Transcription
There are no words to sum up having to turn a predator into my prey because I told him, "You made my daughter your prey, and now you are mine." And I meant every word then, and I still mean it now. So, here we go. Guilty, guilty.
This week, I'm bringing you the story of Unique Harris again, with an update. We told Unique's story back in December 2021, and Isaac Moyi was still awaiting trial for Unique's murder. But on June 23, 2023, he was found guilty. A combination of the DNA evidence found, which prosecutors determined was semen on the couch cushion, and the information from his ankle monitor, they were able to build an airtight case against Isaac Moyi, even without Unique's body.
During their presentation, the prosecution argued that the motive for Unique's murder was jealousy. They argued that Isaac Moyi came over to Unique's home that night, and while he was there, she was on the phone with her boyfriend. They said that that enraged Isaac, and so he murdered Unique. It took 13 years for justice to be served for Unique's family, but they never wavered in their fight for that justice. Convicting someone of murder without a body is hard, but that just lets you know how solid the evidence was against Isaac Moyi. Hopefully, now with him safely behind bars, he will finally tell Unique's family what he did with her body. Isaac Moyi has not been sentenced yet, but he faces 40 years in jail. There has been some closure with his conviction, but Unique's family still grieves her loss and is haunted by the fact that they have not been able to bring her home. So, this week, take some time and listen again to this episode. This is Unique's story.
When Unique Harris went missing in October 2010, her family was completely torn apart. Unique was a young mother, a daughter, and a sister. But the night that she disappeared, no one knew that it would take 10 years to get any real answers about what happened to Unique. The night that she was last seen, Unique was originally from Richmond, Virginia. She was the oldest of three siblings. Unique, her brother, and sister were raised by their mother, Valencia Harris. Her mom, Valencia, had Unique when she was young, and she said it was almost like they had grown up together. Unique and her siblings had different fathers, and so for the first few years of her life, it was just Unique and her mom. Valencia said that Unique was the most beautiful baby that she had ever seen. She was like a real-life baby doll, and Valencia would dress her up in frilly dresses and bows. In a YouTube interview in March 2020, Valencia said that as a little girl, Unique loved purses and baby dolls. She was always carrying one everywhere she went. Valencia said Unique's love for baby dolls showed a motherly instinct way before she became a mother herself. Eventually, Valencia met a man, and they had two children, Unique's younger siblings.
In a 2011 Washington Post article about Unique's disappearance, Unique was described as the quintessential big sister. She was the kind of person who made a big deal out of little things, and that motherly instinct shaped the kind of big sister that she was. Unique and her siblings all went to John Marshall High School in Richmond, Virginia, but the first three years of high school, Unique actually went to Forestville Military Academy in Forestville, Maryland, before she transferred to John Marshall for her senior year. Unique's mom told the Washington Post that Unique was a good student, but a little bit more into her friends and she wasn't to school. So, she was very much a normal teenager, but it was because she cared about people a lot, and she really just wanted to make sure that everyone got along.
In 2004, Unique graduated from high school, and not long after, she gave birth to her oldest son, Richard. And then two years later, she gave birth to another son, who she named You Andre. Now, there isn't much information about her sons' father, but it appears that they were together for a few years before their relationship ended. In 2006, Valencia, Unique's mom, moved from Washington to DC, but Unique and her siblings stayed in Virginia. Her brother, Ardell, said that during that time, Unique held the family down where the matriarch moved. Family was everything to Unique, and she was always there for her siblings, no matter what.
After ending the relationship with her children's father, Unique started to think about her future. The end of her relationship gave her an opportunity to start over, and so in the summer of 2010, Unique moved to DC to be closer to her mom and to get a fresh start. Now, as you may know, housing in DC is very expensive, and so for a single mom to find housing in a good neighborhood is virtually impossible if you're not making a significant amount of money. Now, it appears that when Unique first came to DC, she was staying with Valencia while she searched for a place, but because of the costs, Unique was only able to find an apartment that she could afford in Southeast DC.
Now, Southeast DC is a far cry from the tourist-driven downtown area of DC, where the White House and the Capitol are. Many people who visit DC come to see the historic sites or to visit the many museums. They're not always aware that many parts of DC are plagued by the same issues that most inner cities are, which are poverty and crime. And so, moving to Southeast DC was something that Valencia was worried about for Unique. Unique had never lived in a neighborhood like Southeast DC, and so her mother feared that it wasn't the right place for her daughter and her young grandchildren. But Unique had already made up her mind, and so she moved to Southeast DC. The apartment that she found was only about five minutes from where Valencia lived, and so although it wasn't the best neighborhood, Valencia felt better knowing that she was only five minutes away from her daughter and her grandsons.
Now, once in DC, Unique had decided that she wanted to go back to school. Remember, she didn't just move to DC to be close to her mom; she also wanted to start a better life for her and her boys. So, Unique had applied to a massage therapy school, and Valencia, you know, who would always supported her daughter, agreed to help Unique with childcare while she went to class. In September 2010, Unique moved into her apartment. Her mom, Valencia, said that she and Unique would see each other pretty much every day while she settled into her new apartment.
On Friday, October 8, 2010, Unique picked up her sons from school, and they headed over to her mom's house for a visit. Her grandfather had come into town too. He had come to visit Valencia, who had just broken her leg and had recently had surgery. Valencia was on bed rest at the time, and so Unique had been helping her mom out a lot during those past few weeks. But her grandfather, who was named Richard, when she had named her oldest son after him, had come to help and give Unique a break from caring for her mom for the weekend so she could finish getting moved into her new apartment. Unique visited with her grandfather and her mom, and her grandfather apparently cut hair. So, she had asked him if he would cut the boys' hair for her before they left. But by the time they were finished, it was dark outside, and Unique didn't drive at this time. And so, walking or taking public transportation home this late with her boys just really wasn't an option.
Now, Valencia would have normally, you know, taken her daughter home, but because she was on bed rest, the grandfather, you know, grandfather Richard said that he would take Unique and the boys home instead. Now, Unique's grandfather dropped them off, and he waited for them to get in the house, and he told Unique that he would talk to her the next day.
Now, there isn't much information about Unique's activities during the day on October 9, 2010, but we know that that night she had decided to stay in and have a movie night with her sons. Unique's cousin, Tiffany, and her nine-year-old daughter were also living in DC at this time, and so they had come over to visit. Tiffany's good daughter was going to spend the night, and so Unique and the kids got ready, and Tiffany left for the night, and the kids got ready to have a sleepover and a movie night.
Now, at around 8:30 that night, Valencia spoke to Unique. Her grandfather had called to speak to her briefly too that night, and they both were called hearing the children in the background. And Valencia said that she could hear the kids laughing and playing, and everything seemed perfectly fine. Unique told her mom that they were having movie night and that they were getting ready to bake cookies and pop popcorn. Unique was definitely the kind of mom that was going to make sure, like, a movie night at home felt really, really special.
Now, that night, Unique and her sons and her little cousins, you know, watched movies until the kids got sleepy. We don't know what time exactly that the kids went to bed, but all the children went to sleep in the boys' room, which was located right next to Unique's room. The next morning, when the children woke up, Unique was nowhere to be found. I'm not sure what time the children woke up, but at around 9:00 a.m., Tiffany, Unique's cousin, got a call from her nine-year-old daughter, and her daughter told her that they had woken up and that Unique wasn't there.
Now, this was very odd, but Tiffany told her daughter, you know, not to worry, that perhaps Unique has stepped out for a second and thought that she would be back before the kids woke up. So, Tiffany hung up with her daughter and she started to call Unique's cell phone, but according to Tiffany, the phone just kept ringing. Tiffany then called her daughter back and tried to reassure her that Unique would be back soon. According to the Washington Post, Tiffany was across town at the time, and she was unable to get to her Unique lived, but she had already pre-arranged to get her daughter at 3:00 p.m. that day.
Now, I think at this point, Tiffany was concerned about her cousin, but she didn't want to call Valencia and alarm her until she was sure that something was actually wrong. Now, she kept in contact with her daughter throughout the morning, but when Tiffany arrived at Unique's apartment at 3:00 p.m. and the children were still alone, she knew it was time to call Valencia and let her know what was going on. Tiffany called Valencia, and when Valencia spoke to Tiffany, they both first, at first, tried to figure out a plausible reason why Unique wouldn't be in the apartment. According to the Washington Post, they contemplated the idea that perhaps for some reason, Unique had woken up early to run an errand and got stuck somewhere waiting for public transportation. But Valencia, in her gut, knew that that didn't sound right. It wasn't like Unique to do something like that, and besides, she was also not answering the phone.
They asked the children if they had heard anything, but they really couldn't remember. Tiffany's daughter said that she kind of remembered hearing a man's voice, but she wasn't sure if it was, you know, coming from the TV or if it was coming from the apartment next door. The boys, they had fallen asleep right away after Unique had put them in their bed, and so they couldn't remember anything. Valencia, Tiffany, and Richard had been calling around to different family members to see if anyone had spoken to Unique, but no one had. Richard, Unique's grandfather, went over to Unique's apartment and he stayed with the boys for a little while, hoping that Unique would just walk through the door. But ultimately, he decided to take the boys to Valencia's house. After dropping the boys off at Valencia's, Richard returned back to the apartment to get some clothes for the boys.
Now, while in the apartment, he looked around to see if he could find anything that would give him any idea about where his granddaughter was. He first noticed that her purse was still there. It was hanging on the chair, which meant that wherever she had gone, she couldn't have been planning to be there very long. However, her keys and her phone were missing. He then went to Unique's bedroom, where he saw her glasses folded on a pillow in her room. Richard's heart dropped because he immediately knew that something was very, very wrong. According to Valencia, Unique had bad eyesight since she was a kid and had been wearing glasses consistently since fourth grade. Unique could barely see without her glasses, and so there was no way that she could have gone somewhere voluntarily without her glasses.
Whatever rationale Unique's family had tried to use to explain where she might have gone that morning had now turned to pure dread because they now know wherever Unique is, she most likely is there against her will. Richard told the Washington Post that he didn't remember dialing his daughter's number, but after finding these glasses, he called her and said, "Valencia, honey, it does not look good at all." At the time her father spoke those words, Valencia had no idea that when she watched her daughter leave her home the night before, that it would be the last time that she would see Unique again.
In October 2010, 24-year-old Unique Harris had been living in her Southeast DC apartment for five weeks when she seemingly vanished from her apartment. Unique's family had found her purse and her wallet inside at her apartment, but more disturbing than that, they had found her glasses, which Unique could not see without. In the early hours after Unique was discovered missing, her family had hoped that she had just gone to run an errand, but when hours went by and Unique didn't answer her phone or return to her apartment, her family knew that something was wrong, and her glasses being left behind was confirmation. Valencia contacted the Metropolitan Police Department to report that Unique was missing. Valencia said that in the beginning, she was not happy with the police's response to her daughter missing. As usual, the police's initial response was to assume that Unique must have just left on her own. Valencia was offended by the assumption because she knew her daughter and the circumstances of her now being gone. It didn't make any sense to her. The police would assume that Unique had just disappeared voluntarily. Unique did not have a car, and so how would she have left? Eventually, investigators did begin to look into Unique's disappearance, and it didn't take them long to realize that this was not a case of someone who had just left on her own. Police visited Unique's apartment and found the apartment showed no signs that there had been a struggle. There were also no signs of forced entry either.
Now, the building where Unique lived wasn't exactly secure. There were no surveillance cameras in the hallways, and the intercom system did not work, so police were unable to see if anyone had entered or left the apartment that night. They began their investigation by speaking to neighbors of Unique's. Those who were willing to speak to police couldn't remember seeing anything that night. Once police officers learned about the items left behind, observed the conditions of the apartment, and spoke to Unique's family, they began to suspect that possibly foul play may have been involved. The pieces of the case that they had learned at that point did not point to a woman who would leave her children and little cousin in a home alone and then start a new life. Unique was a responsible person and a loving, caring mom. She never used drugs, she didn't drink at all, so police could not find a reason or an excuse as to why Unique advantaged. She also wasn't having any issues in her life. She was getting ready for school, she had just moved into her apartment, she was looking forward to her new life in DC.
Investigators continued to search for clues about what happened to Unique. They learned about the father of her children, who was living in Virginia at the time. Now, I have read reports that stated that Unique and her ex had a decent relationship, however, they were in court at the time over custody arrangements for the boys. Of course, spoke to him, but he had an alibi and he also passed a polygraph test, and so he was quickly ruled out. The theory is about what could have happened to Unique. Or abundant. Police had ruled out the possibility that Unique left on her own, and without any signs of forced entry, they began to think that perhaps Unique had known the person who was responsible for her disappearance and let him into her apartment or voluntarily left with them, expecting them to come right back. But the problem for investigators at the time is that they didn't seem to have any evidence of either being true. And the weeks following Unique's disappearance, investigators seemed to be finding nothing substantial that would lead them to finding Unique or any theories about why someone would want to hurt her. But that was until Unique's mom revealed that just a few days before Unique vanished, she witnessed a murder right outside her apartment window.
And Valencia told detectives that she had got a call from Unique a few days before she vanished. Valencia recalled her daughter being very upset on the phone and telling her that she had just witnessed a murder. However, Unique lived on the upper floor of the building, and so police doubted that Unique had been seen by the perpetrator of this murder. Unique had also not spoken to the police about what she saw. Although the theory that Unique's disappearance was related to what she witnessed, it seemed like it might be a credible one. It wasn't long before police ruled out that theory. They did not believe that the murder that Unique had allegedly witnessed had anything to do with her disappearance.
In the months following Unique's disappearance, the search for her continued, but there was very little information released about the case. The case was transferred from the missing person unit to a criminal unit. Investigators said that the circumstances of Unique's disappearance led them to believe that a crime had been committed and that Unique could possibly be in danger. Valencia became the driving force behind the efforts to locate her daughter. She spoke to local news organizations and passed out missing persons flyers. Eventually, after a few months, she was connected to the Black and Missing Foundation, which, if you don't know, is an organization founded by two black women to help find missing black people. Over the past few years, the Black and Missing Foundation has been getting more and more of the attention that they deserve, but this organization has been doing this work for a very long time, and by the time they got involved with Unique's case, they had already been involved in over 800 cases of missing black people.
A year after Unique vanished, the Black and Missing Foundation put together a video of Valencia asking the public for any help finding her daughter. "So, anything about what happened to my daughter or where she is, I would be eternally grateful if you help us in finding her. Some information that you think may be small may not be small. There's no such thing as small information with something like this. You may know something that can bring my daughter home to her sons." You clearly hear the pain in Valencia's voice, but she refused to give up finding her daughter.
Investigators continued to look for clues, but the mystery of what happened to Unique was something they couldn't find the answers to. The information they were getting all led to nothing. They interviewed a maintenance man who had been fired from Unique's building for illegally entering apartments, and he was also a convicted felon, but they found no connection. They followed even the most mundane of details and leads, like one about an ice cream truck driver Unique had gotten into an argument with, but he was also ruled out as a suspect. Investigators also received tips of reported sightings as far away as Detroit, but once again, none of the tips led anywhere to any answers about what happened to Unique or where she was. There were also people out there, out there that just flat-out made up stuff about Unique. Valencia got a call one time from someone who told her that she was never going to see her daughter again. Now, investigators believed that this was a prank call, but the months quickly turned into years, and whatever investigators did know at the time, they were reluctant to tell the public. There were so many unanswered questions that some worried that they were never going to get the answers to them.
Two years after Unique went missing, the Metropolitan Police Department released a video featuring Valencia again, asking for the public's help, but again, they received nothing that gave them any real answers. Time continues to move on. Unique's boys went back to Virginia to live with their father, and Valencia turned her pain into activism. She wanted to help other families whose loved ones had gone missing, but her primary fight was always to find her daughter, and Valencia fought hard to keep her daughter's story alive. In 2014, she was featured on the show "Our America with Lisa Lange," where she talked about Unique and her search for answers. Valencia was everywhere, appealing to anyone who would listen to her and help keep her daughter's story out there.
After years of dead ends and no signs of Unique, investigators began to suspect that Unique may no longer be alive, and that in order to move her case to homicide, they asked Valencia to petition the court to have Unique declared legally dead. Now, declaring Unique dead was not something that Valencia wanted to do, but she agreed because she wanted the detectives to be able to thoroughly investigate in this case. But in no way did Valencia believe that Unique was actually dead. She was not going to give up on finding her daughter alive.
In 2017, seven years after Unique went missing, investigators began to make some movement in the case. The case had been assigned to a new set of detectives, and they had re-interviewed several people, including Unique's oldest son, who was five at the time his mom disappeared. As you may remember, when Unique first went missing, neither of the boys could remember seeing anything. Now, at the time, none of this information was public, but when investigators spoke to Unique's son again, he told them that he remembered waking up in the middle of the night and opening his door. He recalled seeing a man that he knew as Iceberg in the apartment. He then told them that he closed his door, and that he could hear his mom saying, "Get out, get out," and then he heard what sounded like muffled screams.
Now, Iceberg was a man by the name of Isaac Moyet. It was someone that police had spoken to several times during the previous seven years, but police had not said much about the people that they had interviewed, and they had not named any person of interest. So, to learn that the person her son was now saying was in the apartment was someone that police had spoken to several times, it's very interesting. Now, it was a relator reveal that during the interviews with detectives, that Isaac told them contradictory stories, and at one point admitted that he was the last person to have seen Unique. AKA Iceberg was someone who was an acquaintance of Unique, and his name had come up early on in the investigation, but police never mentioned him publicly.
Now, when Unique went missing, detectives had collected bodily fluids from her couch. Someone had attempted to cut a piece of fabric off of the couch in order to conceal their DNA, but investigators were still able to collect the sample. Now, learning about these things now is actually confirmation that perhaps in some of these cases and unsolved cases, investigators do have more answers than they are willing to share, because in 2017, no one who had been following this case knew these details, and the name Isaac Moyet had never been mentioned. The fact that DNA had been collected from the scene and there was an obvious effort to conceal that DNA clearly meant that the possibility that Unique had left on her own was never actually really a possibility. But as the public continues to look for answers, the Metropolitan Police were zeroing in on their suspect.
A year before investigators interviewed Unique's son again, Isaac Moyet was arrested on an assault charge, and he was serving time in prison, and therefore his DNA had been collected and entered into the system. The new information from Unique's son led investigators to test the DNA found on the couch, and they were able to match it to Isaac Moyet. But I wasn't arrested in 2017. Now, it's not clear, but my assumption is that the police just didn't have enough evidence to prove that Isaac had done something to Unique. Three years went by, and none of the information the detectives learned in 2017 made it to the public. But in December 2020, just one year ago, detectives announced that an arrest had been made in connection to the disappearance of Unique Harris. Isaac Moyet was charged with second-degree murder. For those who had been following the case, the arrest had come as a shock. There had never been any suspects, no persons of interest, and so for there to suddenly be an arrest took people by surprise. Of course, they didn't know what police had known since 2017.
However, once the affidavit was released, people learned exactly what the police had uncovered. They learned that the night that Unique vanished, Isaac Moyet had spoken to her on the phone at least 13 times. Isaac, however, was also wearing a GPS monitor, and according to the affidavit, police were able to place him at Unique's apartment that night, and he did not leave until the next morning at 7:30 a.m. The GPS monitor said that he then went to a wooded area behind his home. And then in October 2020, a jailhouse informant came forward and told detectives that Isaac Moyet told him something about a missing girl, but he said that Isaac told him, "They will never get me because I did it right away, so they will never figure it out."
The arrest of Isaac Moyet brought some closure to Valencia and Unique's families, but that's a lot of questions too. And the biggest question of all was, where is Unique? Isaac Moyet is charged with second-degree murder, but Unique's body has never been found. Isaac denies killing Unique and has told investigators that he believes that she just left because she was stressed about her life, which everyone, including police, knows is not true. Now, it's not clear how long police knew the information about the GPS monitor that Isaac was wearing, nor is it clear why it took so long to put the pieces together when they had interviewed Isaac in 2011. We also don't know why such an obvious person of interest was not named or why he wasn't required to provide a DNA sample if they had DNA to compare it to. However, an arrest in this case had given Valencia something that after all these years, she really needed: that somebody will be held responsible for what happened to her daughter.
Now, we don't know what the police believe was the motive for Unique's murder, but investigators believe that Unique was murdered sometime between the hours of 3:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. on the 10th, and that Isaac Moyet removed her body before the children woke up. In October 2021, Isaac Moyet was officially indicted by a grand jury and was set to make his first court appearance this past November. Now, we will have to wait until the trial to find out more about how the police got here and what took them so long, but for now, Valencia, at least, you know he's off the street. Isaac Moyet's murder trial is set for May 2023.
Now, Unique Harris disappeared from her apartment 11 years ago, and she still has never been found. The arrest of Isaac Moyet for her murder solidifies for investigators that Unique is in fact dead, but without a body, there's always this small hope that perhaps she's still out there somewhere. But Valencia has accepted the devastating reality that Unique is probably no longer with us. For 10 years, Unique's mother and family fought to keep her story alive. They never gave up, and although they have yet to find Unique, they have never given up on that either. They want to bring her home so that she can rest peacefully. We still don't know exactly what happened to Unique that night, but we know that she didn't deserve to be thrown from her young sons. For families of people who have gone missing or whose murders are unsolved, do not give up your fight for justice. Never give up, because as long as you still breathe life into their stories and into their cases, there's always the possibility that you too can get justice.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Threads.