-length black leather coat that day. A February 26th report contained in the files I received from the district attorney's office shows detectives were trying to reach David in the earliest days of the case, too. The report notes that further investigation was being conducted, including, quote, attempts on making contact with victim's boyfriend, David James, end quote. In the records I have, though, it doesn't look like those early attempts were successful. Meanwhile, The scene back at Bernard Street had its own set of leads. Speaker 1 (11:10) A witness told police that on the night of February 16th, the night Kasha was last seen alive, there was a 1978 or 1979 Plymouth or Dodge van on Bernard Street sometime between 10.30 and 11.30 p.m. Newspaper reporting later described what seems to be a similar lead. The operator of a towing company near St. Mary's Cemetery reportedly saw a 78 or 79 van with a lot of bodywork primer pulled up along Bernard Street. in the early morning hours of February 17th. He thought whoever was inside might be dumping garbage, so he followed the van for about a mile before losing it. At some point, police took that witness to look at a van that may have matched the description. According to the tow truck operator, it was not the same van, though. The records available to me so far do not establish whether the van had anything to do with Kasha. Another lead came from a nearby service station. A man who worked there told police that a tall, light-skinned black man, about 30 to 40 years old, wearing a red baseball cap and a stonewashed jacket, had come into the station and said he'd been looking for cans when he noticed a woman's body on Bernard Street. The man then walked up Talbot Avenue toward Codman Square. The service station worker said the man was with an unknown woman. He described her as black and wearing a dark-colored or black long coat, and that she also said she had seen the body on Bernard Street. There's one more detail from the early investigation that stands out to me,