#RememberThem: Juanita

Born in June 1968, Juanita grew up in Detroit and went to Mumford High School on the west side in the 1980s. She was adopted as a youngster, but both of her adoptive parents passed away when she was still a kid. She had a guardian, maybe you could call her a foster mom, named Carrie. She also had a brother named Grant. 

She was sometimes known as Joann Denise – at least that’s the first and middle name by which her fingerprints ID’d her. So perhaps that was her name on the street. Juanita was her real name. Only a little more info can be culled together from the case files about Juanita, as attempts to contact people who knew her came up empty. At the time of this case, Juanita lived on Collingwood Street in Detroit, west of Woodward and east of the John C. Lodge Freeway. She reportedly had a crack problem. Carrie said she last saw Juanita in fall 1991; she was killed likely a month or two later. 

Juanita was one of three women found on the same day at the abandoned Monterey Motel in Highland Park, Michigan, in February 1992. We honor her today as part of this #RememberThem series.

A postcard of the Monterey Motel from its heyday several decades ago. Photo from eBay.

A still from the crime-scene video of the Monterey Motel discovery that day. Juanita was discovered in this trash-strewn room,, while two other women were discovered in two other rooms, in February 1992.

The police sketch of Room 35 of the motel where Juanita was found.

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. Also see the #RememberThem series on YouTube.

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Postcard photo from eBay; other two images copyrighted and specifically for use in The Crack City Strangler: The Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins; any other use prohibited without permission.

BRBates.com
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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.)