Whitsett Road cuts a curving ribbon of tarmac through a blue-collar neighborhood off of Nolensville Road. A creek sidles up next to it, separated from the street by a thicket of low-hanging vines, trees and trash-strewn bushes. Toward the end of Whitsett, on the side of the creek, there’s a place where the dense, green underbrush thins a little and there’s more trash than twigs. Here, from the street, you can see the creek and the little clearing by the waterside where they found the charred body of Freweini Gebremicael, known to her friends as Winnie.
It’s a dirty, lonesome place covered in dead leaves, candy bar wrappers and broken beer bottles. The creek, shallow and murky, gurgles along, and every little while a train comes down the tracks at the end of Whitsett Road, its shrill, plaintive whistle obliterating the trash-strewn stillness of the place.
Winnie was found on May 8. She had not been raped, robbed or beaten.
The last time anyone saw the 34-year-old woman alive was when she dropped her oldest child, 17-year-old Rutta, off at school on the morning of May 5. After that she was thought to be heading to The City Coffee Shop in Second Avenue’s Market Street Emporium. The coffee shop was her business, and she was the owner and sole employee.
Though police aren’t talking about the crime, Gebremicael’s family thinks that she was abducted while opening the store. They reported her missing that day. Three days later, her corpse was found among the trash and underbrush on the bank of the creek along Whitsett Road. She’d been shot once in the head and her corpse had been lit on fire. When someone is burned alive, there are traces of soot and smoke in their mouths and in their lungs. Davidson County medical examiner Bruce Levy says he didn’t find any of that. He suspects that she was dead before being set ablaze.
That she was spared the unimaginable horror and pain of death by incineration is little comfort to her family. In addition to her daughter Rutta, Winnie has a 15-year-old son named Yonas. It goes without saying that they miss their mother very much.
Her little shop had been open only a year when she died. In that time, however, she had managed to make deep roots in the neighborhood. Winnie loved music and musicians, and she would keep her shop open late—later than the area’s many clubs and bars, so that the musicians who played there could get a hot meal and a cold drink after the show.
“This couple from England,” says a close family member of Winnie’s who did not wish to be identified, “every year they come to Nashville. When they came to the shop last week and asked about Winnie, I had to tell them what happened. They began to cry.” The musicians who knew her say that she was a woman with a special talent for making others feel good. They describe her with words like “angelic,” “blessed” and “pure goodness.” Backpackers and tourists who received her kindness sent gifts from their countries as thanks for the hospitality Winnie had shown them.
“This couple from England,” says a close family member of Winnie’s who did not wish to be identified, “every year they come to Nashville. When they came to the shop last week and asked about Winnie, I had to tell them what happened. They began to cry.” And though local business owners, musicians and artists have teamed up to put on benefit concerts to raise money for the children she leaves behind, her strange and gruesome death has gone largely unnoted in the local press. Aside from a paid obituary, The Tennessean ran only a 48-word news brief (headline included) that was essentially a press release copied from the Metro police’s website. WKRN—Channel 2—did a short piece about her funeral that her family says was attended by more than 250 mourners. For one of the most shocking local murders in recent memory, this paucity of coverage is remarkable, especially considering how well liked the victim was.
Winnie cut a stunning figure—high cheek bones, smooth, dark brown skin, almond shaped eyes and a wide, bright smile. It seems that most people who knew her loved her, with one glaring exception.
Winnie was born in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, a small, sliver of country hard against the Red Sea in East Africa.
Eritrea has spent much of the last 55 years embroiled in violent conflict. The tiny nation has endured guerilla movements, bloody civil war and, most recently, a prolonged border war with its southern neighbor, Ethiopia. The two nations have been longtime antagonists and have much in common besides mutual dislike. Poverty, hunger, illiteracy and government corruption have gripped Eritrea for most of the 20th century.
Eritrea’s struggles in many ways defined Winnie’s life. Her then-husband was a fighter for one of the smallest but most tenacious military groups in East Africa at that time: the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). His name is Amanuel Simon.
According to him, he met Winnie in Asmara in 1984 while she was working in a charity home, cooking, cleaning and taking care of children. It was an extremely hard life, but her family says that Winnie felt lucky to be able to help. “Always she was trying to help,” one family member says. “She was helping herself too, but she cared very much for those children.”
They married shortly thereafter. Soon, the continuing violence brought by the war with Ethiopia convinced Winnie and her husband to flee their homeland.
Simon is a compact man of medium build with light brown skin. He has a narrow bushy mustache and close-cropped black hair with flecks of gray. On his left forearm is a long, rectangular scar from an AK-47 bullet. The Ethiopians whom he fought during his EPLF days were armed and funded by the Soviets.
“We spent whole days walking through the desert. No water, no nothing, for 24 hours,” he says from the porch of his doublewide trailer on Whitebridge Road, recalling the harrowing journey that he and Winnie took to escape Eritrea for the relative safety of Sudan. Sudan was not an entirely safe haven. Simon tells of a Sudanese police colonel in a border town who “tried to take” Winnie. They slipped out of the town at night and resumed their overland trek. They walked during the night and slept through the day, afraid of capture by police or forces loyal to EPLF opposition who might spot Simon.
Eventually, they reached the city of Port Sudan, where he found some work. Not long after arriving in Sudan, Rutta was born. Now Winnie had a child of her own to care for.
In the mid-’90s, the U.S. Department of State partnered with an evangelical Christian NGO called World Relief to bring refugees from African nations like Eritrea and Sudan to Middle Tennessee. That’s why there’s a significant population of East Africans in Davidson County.
In 1991, when Rutta was 2 years old, Winnie and her husband were lucky enough to join these new arrivals, gaining entry into the U.S. through World Relief as refugees.
One family member of Winnie’s came to the U.S. in 1994, and stayed with her and Simon for over a year while she got settled and found work. She characterizes his behavior toward his wife as “crazy.”
Shortly after coming to Nashville, Winnie’s son Yonas was born. She tried hard to make a life for her growing family. In 2001, she became a U.S. citizen. Over the next dozen years, she worked to fulfill her American dream, taking employment wherever she could get it. She worked a series of grueling jobs at a hardwood flooring company, a plastic factory, a hotel, “anywhere,” a close family member says, “to make money for her family.” According to court documents and those close to her, part of that family was slipping beyond her control. Winnie’s marriage was in trouble by the late ’90s. Family members say that Simon neglected his wife, forbidding her to turn on the heat or air conditioning in their home when he was not around, refusing to give her and the children rides to the hospital or doctor’s office for routine medical visits. He would make them take the bus.
One family member of Winnie’s came to the U.S. in 1994, and stayed with her and Simon for over a year while she got settled and found work. She characterizes his behavior toward his wife as “crazy.”
“I remember we would buy all these fans, because he wouldn’t let us use the air conditioner,” she says. “He would break them so we couldn’t use the electricity.”
Simon denies that he ever prohibited Winnie from doing anything and insists that he would make food for the children and take them shopping. Despite her dissatisfaction with the marriage, Winnie’s family says that she tried to make it work.
“She really tried. She would ask others—older, wiser people—for advice on making the marriage better,” one family member says, adding that Winnie didn’t want a divorce because of the children. Eventually, though, she had no choice. “She could not take it anymore.”
She left Simon in 2001 with “just the clothes on her back”—and the children. Winnie’s family says that he almost immediately sold much of the couple’s furniture. He says that he never wanted a divorce and, to this day, doesn’t know why Winnie wanted one.
Although it would take years, a series of custody disputes and many shouting matches for the divorce to be finalized, Simon brought a new woman over from Eritrea almost as soon as Winnie was gone, according to his ex-wife’s family. She lives with him now and he calls her his wife.
The family also says that Simon gave his new wife Winnie’s gold jewelry and didn’t require her to work, whereas, “Winnie worked like a dog to survive.” After the divorce was final last September, Winnie’s children say that they didn’t see or hear from their father until days after their mother was found dead. Even then, they say, he didn’t offer much by way of comfort. But he had hired an attorney. Shortly after Winnie’s funeral, he filed for custody of the kids. As of this writing, they’re still living with a close relative.
It was a Thursday when Winnie’s daughter Rutta found out about her mom. “My heart knew that there was something wrong,” she says.
When Winnie’s tan Toyota Camry had been found not far from where she lived in South Nashville, the feeling only grew. As she describes the strange horror of seeing the interior of the Camry and all of Winnie’s things there, Rutta brings her hands flat to her cheeks, like the ghostly character in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Most of the next hours were an awful wait for news of the unthinkable.
“Not knowing where she was, or if she was OK, was very, very, tough,” the teen says.
Winnie’s immediate family members—she has two sisters and a brother in Nashville—were there to share the worry and offer consolation during this hellish period of uncertainty. But according to numerous family members, the children’s father was noticeably absent. Rutta says he didn’t come by or call, and other family members confirm that.
“To me that was not shocking,” she says. The reason? Her father hadn’t visited her or her brother in the past year-and-a-half, even though he lives only a few minutes away with his second wife. “My friends were asking, ‘Did your father ever call?’ but I didn’t even think about it.” Metro police have interviewed Simon about the murder. They say that they are following some “strong leads,” and they are calling him a “person of interest in the case, but not a focus of the investigation.” Simon says that he’s seen the children more than a few times in the past year and didn’t come around after his ex-wife’s disappearance because he didn’t think her absence was a big deal. “Many times when she was living with me she’d go missing for three or four days.”
When the police came to question him about her disappearance, he says he thought nothing of it. “They said ‘missing.’ I [wasn’t] thinking ‘dead.’ ”
Shortly after Winnie’s car was discovered, a charred, unidentified body was found by the creek on Whitsett Road. “I prayed to God for it not to be her,” Rutta says. But it was her. “My heart broke.”
That was on Monday, May 8. For two days, the children would hear nothing from their father. Finally, on Wednesday, he came.
Eritrean custom requires that close friends and relatives spend as much time as possible in the same home to mourn the loss of a loved one. Simon says that he spent three full days with Winnie’s family and her children, and her family acknowledges that he was there. But their son Yonas, who just turned 15, says, “He was there physically but not emotionally.” Later, at the funeral, which hundreds of people attended, Simon tried to connect with his daughter, putting his arm around her as she wept. “He was saying, ‘it’s OK, it’s OK, stop crying.’ I tried to get away from him,” Rutta recalls.
It’s not that Rutta and Yonas don’t want their father involved in their lives. They feel he has distanced himself from them by not calling or visiting and always siding with his new wife when there are disagreements between her and the children.
“It’s like we were nothing to him,” Rutta says.
The family also relates conflict between Winnie and Simon’s new wife over her treatment of Winnie’s children. These arguments have been punctuated by shouting matches and slamming doors.
Despite this, her family says that Winnie never tried to keep the kids from their father. They say that he just didn’t show much interest. At one point not long ago, he went to Africa for a period of months without even telling them of his trip.
“One day he was just gone,” a family member says. “We found out from one of his friends where he’d went.” After the disappearance of their mother, the children’s perception that their father wasn’t interested in taking part in their lives only increased. “Me and my brother just went through the toughest thing in our whole lives and you couldn’t even be there for us?” Rutta says of his absence between Winnie’s disappearance and the discovery of her body. “He’s never going to be there for us.”
Simon insists that he wants to play a part in the lives of his children, but that conflicts with Winnie’s family have made it difficult. “I don’t blame the kids,” he says. “These people have tried to brainwash them [to hate their father].”
The children now live with one of their aunts and seem to be happy there. They help out at the store that was their mother’s dream. They say they have no desire to live with their father, which is why they were surprised when he filed for custody a few weeks after their mother was buried.
James Price is an attorney hired by one of Winnie’s sisters. Given how little the kids have seen of their father, Price says that he was “a little surprised” by Simon’s custody bid.
After an initial hearing earlier this month, the court granted Simon custody of his children on weekends until Aug. 14. On that day, the kids, their father and aunt will go before a judge who will make a permanent decision about where they will live.
Still, it seems curious that a man who had little interest in his children before would put up such a fight to keep them now. Some in Winnie’s family think that they have a pretty good idea why Simon wants custody so badly—money.
Because Rutta and Yonas are the survivors of a dead parent, whoever gets custody will receive a Social Security check each month as compensation for taking care of them. “You would hope and you can presume that he wants them for good purposes” Price says. But “there will be some cash coming” to whoever wins custody in August.
Simon says Winnie’s family is the greedy party and that he’s in the best position to make sure that the kids get what they deserve financially. “Any property that belonged to Freweini, now belongs to the kids,” he says. “The Social Security money is for them.” He also says that he will support them “100 percent” until they finish college, “or even medical school, if that is what they choose to do.”
The chalkboard in the hallway of the Market Street Emporium reads, “If you knew Winnie like we knew Winnie, you need to be there.” Below this missive, over a dozen people have written their names, some with brief remembrances, hearts and the words “I love you.”
On every wall hang posters advertising a show at Windows on the Cumberland—also located in the Emporium—to benefit Winnie’s children. “In memory of our beautiful friend Winnie,” the high-gloss, black-and-white posters read. “A fine woman who showered Second Avenue with smiles.” A few weeks later and just down the street, there is another benefit to raise money for Winnie’s children, this one at B.B. King’s. These shows are a testament to the impact that Winnie had on the downtown music community. One local singer-songwriter says that Winnie would keep her shop open late and always had a “warm smile and a cold beer ready” for weary performers. When her album was released, Winnie was the first shop in town to play it.
Lee also remembers Winnie’s energy and enthusiasm for his band’s music. “I would see her dancing and having a blast…. After shows, she’d keep her store open as long as her friends were there.” “She was just a very warm and special kind of person,” she says, “not the kind of person who would invite [this kind of attack].”
Robbie Lee thinks that his band, Stonecrossing, was Winnie’s favorite. The stocky young man with short, fat dreadlocks says that she was a big fan.
“She came to all of our shows when we played downtown,” he said before his band went on at the benefit at B.B. King’s. “She would shut her shop to come and see us. We’d ask her, ‘If your shop’s closed, how are you going to make any money?’ She’d say, ‘Oh, you guys will be done in an hour.’ ” Lee also remembers Winnie’s energy and enthusiasm for his band’s music. “I would see her dancing and having a blast…. After shows, she’d keep her store open as long as her friends were there.”
“Boots” Hill, who owns Windows on the Cumberland, right next door to Winnie’s shop in the Market Street Emporium, also knew her well. “It’s a crime,” he said, “that a woman would come out of East Africa and survive wars and all that struggle only to come to America and be killed.”
It took a lot more than Winnie’s charm to get The City Coffee Shop off the ground. About a year ago, Winnie bought the place, just a little cubby nestled in a back corner of the Emporium, a wood-paneled market that houses a lunch counter, a clothing boutique, the Windows bar and an ice cream shop owned by her brother. With the help of her family, Winnie turned the space into a colorful, cozy business with loyal patrons. She painted the walls herself, picking warm, comfortable colors and lamps with painted glass shades. In addition to coffee, candy and smoothies, she stocked tourist-friendly tchotchkes such as plates with scenes of the Great Smoky Mountains and shot glasses with “Nashville—Music City USA!” written in great loopy letters.
“She decorated all this herself,” one family member says, sitting on a folding chair in City Coffee. “She loved picking out the colors.”
A painting behind the register depicts two giant coffee beans and a coffee sack on a mauve background with purple trim. It’s one of a few that homeless people gave her in exchange for food or coffee. Sometimes she’d just give the food away.
Sam, a tall, thin man with a mop of corn silk blond hair, lives on the street and was more than once the beneficiary of Winnie’s generosity. “When you’re living outdoors, someone who’ll give you a cup of coffee, that means a lot,” he says earnestly.
Sam attended Winnie’s funeral, and he wasn’t alone. He says that more than a few of Nashville’s homeless came to pay their respects.
“She was so well loved. So many people showed up, wanting to be there for her family.”
Rutta Simon is a lovely, bright and articulate young woman. She seems simultaneously overwhelmed and excited by the outpourings of emotion and attention that have been showered upon her since her mother’s death.
The organizers of the benefit at B.B. King’s asked that she say a few words onstage. She looked mortified up there, her long, thin legs ramrod straight, while she tugged at the bottom of her pretty black-and-white-striped blouse.
“None of my family will sleep until the person who did this is brought to justice,” she said, somewhat stiffly.
Beyond that brief allusion to the crime itself, there was no talk of suspects, motives, old angers or investigation. Mostly there was just joy and remembrance through music.
Scott Sweeney, the manager of the Graham Central Station bar, helped organize the event. During Fan Fair he’d gotten everyone on Second Avenue who’d known Winnie to sign a cowboy hat. He’d also wrangled rock bands like Trick Pony and Montgomery Gentry into autographing a Fender Squire and a snare drum head. The items were to be auctioned off later that night with proceeds going to support Yonas’ and Rutta’s education. “We had to do something,” he says. “She helped take care of us when she was here, so now we need to do what we can for her family now that she’s gone.”
In the back of the room in a table by the bar, the attitude was markedly different. Sam sat at a round table enjoying the music but quietly fuming. He spoke of Winnie’s killer. “Whoever did this,” he said, his dark eyes staring straight ahead past his listener, “they’re going to hear about it when they get to the next world.”
