- After Dejaune Ludie Anderson’s 5-year-old son, Cairo, was found dead in a suitcase in Indiana, Anderson evaded authorities for two years before her March 2024 arrest in Southern California.
- Anderson’s former associates, including Cairo’s father, Vincent Jordan, have tried to piece together Anderson’s steep mental health decline, as she went from seemingly loving mother to accused murderer.
For years, Vincent Jordan waited by the phone in his home in Atlanta, hoping it would be his ex-girlfriend telling him that he could finally see their young son.
But every time Dejaune Anderson called, she wouldn’t disclose where she and their son, Cairo, were staying, he said. He’d beg her to let him talk to Cairo but she refused and asked for money. Then, when Jordan asked for her Cash App account number so he could send over the funds, he said, she laughed and hung up.
“It was like she was just calling to troll me, to be honest,” Jordan said. “That’s what it felt like.”
Years later, Anderson would be arrested by police on suspicion of killing Cairo amid a bizarre series of events that culminated in her ending up in Los Angeles.
The shocking allegations have Jordan and other former friends searching for answers and reflecting on what they said was a precipitous decline in her mental health.
According to these observers, Anderson immersed herself more deeply into mysticism through a Louisiana-based service provider called Magickal Mystic, which claims to use “ancient spiritual wisdom” to help its customers achieve goals. And eventually, they said, she befriended a woman from Shreveport, La., named Dawn Coleman, who billed herself as a necromancer — someone who communicates with the dead.
The last time Anderson called Jordan was about four or five years ago, he said, when Cairo was a toddler. It wasn’t until 2022 that Jordan would learn what happened to his son.
That April, a man foraging for mushrooms in the woods of southern Indiana discovered a brightly colored hard-shell suitcase with a Las Vegas logo on the front.
Inside were the remains of a small boy, whom police identified as 5-year-old Cairo. His death was ruled a homicide, caused by diarrhea and vomiting that led to dehydration, officials said. The boy had been dead for about a week before his body was found.
Dejaune L. Anderson was arrested two years after her son’s body was found by a man hunting mushrooms in Indiana.
Six months later, authorities issued an arrest warrant for Anderson, alleging that she killed the boy and that Coleman helped her dispose of the body. Last fall, Coleman was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with five years suspended to probation, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.
An attorney for Anderson declined to comment for this article and an attorney for Coleman didn’t respond to a request for comment. Anderson, who has sought to represent herself in court, has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, neglect of a dependent and obstruction of justice.
“I tried to help this woman,” Jordan told The Times. “I think that’s the most heartbreaking thing about this whole ordeal. I feel like my son and I didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
Officials haven’t revealed the motive for the boy’s killing.
However, Anderson’s social media posts documented her preoccupation with exorcism and demonic possession around the time of her son’s death.
“I have survived the death attacks from my 5-year-old throughout the 5 years he has been alive,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, four days before Cairo’s body was found. “I have been able to weaken his powers through our blood. I have his real name and he is 100 years old. Need assistance.”
For nearly two years after the grim discovery, Anderson hid from the authorities, winding up in a North Hollywood complex in 2023. She kept a low profile there until Mar. 9, when her building manager heard shrieking and chanting from her unit and told her that she needed to stop making noise. Neighbors thought she was having a mental health episode.
On March 14, police notified the landlord that she was wanted for murder in Indiana, but by then she had abandoned her apartment, the building manager said. Later that day, Anderson was arrested at the Metro A Line station in Arcadia.
Anderson’s mental health troubles have carried over into her legal saga in the form of statements and court filings laden with conspiracy theories — for example, that her public defender is a relative of President Biden and that she is under “MK-Ultra” mind control, according to court records. After Anderson made dozens of filings in the case, Judge Larry Medlock threatened to hold her in contempt of court for the “irrelevant,” conspiracy-filed motions, according to court records.
Medlock also ruled that Anderson can’t represent herself and must be taken to a psychiatric facility, court records indicate. According to those records, Medlock said that two doctors who evaluated Anderson concluded that she is “not currently competent to stand trial or assist counsel in her defense.”
Anderson’s trial was expected to begin Oct. 1, but will be rescheduled once she undergoes mental health treatment and is deemed competent, Medlock said in court records.
Devastated by the loss of his son, Jordan had given up hope for justice, believing Anderson to be dead. Learning about her arrest was bittersweet, he said, because all of the memories of Cairo came flooding back.
“I was happy and sad,” he said. “It brought all those those feelings back from when I lost him.”
Jordan said he met Anderson in 2015 in Atlanta, where she was working at a warehouse distribution center and he was in the film industry, often spending 12 or more hours a day on set. The pair hit it off and started dating.
Anderson got pregnant and had Cairo in 2017, Jordan said, but she had broken up with him by then. Still, he said, he allowed her to remain on his family’s farm in Atlanta because she didn’t have the best relationship with her mom and didn’t want to stay with her.
“She wasn’t really trying to have a family like that, but she had nowhere to go,” Jordan said.
Anderson never mentioned any interest in magic or exorcism to Jordan during the time that he knew her. In fact, he described her as a good mother to Cairo, from all appearances, although she seemed more excited about the money and events surrounding him than about their son himself.
For Cairo’s first birthday, for example, Jordan said Anderson asked him to spend almost $1,000 on the party. She even had the event catered. Jordan said he caved because he wanted to make her and Cairo happy.
There were other red flags, Jordan said. Anderson told him that years before they met, she had worked as a stripper in Las Vegas. She also told him she had spent years in prison there for a crime at the strip club, he said.
Anderson agreed to let Jordan see the boy on weekends, he said, but one Friday when he went to pick Cairo up, the deal broke down.
Anderson came to the door and threatened to call the police on Jordan, contending that he was disturbing the peace, he said. The glimpse he caught of Cairo that day was the last he would have of his son.
Months later, Jordan claimed, he went to Fulton County Family Court to try to get his son back, but Anderson never showed up for the hearing. The Times couldn’t find records of a custody dispute between Jordan and Anderson; Jordan said he made no further efforts to regain custody of Cairo.
Unbeknownst to Jordan, after Anderson disappeared with Cairo, she joined the mystic community, two former friends said.
One of them, Emme Rain, said she met Anderson online in 2019, when Anderson enrolled in Rain’s Magickal Mystic’s program. Anderson told her that she’d previously studied mysticism with someone else and tried to get a consulting company off the ground. According to Rain, Anderson said she was drawn to Magickal Mystic because it combined mysticism and business, and she wanted to learn energy work — the belief that techniques using energy can affect the mind, body and self.
“I think that’s the most heartbreaking thing about this whole ordeal. I feel like my son and I didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
— Vincent Jordan
Rain said she urged Anderson to see a therapist, which she did, because she was dealing with mental health issues.
Anderson told Rain that Cairo was living with Jordan and that she was trying to get custody of the boy but didn’t have any money, according to Rain. Some members of the mystic community banded together to raise the funds for Anderson to hire a lawyer, although it’s unclear whether she ever did.
One day, Anderson told Rain that she got her son back, but she never mentioned how. The Times couldn’t find court records of a custody agreement between Anderson and Jordan.
Meanwhile, Anderson was struggling to hold down a job and housing, Rain said. According to Rain, Anderson went back to stripping and sold stolen designer shoes. She told Rain that she was thinking about giving Cairo back to her ex because she was running out of money.
Anderson also started to unravel emotionally after she stopped attending therapy and taking her medication, Rain said, adding: “She was being really aggressive and feeling paranoid about people, and that increased to an untenable level.”
Around that same time, Anderson met a woman online named Dawn Coleman, who claimed to be a necromancer, according to Rain. Through Coleman, Rain said, Anderson became more radical and enamored with “dark magic,” or sending bad energy to others.
“There were so many times where she said she wanted to do things to her mom or to Cairo’s dad,” Rain said. “She found someone who was into blaming everybody else and doing whatever she could do to hurt them.”
Things came to a head in May 2021 at a graduation ceremony for Anderson and other participants in Magickal Mystic. There, Rain said, Anderson got into a fight with someone else in the group. A few days later, Anderson went to New Orleans to meet Coleman in person. Rain said she lost touch with Anderson after she started spending time with Coleman.
Coleman, like Rain, charged clients for online consulting that included energy work, according to Coleman’s former clients. But she occasionally behaved strangely in those sessions, according to a former client who asked not to be identified because of privacy concerns.
Dejaune Anderson was charged with murder in the death of her son, whose body was found in a suitcase in 2022. She went on the run, hiding in North Hollywood for a year.
The friend said she met Coleman over Facebook years ago and considered her “like a sister.” She said she paid Coleman for Reiki energy healing, which involves guiding energy through the body to combat physical and emotional problems.
She had a final healing session by video with Coleman in Nov. 2021, during which Coleman talked about conspiracy theories and her belief that a Third World War was coming.
“She was making posts about how she was dying, and if we didn’t raise our self-awareness and consciousness, she’s gonna die,” the woman said. “She started going on about being watched by AI robots and how kids can be demonic.”
“You can be spiritual without turning into a zealot. That comes through being grounded in reality and not trying to make real life into Hogwarts.”
— Emme Rain
Over a two-month span in early 2022, Anderson was arrested twice — once for speeding and suspicion of child endangerment in South Carolina, allegedly going 92 mph in a 60-mph zone with Cairo and Coleman in the car, and once on suspicion of second-degree robbery in Louisville, Ky., after an altercation with a mall security guard, according to authorities.
On April 11, 2022, Anderson was released from the Jefferson County, Ky., jail on her own recognizance, but court records indicate that she never showed up for a hearing on the alleged robbery.
Her son’s body was discovered in the woods five days later.
The news of Cairo’s death was devastating to the mystic community, said Rain, who disavowed the idea that a demon was living inside the boy.
“You can be spiritual without turning into a zealot,” she said. “That comes through being grounded in reality and not trying to make real life into Hogwarts. It was a wake-up call and sent ripples through the community.”
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