Transcription
On this episode of Black Girlcon, I tell you the stories of two unsolved murders: Marquia Benson and Randisha Love.
Marquia Benson was 36 years old when she was murdered in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on March 30th, 2016. The day she was murdered, Marquia did not show up to work. When her co-worker and her boyfriend arrived at her apartment and went inside, they found Marquia dead in the bathtub. She had been beaten to death. After her murder, police did identify a person of interest, but her murder is still unsolved.
Randisha Love was 17 years old when her mother and brother found her shot to death inside the front hallway of their home in College Park, Georgia, on January 12th, 2016. Randisha's family had just moved to the area and didn't really know anyone. The day she was killed, Randisha had spent the day at school, but sometime after she arrived home, a killer arrived at her door. Seven years later, her murder is also unsolved. Who killed Marquia Benson and Randisha Love, and why? This is Marquia and Randisha's story.
In March 2016, 36-year-old Marquia Benson was living in Secane, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia located in Upper Darby Township, Delaware County. At the time, she was working at a packaging company in Chester. She was the youngest of three girls, but her sister Monique said that she and their other sister, Monica, always admired Marquia because she was a hard worker who had accomplished a lot. She spoke to Unsolved Mysteries in 2021 about her sister and said that they jokingly referred to her as a "career college student" because she was always taking some kind of class or enrolling in a new course. Marquia, according to her sister, also loved to travel. She had been to places like Germany and Italy. "She was young, she was vibrant, she was intelligent. At 36, she had accomplished more than most and had her whole life ahead of her." Monique sat at a press conference after her sister's murder, but someone stole all of that from Marquia and her family.
On March 29th, 2016, according to neighbors, Marquia was seen arriving at home around 8 PM after picking up some dinner from a local restaurant. At the time, she was living in the New Orleans Park Apartments located on South Avenue in Secane. The next morning, March 30th, 2016, Marquia was scheduled to be at work. She exchanged some texts with her mom that morning as she got ready for work. Her mom said that nothing about the messages seemed out of the ordinary. The last text from Marquia was around 8 AM. After that, her mom assumed that she had gone on to work as expected.
But later that afternoon, Marquia's mom got a call from her job informing her that Marquia never showed up for work and she did not call out, which was completely out of character for her. After Marquia's job called her mom, she called her daughter Monique, who told Unsolved Mysteries that she remembered her mom calling her and telling her that Marquia hadn't shown up for work and had not called out. She said that she was freaking out because she knew that her sister didn't do stuff like that. She asked her mom if anyone had tried to call her, and when her mom told her that she had tried herself several times to call her with no answer, Monique said that her stomach sank. She was living in Atlanta at the time, and so finding out over the phone that something like this was going on and being unable to help was hard for her.
Marquia had a boyfriend at the time, and according to reports, he said that he also was texting her that morning, but like her mom, stopped receiving messages around 8 AM. After that, he said he texted her again, but when she didn't respond, he figured that she was just busy at work. But Marquia had never made it to work.
After a few hours went by and no one had heard from her, a co-worker of hers decided that she would go over to Marquia's apartment to check on her. Her boyfriend had decided to do the same, and coincidentally, they arrived at Marquia's apartment complex around the same time. It was around 4:30 PM when Marquia's co-worker and boyfriend got to the New Orleans Park Apartments. In the parking lot near her apartment, they found her car, and so they knew that she was home. But when they go and knock on the door, no one answers, and the door was locked. Since neither of them had a key to the apartment, they went to the apartment complex office and explained to them that they were trying to do a welfare check on Marquia and needed to be let into the apartment. The office agreed to let them in, and when they entered the apartment, it was obvious that something horrific had happened inside.
There were papers all over the floor, and the dining room chairs had been turned over. Personal papers of hers were also out and spread all over the floor, as if someone had been looking for something. The apartment was also extremely humid, and as her boyfriend made his way to the back of the apartment, he could hear water running in the bathroom. As he walked past, when he went inside the bathroom, he found Marquia. She was lying naked in the tub. She was dead. It was an unbelievable scene, but it was clear Marquia had been murdered.
When police arrive at Marquia's apartment, they begin to process the murder scene. For these cops, this kind of murder doesn't happen often, and so what they found inside the apartment, for them, was one of the worst scenes they've ever encountered. Detectives determined that the hot water had been running in the tub for at least 12 hours when Marquia was found, which is why the apartment was so humid. When they found her in the tub, Marquia was lying on her back with her face underneath the spigot. The hot water had caused burns on her face. Inside Marquia's bedroom, detectives found blood on the walls and on her pillow and mattress. The amount of blood in the bedroom indicated to them that the attack had likely started in the bedroom. However, there were no real signs of a struggle. Nothing in the bedroom was knocked over, but they believed that Marquia had been knocked unconscious and then dragged into the bathroom, which was right next to her room. They then believe that the killer placed her in the tub and turned on the scolding hot water and then left her for dead. Monique said that she remembers getting the call from her mom sometime after 5 PM that evening telling her that they had found her sister dead. It was the worst day of her life.
So, who would want to kill Marquia and why? An autopsy had determined that Marquia had died from blunt force and sharp force trauma to her head and neck, which was complicated by immersion and burns that were caused by the water. It's believed that Marquia was still alive when she was placed in the tub, but then later died from the blunt force injuries. They did not find a murder weapon at the scene and concluded that the killer had brought it with them and then taken it when they left. The crime scene itself told police that whoever killed Marquia had targeted her. This was not a home invasion; this was personal, and whoever had done it was angry. The papers that they found in the living room had been ripped up. They also found her passport ripped up, which made no sense to detectives. The killer had also knocked over a trash can in the kitchen. There was no sign of forced entry, which told police that she knew her killer. Both the sliding glass door and the front door of their apartment were both locked, and no one besides Marquia had a key to the apartment. And so, it was likely that she had let her killer in.
And so police turned their attention to Marquia's boyfriend, who had been one of the people who found her body. Since he was already at the scene, police brought him in immediately and questioned him. The boyfriend, whose name I don't believe has ever been released, told police that he had last seen Marquia on the 27th of March when they had gone on a date to the movies, and that had been two weeks since he had last been at her apartment. He voluntarily gave his fingerprints and DNA and had an alibi for the day and time of the murder. He had dropped his son off at daycare that day and then went to work. Detectives said that he did not appear to have a motive and had been cooperative. Monique told Unsolved Mysteries that her family never suspected Marquia's boyfriend because he was such a gentleman to her sister and they never believed that he was capable of hurting her.
After speaking to family and friends of Marquia, they discovered that she had mentioned that a neighbor who had moved in across the hall from her was creepy. Marquia told them that he had even knocked on her door one time with a bottle of wine and two glasses. Now, she said that she didn't want to be rude, so she had a glass of wine with him. But at the time of the murder, the neighbor who had moved into the apartment after suffering from his wife had reconciled with her and moved back home. Detectives checked his alibi, and he was ruled out as a suspect.
Once the creepy neighbor and the current boyfriend were ruled out, detectives looked into Marquia's past and learned from friends and family that she had an ex that had allegedly been physically and emotionally abusive. Marquia had broken up with the ex in 2013, but police had learned that she had recently been in contact with him. It's not clear what Marquia and her ex were talking about during those conversations, but Monique believes that her sister still had feelings for her ex despite the issues.
When police are told about the ex, they add him to their list of people they need to speak to. But before they could contact him, he came into the police station on his own. He told police that he had heard about Marquia's murder on the news, and so he sat down with them and told them that he had last seen Marquia on the 17th of March when they had gone out for drinks. But he said after they were done, Marquia, in so many words, told him that she did not want to see him anymore. He said that he did speak to her again on the 26th, and that they argued about her not wanting to see him or hang out with him. But he said that during that conversation, they did make plans to hang out on the 29th, but when that day came, he said that he had to cancel.
On the day Marquia was murdered, the ex had an alibi, and police were able to confirm that through surveillance. He also voluntarily gave a DNA sample and fingerprints, and he allowed police to search his phone. When police looked through the text messages in his phone, they began to get a better picture of the ex-boyfriend, and although he appeared to have an alibi, he quickly became a person of interest after police took a closer look in his phone. Police found the messages on the 29th, including the one where he said he couldn't hang out, but after that, detectives said that there was no activity on his phone until late morning on March 30th. They said that it was strange that there was such a long period of time where there were no calls or texts coming to or from his phone.
On the day Marquia is murdered, police find that he left four voicemails for her at 1:18 PM, 5:29 PM, 6:03 PM, and then again at 10:13 PM. Detectives said that in the messages, the ex was asking her why she wasn't answering the phone, and he sounded angry. But he also volunteered to take a polygraph test. However, when he took the test, it indicated that there was deception, and it was verified by two separate polygraph examiners. Detectives also said that he never showed any emotion for Marquia and that he got angry when they pointed out inconsistencies in his story.
As of today, he remains a person of interest, but police have not found enough evidence to connect him to Marquia's murder, and no one has been named a suspect in her murder. After the one-year anniversary of Marquia's murder, her story began to fade from the headlines, and there hasn't been any new information about this case. Detectives said that they have tried to search Marquia's phone, but because it was encrypted, they've been unable to get into it, and so this case has been on hold. Her family, especially her older sisters, refused to give up finding justice for their sister.
Someone out there knows what happened to Marquia, and her family deserves to know why her life was stolen in such a brutal way. Marquia Benson was found murdered inside her home at the New Orleans Park Apartments on March 30th, 2016, in Secane, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. If you have any information about her murder, please contact the Upper Darby Police Department.
Our second story this week is Randisha's story. Randisha was 17 years old when she was shot to death inside her College Park, Georgia home on January 12th, 2016. Just like Marquia's murder, Randisha's murder is still unsolved. Why would someone kill a 17-year-old girl inside her own home?
At the start of 2016, 17-year-old Randisha Love was a junior at Westlake High School in Fulton County, Georgia. She was the only girl of her mom's four children, the second oldest, and her mom described her as an outgoing young lady who loved to dance and sing and just be around people. She also loved school. At school, she was a proud member of the ROTC and dreamed of joining the Air Force when she was done with high school. Her mom, Catera, said that she couldn't wait to join the military. Her plan was to join the Air Force and then go to college after.
After her oldest son went away to college, Randisha's mom moved her and her two younger brothers to College Park, Georgia, where they moved in with her mom's parents. Catera told Dateline that since they had just moved to the neighborhood, she didn't know any of the neighbors. She was just getting acclimated to her new neighborhood, and it was the same for Randisha. She also didn't really know anyone in the neighborhood.
On January 12th, 2016, Randisha left her home to go to school as she normally did. According to her mom, Randisha texted her when she got on the bus that morning. "It was a normal day, like normal. She texted me, 'Mom, I'm on the bus,' and I text her, 'Have a great day, I love you,' and you know, she said, 'I love you too.'" Catera told Dateline in an interview last year. It was typical for Randisha and her mom to text back and forth in the morning before school, and then after school, she would always call her mom to let her know she got home safe.
Catera said that the next time she heard from her daughter that day was that afternoon around 4:30, when she got home. "She called me because I always like to hear her voice to make sure she's in the house and okay. We said, 'I love you,' and that was it. It wasn't a long phone call because I think I was kind of busy at work. It was just the normal phone call that we had every day, and I had no idea that it would be the last time I would ever hear her voice."
That afternoon, when Randisha arrived home, her grandparents were not there. They, along with her younger brother, had gone to a funeral out of town, and her other brother had basketball practice. And so, Randisha was home alone. Catera said that she got off work that evening at around 7:30, and after she left, she went to pick up her son from basketball practice. They then went to Wendy's so they could get something for dinner before heading home. She said that she tried to call Randisha, but she was not answering her phone. At first, she figured her daughter was listening to music with her earbuds in and didn't hear the phone ringing. But Catera said that when the phone began going to voicemail, she started to get worried. She said she didn't say anything to her son about her concerns, and instead, they just headed home.
Catera and her son arrived at home at around 9 PM. She told 11 Alive that when they pulled into the driveway, the house was dark and quiet, but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Her son went into the house first while Catera got her things together. When she went inside the house, she said she started calling out to her daughter, but her son was standing in the foyer. She said, "We just had this blank look on his face. 'I'm calling her name, calling her name, and he was looking at me with this blank stare. He was like, 'Mom, she's right there.' And I looked down, and literally, had I taken another step or two, I would have tripped over her.'"
Patera told 11 Alive, lying on the floor in a pool of blood was Randisha. She was wearing a jean jacket over top of her sweatshirt, and she had on gym shorts and socks. Catera said that when they saw her daughter, they ran out of the house because they were not sure if someone was inside. That the neighborhood was dark, and so they ended up going to a local church after calling the police. By the time they got back to the house, the police had already arrived.
When police entered the home, they found Randisha in the front hallway of the house, just a few steps from the front door. Police determined that Randisha had been shot multiple times, but there was very little evidence at the scene. There was no sign of forced entry, and so police didn't have much to go on. They spoke to people in the neighborhood, but no one had heard or seen anything. The time the murder was committed was the time that most people were at work, and so police couldn't find any witnesses. From the very beginning, police had almost nothing to go on in terms of leads. Randisha and her family had just moved into the area and, like I said before, didn't really know anyone in the neighborhood. Her mom said that she had probably met some of the younger people who had gone to her school, but no one that she had mentioned to Catera.
As part of their investigation, police looked into Randisha's phone records and saw that on the day she was murdered, she had only made two calls, and both of them were to her mother. The fact that there was no sign of forced entry indicated that perhaps Randisha had opened the door for her killer. But her mom said that she would never leave the door unlocked, and she would never answer the door for someone she didn't know. And so, she believes that her daughter knew the person who came to the door that day. The problem is, she has no idea who or why they would want to kill her daughter. "Well, I just personally think it was someone that she knows, but I have no idea because Randisha wasn't a girl in the streets, she wasn't a bad girl. She was a straight-A student on the principal's list. My child was a good child. I honestly have no idea who did this and why." Catera told Dateline.
The fact that there were no other calls to or from Randisha's phone meant to investigators that she was someone who kept to herself, and so finding a motive has been difficult. It's still unknown what the motive may have been or what transpired. Either she opened the door for somebody she knew from school or their neighborhood, or it was someone who gained entrance to the house. Either she didn't lock the front door, or she opened the door and let them in, or she opened the door and they forced entry. An investigator told 11 Alive that in the seven years since Randisha's murder, there's been very little information released about the investigation, and the case has gone cold. In 2019, investigators assigned to the case said, "We've developed some new information and we're pending the results of information that we have subpoenaed, and once that information is received by our office, it will hopefully give us a direction to go." But as of today, there's been no suspect named, and the investigation appears to be at a standstill.
The murder of her only daughter has been extremely hard for Catera. In a flash, her entire life changed, and she's not been able to get answers about who did it or why. In our interview with Dateline, she had this message for her daughter's killers: "To whomever killed her, just know that they broke my heart. They took my soul. They took my soul away. It just broke me as a person, as a mother, as a child, as a sister. Like, I'm no longer the same person as I was. January 12th, 2016. It has literally broken me down. I'm stronger than I was six years ago, but I have a long, long way to go." And she continued, "But just for anybody who knows something, just please, please, please say something. Just speak up because Randisha deserves justice, and she did not deserve what happened to her. I know that there are people out there that know, and if you could just please come forward. You can remain anonymous. I know people may be scared, but they do have ways that you can remain anonymous, and no one will ever know that you told."
Catera and her family deserve to know why someone would murder Randisha. The fact that there is such little evidence to go on makes this case that much more frustrating because it seems as if investigators don't even know which way to go or where to begin. But there is someone out there that knows something, and in a case like this, police need the public's help. They need someone to come forward and say something. Randisha was only 17 years old. Her murder was senseless, and she had so much life ahead of her. The person that did this to her needs to be caught and held accountable.
Both of this week's stories are cases that need the public's attention. Neither Marquia nor Randisha deserve to be brutally murdered inside their homes, the places where they should have been the safest. Their families deserve justice for them, and they deserve to know who killed them and why. There is no statute of limitation on murder, and so no matter how long it takes, these killers can be caught. Until then, we must continue to share these stories and help their families get their names in the spotlight.
Randisha Love was shot to death inside her home on a 4300 block of Hidden Valley Drive in College Park, Georgia. She was 17 years old. If you have any information about Randisha's murder, please contact The Fulton County Police Department.
And Randisha Love, rest in peace. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Threads.