The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages and is intended for a mature
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Hello everyone and welcome back.
Welcome back everyone.
I am your co-host Eli Sulkowski.
And I'm your host Ali McLaughlin Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing where we cover cold cases.
And unresolved missing person cases.
This week we have a missing case.
That's right, we are covering a missing case.
Would you like to lead us into it?
Yeah, let's just get into it.
Awesome.
So today we are covering the unresolved missing person case of Aesha Muhammad.
And just as a content warning at the top, this story does involve a child.
And it takes place in November 2000 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
But first a little bit about Aesha.
Aisha was 23 years old in November of 2000.
She was born October 11, 1977 and she would be 45 years old today.
Aesha was a doting mother of her two and a half year old son Amaru.
She shared custody with his father, Anthony McLean.
Amaru would spend the week days with his father and the weekends with his mother.
Aesha had recently moved to a boarding house in West Philadelphia on North 56th Street.
The boarding house belonged to her uncle, her dad's half brother, Charles Dawkins.
Dawkins was renovating the home and needed help with money.
Him and Aesha struck up a deal where she would rent a room, which was great for Aisha as
the home was close to the Venus Beauty Academy where she had recently enrolled in classes.
When she wasn't at school, she was working in a beauty salon.
Her sister Rashida says, quote, she's so young and so full of life.
She's a well liked person.
People stop by here constantly and ask where she is, end quote.
So now just to get into a timeline of events.
So the week after Thanksgiving in 2000, Aesha calls Amaru's father, Anthony McLean, and
asks if she can keep Amaru longer.
They agree for Amaru to stay with Aesha from November 27th through December 3rd.
On Wednesday, November 29th, 2000, Aesha calls her sister, Wahkita, to complain about her
landlord, Charles Dawkins.
Her sister tells her she can move in with her and they agree to talk tomorrow.
On Thursday, November 3rd, 2000, Aesha calls Anthony to see if he can take Amaru that weekend
as something had come up.
Anthony says no problem, but Aesha never turns up at Anthony's home in Chester, Pennsylvania,
about 30 minutes away.
Aesha calls her sister, Wahkita, but she isn't home.
Aesha then calls her brother, Solomon, and tells her brother that she has all her stuff
packed up and to come and get her.
Aesha told Solomon that her landlord was quote, acting crazy, end quote, and quote, had thrown
her dinner in the trash, end quote.
Solomon doesn't have a car, so he waits about an hour until Wahkita returns home and Solomon
tells her.
When Wahkita calls Aesha, she doesn't pick up.
So over the next few days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, nobody hears from Aesha and
the family gets increasingly worried and concerned since they can't get a hold of her because she
has Amaru.
On Sunday, December 3rd, 2000, the congregation of Liberty Temple Church in East Orange, New
Jersey, which is about an hour and 45 minutes away from Philadelphia, is holding a service
at their temporary location, which was a space above an auto shop while their new church
was being built out.
Members of the church hear a loud banging at the front door.
When members went to look, they found two and a half year old Amaru there wearing a
black coat, jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and a black beanie.
He had wet his pants and had a scabies rash on his back and abdomen, but otherwise he
was okay.
Reverend Robert Jiggett said quote, I'll never forget that day because it was so unusual.
When they brought the boy to me, I thought he was a member of the congregation.
I held him up near the end of the service and said, whose child is this, end quote.
When no one claimed Amaru, they waited and did it again at the next service.
In between services, members of the church brought him diapers and a suit.
After the second service, when no one claims Amaru, Reverend Jiggett calls police.
Police will try to interview Amaru, but he's only able to tell them his first name.
Police will use local media to get his picture out and try to ID him.
During this time, Aesha's sisters are frantic trying to get a hold of her and leaving worried
messages for Aesha at her house.
Finally, and it's unclear the date of this conversation, Charles tells the sister that
Aesha packed up all her stuff and moved out.
The family finds this odd because Aisha didn't own a car and none of them had helped her
move out, so they have no idea where she could be.
On December 8th, 2000, this is just over one week, Aesha's father, David Muhammad, had
come up from Atlanta, Georgia to look for her.
David, Rashida, Anthony, and other family go to the house that Aesha was renting a room
from.
The room had been completely cleaned out and the only furniture left was a dresser and
a bed with a fitted sheet.
Quote, there was nothing in there at all to show she was ever there.
End quote.
And that was her sister Rashida.
The next day, December 9th, Wakita goes to visit her longtime partner who is serving
time at the New Jersey State Prison.
He immediately told Wakita that he could have sworn he saw Aesha's son on TV.
It's then that Wahkita is able to tell him that Aesha and Amaru have been missing.
She immediately leaves and calls family and police.
It takes about a week, but by December 15th, Amaru is reunited with his father, Anthony.
Anthony says, quote, I have never had to deal with this much stress.
I am happy we found Amaru, but we have to find out what's up with Aesha.
She would not drop off Amaru at that church unless it was life threatening.
End quote.
When Amaru is reunited with his family, he begins to talk about what happened.
His aunt Wahkita says, quote, when we got him back, I asked him what happened to Aesha.
He said, mommy's dead.
Then he said, name redacted, punched my mommy in the face and she was bleeding.
I was fighting him and mommy was fighting him.
End quote.
He tells the same thing to his aunt Rashida, who calls Southwest Detectives.
They advise the family not to drill him, but write down anything he says.
The family says Amaru continued to talk about it and his story never changed.
Rashida says, quote, I do believe those things took place.
Definitely saw something.
He doesn't even ask for her.
It's like he knows harm came to her because he was always asking for his mom before, even
when he was in daycare.
End quote.
On January 9th, police interview Amaru.
A special victims officer will conduct the interview and his story does not waver.
Amaru tells police the name of the man that hit his mother and that she was hit in the
head.
Police say that they are taking his statements very seriously.
And the next day, January 10th, as a result of talking to Amaru, police take cadaver dogs
to Aesha's rental house, but they don't ever report what comes of this, if the dogs hit
or not.
Aesha's sister says, quote, I would like to believe that she just ran off because it would
make me feel better.
But I know in my heart she didn't.
End quote.
And that's Rashida.
Police will interview Charles twice and his story will change each time about what happened
to Aesha.
Police will schedule a polygraph test for mid-January, but he'll flee town.
Police put a warrant out for his arrest because at this time, Charles was on probation as
he had just been released from jail about 10 months earlier.
So by fleeing town, it was a probation violation.
Charles stays on the run for about six months.
And in July of 2001, Charles Docket was arrested and sent back to prison to serve the rest
of his sentence for an aggravated battery charge.
In December of 2002, so this is two years Aesha has been missing, there had been no
activity on her credit, which led investigators to pass the case to homicide.
Lieutenant Mark Deegan, the commander of the homicide special investigative unit, said,
quote, she's been missing a long time.
She was a competent and caring mother.
And after putting our heads together, we've taken over this case because it appears foul
play might be involved.
End quote.
Her family also believes there's no way she would go this long without contacting them.
Her father, David Muhammad, says, quote, I already know how this is going to turn out.
My daughter's gone.
I just want to recover her.
If anyone could bring this to closure, bring this to an end, they could bring peace to
us.
This is really destroying us.
End quote.
So with that, if you know anything about Aesha's disappearance in November of 2000, please
contact the Philadelphia police at 215-685-3257.
Again that's 215-685-3257.
And the sources for today's podcast come from the Philadelphia Daily News, the Courier
Post, Donetwork.org, and NamUs.gov.
OK, so any questions?
I don't.
I'm sure some will develop as I talk to you.
But the first thing that I thought when you introduced Amaru, one of the things that immediately
popped into my mind, especially doing this podcast with you, is that it's always interesting
to me when cases with children, specifically with children who do tell them what happened,
that those cases are overlooked.
Because well, you know this about me, but I worked in childhood development for many
years.
And not that I'm an expert or anything, but something that I learned about kids is that
they are incapable of lying before age three.
So if there's a toddler who's telling you pretty blatantly what happened, that's probably
what happened.
And it brought into my mind too that children just overall are usually not listened to for
involving something serious.
Like they're not taken seriously.
And I've never really understood that because we're all children at one point.
And it really disregards their developmental capabilities and just their own agency.
And of course it broke my heart that this was the person that had to be the person to
tell you what happened.
It's a really heavy burden for a two and a half year old to have to carry.
Yeah.
I think again, my question is and will always be like, what happened here?
It sounds like the way he turned up, especially in a church, it began to sound like again,
a storyline you would see on something on television.
You know?
Yeah.
It's very interesting to me.
So Amaru knew whoever caused Aisha harm and caused her to disappear.
Like this two and a half year old knew this person enough to be able to name him.
And he's told police and his family the name and the name has been redacted since no charges
have been filed against this person who they named or that Amaru named.
But yeah, as I was reading this case, I was thinking about children and their agency.
And I kind of expected his testimony, for lack of a better word, to be disregarded.
But it does seem like they take it pretty seriously.
Yeah.
As soon as he starts talking and the fact that his story doesn't waver, he says the
same things consistently over and over to different people.
Well, yeah, again, that proves the well, it's not even a theory.
It's just that like, he is incapable of lying to you about this.
That's why it doesn't change.
Right.
Is because like he doesn't your brain developmentally doesn't have that in it to not tell you that.
So I think that's why I spoke about it right when I walked in because like, whoa, they're
listening to him.
Yeah.
And that is great, specifically for a case like this.
But yeah, it just seems like Charles kind of slips away from them.
Like he does end up back in jail.
And in December of 2002, the homicide detectives who had taken over the case mentioned that
they were going to go to the jail to interview Charles more to try to get more information
from him.
So I have no, no idea if that happened the results of that.
If Charles is even a suspect, he's never been named or charged officially as a suspect in
this case.
But he's definitely a person of interest I would venture.
What I want to what do you think happened?
What's your opinion since you've been sitting with the case a bit longer than I have?
You know, on the surface, it is pretty easy to look at Charles and say, well, that's who
did it.
You know, she's calling talking about her landlord acting crazy, which is Charles.
He had thrown her dinner in the trash, which is rude and aggressive.
That's also a moment where it felt like a storyline I had seen before with like a weird
landlord or a weird, you know, just like homeowner that you're renting from who's in the same
house who like does weird things like that, like moves your shoes or, you know, like maybe
people who are listening and you like we've all lived in the vicinity of someone who behaves
where you're like, this disturbs me and I don't understand why.
Like that's a that's disturbing.
Yeah.
So on the surface, it's really easy for me to be like, well, Charles absolutely did it.
Sure.
But at the same time, you know, everything looks suspicious after the fact.
We've talked about it on here.
Yes, to echo you.
Yeah.
So, so I also like just want to give the, you know, innocent until proven guilty because
it could be this guy who was on probation, whose niece that is his niece kind of goes
missing all of a sudden.
And it absolutely looks like he did it because they had problems.
They were arguing a couple of days beforehand.
So like, we don't know what happened.
We don't know the results of the investigation.
So like there is it, you know, innocent until proven guilty.
You know, I do see an argument where like, maybe he panicked and ran because he knew
he was going to be.
Yeah.
I mean, there are just as many wrongfully accused as there are like cases that, that
are, that are, that receive some form of justice and catching the person, you know, who committed
the crime.
But like, yeah, wrong place, wrong time when you didn't do it, that's very, very real.
Totally.
You know, but again, they were arguing.
So, you know, for me, if I was an investigator on this, for me to feel good about crossing
Charles off, you know, I would need a rock solid alibi, like really great proof that
you were not around, you know, Thursday, November 30th, the last time that Aesha's heard from,
like, I'm going to need to know your every move that day and the days in between until
Amaru shows up.
Yeah.
I need to know everything and I, it really needs to be rock solid.
Yeah.
Like you come on, man, for, for us to like have faith, you really have to be transparent.
And maybe he has provided that because it is 2023 at the time we're recording this and
charges have never been brought against him.
But yeah, one thing that does seem certain is that Amaru knew the person and for a two
and a half year old to be able to name somebody, they have to be pretty familiar in my experience.
You know, I, again, I am not a child expert, but neither of us are.
Yeah.
But you know, I've been a nanny, like I've worked in children's museums.
So we have a lot of nieces and nephews around this age who, yeah.
And sometimes it takes them a couple of times to remember my name.
So to be able to remember somebody's name in their life is this is somebody that they
have seen more than once, more than twice, I would imagine.
Yeah.
But yeah, again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Aisha Muhammad in November
of 2000, please call the Philadelphia police at two and five six eight five three two five
seven.
And we are going to be posting pictures of Aesha on our Instagram.
So if you're not following us, that's a great place to follow us.
Absolutely.
We're also on all of the podcast platforms.
Yeah.
So while you're in there getting ready to go to your next podcast, if you could give
us a review five stars, if you're an Apple reviews, we've had a couple really kind reviews
over the last couple of weeks, written ones that have just lit up our life and kind of
a big milestone this week.
We passed 10000 downloads, which thank you so much.
None of it would be possible without you, the person who's listening to this right now.
So thank you so much.
It's an honor to be a part of your week, to be a part of your life in a small way.
So thank you.
And if you're enjoying it, tell your friends again, we want these cases to be known.
We want these to be household names.
So tell your friends, tell your family who enjoy podcasts, who enjoy true crime podcasts.
Yeah, let them know about us.
Let them know we're a little bit different, too.
And I'm not tooting our own horn here, but just like that we care and we're trying to
be delicate with the work that we do.
That's all I have.
Thank you again.
Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.
Thanks so much.
Peace!