#RememberThem: Patricia (Pat)

“Ask her anything, about money, about stocks, anything, and she would tell you anything. She was very smart. Even though she got on drugs, she used to research all kinds of stuff. And she used to tell me, ‘Little brother, if you don’t know, research it.’"

That's how Derrick remembered his big sister Pat when I spoke to him. She was a positive presence in his life when he was growing up, a sister he truly looked up to. She spent time with him. She took him places. She mentored him. Losing her all those years ago is a pain that he still feels.

Pat (on the right above) was the fifth to be born out of eight kids to Leroy and Nezzie in southwest Detroit, and her upbringing was a happy one. Several of her siblings went on to be successful in the Detroit area, including Derrick, who enjoyed a great career in law enforcement. The last time Pat's family heard from her was around Thanksgiving 1991.

Pat is likely the first person Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins killed. That's how he remembered it -- that she was the first, and that it happened in Detroit. (He killed three women in Detroit, but he killed many more -- eight -- in its enclave of Highland Park.) 

Atkins left Pat in an abandoned house, likely in late November 1991, then, the following month, a demolition crew came through to check the house. They didn't find her -- she was hidden in a closet. They then began to raze the house. It was not until early January 1992, when they were clearing the rubble, that they found her. She was lying near a fence in this small inner-city lot on Kenilworth Street, near the historic Woodward Ave where Atkins did his hunting.

This post is part of a series on this blog that I am calling #RememberThem, a chance to honor the women who encountered the two Detroit serial killers I have researched, John Eric Armstrong and Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins. In this continuing series, with installments dropping every week or so, we first learn more about the women Armstrong was known to have killed in Detroit, plus two of his survivors, then we turn to the women who encountered Atkins. Click on the "Honoring the Victims" label on the left to see all of the parts in the series.

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Above photos obtained by FOIA from Detroit Police and specifically for use in The Crack City Strangler: The Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins; any other use prohibited without permission.

BRBates.com
wbp.bz/CrackCityStrangler
Murders in the Motor City Series

(And yes, that photo on the book's cover is actually a photo of Atkins; see this blog post on the confusion over his photos.)