Candace Butts, 44, lived in an apartment building in the 1900 block of East 73rd.
"Someone did this to her and that is what hurts the most," said Tia Butts, daughter.
Tia Butts was working at her downtown job Friday morning when she was called by a relative to rush home. The 18-year-old's mother had been stabbed to death around 6 a.m. Friday. The 44-year-old was found in her bedroom by her mother.
"I knew my baby was dead when I walked in there. I knew this," said Gloria Martin, Candace Butts' mother.
Martin and her granddaughter Tia live in an apartment right next to Candace Butts. Their back porch doors face each other. Martin says she called Candace several times Friday morning but her phone went straight to voice mail. By 9:30 a.m., Martin became worried.
"I knocked on the kitchen window," said Martin. "I knocked on the back door with my phone, no answer. So that's when I used my key but the door was unlocked."
Martins made a gruesome discovery.
"I saw this long butcher knife ... laying on the bed and all the blood on the bed by the pillow," she said.Martin says Candace's TV, jewelry and iPhone were missing, although police are not calling it a robbery yet.
Butts' family says Candace didn't have a boyfriend or many friends, but she was very close to her mother and her only child, Tia. The 18-year-old says she and her mom did everything together including go to the same college, Olive Harvey. Candace had recently gone back to school for a degree in criminal justice after her father was murdered last year.
"We lived for each other. If there was something my mama didn't have, I got it for her. If there was something I didn't have, my mama made sure I had it," her daughter told ABC7.
Tia Butts says she and her mom unexpectedly spent Thursday downtown together shopping and going to lunch. Butts says that memory is what is keeping her going.
While police are not commenting, the Butts family says an upstairs neighbor heard someone try to break into Candace's apartment early Friday morning.
No arrests have been made.
