When the Kalamazoo police were called out to a student apartment building on a spring night in 2018, they believed they were responding to a report like any other.

A Western Michigan University student, 24-year-old Anniah Mack, had been out of touch with friends for a few days.

It was unusual behavior, though police would initially find no signs of foul play, just oddities around her home that no one could explain.

That is, until an unexpected encounter outside of her home that broke the case wide open and uncovered a shocking secret in the young student’s life that no one saw coming.

In the early morning hours of Thursday, June 28th, 2018, officers from the Kalamazoo Police Department responded to a call at the Hunter Ridge Apartments in West Michigan.

The complex is composed of a multi-story, multi-unit apartment building with a parking lot.

The building serves as off-campus housing, and all of the residents are local college students.

Officers were there to look for Anniah Mack, a Psychology major studying at Western Michigan University.

No one had heard from Anniah, or “Nia” as she was known by those close to her, since the previous Sunday.

Nia was a social butterfly, always active and engaged in a range of activities.

In high school, she was an honor roll student, on the student council, in the health occupations association, the marching band, the concert band, varsity cheerleading, volleyball, and softball.

In college, she still sang in the church choir and danced with the WMU all-girls dance group.

To be out of contact with so many friends for even a few hours, and certainly for several days, was extremely uncharacteristic of Anniah.

Her good friend, LaQuenta Watson, phoned the police in Kalamazoo.

She told them that she usually spoke with Anniah every day.

When she hadn’t heard from her after a couple of days, she grew suspicious.

Calls went straight to voicemail.

Her suspicions grew when she went to Anniah’s new job at the Great Lakes Alternative Research Center, where she worked with autistic children.

They told her that Anniah had failed to report to work two days in a row.

She had only landed the position three months prior and was thrilled to have found the role.

There was no way she would choose to blow off work unless something serious had occurred.

Her childhood friend, Dominic Thomas, met with police at the apartment building after speaking with Anniah’s mother, Loretta, in Louisiana, as well as LaQuenta.

All three had grown increasingly concerned over their inability to reach her.

“It’s unlike her to just not answer the phone,” Dominic told the officers.

“If anything is going on, I’m like pretty much the only person that she has here besides her family.”

“Me and her, we have been best friends our entire being, basically.”

“It’s just driving me real crazy that if anything was going on, she would call me.”

He confirmed she had no known medical or psychological issues, nor any history of hard drug abuse.

The officers learned that Anniah owned a white 2008 Malibu, which they spotted in the parking lot without a license plate.

In a spot nearby was a second, nearly identical vehicle.

That second Malibu had Anniah’s plates attached but was registered to a man named Gustavo.

Both vehicles had two flat tires and neither appeared to be drivable.

There was a light on inside her apartment, and it appeared there was a television on, though no one was answering the door.

Dominic told officers that Anniah had some issues in the past with her boyfriend, 25-year-old Donovan Lewis.

Donovan, or “Donnie” as friends called him, was a former community college basketball player and YMCA lifeguard.

He had recently returned to Kalamazoo after a short stay with his brother in Indianapolis.

Now that he had returned to Michigan, Donovan had taken whatever job he could find.

For the last week and a half, he had been working the night shift as a janitor at a large local manufacturing firm.

Dominic recalled several occasions when they went back and forth, and noted the police had been called at least once.

He “threw water on her several times,” Dominic said.

He also recounted a time Donovan “rode her arm up in the window like down the street.”

When Anniah’s roommate, Kora, arrived to let the search party into the apartment, the scene only became more perplexing.

Kora told officers Lockett and LeGros that it was common for her and Anniah not to cross paths for days at a time.

She said she hadn’t seen Anniah since before Saturday, as Kora had been away for her own graduation.

But she noted someone had clearly been in the apartment that day.

“Someone was here today,” Kora said, “because they turned on the air and they put some clothes in the washer.”

In the washer were men’s clothes and two teal bathroom rugs.

Inside, officers found more oddities.

The bathtub in the bathroom used by Anniah was full of water, as if she had drawn a bath but never taken it.

There were no mats in that same bathroom.

Kora confirmed Donovan did laundry there, but she didn’t think he had a key.

Many of Anniah’s personal belongings that she would need to travel—her makeup, her purse, her hair stuff—were located in her bedroom.

There was also the unexplained situation with the two Malibus.

If Anniah had voluntarily left home, how was she traveling.

“I think it’s just a little fishy,” one officer remarked.

“Both of her cars are here, boyfriend has no car.”

“Her best friend, her parents, her god-sister, her pastor… she’s missed work.”

The officers left the apartment with different impressions of the severity of the situation.

They had failed to find any obvious signs of foul play, but there was a lot that was not right about the situation.

“Do I think that she’s endangered,” one officer said on bodycam.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“We’ve got nothing to lead us to believe that she’s endangered, other than the fact that the boyfriend was an ass at one point.”

Another officer was less sure.

“There’s still somebody coming and going from the apartment,” he noted.

“That’s the weird part.”

Donovan Lewis had been unreachable.

What they knew from Donovan had been relayed to them via Anniah’s friends, who had spoken with him.

Both Dominic and LaQuenta said that Donovan had also been trying to reach Anniah unsuccessfully since Sunday.

After failing to locate Donovan at his mother’s home, Anniah’s good friend and godsister, LaQuenta, contacted Officer Lockett once again.

This time, she informed him that she knew Donovan was finishing his janitorial shift at Stryker, the medical equipment company, at 3:30 a.m.

She told him Donovan would be returning to Anniah’s apartment.

Officers Day and Lockett returned to the Hunter Ridge Apartments once more that night to seek him out.

As they waited, their suspicion grew.

“I feel like you’d be a little bit more concerned if your girlfriend’s missing,” one officer said.

“That’s the one person who hasn’t talked to us.”

“Now I think something fishy is going on here.”

“Why would she completely cut off everybody.”

The officers were standing in front of their cruiser and discussing their concerns over the case when things took an unexpected turn.

A man wearing a black T-shirt, khaki shorts, and a backpack approached them from the front left side of the cruiser in the dark.

“What’s uh… what’s going on, sir,” the officer asked.

The man, Donovan Lewis, replied, “Take me.”

“Just tell me now,” the officer said.

“I killed my girlfriend,” Donovan stated flatly.

The officers immediately moved to detain him.

“Where is she,” one officer yelled.

Donovan was read his Miranda rights.

“Where is she,” the officer asked again.

He explained she was “out in the river on the east side of the city somewhere.”

“In a creek.”

The case that seemed to be only a possible missing person’s report minutes earlier was now a homicide.

As Officer Lockett drove Donovan to the station, the 25-year-old continued to provide scattered details, despite being told he didn’t have to talk.

When detectives arrived, Donovan Lewis offered a full written confession to the murder, revealing the shocking secret that had remained hidden.

He explained that after going through his girlfriend’s phone, he discovered inappropriate text messages from her pastor.

He believed that the two were physically involved.

He further claimed that since Anniah had been struggling financially, she had been blackmailing the pastor.

This pastor was identified as Floyd Strickland, of the Second Baptist Church, who was also the local president of the NAACP.

According to Donovan, the pastor had been paying her rent, her phone bill, and had given her the second Malibu to drive.

An argument had broken out at Anniah’s apartment that Sunday, prompted in part by the ongoing tensions caused by this relationship.

Donovan said Anniah’s original car kept getting flat tires.

The pastor had paid to have them mended, then offered her the second Malibu, which he claimed to own.

It, too, began getting flats.

Donovan claimed that after Anniah threatened to expose the relationship to the pastor’s wife, Strickland had threatened Anniah.

That Sunday, Donovan had been drinking.

He claimed to be drunk and exhausted from lack of sleep, having stayed up all night going through her phone.

Anniah was running the bath that officers would later find full of water.

The two began to argue.

Anniah told him that she wanted him to leave for good.

She got out one of his suitcases and began packing his belongings into it.

That is when Donovan said he struck her, rendering her unconscious.

He said that he then went into the kitchen, got a large knife, and returned to the bedroom.

He slit her throat and stabbed her.

He admitted that he then put a garbage bag over her head and put her body into the suitcase.

He placed the suitcase in a dumpster outside of the visitor parking.

The next day, in the dark, he retrieved it.

Driving his mother’s van, he drove out to Comstock Creek on East Main, past Sprinkle Road.

He left Anniah in a deep stream off of the creek, weighing the suitcase down with mud so it would sink toward the bottom of the water.

Investigators questioned some details provided by Donovan.

In particular, they expressed some doubt over how the murder transpired, based on the lack of blood in the apartment.

Responding officers had failed to identify any signs that a stabbing had taken place.

Upon closer inspection, however, small but identifiable stains were discovered in the hallway, on the edge of Anniah’s bed, and on the bedroom carpet.

Cleaning products already inside the unit had been used to clean other surfaces.

Donovan had disposed of a mattress cover in the apartment dumpster, which had already been collected by the time law enforcement reached it.

He had placed the teal bath mats in the washing machine and disposed of his own clothing at his mother’s home.

The physical evidence was not the only aspect of his story that the detectives sought to verify.

Pastor Strickland told the Kalamazoo police that Anniah Mack was simply a member of his congregation and the church choir.

He insisted he was not having a relationship with her.

Indeed, when pressed by detectives, Donovan admitted that Anniah had never actually admitted to an affair with the pastor, only that she was allegedly manipulating him for financial gain.

Strickland offered his own version of events.

He stated that Anniah had recently traveled with him to Mississippi for a choir trip.

While she was there, she met a young man with whom she was interested, and they started a relationship.

According to Pastor Strickland, Anniah was hiding this new relationship from Donovan.

He claimed she was doing this by hiding the young man’s contact info in her phone under his name.

He stated she did this so if her boyfriend saw the phone, he would think it was the pastor contacting her and would not be suspicious.

Roughly a month after the pastor gave his statement to police, he contacted them once again.

He wanted the 2008 white Malibu—the one registered to “Gustavo”—returned to him.

The issue was that he seemed unable to prove that it was properly purchased.

Strickland claimed that the car was his wife’s, but he had no title or bill of sale.

Ownership of the car was never proven, and it was not returned to the pastor.

This would be the least of the pastor’s issues, however.

Later that year, he was accused by three teenagers in his church of sexual assault.

He and his wife stood accused of using their positions in the church and at a local school to coerce teens into their bed.

One victim reported feeling unable to refuse the pastor’s advances because he needed the use of a car that the pastor was lending him.

The Michigan State Police investigation into Strickland and his wife found that the alleged assaults took place between January and May 2018, the same time frame as Anniah’s murder.

In February 2023, a plea agreement was reached.

Strickland admitted to using a vehicle to solicit prostitution.

The pastor was sentenced to one year in prison.

In a lengthy sentencing statement, the pastor continued to deny his guilt, explaining that accepting the plea was in the best interest of his family.

Donovan Lewis agreed to lead Kalamazoo police to the location at Comstock Creek where he had left Anniah.

An accomplished swimmer, Donovan had taken Anniah in the suitcase further down the creek and into the deeper, muddy water.

Searchers were unable to wade into the stream and instead took a rescue boat.

After connecting to the suitcase, they recovered Anniah’s body.

Investigators continued to search the small channel for the murder weapon, the black-handled butcher knife that Donovan had used.

He stated that he had stuck it into the side of the creek, but Searchers were unable to locate it.

The recovery had been successful nonetheless.

Anniah’s family was able to lay her to rest.

“Giving to other people, being about other people, was her legacy,” her family said.

“Anniah was about mental health awareness.”

“She was about autism research.”

“She loved kids.”

Three days before Donovan Lewis was meant to stand trial for first-degree murder, he was in the recreation yard at the Kalamazoo County Jail.

He abruptly bolted towards the fence.

Donovan scaled two 15-foot walls, climbed over security fences topped with barbed wire and razor wire, and then scaled a third fence separating the jail from the highway.

He was captured just over a half an hour later.

Donovan later claimed that he was not trying to avoid punishment for the murder.

He said that he feared for his family, whom he claimed had been receiving death threats.

Anniah’s family was keen to avoid the trauma of a trial.

In late 2018, the state agreed to offer Donovan Lewis a plea deal for second-degree murder.

“I can’t imagine the hurt that I’ve caused,” Donovan said at his sentencing.

“I just want to say sorry to the family.”

The judge was not moved.

“Mr. Lewis, you threw all of that out the window back on June 24th,” the judge stated.

“Anniah Mack didn’t deserve any of these things.”

“She didn’t deserve to be hit.”

“She didn’t deserve to be put unconscious.”

“She didn’t deserve to be stabbed and murdered.”

“And her body didn’t deserve to be treated less than garbage.”

“And all of that happened because of you.”

Donovan Lewis was sentenced to 25 to 40 years in prison.

He was given an additional 17 months to 4 years for his escape from the county jail.

Anniah’s sister spoke about the sentence.

“He has to live with it for the rest of his life,” she said.

“I haven’t forgiven him.”

“In time, I’m sure I will, but not now.”

“Clearly she was one of the most loving people.”

“She loved a monster, so that says a lot about her personality.”

Floyd Strickland served his brief sentence for the single felony count.

It seems that he is now going by the name Dr. Floyd Strickland and is a pastor at the Galilee Baptist Church in Mount Olive, Mississippi.