The Suspicious Death of Kasha Blount (Massachusetts) 

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 Blount die?

Police waited on the medical examiner. The medical examiner waited on police. Kasha’s mother pushed for answers and 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.

Discovery

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.

Kasha Blount is Missing

The last time Phyllis Johnson heard her daughter Kasha Blount’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 16th, 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 Kasha wasn’t, and he hadn’t heard from her either. Kasha was nineteen. She worked. She had friends. Phyllis assumed she would call, so she went to bed around midnight. 

When Phyllis woke up Saturday morning, Kasha still wasn’t home, but because Kasha usually worked from 10 to 5, Phyllis thought she may have already left for work. The day passed. 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, Webb & Touraine, 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 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.

By Monday morning, 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’s 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 Kasha was with a friend or boyfriend and didn’t want to call. But Phyllis rejected that. Kasha 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 Kasha’s description. Phyllis went to the morgue and viewed an image of the person on a television screen. At first, she didn’t think it was Kasha, 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.

About Kasha Blount

Kasha’s full name was Kasha LaTeach Aquita 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.

Kasha 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.

Kasha 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, Kasha 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 out clothes and toys and maybe a stroller on the night she was last seen alive.

Kasha Blount’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.