“I was thinking, ’13-year-olds don't just disappear for four years.’”
Reporters have instincts about certain things. And Gus Burns’ gut reaction on the story of an unidentified dead girl in Detroit led him to a remarkable story.
It also took 10 years of his career to track it down, which is, in itself, a remarkable story.
Breanna Sharp, whose body was found in a Detroit apartment building in 2008, came onto Burns’ radar in 2012, when her body was exhumed and identified. At the time, Burns was working as a reporter in a Detroit office for MLive. He was immediately drawn to the story, and its many mysteries.
“My boss said, ‘Hey, check this out. There's this girl from Detroit that has been missing for about four years.’ At that point, I don't think they had identified her yet but she was a runaway,” Burns said.
“I was checking every couple of months and asking a few questions, but it was not a top priority. All of a sudden, there's a website called Websleuths, and it showed a digital candle that is like a beacon for missing kids to come home. And it was snuffed out (for Breanna).”
The flame may have gone out, but Burns’ journey was just beginning. He learned that Breanna had been found with a TV cord wrapped around her neck, and that her death was ruled a suicide. But who was she? Where was her family? Why hadn’t she been reported missing? Why had no one claimed the body? Why was she buried without an identification?
When he started looking for public records – police reports, an autopsy, anything – the mystery only deepened.
“I wasn't getting direct answers. Through a lot of reporting over the years we concluded that there was no autopsy conducted,” Burns said. “There’s two other big components – police said that she looked like she was possibly pregnant, and they requested a rape kit. …”
That leads us to another component of Burns’ reporting: Dysfunction in Detroit and Wayne County government. A few years into the work on the Breanna story, it was revealed that Detroit police stored more than 11,000 rape kits without ever processing them as evidence.
“We couldn't find any records with any of that being done – any analysis of pregnancy or rape or sexual assault,” Burns said.
In telling Breanna’s story, Burns also established that of Michigan’s 330 or so unidentified bodies, more than 250 are in Wayne County and more than 200 of those are in Detroit. In neighboring Oakland County, there is one unidentified body case.
But he knew none of that in 2012. All he knew was Breanna had been identified, but reporting was a slog. He couldn’t find relatives to talk to, and records were scant. Eventually, what he called the “tidal wave of Detroit news” took him away from the case.
In 2016, Burns’ interest in podcasting as a storytelling form brought him back to Breanna’s story. That led him to state police who had been involved in investigating and identifying her. But more important, it led him to her father in Texas. While in the Austin area for a personal trip, Burns paid him a visit.
“I saw what he was going through and how important this was to him to get the story out,” Burns said. “I made a promise to him: I'm going to report this, trust me. … And then life changes, work changes.”
Burns changed reporting locations and beats for MLive; he got married and he moved. But he never let go of the Breanna case. Earlier this year when our editors were looking for ideas for our Michigan Crime Stories podcast, Burns pitched the story again.
The result is a story – in written and podcast form – you will not soon forget, and one that brought closure to both the family of Breanna and to the reporter who was driven to tell it.
“Even in those long periods of time when I was not working on it, it was always in the back of my head,” Burns said. “I always felt an unfulfilled obligation to Breanna and to her family and to her sister and to the people that were willing to share her story with me.”
🎧 In this episode, Gus Burns joins John Hiner and Eric Hultgren to talk about his incredible reporting on the Jane and John Does in Wayne County focusing on the heartbreaking Breanna Sharp story and the podcast about her MLive just launched to tell her story. Listen here on Spotify or here on Apple.
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John Hiner is the vice president of content for MLive Media Group. If you have questions you’d like him to answer, or topics to explore, share your thoughts at editor@mlive.com.
