Nicole Fitts was 32 when she was killed. Her life had been a hard one, marked by poverty and struggle. She worked relentlessly to make ends meet for her two daughters, but high Bay Area rents forced her to send her oldest to live with the girl’s father in Southern California. Nicole and Arianna, just 2 and a half years old, bounced from home to home, and sometime before Nicole was killed, they ended up briefly in a homeless shelter.
There, Nicole’s family says she
met a so-called “street pastor” named Lemasani Briggs. Nicole and Arianna moved in with her, but the relationship quickly soured; Nicole’s loved ones have alleged Briggs was emotionally abusive and controlling.
The Fitts left Briggs’ home and found shelter with relatives in Santa Cruz. But that meant hours of driving to and from San Francisco, where Nicole had a job at the Harrison Street Best Buy. To cut down on commuting, she sometimes couch-surfed with friends. Arianna would stay for days at a time with her new babysitters, Helena and Devin Martin, at their home on Castro Street in Oakland.
Nicole met the Martins through Briggs; Helena was Briggs’ niece. When worried family members asked Nicole if she was concerned about still having ties to Briggs, she allegedly reassured them that Helena wasn’t close to her aunt. It’s not clear if Nicole knew that Helena had once been
charged with murder in 2001 — then known as Helena Hearne, the 18-year-old was accused of fatally shooting the father of one of her children. She
reportedly served six years for the crime.
San Francisco police detectives quickly homed in on Helena and Devin Martin. A police commander told reporters they believed Nicole was trying — and failing — to
bring Arianna home at the time of her disappearance. Although the Martins “cooperated initially,” SFPD said they gave “inconsistent, conflicting statements” and soon stopped helping altogether.
The tragedy of Nicole and Arianna Fitts is one of the most frustrating unsolved cases in...
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*I think of this little girl often.