Where Is Arianna Fitts?
The brutal, mysterious killing of a San Francisco woman remains unsolved, and two years later, her young daughter is still missing.
Nuala SawyerThu Jul 26th, 2018 10:03amNEWSTop Stories
Arianna Fitts was two-and-a-half years old when she went missing in 2016. She turns five in September. (Photo courtesy Fitts family)
John McLaren Park has long been considered a good place to dump a body. The 312-acre open space was, for decades, left largely wild and untouched, with rolling, overgrown hills covered in dense blackberry bushes and tall fennel plants. In 2006, the remains of five-month-old Camille Ferguson were found hidden in dense brush in the park. Gardeners discovered body parts belonging to 32-year-old Omar Sharif Allah in 2009, two years after he was reported missing. And Jonathan Caballero, 18, was shot and killed in the park in early 2015.
So when the city dedicated nearly $12 million to McLaren Park improvements a few months after Caballero?s death, neighbors breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, the long-neglected park would get some attention. Local politicians ? Districts 9, 10, and 11 border McLaren ? boasted it would be a destination to rival Golden Gate Park.
Construction crews spent months repaving pathways with the first $200,000 the city dished out. It was off one of these newly renovated paths ? which led from Woolsey Street in the Portola to Louis Sutter Playground ? that a gardener, working the early shift on the morning of April 8, 2016, came across a large piece of wood resting in the dirt behind a clump of ivy-covered bushes. It had an odd, silver character painted on it, and it looked like construction scrap. But when they lifted it up, they found the small body of a woman underneath, curled up in a shallow grave.
The discovery closed the door on a week-old missing person case. Nicole ?Nikki? Fitts hadn?t been seen or heard from since April 1, after she left her house in the Bayview to meet someone and never returned home.
But the gruesome discovery of Nikki?s body raised another terrible question: Where was her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Arianna?
It?s been more than two years since the story of a missing single mom turned into a brutal homicide and kidnapping case. It remains unsolved. In the beginning, the San Francisco Police Department?s homicide, special victims, and missing persons divisions rallied together for a widely publicized hunt for the killer and kidnapper ? who it seemed obvious to anyone who learned details of the story ? were probably one and the same.
But as the investigation extended for weeks, and then months, the city?s interest began to cool. As the Fitts family frantically searched for Arianna, deep cracks were splitting the SFPD apart. After a number of fatal officer-involved shootings, and a weeks-long protest by the Frisco Five, Police Chief Greg Suhr was under immense pressure to resign. The media shifted their attention elsewhere, and the story of Nikki?s death and Arianna?s disappearance faded from the headlines.
Arianna turns five in September, the age when most kids start going to school. Her bright face and apple-cheeked expression may not have changed all that much, yet. If there were ever a time to push for a fresh commitment to the case, it?s now, before all we have left of the little girl everyone fell in love with as soon as they met her is an FBI-issued age progression sketch.
Nikki and Arianna. (Photo courtesy Fitts family)
Nikki Fitts was the middle child, but everyone thought of her as the youngest. Petite and naive, her younger sister Contessa ? who goes by Tess ? often teased her.
?A lot of times, I felt like Nikki was my little sister,? she says. ?I picked on her. She was always shy.?
There were three Fitts sisters growing up; Kathryn was the oldest, then came Nikki, and Tess last. Raised by a single mom, they hopped around Southern California, finally settling in Culver City, near Marina Del Rey.
From an early age, Nikki developed a deep desire to help people around her.
?She loved school and wanted to be a teacher. She was quite the teacher?s pet,? Tess says. ?I?m sure I made fun of her for that.?
From the get-go, Nikki seemed to be setting herself up for success. When she was a teenager, Nikki volunteered at the Culver Slauson Recreation Center. She spent so much time there that in 1999, when she was 15, she received an award for her work from the City of Los Angeles. In photos, she?s shown beaming shyly, wearing a black dress and a child-like white headband.
A teenage Nikki Fitts receives an award from the city of Los Angeles for her volunteer work. (Courtesy: Fitts Family)
?With anything that Nikki did, she always found a way to do more,? Tess says. ?She looked out for the people around and did her best to make sure no one went without. She was very sensitive.?
The Fitts sisters? mom died when all three girls were teenagers. Despite being split up among various caretakers, they remained close.
?We always managed to find each other,? Tess says.
The bond continued into adulthood, and in 2012, Tess, her girlfriend Clare Bonnar, and Nikki settled in a small place in Pacifica ? the closest they could afford to get to San Francisco. By this time, Nikki had a daughter, Sendy. Everyone was excited about the future; Bonnar managed to find bunk beds for free on Craigslist, which they crammed into her Prius for Nikki and Sendy.
But the reality of living in the Bay Area was rougher than they?d expected. Nikki became pregnant with Arianna and fell behind on rent. The trio lived paycheck-to-paycheck, and after a couple months of barely making ends meet, they decided it was too hard to keep the apartment. Tess and Bonnar moved south to the Santa Cruz area, and Nikki, who wanted to stay near S.F., ended up in a homeless shelter for women. Sendy went back to Southern California to live with her dad.
It was at the shelter that Nikki got involved with a self-described evangelical ?street pastor,? Lemasani Briggs, who invited Nikki to live with her. In the beginning, it seemed like a good situation; Nikki got a job at Best Buy, and she was grateful to be out of the shelter. She paid Briggs rent, on top of money for watching Arianna while she was at work.
But after a couple months the prices began to fluctuate.
?I assume she switched babysitters because she started to realize that she was being taken advantage of,? Tess says.
Nikki shifted childcare responsibilities to Briggs? nieces, sisters Siolo and Helena Hearne. Siolo, an Uber driver, lived with a roommate in Emeryville. Helena, whose married name was Martin, lived with her husband Devin and their children in a small house in Oakland.
Bonnar was skeptical of the new arrangement.
?She told me, ?Yeah, these are Lemasani?s nieces, but they?re not really on good terms, so I?m not afraid. I know they don?t really talk to each other, so I feel like I can trust them,? ? Bonnar says.
She pleaded with Nikki to find someone outside of Briggs?s family, but affordable childcare was hard to come by. As Nikki deviated Arianna?s care away from Lemasani, the living situation only got more toxic. Her rent, which she had been paying Briggs along with babysitting fees, suddenly skyrocketed. Soon, all of Nikki?s income from working part-time at Best Buy was going to Briggs. And there were other red flags: Nikki had never been given a key to the apartment, and could only get in if someone was home.
After a few months, Tess and Bonnar caught on to what was rapidly becoming an abusive relationship.
?Nikki started sending me text messages that Lemasani was sending to her, calling her names and being disgusting,? Tess says. ?She mentioned something about Nikki seeing some guy, and Nikki said the only way she would have known that is if she went through her stuff. She had some sort of journal on her computer.?
In the end, it was Tess and Bonnar who stepped in. On a cold November morning in 2015, they drove the 60 miles up to San Francisco, called SFPD for backup in case things got ugly, picked up Nikki and Arianna from Briggs? house, and drove them back down to Santa Cruz.
Nikki had escaped, but the harassing text messages didn?t stop.
Lemasani ?started sending Nikki these texts, saying, ?Bring my baby back here,? ? Tess says.
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