Death of a Fortune Teller

In 2005, Ha "Jade" Smith and her daughter Anita were murdered. Was it a case of superstition or greed?

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Tanya Nelson

Tanya Nelson, 52, believed in fortune telling. She was a Vietnamese immigrant who came to the United States in 1979. Her family had done well in the Vietnamese community in Orange County, California, however in 2005, the mother of four had a downturn in her business.

She went to see Ha "Jade" Smith, a well-known fortune-teller known as "Miss Ha", who she had been consulting with for several years. The fortune teller drew clients from across the country, and was known to command a fee of $15,000.

Jade's advice to Tanya Nelson was to move to North Carolina. However it seemed Tanya could not outrun her bad luck. Even after she relocated to Roanoke, North Carolina, her business failed and she lost her house. She blamed Jade Smith.

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Ha Jade Smith

On April 22, 2005, a friend of Jade and her daughter Anita Nhi Hung Vo, came to their home, a small stucco house on Bird Ave in Little Saigon. She found their pet Pomeranian outside.

Police were called. Inside they found both women dead. They were stabbed numerous times and the house was splattered with white paint. So were the corpses. It was an unusual thing for a thief to do, however the motive seemed to be robbery, since jewelry and credit cards were taken. The police noticed there was no sign of forced entry.

In the Vietnamese tradition the white paint is used to ward off evil. Over a month later, police got a good lead when Tanya booked a flight to Orange County from North Carolina using Jade's credit card. She had also used the credit cards of both women to go on a shopping spree.

Police arrested Nelson, and found the credit cards in her possession. The next move was to search her house. Here they found Phillipe Zamora who confessed to the police. Both were held in Santa Ana on murder and burglary charges.

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Ha Jade Smith's home

He said that Tanya asked him to fly with her to Orange County in order to murder Ha Jade Smith. In exchange she promised to set him up with other gay men she knew.

Zamora and Nelson, both Vietnamese were originally from Garden Grove. The pair were longtime clients of Jade Smith, and had set an appointment with her for a reading on the day of the killings.

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Anita Nhi Hung Vo

It was alleged that after taking Smith to breakfast, the pair set their plans in motion upon returning to their hotel. They lured Jade back to her house by a phone call.

According to Zamora, Tanya stabbed Anita and then she screamed for him to kill Jade. He hit the fortune teller with a wine bottle, then using a kitchen knife stabbed her several times. Then they went through the house taking items of value, and returned with white paint which they poured over the bodies.

By 2009, Phillipe Zamora, 55, had pled guilty to murder charges, and agreed to testify against Tanya. He was sentenced to 27 years to life.

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The prosecutor said that Tanya was motivated by her anger at being misled by Anita's bad advice.

During that time she was having an affair with her brother-in-law which he had ended. She had gone to see Jade about a reading in which they would reconcile. Tanya was also accused of trying to get her son to kill her lover's wife after the end of their affair.

In 2010, Tanya Jaime Nelson, 46, was found guilty of two counts of first degree murder and was sentenced to death. The jury recommended this sentence. She has never admitted to the crime. She says that on the day of the murder she was in Orange County following her estranged husband.

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The house on Pulaski Hwy in Baltimore where a fortune teller was murdered in 1994 (Source - Baltimore Sun)

In November 1994, Mary Debrah Stevens, 62, a gypsy fortuneteller who went by the name of Sister Myra was beheaded, and her body was found near the front door of her home on Pulaski Highway in Baltimore. Her head lay 10 feet away. She had been in business for 25 years, from her two-story, brick house, situated next to a Dunkin' Donuts. She had a sign out front that read, "Psychic Reader and Adviser: Sister Myra."

Even though she was born in Chicago she spoke with an Eastern European accent. The family had emigrated from Romania at the turn of the century.

She was buried in a white, sequined dress at the Western Cemetery where hundreds of other Gypsies are buried. Her husband Walter had died in 1973.

Hundreds of gypsies came from across the country to attend the funeral and burial. Her children swore to tear down the house and turn the earth, but instead sold it four years later.

A down-on-his-luck man named Douglas Clark, 28,  was charged with the murder. Two hours after the discovery of the body he tried to jump in front of an Amtrak train which narrowly missed him. Amtrak police found him and he broke away from them twice in order to throw himself infront of trucks.

Later police verified he was a frequent customer of the dead woman. He came to consult with Sister Myra because he thought Jamaicans had put a hex on him. He also thought the fortune teller was the devil, which is why he killed her.

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The house on Pulaski Hwy was torn down sometime after 2015

His sister Cynthia Clark, said that two months before her brother mentioned that he believed a hex had been put on him.

Court documents reflected that the head had been cut off with some unknown bladed object and apparently tossed across the room. The police could not locate the instrument used, but eventually it was found in a trash bin across the street from the Steven's home. It was a culinary saw.

Clark was the father of two children, a daughter, 4, and a son, 1. His sister clarified he did not live at her East Lombard Street rowhouse.

When paramedics came to treat him he started to babble about killing the woman, and he told doctors at the hospital as well.

After his arrest he was examined by psychiatrists who diagnosed him as schizophrenic, however he was judged competent to stand trial. At his first court appearance he was sedated, bound and secured. Seventeen corrections officers escorted his wheel chair.

A paramedic who transported him told a news reporter, "I remember working on a city medic unit in east Baltimore that day being dispatched to north Washington Street for a "pedestrian struck". On arrival the scene was unusual as an Amtrak police officer was on location and the first to provide us with details of the 'pedestrian incident' when we arrived he began saying…  I ran him over." When the officer arrived he jumped from the train bridge and threw himself under the car.

Clark kept ranting on about a root until he said, "I had a root on me, she wouldn't take it off, and that's why I had to cut off her head."

At that time a call involving a decapitation had come over the police radio. The location was the same rail line that ran a block north of the Pulaski Hwy incident.

In 1995, Clark pled guilty but not criminally responsbile to first degree murder. He was committed to the State Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Six years later he was released to the care of his mother, and no other details are known. After 2001, Clark's whereabouts are unknown.

Some time after 2016, the two story brick home built in 1920, where the murder was committed was torn down, and all that's left is an empty lot.

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In May, 2022, Anna Torres, 51, was gunned down in her own home. She was a tarot card reader, and Giuseppe Canzani, 41, admitted to shooting her "because she was a witch." He believed she had cast a spell on him and cursed him.

When she answered the door at her 109th Avenue house in Queens, he shot three times. Two of the bullets struck her, one of them in the head.

He told police at the 106th Precinct station house, "They tried to kill me." He turned himself in about an hour after the crime.

Anna Torres was the mother of an NYPD officer, and prior to the confrontation had a fight with a client known as "Joey."

Her husband who was at work found out about his wife's murder when he saw it on the news.

Cops said Torres and Canzani knew each other "to some extent", but the relationship appeared not to be romantic.

Canzani had no prior criminal record but was a gambling addict who blamed Torres when his luck ran out. He was married, and was the father of twins.

His attorney said he suffered from anxiety as well as depression.

As of 2023, the outcome of the case is pending.

Sources - NYPost, DailyMail

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