Episode 147: Mujey Dumbuya – Bite-Sized Crime

When a high school student suddenly disappears, investigators from multiple departments must work together to find the truth. What happened to Mujey?

Episode Media

Wooded area where Mujey’s body was found *(MLive)*

Mujey’s pink shoe with bleach stains *(MLive)*

Quinn Anthony James *(Grand Rapids Police Department)*

Episode Sources

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a case of a young woman who bravely reached out for help, but sadly was beyond protection. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.

Mujey Dumbuya was born in the middle of a war zone. As the West African nation of Sierra Leone fought a brutal civil war, Mujey’s family did everything they could to protect her from the horrific violence that surrounded them every day. When Mujey was a young child, her family was granted refugee status through the United Nations and immigrated to Grand Rapids, Michigan. For the first time, they felt safe, and Mujey and her younger brother were able to grow up without fear.

Mujey grew into a bright, energetic young lady. She loved learning and excelled at school. She was also active in extracurriculars, taking dance classes as well as participating in archery and martial arts. Mujey loved trying new things, and her adventurous spirit endeared her to everyone who met her. Her aunt Haja told WOOD TV, “Mujey was full of life. She made people smile, even if you have difficult times, she would just come to you and hug you. She always said, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a superstar someday.’”

Mujey attended East Kentwood High School, a large, diverse public school in the suburbs of Grand Rapids. There, Mujey thrived. She had a close circle of friends, and she was dedicated to her studies. She was looking ahead to graduation and to pursuing her dream of becoming a police officer. Mujey felt strongly about social and racial injustice and wanted to be part of the solution.

Unfortunately, Mujey was not as safe as her family had hoped. In the summer of 2017, 15-year-old Mujey was sexually assaulted multiple times by an older man, 42-year-old Quinn Anthony James. James had raped Mujey multiple times in at least four different locations, including in the parking lot of a school and at his house.

After enduring these assaults for several months, Mujey bravely told her school counselor what was happening to her. During police questioning, Quinn James claimed that he didn’t know Mujey was underage, that the sex had been consensual. James was charged with four felony counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and was ordered to not have any contact with Mujey. His trial was scheduled for April of 2018, and he was released on a $100,000 bond.

In the meantime, Mujey tried to carry on with her life. She started her junior year of high school and was looking forward to attending prom in the spring. She began looking into colleges and was excited about the future.

On the morning of January 24, 2018, Mujey’s mother Fatmata got a phone call from East Kentwood High School. Mujey had not shown up for classes that day. This was extremely unusual – Mujey never skipped class. Fatmata had watched her daughter leave the apartment early that morning, backpack slung over her shoulder. She had been in a good mood as she said goodbye and stepped out into the cold winter air, ready to make the short walk to the city bus stop. Why hadn’t Mujey made it to school?

Fatmata called her sister Jainya and told her that Mujey was missing. Jainya immediately jumped into action, reaching out to some of Mujey’s friends, girls who rode the bus with her each day. But they said that Mujey hadn’t been at the bus stop that morning. They had assumed that she was sick and was staying home, but now it was becoming clear that something had happened to Mujey as she walked the short distance from her apartment to the bus stop.

At first, the family hoped that Mujey was just being a typical teenager, skipping school to go hang out with friends. Maybe she had decided to catch a different bus and go into the city. But that wasn’t like Mujey at all; if she had changed her plans, she would have let someone know. Now, she wasn’t answering her phone, and her friends noticed that she hadn’t posted on Snapchat or Facebook in hours. Something was very wrong.

The family knew they needed to get help. They contacted the Grand Rapids Police Department and reported Mujey missing. Unfortunately, the officer who took the report categorized Mujey as a teenage runaway, diluting the sense of urgency that should have come with a missing persons report.

For days, Mujey’s friends and family waited for her to come home. Sadly, it was not to be.

On January 28th, a call came into the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety. Two students walking in the woods had come across what they believed to be the body of a young woman. At first, they had called out to her, thinking she may have been injured where she lay on the ground, but when she didn’t respond, they realized that she was likely deceased and called for help.

When investigators arrived at the scene, they found the body of a teenage girl. She was dressed in jeans and a black winter jacket over a pink Cinderella t-shirt. One of her pink sneakers was missing. There was no sign of a struggle nearby, leading investigators to believe that she had likely been killed elsewhere, her body later dumped in the woods. Large white stains on her clothes suggested that someone had poured bleach on her body, perhaps in an attempt to eliminate evidence. An autopsy would later reveal that she had died of asphyxia by manual strangulation.

The girl didn’t have identification on her, but during the autopsy, the forensic pathologist found a bus pass from Grand Rapids public transportation in her pocket. Investigators in Kalamazoo reached out to the Grand Rapids Police Department in the hopes of connecting the bus pass to a missing person. It was then that they learned their victim was 16-year-old Mujey Dumbuya.

Mujey’s family was devastated to learn that she would not be coming home after all. Why would anyone want to hurt Mujey? She was a kind, loving young woman who had big dreams for the future. Her aunt Jainya told WOOD TV that the family couldn’t understand why this had happened; they had escaped violence halfway across the world only to lose Mujey in this tragic manner. “Thinking about the sufferings… hiding from bullets and running away and walking for hours on your feet and not having a place to lay your head, not having food to eat. Then here we are, this is where we’re going to make it, this is our place that we’re going to be that we can be safe, and here we are not even safe.”

While Mujey’s family made funeral preparations, investigators in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo were working around the clock to find her killer. What had happened after Mujey left home on the morning of January 24th? Why hadn’t she made it to the bus stop, and how had she ended up in Kalamazoo, 50 miles away from home?

Investigators learned that the city of Kalamazoo had recently installed trail cameras in the area near where Mujey’s body was found. They pulled the footage and began combing through thousands of photographs, but they didn’t see any vehicles pulling off the road or stopping near the woods.

Investigators from Grand Rapids canvassed the apartment complex where Mujey lived, but none of her neighbors had witnessed anything on the morning she disappeared. Even though Mujey had left home at her usual time, the bus driver confirmed that she hadn’t been at the bus stop. Investigators suspected that she may have been abducted somewhere between her apartment and the bus stop, but it was such a short distance – whoever grabbed her must have known her routine. Unfortunately, there were no security cameras in the apartment complex to prove this theory.

Early in the investigation, Mujey’s family told detectives that she had been scheduled to testify against the man who had raped her the year before. The trial was just a few months away; had he decided to get rid of his accuser?

Investigators began looking into Quinn James, and what they found was disturbing. James had a lengthy criminal record dating all the way back to 1989 when he was just 14 years old. Over the next 30 years, James was arrested for crimes such as armed robbery, auto theft, and impersonating an officer. Even with multiple felonies on his record, James was hired by Kentwood Public Schools in 2012 to work as a groundskeeper, a role the district claimed did not include interactions with students. But that didn’t seem to stop Quinn James from seeking out young women.

In 2014, James was accused of raping an 18-year-old girl in his apartment. The victim said that she and James had been friends for about a year and that he would often buy her presents and give her money. She had always turned down his physical advances, but one occasion, James refused to take no for an answer, choking her and threatening to kill her before raping her. Afterwards, he dropped her off at a local restaurant, where she called the police. Unfortunately, prosecutors didn’t feel they had enough evidence to lay charges, so the case against James was dropped.

In November of 2017, when Mujey reported her assault to police, Quinn James was arrested and charged. But it wasn’t long before he posted bond and was released from jail. Two months later, Mujey was dead, no longer able to testify against him.

Now, investigators had their sights set on Quinn James. They brought him in for questioning, hoping to find something that would connect him to Mujey’s murder. But James had an alibi, and there was no evidence that Mujey had been in either of his vehicles. Kalamazoo police even went back to the trail cameras to see if they could spot one of James’ cars in the footage, but it was a dead end. James was free to go.

Investigators turned to Mujey’s social media. Like most girls her age, Mujey was very active online – it was the main way she connected with friends. As they dug through her messages, investigators learned that Mujey had been communicating with a boy named Mike on the morning she disappeared and that they had been planning to meet at the mall later that day. Naturally, this raised questions for investigators – was Mike the one responsible for hurting Mujey? Ultimately, investigators were able to rule him out, but this line of inquiry led them to Mujey’s previous boyfriend, DQ.

Mujey and DQ had met online in the summer of 2017 and had quickly started a relationship. DQ was from Saginaw, about 2 hours east, but he was staying with his aunt in Grand Rapids that summer, so he and Mujey spent lots of time together. According to Mujey’s friends, Mujey and DQ had a tumultuous relationship from the get-go. DQ was always talking to other girls, and he had cheated on Mujey several times. Her friends kept telling her to break up with him, but Mujey loved DQ and didn’t want to let him go. She kept the relationship hidden from her family for a long time, knowing they wouldn’t approve.

According to Mujey’s friends, she and DQ broke up not long before she disappeared. Investigators now wondered if DQ could be connected to her murder. Had he been angered by their breakup and decided to seek revenge? They brought DQ in for questioning, but he had a solid alibi: he had been at home in Saginaw on January 24th, a fact corroborated by several witnesses. He didn’t have a driver’s license or access to a car. There was no way he could have killed Mujey.

But talking to DQ gave investigators a crucial piece of the puzzle. In the summer of 2017, Mujey and DQ had spent a lot of time at DQ’s aunt’s house in Grand Rapids. DQ’s aunt was dating none other than Quinn James, the man who had repeatedly raped Mujey over the course of several months. DQ told investigators that he had witnessed the assaults, unable to stop what was happening out of fear that James would kill them both. He had been choked and beaten by James before; he knew what the man was capable of. When Mujey decided to report the assaults, DQ had supported her, filing his own report even though he was afraid of retaliation.

Investigators were now convinced that Quinn James was responsible for Mujey’s murder, but they needed more time to build their case. They came across the rape allegations against him from 2014 and convinced the Kent County Prosecutor’s Office to officially file charges in that case. On February 1st, Quinn James was arrested and charged with third-degree sexual assault.

While he sat in jail, investigators were hard at work, listening to his recorded phone calls and gathering as much evidence as they could. They learned that the wooded area where Mujey’s body was found in Kalamazoo was less than a mile away from the home of James’ mother. They also learned that on January 24th, James hadn’t been driving his own car, but a rental vehicle from a dealership. When they went back to the trail cameras, they spotted that car – a black GMC Acadia – right by the spot where Mujey was found. Investigators were able to track down the vehicle and run forensic tests. Sure enough, they found traces of blood inside that was a match to Mujey. They finally had what they needed.

In April of 2018, Quinn James was officially charged with first-degree premeditated murder in the death of Mujey Dumbuya. But before he could stand trial for her murder, he would be tried for her rape.

In October of 2018, prosecutors laid out the evidence they said proved Quinn James had sexually assaulted Mujey Dumbuya multiple times during the summer of 2017. DQ was called to testify about what he had witnessed, and the jury watched video of James’ interviews with police. After six hours of deliberations, the jury found James guilty of four counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was sentenced to 20-30 years in prison.

Four months later, in February of 2019, the murder trial began. Jurors listened as all the evidence was presented, dating back to November of 2017 when Mujey reported that Quinn James had raped her. On November 29th, the city bus driver who picked up Mujey on her route noticed a black GMC Acadia driving strangely, speeding up and slowing down, almost as if it was trying to catch a glimpse of the passengers on the bus. The driver noted the license plate number, which ended up being a match to the rental vehicle James had been driving on the day Mujey was killed.

The jury also heard about several conversations James had had about Mujey’s allegations against him. He told one person that he hoped Mujey would die in a plane crash. He asked another person where he could get a gun to protect himself against someone who was accusing him. One witness, a man named Daren Eckford, testified that James had purchased a rifle from him in December of 2017, saying that some young people were making claims against him and he needed to “take care of some business.” Eckford said that James asked him to come to Grand Rapids and help him, but he declined. Eckford recommended that he contact Gerald Bennett.

According to prosecutors, on January 18, 2018, James texted the mother of his two kids asking her if he could drop them off with her on the 21st, claiming that he needed to “drive up north to pick up my brother”. Cell phone data showed that James actually drove to Detroit to pick up Gerald Bennett on the 21st, and they were back in Grand Rapids shortly after 10pm. On January 23rd, James and Bennett went to a local department store and wired $125 to Bennett’s girlfriend. Prosecutors believe it was payment for what James was asking Bennett to do.

Around midnight, just hours before Mujey would leave for school, both men’s cell phones pinged in the vicinity of her apartment complex. Mujey left her apartment just after 6am; an hour later, Bennett’s phone was located near the bus stop. It then returned to James’ house in Grand Rapids. Both phones’ locations were turned off between 7:40 and 9:09am. That’s the time prosecutors believe they took Mujey’s body to the woods.

The trail cameras in Kalamazoo showed a black GMC Acadia driving back and forth near the spot where Mujey’s body was found before finally leaving at 8:42am. Less than 30 minutes later, Bennett’s phone pinged off a nearby tower, showing him moving south along Highway 131. James’ credit card was used at a gas station and then at a car wash in Grand Rapids. Surveillance video from the car wash showed James and Bennett and the black GMC Acadia. Later that afternoon, James and Bennett returned the car to the dealership where James had rented it. Once they were back at James’ house, James gave Bennett a blue 1985 Chevy Caprice, and Bennett drove back to Detroit. Prosecutors believed this was another payment for Bennett’s assistance.

In the days after Mujey’s death, Quinn James told several people that his sexual assault case had been taken care of. He even told a teacher at one of the schools he had worked at that he would be getting his job back soon since the charges were as good as dropped.

On January 26th, a woman traveling along Highway 131 noticed a backpack along the side of the road. When she saw it again two days later, she pulled her car over and picked up the bag. When she opened it up, she found textbooks, binders, and a journal. She also found a school ID with the name Mujey Dumbuya. Prosecutors told jurors that it was no coincidence that James and Bennett had been traveling down that same road just days before.

During the trial, multiple experts testified to the physical evidence tying Quinn James to Mujey’s murder. A forensic scientist testified that James was a contributor to DNA found on Mujey’s jeans, and that Mujey’s DNA was found in the back seat of the GMC Acadia. The prosecutor told the jury, “You’ll hear zero reason why this little girl’s blood should be in a vehicle the defendant rented… No reason unless she’s killed or transported in that vehicle.”

The defense argued that there was no direct evidence that Quinn James killed Mujey. “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well in this case, they have what they believe is this motive and everything that Quinn does now looks guilty.”

After two days of deliberations, the jury found Quinn James guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Mujey Dumbuya. He was sentenced to life in prison.

At the sentencing hearing, Mujey’s family spoke about their love for her and the impact her loss had on them. Mujey’s mother Fatmata spoke to James directly, saying, “You destroyed her and then you turned around and you [took] her from me.”

Gerald Bennett was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, but in 2020, a judge ruled that he was incompetent to stand trial due to low cognitive functioning, saying that he was incapable of understanding the charges against him. In 2022, another judge overturned the ruling, ordering Bennett to stand trial. However, a year later, Bennett was admitted to the hospital for cancer treatment before eventually passing away.

In the end, Mujey’s family was able to get some measure of justice for her, but of course, it doesn’t make up for her loss. As her aunt Jainya told reporters after Quinn James’ sentencing, “It doesn’t really fix the hurt. The pain is always going to be there, the trauma is always going to be there, but we are glad that her voice was heard.”

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, please reach out for help. The National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-656-4673 or online at rainn.org. You deserve to be heard.