Blanchard, 32, was released from prison last week after serving nearly a decade behind bars for second-degree murder in the death of her abusive mother in 2015. During her interview, Blanchard spoke about her future plans, which include doing advocacy work for other abuse victims. She then addressed the camera.
“If there is someone out there watching right now, please listen to me, heed my words, that you are not alone in this situation,” she said. “There are other ways out. I did it the wrong way, um, so—”
“No, no, honey, no,” Behar said, cutting Blanchard off. “Don’t say that.”
“Well, I did—” Blanchard said.
“You had no choice,” Behar said.
“I did something wrong,” Blanchard said. “And I paid my dues for it.”
“Oh, you mean that part,” Behar said with a sheepish smile, and began to backpedal.
“Yes,” Blanchard said. “That part of it.”
“Where are you going with this, Joy?” one of Behar’s co-hosts shouted from off camera.
“Murder is wrong, Joy,” co-host Ana Navarro said, mock-patiently.
“Yes, murder’s wrong,” Blanchard said with an awkward laugh.
A clip of the moment made its way onto X, formerly Twitter, where users certainly found humor in Behar’s seeming suggestion that murder is OK sometimes.
Joy said “you had no choice” LMFAO MISS JOY
— Re-employed rays secretary (@CHRIS_NASTii) January 5, 2024
Joy you can’t say the quiet part out loud on TV like that
But many others agreed with Behar — who was likely referring to the horrific abuse Blanchard was forced to endure. Some people said that due to the circumstances of Blanchard’s case, they understood her actions.
the thing is she kind of didn’t have another choice
she really didn’t have any other way out though her mom had the world convinced she’s mentally handicapped they wouldn’t have believed nothing she said 😭😭
Blanchard’s mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, lied to her about her health since early childhood and made her believe she had several illnesses and conditions she did not actually have, including leukemia, muscular dystrophy, brain damage and an unspecified chromosomal disorder.
In order to sell the scam, Clauddine Blanchard forced her daughter to use a wheelchair, shaved her head and had a doctor install a feeding tube in her stomach. Clauddine, who was also physically abusive, exploited Gypsy Rose’s fake illnesses for personal gain and convinced their community that the charade was authentic — which kept her daughter isolated and in a state of arrested development.
Gypsy Rose realized later in life that she was not sick at all, and at age 19, she conspired with her then boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to kill her mother. Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder after stabbing Clauddine Blanchard to death in her home in Springfield, Missouri, in 2015. He was sentenced to life in prison.
During her appearance on “The View,” Gypsy Rose was asked about her critics who claim she’s using her notoriety for financial gain. She explained her reasons for being so public now that her sentence is up.
“I’m a very private person, and I don’t like the fame,” Blanchard said. “But the one thing that I can do with it is some good. So, I’m not in it for fame or fortune. My story is important to me, it happened to me, and I just want to be an advocate. I want to be somebody that can help others. That’s seriously all that I want.”
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Authorities in western Michigan are looking into missing persons cases and unsolved homicides after interviewing a convicted murderer and long-haul truck driver with terminal cancer who died last week in a prison hospital.
Kent County sheriff’s detectives questioned Garry Artman on three occasions before his death Thursday at a state Corrections health facility in Jackson, Michigan. In a statement to CBS News, Kent County Lt. Eric Brunner said officers were working “to determine if Mr. Artman can be tied to any other homicide or missing person cases.”
Michigan Department of Corrections via AP
Brunner said detectives “gleaned information” from their interviews with Artman and are collaborating with other law enforcement agencies to “connect the dots with missing pieces or homicide cases that are still open.”
Brunner would not say which unsolved cases are being looked into or how many cases are being investigated, although police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have tied Artman to a woman’s disappearance nearly 30 years ago.
“Interviews with Artman provided enough information to reasonably conclude he was involved in the 1995 disappearance of Cathleen Dennis but that it is very unlikely that Dennis’ body will ever be found,” a Grand Rapids police spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Grand Rapids detectives also met with Artman before his death and are trying to determine if he is connected to other missing persons or homicide cases in that city, the spokeswoman said in an email.
WOOD-TV first reported Artman was being investigated in other cases. Sources told the station that Artman confessed to nine murders for which he never faced charges.
“Other information from WOODTV8 here in Grand Rapids was obtained through their non-law enforcement sources,” the Kent County Sheriff’s Office told CBS News in a statement.
John Pyrski, Artman’s court-appointed lawyer, told The Associated Press Wednesday that he didn’t know if Artman had committed other murders. But “if he did, I’m glad he made everything right in the end” by disclosing them, Pyrski added.
Artman, 66, had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. A Michigan jury in September convicted him of the 1996 rape and murder of Sharon Hammack, 29, in Kent County. He was sentenced in October to life in prison without parole.
Artman also faced murder charges in the 2006 slaying of Dusty Shuck, 24, in Maryland. Shuck was from Silver City, New Mexico. Her body was found near a truck stop along an interstate outside New Market, Maryland.
Artman, who had been living in White Springs, Florida, was arrested in 2022 in Mississippi after Kent County investigators identified him as a suspect in Hammack’s slaying through DNA analyzed by a forensic genetic genealogist.
His DNA also matched DNA in Shuck’s slaying.
Kent County sheriff’s investigators later searched a storage unit in Florida believed to belong to Artman and found several pieces of women’s underwear that were seized for biological evidence to determine whether there were other victims, Maryland State Police said in a 2022 news release.
Investigators from the Maryland State Police Homicide Unit traveled to Michigan to conduct interviews and gather additional information relevant to the investigation, CBS Baltimore reported at the time.
Artman previously served about a decade in Michigan prisons following convictions for criminal sexual conduct in 1981.
Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay are joined by filmmaker Jason Hehir to discuss the new docuseries Murder in Boston (1:25), explain Boston’s history of racial strife (13:24), and the city’s reckoning with its past (24:18).
Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guest: Jason Hehir Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith
An altercation over alleged package theft turned deadly after a California resident ran over the 60-year-old woman she accused of being the thief, according to local police.
Dene Blakely, 39, of San Pablo, California, is facing murder charges after the December 8 crash. The victim, who has not been identified, died from her injuries on December 23, the San Pablo Police Department (SPPD) said in a statement on Saturday.
Shortly before 2:30 p.m. on December 8, SPPD officers responded to the 1100 block of Broadway Avenue for a crash between a vehicle and a pedestrian where they found the 60-year-old victim with “major injuries,” according to the statement. The victim was transported to the hospital in critical condition and underwent surgery but succumbed to her injuries roughly two weeks after being hit, SPPD said.
Newsweek reached out via email and social media on Sunday to the SPPD for comment and update on the case. It was unclear at the time of publication whether Blakely had retained an attorney who could speak on her behalf.
Dene Blakely, 39, of San Pablo, California, ran over a woman whom she suspected had stolen a package from her home after an altercation on December 8, 2023. The woman died on December 23, and state prosecutors charged Blakely with murder, local authorities announced on Saturday. San Pablo Police Department
Police “quickly learned” that 39-year-old Blakely was behind the wheel of the vehicle that struck the woman after a “verbal altercation” over the theft of packages had escalated, the SPPD’s press release said.
“The suspect believed to recognize the victim as someone who had previously stolen a package from her residence, and confronted the victim as she walked in the 1100 block of Broadway Avenue,” the department wrote.
Investigators believe the pair’s altercation became heated and resulted in the subsequent collision, according to the statement, which noted that evidence shows the crash was an “intentional act of assault.”
Police did not clarify at the time of publication whether the victim stole any packages or if it was a case of mistaken identity.
Blakely was arrested at the scene without incident and was booked at the Martinez Detention Facility on a felony charge of assault with a deadly weapon, SPPD said.
Several days later, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office filed formal charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, following a review of the criminal case, SPPD said.
After the victim died, the District Attorney’s Office amended the complaint to include a criminal murder charge.
Newsweek reached out via email on Sunday to the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office for comment.
Blakely remains in custody at the Contra Costa County Jail on a $1 million bond. She’s due back in court on January 30, 2024.
SPPD said that the investigation is ongoing.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
This story originally aired on Jan. 30, 2021. It was updated on Dec. 30, 2023.
Debbie Boyd spent an agonizing 15 years wondering where convicted killer Mario Garcia hid the body of her murdered daughter Christie Wilson.
“Was she in an ocean? Was she in a ditch?” asked Boyd. “And for 15 years, I never went to bed without wondering ‘where is she? Where did Mario Garcia put her?’”
“We wanted to find her to show Mario, you’re not going to win, you’re not winning this,” said investigator Don Murchison. “We’re going to find her and bring her home to the family.”
Through sheer will and wit, and the help of two determined investigators, Boyd finally got her answer.
Christie Wilson, 27, was last seen leaving the Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, California, in the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 2005.
Debbie Boyd
Mario Garcia met Christie Wilson in a casino in 2005. It was the last time the 27-year-old woman was ever seen. Garcia denied having anything to do with Wilson’s disappearance.
“What happened to her, Mario? How could she simply disappear after she was with you?” “48 Hours “correspondent Erin Moriarty asked Garcia in 2006. “I don’t have answers for that,” he replied.
A jury disagreed. Years passed since he was convicted and in 2018, Garcia let Boyd know he wanted to be released early from his 59-year sentence. Boyd considered negotiating with him, but changed her mind.
“This would be such a disgrace,” she said. “He will not use my daughter’s body as a bargaining chip.”
In August 2020, investigators working for the district attorney in Placer County, Calif., got a tip from an unlikely source that led them back to Garcia’s former home. There they started digging until something emerged from the ground.
“We found Christie,” says Boyd. “This is a day that we had hoped for. My prayers have been answered. We can now move forward without the torment of the last 15 years.”
THE BIGGEST GAMBLE
Tiffney de Vries: Christie and I were definitely soul sisters for sure …we grew up together in school and just loved pretty much doing everything together.
Tiffney de Vries says best friend Christie Wilson just had a knack for making her laugh.
Tiffney DeVries: I picture her in our front room … just dancing and laughing and having so much fun … I could be having the worst day … And she would always be there for me. … We always knew that no matter what, we were there for each other.
But Tiffney was not with Christie in early morning hours of Oct. 5, 2005. That’s when a surveillance camera in a California casino captured Christie walking into a parking lot with a man she met that night.
Christie Wilson and Mario Garcia are seen leaving the casino together at 1:13 a.m.
Placer County District Attorney
Tiffney DeVries: That was really scary because we didn’t know where she was or if she could be alive.
Christie was then only 27 years old. Her mother Debbie Boyd can hardly believe how much time has passed.
Debbie Boyd: You know, I try not to think of it too much because it actually kind of takes me to a very sad place.
Since the moment Christie vanished, Debbie vowed not to rest until she knew what Christie’s killer had done with her body.
Debbie Boyd: I’m her mother forever, and I was not going to give up.
“48 Hours” has been covering the Christie Wilson case since 2006. It began like so many of these stories do: with a concerned boyfriend telling authorities that his girlfriend had gone missing.
Danny Burlando [2005]: I loved her, and I know she loved me, and we cared about each other very much.
On the evening of Oct. 4, 2005, Christie’s boyfriend Danny Burlando says she went to the Thunder Valley Casino to play blackjack.
Erin Moriarty: Did it surprise you to hear she had been at a casino that night?
Tiffney de Vries [2005]: You know it — it didn’t — because recently she um — she had been telling me she’d been, you know — playing some blackjack.
Back in 2005, Tiffney de Vries was a young newlywed. She’s thought about why Christie left the casino that night with a stranger, and she had a theory.
Tiffney de Vries [2005]: Sometimes I think, “Well what if — you know — someone put something in her drink?
Debbie was aware her daughter was gambling, partly because she was between jobs and low on money. Her boyfriend Danny felt Christie was gambling too much.
Erin Moriarty: When’s the last time you actually talked to her?
Danny Burlando [2005]: At 10:28 p.m. Tuesday, October 4th. We had a 55 second conversation.
Christie Wilson seen in the casino on the phone with Danny Burlando at 10:28 p.m. on October 4, 2005.
Placer County District Attorney
Danny Burlando [2005]: I told her to come home and … she was like, “OK, I’m finishing up. I’ll be home soon.”
But when Danny awoke, there was no sign of Christie. He began leaving dozens of desperate messages on Christie’s cellphone:
A quarter after 10 on Wednesday. It’s now been 24 hours since I talked to you last, and I’m worried sick about you … Please call me. If you’re OK, call me. If you’re not OK, call me. Let me know what’s going on.
Danny filed a missing person’s report. Investigator Don Murchison interviewed Burlando back in 2005 and says Danny was very cooperative.
Don Murchison [2005]: Anything that I wanted from him when I was at that residence, he allowed me to have.
Murchison says investigators soon found their prime suspect when that casino video surfaced. They were able to track down a 53-year-old man named Mario Garcia by his player’s casino card. Sheriff’s deputies arrested and held him on a weapons charge.
Mario Garcia: Christie Wilson came and sat on my left between me and another individual.
In 2006, Mario Garcia told “48 Hours” what he says happened in the hours before Christie disappeared.
Christie Wilson and Mario Garcia
Placer County District Attorney
Mario Garcia: We were at that table for a period of time until that table got hot. She asked me, “Hey, you want to go with me to another table?” And I said, “Sure.”
Their night of gambling ended just past 1 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5. Garcia claimed that he and Christie walked to his car and then went their separate ways. And he suggested that Christie may have met someone in the parking lot.
Erin Moriarty: Well, wouldn’t that be seen on camera?
Mario Garcia: Well, they don’t see that she got in my car, do they? They don’t see where she went, correct?
Some 3 minutes and 41 seconds later, Garcia’s car reappears on the cameras and it looks as though he’s the only one inside.
George Malim [2005]: She hasn’t called any family. Any friends.
Investigations Commander George Malim helped coordinate a massive search for Christie through the rugged and varied terrain of Placer County.
George Malim: We utilized search and rescue people and their vehicles … and they drove every road they could … every driveway, looked in every culvert … and still nothing was found.
Among the searchers was Christie’s heartbroken older sister Stacie.
Stacie Wilson [2005]: You wanna hear details, but you don’t. It’s just like you get this image in my head of “god, what she must have been going through.”
The physical searches turned up nothing, but then investigators began looking into Mario Garcia’s past … and what they found was chilling.
Wendy Ward [2005]: You don’t cross Mario. You don’t cross him, especially if you’re a woman and you’re alone. You don’t cross him.
GARCIA’S PAST
Even though Mario Garcia was the last person seen with Christie Wilson, to some he appeared an unlikely murder suspect. He was a project manager for a local hospital, married with two teenage boys.
Mario Garcia: I am, and I have been happily married.
Jean Garcia [2006]: Your husband … is your destiny … and with him I have that feeling. I just have that connection.
Jean and Mario Garcia
Jean Garcia
Garcia’s wife Jean defended him.
Jean Garcia: He is a family man … if he’s not working we will take the kids for sports.
And his son Kris, then 19, said he’s a great dad.
Kris Garcia [2006]: … he was always there for us … you know he’d always come home, make sure … we all sit at the table. … we’re just a good family.
The family lived in a house on five beautiful acres in Auburn, California – Gold Country.
Jean Garcia: With Mario, I always feel good about him.
But investigators were not about to take Jean’s word for it. Four days after Christie disappeared, they went to Garcia’s home to question him and ran a criminal background check. And that’s how they found Wendy Ward, a woman from Garcia’s past.
Wendy Ward [2005]: When I first met him, I found him to be very intelligent, very articulate, very warm.
Wendy Ward and Mario Garcia met and began dating in 1978.
Wendy Ward
Wendy Ward met Garcia in 1978 near Oakland, when she was 26 and he was 27, and they began dating.
Wendy Ward [2005]: I would say a very supportive person. It felt like he cared a lot.
But Wendy says he also had a temper, and he reached a boiling point after she ended the relationship. He grabbed her one night and drove off with her in his van.
Wendy Ward [2005]: He was holding my neck, or he was holding my head … and he says, `You do anything, you do anything, I will take your head and I will smash it.”
Wendy Ward [2005]: I think he said to me, “Take off your clothes” or – -or something like that, and I said, “No.” … I just was clawing, scratching, whatever I could do. … Then he started to choke me. I couldn’t — I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.
Erin Moriarty: Did you think you were going to die?
Wendy Ward [2005]: I did. I really did.
She says he raped her and then took her back to his apartment.
Wendy Ward [2005]: … he pulled a gun out of his cabinet … and he held it to my head … and he pulled the trigger. … he says, “well it wasn’t loaded this time,” but basically, “I can come and get you anytime I want.”
Wendy says he raped her again. And then, he casually made himself a sandwich, ate it, and drove her home.
Wendy Ward [2005]: I’m surprised that I actually am alive. I — I’m very lucky.
Wendy immediately went to the hospital, and police arrested Garcia. But the court case stalled for two years, before prosecutors offered him a deal.
Wendy Ward [2005]: I figured it’s better than nothing and let’s do this and then let’s move on. Garcia agreed to plead guilty to one count of assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 18 month’s probation. Believe it or not, Garcia says he’s the one who was railroaded.
Mario Garcia
CBS News
Mario Garcia [2006]: She made allegations that were not true.
Erin Moriarty: There was a gun involved, wasn’t there?
Mario Garcia: There was no gun involved.
Erin Moriarty: You pled guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and there was no gun involved? You just offered to plead guilty?
Mario Garcia: I possess guns, I possess guns but there was no — we had a stormy relationship.
Erin Moriarty: When you say stormy relationship, did you hit her?
Mario Garcia: No, I did not.
Wendy never forgot about Garcia, but she moved on … until October 2005, not long after Christie went missing, when she was tracked down by Detective Murchison.
Erin Moriarty: When you heard that Christie Wilson disappeared and the last person to see her alive was Mario Garcia, what was your reaction?
Wendy Ward: I felt sick to my stomach.
Wendy told Murchison what happened with Garcia, and she said there was something else about Garcia they needed to know.
Wendy Ward: I felt, after my own incident with him … that he could very easily do this again with someone else.
It wasn’t long before something terrible involving Mario Garcia happened again.
Tom Davis [2005]: My younger sister and I were pals, we were friends. She was a lot of fun to be around. She was very outgoing.
Tom Davis’ sister Lynette dated Mario Garcia after Wendy in 1979. It, too, was a volatile relationship, and Garcia was upset with Lynette because she ended a pregnancy with his child. But the couple still celebrated Christmas with Lynette’s mother. After dinner, the three of them got into Lynette’s car.
John Cave [2005]: The streets were dry; the weather was clear.
Retired officer John Cave was the chief accident investigator for the Oakland Police Department. That Christmas night, he got a call that a car had plunged into the water near the Oakland airport.
John Cave: The witnesses said the car pulled over to the right shoulder. They drove by, and the car accelerated. … And there was a ledge, like into the pier, and the car shot off that ledge out into the water … And that’s where it sunk.
Lynette Smith and Violet Davis
Tom David
Garcia was the only survivor.
Mario Garcia: I panicked and eventually, I took my seat belt and I opened one of the windows … all this rush of water came into the car. I got out and everybody else, I presumed, got out.
He told police Lynette was driving, but they couldn’t confirm who was behind the wheel.
Erin Moriarty: If in fact Mario Garcia was the driver and he intended to kill Lynette and her mother … it’s not a very efficient way to get rid of somebody, is it?
John Cave: It worked didn’t it? … and, if he was the driver, he got away with it.
Cave wanted to question Garcia further, but he got a lawyer the next day.
Erin Moriarty: Why, if it were just a simple accident, would you not talk to the police and would you hire a criminal lawyer?
Mario Garcia: It’s the thing to do. It’s the legal right of every citizen of the United States. And my attorney advised me not to talk to them.
After the accident, a heartbroken Tom reached out to an old friend from his hometown. Incredibly, it was Wendy Ward. As they talked, she asked how his sister was doing.
Tom Davis: I said, “Yeah, she was killed in a car accident, involved with this guy named Mario Garcia.” “Mario Garcia?”
Wendy Ward: It goes beyond disbelief.
Tom Davis: She says, “I used to date him. I was involved with him. I have rape charges against him.”
No charges were ever filed against Garcia for Lynette and her mother’s deaths. But Debbie Boyd had heard all she needed to about Mario Garcia.
Debbie Boyd [2005]: You’re not fooling anybody, and especially not me. … And I will continue to pursue you and pursue you and pursue you.
THE CASE AGAINST MARIO GARCIA
After three weeks of searching, Placer County authorities made a tough decision: to charge Mario Garcia with Christie’s murder even though they hadn’t found her body. Her mother Debbie Boyd worried there wasn’t enough evidence.
Debbie Boyd [2005]: The thought of him getting off on this case, once again, scares the living daylights out of me for every woman.
Garen Horst [2006]: It was a large case to put together.
Garen Horst, the Placer County deputy district attorney at the time, had the unenviable task of prosecuting the county’s first no-body murder trial in September 2006.
Erin Moriarty: So, what do you believe happened to Christie Wilson?
Garen Horst: She went out of the casino with the defendant. … At some point in the vehicle at the casino, he incapacitated her.
Mario Garcia leaves the parking lot in his car, seemingly alone.
Placer County District Attorney
Garen Horst: He was probably putting her in the backseat so that when he drove away nobody could see. … As far as what he did … afterwards, that’s anybody’s guess.
Erin Moriarty: Was she in your car?
Mario Garcia [2006]: No, she never was inside my car. … At some point in time, she says that she left her cellphone in the casino and we embrace. … And that, that was the end of the conversation.
Investigators did later find Christie’s phone in the casino, but there is no footage of her returning to get it and no footage of Christie getting into Garcia’s car. But Horst says the evidence prove Christie was inside the car.
Garen Horst: One of Christie’s pulled hairs was found in that trunk.
Small amounts of Christie Wilson’s blood was found on the door and backseat of Mario Garcia’s car, and her hairs were found in his trunk and on a door handle.
Placer County District Attorney
Crime scene investigators also found tiny drops of her blood on the backseat and door.
Mario Garcia: Why is it that the DNA on the door, claimed to be of Christie Wilson, was the only thing that was found? Why is it that the DNA from my sons, my wife and other people that were in the car were not found?
Erin Moriarty: By your own admission, you cleaned the car.
Mario Garcia: I cleaned everybody else’s DNA except Christie Wilson? That’s the only thing they found. So how did it get there?
Erin Moriarty: What’s your reaction when the defense insinuates … that was planted?
Don Murchison [2006]: It greatly angers me … They couldn’t defend what was there, so they had to say it was planted.
The prosecution says the evidence that incriminates Garcia is as plain as the scratches on his face and body left by Christie as she fought for her life.
When police spoke with Garcia four days later, he had scratches on his face and chest. Investigators believed Christie Wilson left the marks during a struggle.
Placer County District Attorney
Erin Moriarty: Did you get the scratches … through Christie Wilson?
Mario Garcia: No. Absolutely not.
But the morning after that trip to the casino, several of Garcia’s co-workers say they saw scratches on Garcia’s face, and he visited the eye doctor.
Mario Garcia: Those are injuries that I received through poison oak and falling from a tree.
Yet Robert Royer, an emergency room doctor who sat at the same table as Garcia at the casino, told investigators he could clearly see Garcia’s face that night.
Erin Moriarty: How far is — is Mario Garcia from you?
Robert Royer [2006]: Two feet? Less than a meter.
Erin Moriarty: Did he seem to have any injuries on his face?
Robert Royer: I didn’t see any injuries, no … and I’m reasonably good at making those kind of observations ’cause that’s what I do for a living.
Erin Moriarty: Why wouldn’t the emergency room doctor see those?
Mario Garcia: I cannot answer what he saw or didn’t see.
And no one can answer why Christie left the casino with Garcia. Those who knew her had wondered if he put something in her drink. And the prosecution presents evidence to support that theory.
A week after Christie disappeared, Garcia searched online for information about how authorities test for date rape drugs. But when Garcia takes the stand, he insists he’s done nothing wrong.
Mario Garcia [to Erin Moriarty]: I wanted to tell the court that I am very sorry Christie Wilson is missing. But I don’t know where she’s at.
The jury doesn’t get to hear about Garcia’s violent past even though he comes face-to-face with a reminder.
Wendy Ward travelled to Sacramento to meet Debbie and Christie’s family for the first time.
CBS News
To show her support, Wendy Ward travels to Sacramento to meet Debbie and Christie’s family for the first time.
Wendy Ward [2006]: I couldn’t stop hugging her. I just wanted to hold her and hug her and all the family. They’re just going through so much.
Wendy heads to court with the Boyds for closing arguments, where Garcia’s lawyer suggests that no one even knows if Christie is dead.
Erin Moriarty: Are you saying that Christie Wilson may still be alive?
Mario Garcia: Do we know if she’s dead?
The jury concluded it did know: “Case 55517 We the jury in the above and titled action find the defendant Mario Flavio Garcia guilty of a violation …”
DEBBIE BOYD [to reporters]: Absolutely justice has been served. It’s about time. Now, if he’s any kind of a man, he’ll tell us where he disposed of my daughter.
At Garcia’s sentencing in January 2007, the Boyds still held out hope that Garcia would disclose where he left Christie’s body in exchange for a lesser sentence.
Mario Garcia addresses the judge at his sentencing.
CBS News
MARIO GARCIA: I suppose that at this hearing I’m supposed to ask for mercy, for forgiveness, and to show remorse. However … I will not do such thing [sic] … I did not kill Christie Wilson. I am innocent.
Garcia’s sentence, 25 years to life, is doubled because of his assault on Wendy Ward. When other charges were added, his total sentence became 59 years-to-life.
Debbie Boyd [after the sentencing]: At this point, I don’t ever expect that he’ll disclose what he did with Christie.
Jean Garcia [2006]: The truth is out there. And Mario told me that we have to found [sic] Christie and that’s the only hope he has.
Jean Garcia did not know that her own family would play a key role in the search for Christie.
WHERE IS CHRISTIE?
Mario Garcia’s murder conviction in 2006 was hardly the end of the case for Christie’s mother. Garcia was sent to prison and the years dragged by. But he refused to say what he did with her body. It’s been the mystery at the center of this case, and it has gnawed at Deb’s soul.
Debbie Boyd: Debbie is forever changed. Mario Garcia changed that. He changed me.
The loss of her daughter was crushing, but Debbie knew she couldn’t allow Garcia to control her life.
Debbie Boyd: We made a commitment … he is not going to take our marriage … He’s not going to take the marriages of our children. He’s not going to disrupt our jobs. We are not giving him any more.
That was not easy as Garcia filed one appeal after another.
Debbie and Pat Boyd
CBS News
Debbie Boyd: You can’t move forward completely when you have all these appeals … You know, it’s like you move forward five steps and then you’re back in it again.
Pat Boyd, Christie’s stepfather and a former San Jose detective, knew the stakes were high.
Pat Boyd: ‘Cause it’s not like we had a tremendous amount of evidence. A small amount of evidence being lost, the case would have been lost.
Nuno Tavares: The concern is always there for appeals but it was not a distraction that it took us away from … our, our tasks and our mission to try to find Christie.
Nuno Tavares, an investigator for the Placer County District Attorney’s Office, and fellow investigator Don Murchison had been on the case from the beginning and never let go.
Investigators Don Murchison and Nuno Tavares.
CBS News
Erin Moriarty: Why is it so important to the two of you to bring her home?
Don Murchison Because the family needed her … They needed a place where they could go and to spend time with her.
Nuno Tavares: We wanted to give Debbie and her family back control … up until this point, he controlled the location of Christie’s remains. And that didn’t sit well with me.
Morgan Gire:They are incredibly dedicated. They are very experienced … their balance between tough cop and teddy bear is the appropriate balance.
Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire gave Nuno and Murch, as Debbie calls them, the green light to keep looking for Christie and they ran with it — going to extraordinary lengths to find her no matter how dirty the job.
Don Murchison:We actually pumped an entire septic tank out … We pumped out the entire 2,000 gallons of sewage and went through it by hand.
Erin Moriarty: That is determination.
All those searches over all those years turned up nothing but the investigation entered a new phase in 2017 after Tony Lopez, an anchor for the CBS Sacramento, conducted an interview with Debbie. She directed some carefully chosen words to Garcia.
DEBBIE BOYD [CBS Sacramento interview]: I now view him as a lost soul … And that I often wonder — I want him to know I often wonder how he ever became the man that he did. … If Mario were to pass away with me not having had the opportunity to sit and just talk with him, I know I would forever regret it.
Debbie says Garcia spotted that interview and began writing letters to her and Placer County officials. Garcia apologized for what Debbie had gone through but did not accept responsibility for Christie’s murder.
Debbie Boyd: I wanted Christie back so bad that I thought, you know what? Let’s see how far this goes.
Morgan Gire: Deb had struggled with the idea that, you know, what do you negotiate with a man who has been convicted of the murder of your daughter who knows where she is?
But ultimately, Debbie changed her mind—she could not bring herself to negotiate with Garcia.
Debbie Boyd: I was sitting there thinking, “what on Earth are you doing, Debbie? Get a grip.” This would be such a disgrace … He will not use my daughter’s body as a bargaining chip.
Morgan Gire: And we certainly weren’t going to agree to let him out in exchange for the location of her remains. So really, the only option was, find her.
Nuno and Murch reapproached Garcia’s family. Investigators knew Jean Garcia had divorced Mario after his conviction. She had reached a point where she no longer believed Garcia.
Nuno Tavares: … she said she was very convinced that Mario had something to do with Christie’s disappearance and murder.
The investigators also reached out to Garcia’s sons, Kris and Andy, and walked them through the four days in October 2005 after Christie went missing but before police began questioning Garcia. What did they see? How did their father behave?
Nuno Tavares: We went through — every day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then it got to Saturday. And that’s where the story got a little bit interesting. … Kris had an important soccer game.
Nuno Tavares: He saw his dad working on a tractor … working kind of frantically and had kind of a crazed look in his eyes as he was working around the property … And he told Kris, “I’m not going.” And it was a very firm, “I’m not going.” … Kris found that out of character for Mario.
In August 2020, Nuno Tavares and Don Murchison went back and searched the property around the home where Mario Garcia and his family lived at the time of Christie’s disappearance.
CBS News
The investigators asked Kris to accompany them back to his childhood home, which the family lost in 2007, to pinpoint the spot where he had seen his father working on the tractor.
Nuno Tavares: He said it was right next to the detached garage, right along the road.
It was barely 100 yards from the Garcia house. But if he had been digging in that spot with a tractor just days before deputies searched the property, why hadn’t anyone noticed?
Don Murchison: It wasn’t just a small area where he had landscaped … there was landscaping all over the property.
Nuno Tavares: And you’ve got to remember, he had time. Mario has four or five days to really do this right …
Don Murchison: Mario did a extremely good job … making the terrain look like it just fit the area.
And Nuno and Murch also knew that cadaver dogs had roamed the property back in 2005 and had found nothing.
Nuno Tavares: … cadaver dogs are a tool like any other tool that we use. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
A year passed and in August 2020, investigators decided they would take another look. This time, they brought with them a company that specialized in ground penetrating radar or GPR. Nearly the entire 5 acres were scanned, and technicians pinpointed eight spots where there were voids or pockets beneath the surface. The first two holes produced nothing.
Erin Moriarty: You struck out twice.
Nuno Tavares: We’ve been going for a long time. Three is now my favorite hole … it’s my favorite hole because that’s where Mario was working that day …
Erin Moriarty: And how far did you go?
Nuno Tavares: … we started pulling back about 25 feet, pulling just a couple of inches at a time, went about 18-feet wide … and out of the corner of my peripheral, I see a bone popping up out of the ground.
Nuno Tavares: I was a little bit short of breath, I’ll tell you that … The blood was rushing … And we stopped everything. We froze everything.
It was the moment of truth — had Nuno and Murch found Christie Wilson?
“WE FOUND CHRISTIE”
Buried on what was once Mario Garcia’s property, Nuno and Murch had found what looked like a human bone. They needed confirmation, so, they called in archeologist Cindy Arrington. She immediately told them the bone was human, but the detectives weren’t convinced.
Cindy Arrington: He’s like, “you’re not close enough.” I said, “oh, yes, I am [laughs]. … And he said, “get closer.” … So, they had me get down in the trench and really double check, triple check. OK, yes. It’s human.
At the third location, just 100 yards from Mario Garcia’s former home, investigators recovered nearly a full skeleton. Tests would later confirm it was Christie Wilson’s.
Placer County District Attorney
Human — but was it Christie’s? More identification work needed to be done but finding any human bones on Garcia’s property was big news and they immediately shared it with the sheriff and the DA.
Nuno Tavares: They came to the conclusion that … we need to get this news to Debbie quickly.
And they knew how they needed to get it to her. For years, Debbie and Wendy Ward have helped the detectives teach a class for homicide investigators. And just two months earlier, someone in the class asked Debbie a question no one had ever asked before.
Debbie Boyd: “Mrs. Boyd, if your daughter was ever recovered, how would you want to be notified?” … And I just said, “you know, please don’t ever just call me on the phone.”
Nuno and Murch flew to Scottsdale, Arizona. It was nearly midnight when the Boyds’ doorbell rang. Debbie was asleep on the couch. Pat answered the door.
Don Murchison: He opened up the door and he looked at us and he got a big smile on his face. He said, “Hi, guys, how’s it going?” … And then you could see him pause and you could see things starting to click the gears in his head.
Debbie Boyd: And I got up. … I just was in a fog … And I looked at them and he said, “Debbie. It’s Murch. And it’s Nuno.” I said, “what are you doing here?”
Don Murchison: So. that’s when we told her that we had found human remains on Mario’s property that we believed were Christie’s, but we couldn’t confirm that.
Nuno Tavares: I remember her that night saying, “is it OK to be happy or joyful?” She kept looking around going, “Is that OK?”
Pat Boyd: We didn’t know whether we should open a bottle of champagne, what — it was just a lot of hugs, some quietness and sometimes just sitting there letting it sink in.
Debbie made plans to fly to California to tell her daughter Stacie. And before she left for the airport the next morning, Nuno and Murch heard that their team had had found nearly an entire skeleton and it was definite — the bones were Christie’s.
Days later, Debbie shared the news with the world and made sure to thank Nuno and Murch.
DEBBIE BOYD [to reporters]: Today is a day that absolutely reflects some of the greatest level of perseverance and police work that a victim’s family could ever ask for.
Pat Boyd: They brought two people home. They brought my daughter home. They brought my wife home.
Erin Moriarty: Do you feel that you got Deb back? Tell me about that.
Pat Boyd: She can think of more than just where is Christie?
Kris and Jean didn’t want to speak publicly, but they’re grateful to have closure for Christie’s family, and their own.
Nuno Tavares: Kris, Andy, Jean — they didn’t ask to have a dad and a husband who was a murderer, who buried his victim on their property, where they lived and played. They didn’t ask for that.
And then there were the other victims of Mario Garcia who were hit hard by Christie’s murder, like Danny Burlando, her boyfriend at the time.
Danny Burlando: I didn’t realize … how much had really been bottled up for 15 years. … I think I may have been judged, misjudged, misunderstood through the process … and that didn’t really allow me to grieve and be a victim in this, in this whole thing.
Wendy Ward was also relieved. She knows how lucky she is to have survived her own encounter with Garcia and has used art to help transform the feelings that she’s held onto for all these years.
Wendy Ward: It helped shift those feelings into something positive — what came up in me to create that and to survive and to say no more.
Everyone involved takes pride that Christie was found without making a deal with Garcia. And the discovery lays to rest any doubts about Garcia’s guilt.
Debbie Boyd: I mean, there’s no greater proof.
The autopsy revealed that Christie’s hand and nose were broken, but it couldn’t establish a cause of death.
Erin Moriarty: Do you believe he strangled her?
Don Murchison: I think that’s very likely … what — what occurred that day … But we just don’t know.
Those who loved Christie try to focus on the life she lived. Her best friend Tiffney de Vries says she’s reminded of Christie by the little things she loved — a song on the radio, or the way Christie danced.
Tiffney deVries: For me, Christie has never been completely gone. I’ve been carrying her spirit with me every day.
In October 2020, to mark the anniversary of Christie’s death, Debbie Boyd visited the pier in Capitola, California, where the family put a plaque many years ago.
CBS News
Debbie and Christie’s father Dennis had Christie’s remains cremated. In October 2020, to mark the anniversary of her death, Debbie visited the pier in Capitola where the family put a plaque many years ago.
Debbie Boyd: This is a place that Christie just absolutely loved … It was what she called her happy place.
Debbie says no longer having to wonder where Christie is changes everything.
Debbie Boyd: We can grieve the way that we should have been able to grieve 15 years ago. There’s a peace about that.
Debbie Boyd: I was so blessed to be her mom for 27 years and that I will carry with me forever.
Mario Garcia died of pneumonia on Dec. 24, 2020.
He died without ever admitting guilt.
Produced by Paul LaRosa and Dena Goldstein. Greg Fisher is the development producer. Jud Johnston, George Baluzy and Joan Adelman are the editors. Peter Schweitzer is the senior producer.
A 14-year-old boy has been arrested this week on suspicion of killing his parents and critically injuring his younger sister in rural Fresno County, authorities said.
The boy, whose name has not been released because he is a minor, faces two charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Detectives have not determined a motive in the case.
The boy’s parents, Lue Yang and Se Vang, both 37, were found dead by officers in the family’s Miramonte home around 7:40 p.m. Wednesday, authorities said in the release. The boy’s 11-year-old sister “suffered major injuries” but is expected to survive.
The boy placed a 911 call earlier to report that someone had broken into his home and attacked his mother, father and sister, then fled in a pickup truck, according to the news release. Detectives who spoke with the boy discovered “inconsistencies” with his story, determining he fabricated the story and had used “multiple weapons to attack his family members,” authorities said.
A 7-year-old boy was also home during the attack, but was not physically injured, authorities said. Other family members are now caring for the boy.
Officers had not previously received any calls for service to the family’s home, Fresno County Sheriff John Zanoni said during a news conference this week.
A delay in the trial of suspect Bryan Kohberger, originally set for October, had also delayed the demolition of the house on King Road in Moscow, Idaho, which had been given to the school earlier this year. Kohberger, 28, now expected to face trial next summer over the stabbing deaths of Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, and Xana Kernodle and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, both 20.
The university had announced that teams from both the prosecution and defense would have access to the six-bedroom house before its demolition, and the FBI had gathered additional information from the house in October. Neither the prosecution nor the defense have opposed demolition.
Demolition was set for during the school’s winter break, when fewer students would be in the area, according to the school.
Heavy equipment is used to demolish the house where four University of Idaho students were killed a year earlier, on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho.
Ted S. Warren / AP
“It is the grim reminder of the heinous act that took place there,” university president Scott Green said in a statement released earlier this month. “While we appreciate the emotional connection some family members of the victims may have to this house, it is time for its removal and to allow the collective healing of our community to continue.”
“The family has stressed tirelessly to the Prosecution and the University of Idaho the importance (evidentiary and emotionally) that the King Road house carries but nobody seems to care enough,” the family said in the statement, obtained by local station KREM. It’s like screaming into a void. Nobody is listening and everyone tells you how sorry they are for the decision but the families’ opinion isn’t a priority. Victims’ families have a voice and should be heard and listened to!”
The family of Ethan Chapin, who did not live at the house, offered its support for the demolition.
“We’re supportive of the decision to take down the King Street House — for the good of the University, its students (including our own kids), and the community of Moscow,” family members said in a statement earlier this month.
The four students were found stabbed to death in the rental home in November 2022. Two other roommates were unharmed. Kohberger, a graduate student in criminology at nearby Washington State University, was arrested the next month after a search that garnered national interest. He has pleaded not guilty.
University spokeswoman Jodi Walker told The Associated Press it would take a few hours to raze the house and a few more to clear the site, depending on the weather.
“That is an area that is dense with students, and many students have to look at it and live with it every day and have expressed to us how much it will help with the healing process to have that house removed,” she said.
Allison Elyse Gualtieri is a senior news editor for CBSNews.com, working on a wide variety of subjects including crime, longer-form features and feel-good news. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and U.S. News and World Report, among other outlets.
Authorities in Texas indicated that they believe they found the body of missing pregnant teen Samantha Soto, 18, who sparked a CLEAR alert after she failed to show up at the hospital for her scheduled induced labor last week.
San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) Chief William McManus held a press conference Tuesday announcing that two people had been found dead in a car, adding that the crime scene was “complex” and “perplexing.”
McManus said the bodies were found in a Kia, described previously as belonging to Soto’s boyfriend Matthew Guerra, 22, at an apartment complex on the city’s northwest side. The chief did not confirm their identities but said he believes they’re Soto and Guerra. He did not comment on whether Soto’s unborn baby survived.
The chief added that SAPD is investigating the case as a homicide.
Authorities in San Antonio, Texas, said they believe they have found the bodies of a missing pregnant teenager and her boyfriend in a car on the city’s northwest side. Getty
McManus said it wasn’t clear how the pair died but said that their bodies had been in the car for roughly three or four days before they were discovered.
“It’s a very, very perplexing crime scene,” he said. “Detectives are looking at this as a possible murder, but we’re not sure. We can’t say for sure what we have.”
Newsweek reached out via email and Facebook on Tuesday to SAPD and Soto’s family for comment.
Gloria Cardova, who identified herself as Soto’s mother on social media, posted to Facebook on December 23, pleading for the public’s help in finding her daughter, saying that Soto was scheduled to be induced into labor at 6:30 p.m. that evening but did not show up to the hospital. She said that she is “worried about her safety.”
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) issued a CLEAR Alert for Soto on Christmas Day after the teen, who was nine months pregnant, was reported to have last been seen around 2 p.m. December 22 in the 6000 block of Grissom Road in Leon Valley, Texas, with Guerra.
CLEAR alerts are issued when one is in “imminent danger or disappearance was involuntary.” DPS said Soto was driving a 2013 gray Kia Optima at the time of her disappearance.
“The Leon Valley Police Department has been notified of the disappearance of Savannah Nicole Soto, who was reported missing by her family,” the alert read. “Ms. Soto, who is pregnant and has passed her delivery date, has caused significant concern among her family members after missing an essential medical appointment.”
SAPD had been searching for a 2013 Kia Optima, which McManus confirmed is where the two bodies were found on Tuesday night. The chief said the family was alerted that the car was spotted at the apartment complex and called police.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Neighbors were unfazed by the senseless killing that claimed the life of a 23-year-old man at a Harlem housing complex on Christmas Eve, saying death and violence are a part of everyday life in the projects.
“Same s–t, different day,” said Latishia, 50, a grandmother of eight who lives at the building where the murder occurred.
Latishia spoke to the Daily News in the lobby of the Manhattanville Houses on Amsterdam Ave. near W. 131st St, where on Saturday around 5:45 p.m. she heard voices shouting in anger on the floor below her, but didn’t pay it any mind.
“You tune it out,” said Latishia, who said fights and arguments are common occurrences at the Harlem housing complex.
Suddenly two shots rang out. Latishia thought it was an action film with the volume set too high.
“My husband was like, ‘That was gunshots, baby,’” Latishia recounted.
Latishia looked down from her apartment window to find paramedics gathered around a body near the building’s entrance, a medic desperately hammering on the victim’s chest.
Los Angeles County sheriff‘s deputies have arrested a 37-year-old man suspected of murder after a woman’s body was found this week stuffed inside the trunk of a car at his home and set on fire.
Veronica Aguilar, 27, had been living in a home owned by the suspect, Matthew Switalski, in the Quartz Hill neighborhood near Lancaster. The UCLA graduate taught at a nearby elementary school and was beloved by the families she worked with and her friends.
Aguilar’s body was found by Los Angeles County firefighters responding to a garage fire Wednesday.
“Her story is all over the news of her brutal death,” her brother Juan Aguilar wrote on a GoFundMe page meant to raise money for a funeral. “Things will never be the same ever again. We miss her so much. She had the best spirit she always had a smile. My family is heartbroken.”
“She was the sweetest teacher in the world,” one parent of a student wrote on the website. “We were blessed to have her in our lives. My daughter loved her so much.”
Switalski is a former Northrop Grumman employee, and KABC-TV reported that he worked at the defense company until May. He was, according to LinkedIn, a program, cost and schedule controller and had worked for the company since 2010.
In the spring, court records show, Switalski was arrested and charged with several counts of rape and sexual misconduct with a romantic partner. After being arraigned in June, he was released on $600,000 bail, according to court records.
After the fire was extinguished at the Quartz Hill home Wednesday morning, authorities quickly identified Switalski as a suspect. Crews had searched the garage and discovered the woman’s body inside the trunk of the car.
He was arrested Thursday in Kern County, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He’s being held at the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station on a $10-million bond and has been charged with a felony, according to the department’s inmate locator.
Mary Day was 13 when she vanished from her family’s Seaside, California, home in 1981. There is no record of her parents ever reporting her missing.
“I can’t remember a time when a child was not reported by the parents,” former Seaside Police Chief Steve Cercone told “48 Hours” correspondent Maureen Maher.
Sherrie Calgaro, who was 10 when her sister disappeared, was told Mary ran away. The family was not allowed to talk about Mary, said Calgaro, who was haunted by what happened. When she became an adult, she reported her sister missing.
What ever happened to Mary Day?
Sherrie Calgaro
“My mother told me that there were a lot of places in California that you could bury a body and they’d never be found,” Calgaro said. “I started believing she was murdered.”
Years later, after her sister got police on the case, they believed she was murdered, too.
But then there was a turn no one saw coming.“And I’m like, “This case just gets weirder and weirder,” said Cercone.
Seaside, California, Detective Joe Bertaina first heard the name Mary Louise Day back in 2002. He’d been asked to lead the investigation into her disappearance.
Det. Joe Bertaina: The case was … a tangle of weeds that went all different directions.
Mary was gone — seemingly without a trace.
Det. Joe Bertaina: There was no evidence that she was alive.
Bertaina’s boss at the time was Steve Cercone.
Steve Cercone | Seaside Police Department: Not a trace of her as an adult; no Social Security record of her having a job, getting welfare benefits … we have nothing on this person’s identity.
Maureen Maher: She didn’t exist?
Steve Cercone: She didn’t exist.
Mary’s existence came close to being completely erased; there’s no record that her stepfather William Houle or her mother Charlotte had ever reported her missing.
Maureen Maher: It’s hard to believe … allowing a child to walk away or a child go missing and it’s not reported.
Steve Cercone: I can’t remember a time when a child was not reported by the parents.
Sherrie Calgaro: I couldn’t understand how a mother could not go to the ends of the earth to find her child.
It was Sherrie Calgaro, Mary’s sister, who finally got authorities on the case.
Sherrie Calgaro: I wanted to know what happened to my sister, Mary.
Sherrie was 10 when Mary went missing. As an adult, she filed a missing persons report and told the police about Mary’s troubled childhood.
Steve Cercone: The information we have through the sisters is that … it was a very dysfunctional household.
The Day sisters. From left, Kathy, Sherrie, and Mary.
Sherrie Calgaro
In their early years, Mary, middle sister Kathy, and Sherrie were in and out of a foster home. Their mother couldn’t take care of them. Sherrie was adopted by the foster family.
Sherrie Calgaro: We were separated when I was 6 years old.
Mary and Kathy were returned to their mother Charlotte. By this time, Charlotte had married William Houle and the couple had two kids of their own.
Houle was a soldier. The family moved around a lot from base to base. At one point, detectives say, Mary’s stepfather had been reportedly physically abusing her.
Steve Cercone: Children’s protective services had taken custody of Mary … she was eventually turned back over to the family. … In my opinion, the system failed.
At the time Mary disappeared, Houle was assigned to Fort Ord, on the California coast north of Monterey.
Det. Joe Bertaina: They were living in Seaside, which was kind of a military town at that time and that’s where she was last seen.
Sherrie, who kept in touch with her birth family, later visited them.
Sherrie Calgaro: When I went to visit my family, I asked them, “what had happened to my sister, Mary?”
Sherrie Calgaro: Kathy … was, like, “Shh — don’t say anything. We’re not allowed to talk about Mary.”
But Kathy did say her mother Charlotte told them that Mary had run away.
Sherrie Calgaro: At the time I wasn’t sure what I thought except that it didn’t make sense to me.
When Sherrie grew up, she filed that missing persons report. By the time Seaside Police launched its investigation in 2002, there was little to go on.
Steve Cercone: The neighbors barely recall the family living there … nobody really knew this family and they sure didn’t know Mary Day.
Mary had never been enrolled in school in California and her parents had never told anyone she was gone. Bertaina says they had at least one reason to keep quiet. Mary had been getting government checks because her birth father had died in an accident.
Det. Joe Bertaina: They were taking Mary’s social security checks and cashing them.
In March 2003, Detective Bertaina went to the Seaside home – Mary’s last known whereabouts. He brought Kathy with him. The visit was recorded.
Kathy Pires was just 11 when she last saw her sister.
Kathy Pires: That day lives in my head a lot. It feels like you’re opening a scab, you’re opening it up and it hurts.
Det. Joe Bertaina: Mary was at home along with Kathy when the rest of the family went out. … they came home later that evening, and while they were gone, the dog became sick and was dying in the kitchen area. When William saw that, he immediately accused Mary of poisoning the dog.
Kathy Pires: He started yelling at us … and I got scared … all hell broke loose…
KATHY PIRES [on video with detective]: This is corner where he was hittin’ her, the fight was back here…
Kathy Pires: [Crying] I can hear her yelling. There’s nothin’ we — we can do.
Maureen Maher: He hit her?
Kathy Pires: [breaks down]
KATHY PIRES: Last time I saw her, she had the blood coming out of her mouth.
Kathy said after Mary disappeared, her parents ordered the kids to stay away from one particular area of the backyard.
In 2003, Seaside Police Detective Joe Bertaina took Kathy back to the Houles’ home in Seaside; Mary’s last known whereabouts. Kathy showed the detective a corner of the backyard where she said her parents told her not to play.
Seaside Police Department
KATHY PIRES [on video with detective]: We were not supposed to come over to this part.
DET. JOE BERTAINA: You weren’t supposed to come over there? Who told you that?
KATHY PIRES: My father.
The clues were adding up and detectives felt that they could be dealing with something much more sinister than a runaway teenage girl.
They brought in team of cadaver dogs — dogs trained to find human remains.
Steve Cercone: As the dogs went into the back yard, they each hit on one particular spot near a tree.
Steve Cercone: We started to dig … As a father … my heart was pounding … and as we dug, I saw a little girl’s shoe … my heart started pounding even more and I thought … “Here we are. We found her.”
WAS MARY MURDERED?
In 2003, the missing persons case of Mary Day was quickly becoming a homicide investigation – with police facing the grim task of digging in the dirt where the cadaver dogs alerted.
Steve Cercone: And we kept digging — and there was no body. I said, “Well, it must be here.” … And they kept digging.
Maureen Maher: They were sure that a body had been there.
Steve Cercone: They were positive. They said, “our dogs don’t lie, and four of them independently hitting … on the same spot before we dug.”
Steve Cercone: The dog handler said … it’s been moved.
Steve Cercone: At this time, there was no question that the parents were the suspects in the possible homicide of a little girl from 1981.
Steve Cercone: We knew that we had to find the parents.
While the girls were in foster care, Charlotte divorced Charles Day and married William Houle, who enlisted in the Army soon after.
Kathy Pires
They found them in Kansas.
It was more than 20 years after Mary disappeared. Her stepfather William Houle had left the Army and was now at a Kansas prison working as a corrections officer. He and Charlotte were still together. She agreed to talk with local detectives about the daughter who vanished so long ago:
CHARLOTTE HOULE: You don’t have whips and chains do ya?
COP: Oh, absolutely not.
Steve Cercone: I remember watching the interview … and realizing that she had something to tell us.
CHARLOTTE HOULE: You know life is full of regrets. If you go back and say, you know, “if I had did this, and this and this.”
Steve Cercone: Her body language and then her sinking down in the chair and saying words to the effect of “you know, sometimes you do things in your past, and it comes back …” I knew that it was something there.
Charlotte said Mary running away was no big deal; she did it all the time:
CHARLOTTE HOULE: Oh, what a mess. It was like trying to get … a night crawler out of a wormhole and just grabbin’ it and it was gone, and grabbin’ it, it was gone … I mean … how many times did she run away? You know, all of these questions I can’t answer.
COP: When you was back in California … did you guys take any kind of steps to find her?
CHARLOTTE HOULE: We should have, we should have.
COP: But you didn’t?
CHARLOTTE HOULE: … my husband says we filed a police report with the Salinas Police Department. If we did, I don’t remember.
There is no record of a report.
Steve Cercone: I couldn’t understand a parent — number one — not reporting their child as a runaway, but number two … treating this case, the status of their missing daughter as basically no big deal. It didn’t seem to really concern them … they were not really, really surprised at us being there.
Detective Bertaina later questioned Mary’s stepfather William Houle.
Det. Joe Bertaina: I just asked him, “Tell me about the last time that you saw Mary?”
He told me that well, he was going room to room checking on the kids and he discovered Mary wasn’t in the bedroom. He tells Charlotte, she panics, he panics, called the police.
Det. Joe Bertaina: And he knew I wasn’t buying that. I said, “William, she runs away all the time, why did you panic?” … I never got a good response.
The detective pressed Houle and brought up the story of the sick dog.
Det. Joe Bertaina: And he said five or six times, “You know what she did? She poisoned my dog. I was really angry” … “She tried to run out of the house. I didn’t want her to go, so I caught her before she got out of the front door. She was kicking me, punching me, so I pushed her” and when he’s doing this, he’s making a— [gestures with his hand].
Maureen Maher: A choking?
Det. Joe Bertaina: Yeah, gesture, he – yeah, with his hand, and it’s like a hand strike I’ve seen before … it’s a martial arts technique. So, I asked him, “Where’d you hit her with that?” And he said, “Well, in the upper chest.” And I said, “could it have been the throat? And he said, “It may have slipped off and hit her in the throat.”
Mary Day ended up in protective custody in December 1980 while in Hawaii. Detectives say that her stepfather, William Houle, had reportedly been physically abusing her.
Kathy Pires
Det. Joe Bertaina: I wanted to know on a scale from one to 10 his anger when he had done this, when he had struck Mary. He said on a scale of one to 10 “I was a 15.” And I said, “You’re this angry, I think you may have killed her.” He looked at me and said, “No, I didn’t kill her. But the next day my wife Charlotte told me that that night she saw Satan in my eyes. And she said I was possessed by a demon.”
Det. Joe Bertaina: And then it dawned on me that he’s admitting, but not admitting that he killed her. And I said, “OK William, I believe you, you didn’t kill her. But what about that demon inside of you? Could that demon have killed Mary?” And he looked at me and said, “Yes, the demon could have killed her.”
Maureen Maher: When he walked out did you think you were letting a killer go?
Det. Joe Bertaina: Yeah, yeah.
Steve Cercone: Joe said, “Yeah, we don’t have a body,” but he said, “This guy came so close to confessing,” it was as close as he’s ever had anybody come.
Maureen Maher: Is that enough to go to a prosecutor and say, “I don’t know if we’re ever gonna have a body, but we have a lot of pieces of the puzzle.”
Steve Cercone: Yeah, the DA wasn’t ready to file at that time.
Maureen Maher: Did you think there was enough?
Steve Cercone: I thought there was probably enough … I was not worried really, because I thought we are building the case here.
Then, just as the detectives’confidence was growing, the case took an unexpected turn.
Remember, police had no record of Mary Louise Day as an adult; there were no credit cards, no driver’s license or ID recorded anywhere. There hadn’t been a trace of Mary in more than two decades — until police in Phoenix, Arizona, made a traffic stop.
Steve Cercone: I got a phone call … I was at home, I had left work. He told me, “Hey captain.” He says, “Are you sitting down?” I said, “What happened?” He said, “Just gotta let you know, Phoenix Police Department in Arizona pulled over a car and they say that they found Mary Day.”
AN UNEXPECTED APPEARANCE
November 2003, in Phoenix Arizona – it was a routine traffic stop: a pickup truck with stolen plates. When police ran the IDs of the passengers, one of them hit: a woman named Mary Day.
Det. Joe Bertaina: He said, “Joe, guess what? Mary Day’s been found.” And I was stunned.
Investigators had put Mary Day into a missing persons database long ago.
Det. Joe Bertaina: She identified herself with a Phoenix identification card. Or Arizona — state identification card.
Back in California, Detective Joe Bertaina felt like a ghost had just appeared. In his mind, Mary Day had been murdered more than 20 years earlier at the home of her parents.
Maureen Maher: You talk to William and Charlotte in April of 2003. And then, seven months later or so, a woman named Mary Louise Day just falls out of the sky.
Det. Joe Bertaina: Right, I was stunned.
Is the woman pictured at right the same person as the girl at left who disappeared in 1981?
Sherrie Calgaro/Phoenix Police Dept.
His boss, Steve Cercone could not believe it.
Steve Cercone: Joe went down there, and he met her and he sent a picture of her, and we went, “What, wait a minute, no. Alright, alright.” It looked like it could be her.
Steve Cercone: I said, wait a minute, all these years, bits of circumstantial evidence.
Maureen Maher: The father almost confessing to something.
Steve Cercone: Almost confessing to the murder of a little girl.
And now, here was this woman 700 miles away with a valid Arizona state ID. Strangely, that ID had been issued only three weeks earlier, while the homicide investigation was underway.
Maureen Maher: You must have found the timing awfully suspicious.
Steve Cercone: Yes, it was very suspicious.
When Detective Bertaina went to Phoenix, the woman he was sure had been murdered told him she had run away from her mother Charlotte and stepfather William when she was a teenager. She basically lived under the radar and by her wits ever since. But she seemed hesitant, and her story seemed sketchy. Later in a phone call, Mary told Bertaina she had some awful memories:
DET. JOE BERTAINA [phone call]: Do you want to talk about what happened that last night?
MARY: It hurts.
DET. JOE BERTAINA: I’m sure it does … but what happened that last night?
MARY: I’m so confused anymore [sic], I don’t know what’s real or not. … I remember he kept slamming my head into the tub and it hurt [cries].
DET. JOE BERTAINA: Is that when you started bleeding?
MARY: I started bleeding and he hit my head on the coffee table … I think I blacked out … maybe that’s why I can’t put all the pieces together.
But she didn’t remember anything about the sick dog.
Maureen Maher: Was that troublesome to you?
Det. Joe Bertaina: That was, yeah.
Detective Bertaina recalled the awful memories Mary had, but it was the memories Mary could not remember that he found troublesome.
CBS News
Investigators say it was hard to pin down much of anything about her past two decades. They began to wonder if the woman with the freshly-minted ID was really who she claimed to be.
Maureen Maher: You refused to call her Mary Louise Day?
Steve Cercone: We called her Phoenix Mary.
In phone conversations, Phoenix Mary was sounding increasingly frustrated:
MARY [phone call]: Can I throw one question at you if you if you don’t mind?
DET. JOE BERTAINA: Go ahead, Mary.
MARY: If you were to find my body, how were you gonna be able to prove who the hell I was?
DET. JOE BERTAINA: DNA.
MARY: Oh, so since I’m still alive, you all can’t prove who I am?
DET. JOE BERTAINA: There’s no record of you ever being anywhere … it’s like you haven’t existed up until now.
MARY: So, I’d be better off if I’m just dead and then you all can do that detecting from there.
Steve Cercone: I said, “all right, let’s get a DNA test on this woman … let her prove that she’s the daughter of Charlotte.”
Steve Cercone: We’re gonna disprove that she’s Mary, of course, ’cause there’s no way her DNA’s gonna match.
Except it did match.
Steve Cercone: I nearly fell on the floor. I couldn’t believe it. The DNA came back positive to being a daughter of Charlotte.
The case was closed. Sherrie Calgaro invited her long-lost sister to move in with her. In most cases, that would be the end of the story – but not in this case.
Maureen Maher: So now DNA matches. Case closed.
Steve Cercone: Yeah, well, if it were that simple, right?
Once Phoenix Mary moved in, Sherrie started to have her own doubts.
With DNA proving Mary’s identity and the case closed, Sherrie Calgaro invited Mary to move in with her in North Carolina. From left are sisters Sherrie, Kathy, center, and Mary.
Sherrie Calgaro
Sherrie Calgaro: The first thing I noticed was she — it sounded like she had some weird, Midwest or southern accent. Weird to me.
The detectives had noticed that too:
DET. JOE BERTAINA [phone call]: That’s an interesting dialect you have Mary.
MARY: What do you mean?
DET. JOE BERTAINA: I don’t know I’ve ever heard that particular manner of speaking.
MARY: Then y’all still trying to prove who I am, huh?
DET. JOE BERTAINA: Yes, ma’am. We are.
Phoenix Mary also said she never used her real name:
MARY [phone call]: Nobody … knows me as Mary. I gave that name up years ago.
DET. JOE BERTAINA: What name would they know you by?
MARY: Monica Devereaux.
It’s a name she said she made up.
Sherrie Calgaro: I did notice that she had magazines in the name of Monica Devereaux.
Kathy Pires and Sherrie Calgaro say they still had doubts that Phoenix Mary was their sister who disappeared.
CBS News
Sherrie’s sister Kathy was also unnerved.
Kathy Pires: No, that’s not Mary.
Maureen Maher: Why? What makes you so sure?
Kathy Pires: Something’s off.
Maureen Maher: You’re telling me that your gut is saying, “It’s not her.”
Kathy Pires: My gut.
She says the woman claiming to be Mary didn’t even remember that their birth father left them an inheritance they could collect at age 18. It was their shared escape plan and they had a code word for it.
Maureen Maher: Was there a — code word, or some sort of secret between you and Mary?
Kathy Pires: Yeah, it was. It was called “Mohawk.”
Maureen Maher: “Mohawk” was your secret word?
Kathy Pires: Yep.
And Mary did something else strange: she wrote a note to Detective Bertaina.
Steve Cercone: She emailed Joe. And … her email said something to the effect of, “I’ve been lying to you about who I am,” and that was new information. … Oh, my God. I said, “This is a whole new ball game.”
Still, the case remained closed.
Then in 2008, Steve Cercone, now Seaside’s police chief, got a phone call from investigators at the Army base in Fort Ord. Another set of cadaver dogs had been working on an unrelated matter and had found something.
Steve Cercone: Fort Ord was a huge place. And he said, “Look, we brought the cadaver dogs out here and they went over hundreds of homes.” And he said, “We got a hit on one of the homes. You’ll never believe who was living in this house …” He said, “William Houle and his family lived in this house.”
IS MARY AN IMPOSTOR?
In 2008, cadaver dogs alerted near a second home where the Houles had lived — the house they had moved to shortly after Mary disappeared.
Maureen Maher: So, what are you thinking? That a body’s been moved by this family from one location to another?
Steve Cercone: Yeah.
Once again, police dug. And once again, they came up short.
Steve Cercone: Was Mary moved twice? Was this little girl who may have been killed back in 1981, was her body moved twice?
“I’ve never seen a case like this,” former Seaside Police Chief Steve Cercone said of the Mary Day investigation.
CBS News
Although the case had been closed, Cercone felt something was seriously wrong.
Steve Cercone: I don’t know, I don’t know … but we have to investigate this.
He hired Mark Clark, a retired homicide detective from nearby Salinas, California.
Mark Clark: Absolutely the most bizarre case I’ve ever come up against.
Reviewing the evidence collected over the years, Clark was convinced there was a murder —and missed opportunities.
Mark Clark: There’s so many parts about this thing … that coulda solved this case back then, that is really frustrating.
He believes they let the parents off the hook too soon.
Mark Clark: Mom and dad say, “She ran away. Don’t ever talk about her again.” They tore up her pictures, threw away her clothes, and that was it.
Most damning, he says, are William Houle’s own words.
Mark Clark: His comment was, “I couldn’t have killed Mary … my body woulda done it … but it wouldn’t have been me … It woulda been that demonic personality, ’cause I blacked out.”
Clark says he would have arrested William Houle.
Mark Clark: You just — admitted, tantamount to — a homicide, and we’re lettin’ him go?
Clark also focused on that shoe detectives found. Another detective asked Kathy about it.
During search with cadaver dogs, investigators unearthed a little girl’s canvas sneaker in the Houles’ Seaside, California, backyard — the same area where Kathy says she was not allowed to play.
Seaside Police Department
Mark Clark: He first asked, “Did you — guys ever wear canvas tennis shoes?” And Katherine said, “Keds?” And she said, “Yes.” And he pulled out the shoe, and it’s pretty chewed up, but you can tell that it’s a tennis shoe with a canvas body to it. And she said exactly that.
And he consulted with the Body Farm, a renowned research facility that studies what happens when bodies decompose. He says they found soil samples consistent with a body being buried.
Maureen Maher: What do you think happened to Mary Louise Day?
Mark Clark: She was killed in 1981, probably around July.
Clark believes the woman now claiming to be Mary Day is an impostor.
Mark Clark: There are just too many things that point to Phoenix Mary Day being somebody else.
But what about that DNA test showing she’s Charlotte Houle’s daughter? Well, Mark Clark has a theory that he says explains it all — even if it is a little far-fetched. He says Charlotte Houle had another daughter — a secret daughter — born before Mary and given up at birth. Clark believes Phoenix Mary is that secret daughter.
Maureen Maher: So, you think Phoenix Mary is the actual … sister of Mary Louise Day, who goes missing back in 1981.
Mark Clark: Yes.
He looked into Charlotte’s background.
Mark Clark: There’s some circumstantial evidence … that Charlotte had a couple of marriages in which she would be involved in extramarital affairs and become pregnant from those affairs …
Clark says the Houles could have reached out to Charlotte’s secret daughter when they felt they were in trouble.
Mark Clark: Ibelieve she was somehow sought out by Charlotte and William to pose as Mary Day to avoid prosecution.
It was an elaborate plot, he says. The Houles knew that police were investigating Mary’s disappearance and they asked her secret sister to assume her identity. Cercone says the Houles had the wherewithal to do it.
Steve Cercone: What if they took the birth certificate of Mary, which they probably had, and the Social Security card for Mary … What if they gave those cards to the other sister … and said, “You’re now Mary?”
Clark says the alleged scheme put an end to the investigation. And it also put money in Phoenix Mary’s pocket.
Steve Cercone: There was an inheritance. … We thought … the motivation would be the inheritance, because she could collect that inheritance.
With accrued interest, that inheritance was now worth roughly $60,000. Sherrie helped Mary get her cut.
“48 Hours” reached out to William and Charlotte Houle. Through a relative, they said they had no comment.
Mark Clark says the impostor theory accounts for a lot of inconsistencies: for example, Mary’s odd southern accent.
Mark Clark: The accent … was really thick … Sherrie and Katherine both said that Mary Day never had an accent.
Steve Cercone: She has a southern accent. It’s a pronounced southern accent.
MARY [Phone call]: Can I throw one question at you if you if you don’t mind?
DET. JOE BERTAINA: Go ahead, Mary.
MARY: If you were to find my body… how were you gonna be able to prove who the hell I was?
Mary did claim that she spent some time in the south as an adult, but was only there briefly as a child, when experts say she would have developed that accent.
Mark Clark: I let four separate Southern dialect experts listen to the interview, and
they all concluded that … it woulda taken living her formative years up to 9 or 10 in the
south to acquire this Southern accent.
And there was that email that Phoenix Mary sent – saying she wasn’t who she claimed to be.
After about a year living with Sherrie, Mary moved out on her own. But the mystery just wouldn’t die. Another detective was about to take a crack at the case.
Judy Veloz | Acting Chief, Seaside Police Department: We have to be very careful, all of us in law enforcement, not to make our story fit our ideas or what we believed happened.
ONE MYSTERY SOLVED, ANOTHER BEGINS
In 2017, Sherrie Calgaro still wanted answers about the woman claiming to be her sister.
Sherrie Calgaro: Basically, everyone that’s ever met her — has a lot of doubts, I have my own doubts.
“48 Hours” took Sherrie to visit Phoenix Mary in Missouri, where she’d been living for a few years.
Sherrie Calgaro [In car with Maureen Maher]: I’m hoping that she will admit, she will confess to us who she really is.
Maureen Maher: OK, good luck.
Sherrie Calgaro: Bye.
Maureen Maher: Bye.
Mary was living here and suffering from late-stage cancer. She was not up to any more visitors that day.
As Mary’s health was failing, the new acting chief of the Seaside Police Department was determined to solve the case once and for all.
Judy Veloz chipped away at the idea that Mary Day was murdered. For starters, additional tests showed Mary’s DNA matched not only Charlotte – but also the birth father. And then, there was that little girl’s shoe.
Judy Veloz: I put it in the palm of my hand, and I mean, it fit in the palm of my hand.
It was very small. I had a hard time believing that a 13-year-old would have to be— I mean, I saw her stature in the picture. … She wasn’t that short.
Veloz also traveled to Mary’s home. She says Mary herself filled in the gaps.
Judy Veloz: She wanted to convince us she was Mary. And it seemed sincere. She said she began calling herself Monica when she ran away because she didn’t want police to take her back home.
Mary also mentioned a new name – Morie – a woman she knew in those early days on her own in California.
Veloz tracked down Morie Kimmel.
Morie Kimmel: I got her when she was—15 … very naive and — and an innocence about her, almost like, childlike, you know?
At the time, KImmel had two young daughters of her own.
Morie Kimmel: She just won my heart and my girls loved her.
Maureen Maher: You know that that may have been the only and the best family life she ever had in her entire life?
Morie Kimmel: I’m realizing that now, you know … I wanted to nurture her, you know?
But after about a year, one day Mary was gone.
Morie Kimmel: I was heartbroken [cries].
Veloz discovered that Mary had moved around a lot — city to city — living on the margins.
Judy Veloz: Honestly, when I talked to her, she just seemed like a survivor.
She also solved the mystery of why Mary suddenly got that Arizona ID. She needed state aid to pay for surgery.
Judy Veloz: She had her gall bladder taken out … that led her to obtain her proper driver’s license or ID … in the name of Mary Louise Day.
A local nonprofit had helped Mary track down her real birth certificate.
Veloz chalks up Mary’s foggy memory to trauma and a lifelong battle with alcohol.
Judy Veloz: Those gaps in memory to me can be legitimate, especially if someone’s —been an alcoholic from the time they’ve been a teenager.
As for that email Mary sent to Detective Bertaina saying she had been lying about who she was, Veloz says Mary sent a follow up email, writing, “I’m not sure myself what I was trying to say in that email.”
Judy Veloz: Again, from someone who is still a severe alcoholic and using.
And then Veloz came up with the smoking gun: one of Morie Kimmel’s relatives had a photograph.
While Judy Veloz continued to track down the details of Mary’s life after vanishing, one of Morie Kimmel’s relatives had a photo that would help turn the case around:a photo of Mary, center. taken at least a year after the alleged murder. With this photo, Veloz submitted her report and closed the Mary Day investigation for good.
Seaside Police Department
Judy Veloz: The picture really did it.
It’s Mary, she says. And it was taken at least a year after the alleged murder.
“48 Hours”took the photo to True Face, a state-of-the art facial recognition company.
Shaun Moore | CEO, True Face: So, we’re gonna look at the results of our face matching algorithms on the images that you all sent us.
Maureen Maher: OK. And it’s trying to see what?
Shaun Moore: It’s trying to see the probability that we’re matching a young picture with one of the older pictures. So —
Maureen Maher: If this is the same person.
Shaun Moore: Correct. The probability that it’s the same person.
Maureen Maher: What are the numbers telling you?
Shaun Moore: And the numbers are telling us that it’s the same person.
He says that’s a 99% probability.
With that photo, Judy Veloz submitted her report andclosed the Mary Day investigation this time, for good.
After all these years, the woman at the center of the case finally agreed to meet with Maureen Maher.
While suffering from late-stage cancer, Mary Day told Maureen Maher it’s very frustrating trying to prove who you are, when there is no proof.
Sherrie Calgaro
Maher says the Mary she met was fragile, but not feeble. It was clear from seeing her in person that this was a woman who had not had an easy life. Still, she didn’t seem to be trying to hide anything. In fact, she said it’s very frustrating trying to prove who you are, when there is no proof
After her visit with Mary, Sherrie is finally at peace.
Sherrie Calgaro: All of a sudden it felt like I had a weight lifted off of my shoulders. … It was just, like, “It’s done. This is her.” … And that’s pretty much the end of that story.
It’s not that simple for Mark Clark.
Mark Clark: I’ve seen the report. I’d be lying if it didn’t make me second guess my investigation.
But even though he can’t prove his theory, he can’t quite shake his old hunch that Mary is an impostor.
Maureen Maher: Do you believe William Houle murdered Mary Louise Day?
Mark Clark: Based on the evidence I’ve found, yes.
As for Steve Cercone …
Steve Cercone: I will admit that, once I read Judy’s report and I saw that picture, I definitely leaned towards the identity of Mary as being Mary Louise Day, the little girl that we were looking for.
Still, he says he is certain of one thing: those cadaver dogs were onto something.
Steve Cercone: They were positive. They were positive. … They said … “Our dogs don’t lie. … They don’t lie.”
Steve Cercone: Who is buried in those gravesites?
Mary Day died nine days after Judy Veloz interviewed her.
There was no funeral.
Produced by Chuck Stevenson. Lauren A. White is the field producer. Doug Longhini and Gayane Keshishyan are the development producers. Chelsea Narvaez is the broadcast associate. Michael Baluzy, Karen Brenner and Jon Baskin are the editors. Gail Zimmerman is the senior producer.
A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy convicted and sentenced to death for murder died in custody Thursday, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Stephen M. Redd was pronounced dead after prison staff found him unresponsive in his cell at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, where he’s been incarcerated since 1997. He was 78.
His cause of death remains under investigation.
Redd was sentenced to death after being convicted in 1997 of first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, second-degree burglary, second-degree robbery and attempted murder.
The sentence stemmed from a robbery Redd committed at a Yorba Linda supermarket in 1994.
During the robbery, Redd shot and killed the store’s manager, 34-year-old Timothy McVeigh. Redd evaded arrest for eight months before he was arrested in San Francisco.
Redd’s death sentence has been suspended since 2006, the year California last executed a prisoner. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a formal moratorium on the death penalty in 2019.
Former NBA player Chance Comanche has admitted to working with his girlfriend to strangle a woman to death in Las Vegas earlier this month, according to authorities and court documents.
The former Beverly Hills High basketball star admitted to Las Vegas homicide detectives that he conspired with Sakari Harnden to kill Marayna Rodgers in the early hours of Dec. 6, a court filing said.
Comanche, 27, who played briefly for the Sacramento Kings in October and Portland Trail Blazers in April, was playing for the Stockton Kings of the NBA G League at the time of the killing. The team was in Las Vegas for a game the night of Dec. 5, and the court filing alleges that he and Harnden planned the killing days earlier through numerous text messages — some including emojis of a gun, a ghost and a coffin.
After they were unable to find someone to kill Rodgers for $3,000, Comanche and Harnden, 19, decided to carry out the killing themselves, the filing said. In a text message to Harnden on Dec. 4, Comanche wrote, “If you get a nice little thick piece of rope or sum sturdy I can do it from the back seat. Like how killers do it in the movies.”
According to the court filing, Harnden and Rodgers, 23, were prostitutes and acquaintances who had argued over a Rolex watch and the fact that Rodgers had revealed to others that Harnden had cooperated with police about a boyfriend’s involvement in a double homicide in Stockton earlier this year. The boyfriend, Iosua Sataua, was arrested in May along with a 16-year-old boy in the case.
The night of the killing in Las Vegas, Harnden told Rodgers that Comanche was a trick who was into kinky sex and wanted to tie them up and have sex with both of them, according to the court filing. Rodgers agreed, and while sitting in the front passenger seat of Harnden’s Mercedes-Benz willingly allowed Harnden to tie her hands together with zip ties, the filing said.
Comanche told detectives that he strangled Rodgers with an HDMI cord from the backseat and that Harnden strangled her with both hands around her neck, the filing said.
“Chance made reference to fluid coming out of Marayna’s mouth, which caused them to believe Marayna was dead,” the filing said.
Comanche and Harnden placed Rodgers’ body in a ditch and covered it with rocks, according to the court filing. The next morning Comanche boarded the team bus headed for the airport.
Las Vegas homicide detectives interviewed Comanche in Stockton on Friday. The court filing said he confessed to the killing and told detectives where Rodgers’ body was located.
A criminal complaint filed in Las Vegas court on Monday charged Comanche and Harnden with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Comanche appeared in a Sacramento County court on Tuesday and waived his extradition, meaning Las Vegas police will have 30 days to take him to Nevada.
Comanche declared for the 2017 NBA draft, forgoing the remaining two years of his college eligibility, but was not selected. Since then he’s bounced around the G League and in 2021 played for a professional team in Turkey.
The Trail Blazers signed Comanche to a 10-day contract in April and he appeared in one game, scoring seven points. He wasn’t re-signed but landed with the Sacramento Kings on a 10-day contract in October. The Stockton Kings released him shortly after his arrest.
A jury on Friday found a western Michigan woman guilty of murder and child abuse in the starvation death of her disabled 15-year-old son who weighed just 69 pounds.
The Muskegon County Circuit Court jury deliberated just over an hour before convicting Shanda Vander Ark, 44, of Norton Shores in the July 6, 2022, death of Timothy Ferguson.
An autopsy determined the teenager died from malnourishment and hypothermia. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
Video shown by Court TV appeared to show Vander Ark become violently ill after being shown photos of her son’s emaciated body.
Vander Ark was sick and not in the courtroom when the jury reached its verdict. The judge said Vander Ark was not required by law to be present for her verdict, WZZM-TV reported.
She faces mandatory life in prison when she is sentenced Jan. 29.
Vander Ark’s attorney, Fred Johnson, argued his client did not grasp the harm she caused her son and did not know he was starving to death.
However, a Muskegon County deputy prosecutor, Matt Roberts, disputed that notion and said she tortured her son by feeding him hot sauce, putting him in ice baths, depriving him of sleep and locking the refrigerator and food cabinets.
“She killed him. She starved him to death,” Roberts said.
Timothy Ferguson had some mental disabilities and was being home-schooled, prosecutors have said.
Vander Ark’s other son, 20-year-old Paul Ferguson, allegedly participated in the abuse, WZZM reported. Paul Ferguson faces one count of first-degree child abuse.
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In the early morning hours of Sept. 22, 2020, when Laredo, Texas, police officer Gregorio De La Cruz walked inside the home on Canyon Oak Drive, his body camera was recording the emergency unfolding in front of him.
At the top of the stairs, near the main bedroom, Joel Pellot dressed in teal surgical scrubs, was performing CPR on his wife Maria Muñoz. De La Cruz soon took over.
Erin Moriarty: What kind of shape was she in when you started giving her CPR?
Officer Gregorio De La Cruz: She was warm. She was still warm to the touch.
While De La Cruz desperately tried to revive Maria, he asked her husband about the drugs. Pellot had told the 911 operator his wife may have taken some pills.
Officer Gregorio De la Cruz: He stands up, he goes to the restroom. … He opens a medicine cabinet. I can — I can tell all this because I hear it.
JOEL PELLOT (police bodycam video): I’m not really sure if she took them or she dropped them …
Upon his return, he hands De La Cruz a pill container.
JOEL PELLOT (police bodycam video): It’s clonazepam.
Clonazepam is a drug that is often used to treat anxiety. It had been prescribed to Pellot, not to his wife Maria.
De La Cruz quickly tossed the pill container aside to continue CPR.
Pellot told De la Cruz that Maria had been struggling lately.
JOEL PELLOT (police bodycam video): Yeah, she’s been super depressed.
Pellot told the officers, the couple’s two young sons were still in separate bedrooms nearby — seemingly unaware of what was happening to their mother Maria.
OFFICER DE LA CRUZ (performing CPR on Maria): They are asleep?
JOEL PELLOT: Yeah.
Maria Muñoz
Facebook
Yazmin Martinez says her friend Maria adored her boys, 5-year-old Alejandro and Valentino, who was turning 2.
Yazmin Martinez: She would like to take her children to the park … she read to them before they went to bed. … just a really dedicated mother.
Maria enjoyed being a stay at home mom. She was learning to play the piano and planning to resume her career.
Yazmin Martinez: I asked her if she had gone to school, and she said yes that … she was a nurse in Puerto Rico and she’s like I’m actually studying to take my test so I can work here.
It was in Puerto Rico where Maria met Joel Pellot. He was 11 years older and a nursing student.
A few years after they married, the couple moved to Laredo, Texas. Pellot had landed a lucrative job as a nurse anesthetist, known in the medical profession as a CRNA.
Tina Dores: A nurse anesthetist, or a CRNA, certified registered nurse anesthetist and a physician anesthesiologist use the same medication, same techniques to provide anesthesia for people of all ages.
Tina Dores, also a CRNA, worked with Joel Pellot at Doctors Hospital in Laredo.
Erin Moriarty: Did he seem dedicated to his work?
Tina Dores: Yes, very much so. … he always wanted to be better.
Tina Dores: When I first met him … he was very family orientated … a hard worker, smart guy … he would always talk about … Maria and Alejandro … and showing pictures of his son and just talking about family life in general.
And now at the Pellot home, paramedics and police were struggling to save the life of the young wife and mother.
When more help arrived, De La Cruz sent Pellot downstairs to the kitchen. And that’s when De La Cruz realized that the pill container he had tossed to the side earlier was now missing.
OFFICER DE LA CRUZ (police bodycam video): He had a prescription drug, where is it?
Officer Gregorio De La Cruz: I was like, he has to have them. So that’s when I asked, “Hey, does he have pills?” He comes up to the first landing of the stairs and he tosses them to me.
Officer Gregorio De La Cruz: So, he had taken them. So, now I’m thinking now you’re trying to hide something.
At 3:58 a.m. less than three hours after Joel Pellot had called 911, his wife, 31-year-old Maria Muñoz, was declared dead inside their home.
Police began asking Joel what had happened to his wife.
JOEL PELLOT (bodycam video): We had sex, I took a shower. Then I thought she was, like, knocked out … And then I go back upstairs and she’s just – oh God (covers his face with his hand and begins to cry).
By now, things just didn’t feel right to the investigators. And there was something about Pellot’s appearance that seemed suspicious.
Joel Pellot talks to police in his Laredo, Texas, kitchen. Officer Gregorio De La Cruz observed Pellot sweating profusely through his scrubs and said Pellot seemed like he may have been under the influence of drugs.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
Officer Gregorio De La Cruz: He was really sweaty … I’m wearing a vest, I’m wearing a gun, I’m wearing almost 20 pounds of gear, right, and I’m not sweating as bad as he was.
Erin Moriarty: So, what went through your mind when you saw how sweaty he was?
Officer Gregorio De La Cruz: He’s using drugs. He may be under the influence of drugs.
SGT. MATA (to the couple’s sons): You wanna see a fire truck? Come on let’s go outside.
The couple’s children, now in the care of law enforcement, were escorted outside. Authorities immediately launched a death investigation.
Sgt. Luis Mata: When I get there, I meet with Officer De La Cruz. … He runs the information by me.
Lead investigator Sergeant Luis Mata didn’t know if Maria had died by suicide, an accidental overdose, or if her husband was somehow involved. Mata knew he needed to search the house, but to do it he would have to get Pellot’s permission.
Sgt. Luis Mata: And he said, “Well, I don’t want you going through my stuff because I’m a very private man.” … Then I said, “look Joel, I’m not going to force you to, this is your right, but … I’m going to have to go and get with my DA and apply for a search warrant.
Pellot eventually gave consent for the search. Still, Mata had a lot of questions. To get some answers, he directed authorities to put Pellot in a police cruiser to take him to the station.
Erin Moriarty: Could you see him before you went in?
Sgt. Luis Mata: I could see him … through my camera.
Cameras recorded Joel Pellot in the police interview room. While he was alone, “he’s hitting walls, he’s moving furniture … It was scaring some of the people down the hall in the dispatch room,” said Sgt. Luis Mata.
Laredo Police Department
Sgt. Luis Mata: Everything there is recorded … he’s hitting walls, he’s moving furniture … It was scaring some of the people down the hall in the dispatch room … so that’s how loud it was …
SGT. MATA (to Joel Pellot): Holding up OK man?
Around 4 a.m., Mata begins his interview with Pellot, who claims he had given Maria that container of clonazepam prescribed to him.
SGT. MATA: Is it possible that she swallowed them all?
JOEL PELLOT: I don’t know man, I don’t know.
SGT. MATA: How many pills were there before?
JOEL PELLOT: I don’t know.
SGT. MATA: Mas o menos? (More or less?)
JOEL PELLOT: I really don’t know.
Sgt. Luis Mata: He couldn’t remember the minorest things … I don’t know how many times I asked him – “play back to me the minute you got there – what did you do?” … and he, well, “What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?” … Well, you know what, if you remember the truth, you don’t have to think about it.
ANOTHER WOMAN
SGT. MATA (police interview): What was the time period between the time you got out of the shower … until when you noticed she’s not really responding anymore?
JOEL PELLOT: Uh, 10 minutes? … I’m not 100 percent sure.
The sudden death of a healthy 31-year-old woman like Maria Muñoz didn’t make sense to Mata. And neither did her husband’s explanation.
Sgt. Luis Mata: His initial statement was that he went in and took a shower … he thought she was asleep. … and then 10 minutes later … He realizes that she’s unresponsive.
Sgt. Luis Mata: When a common person showers … what’s going to be in the bathroom? Steam, condensation, the smell of soap or shampoo … that master bedroom shower, which is the one he alleged he used, was as dry as a desert.
First responders also found syringes and IV equipment in a medical bag at the home — the types of supplies normally found in a medical setting.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
Investigators had also discovered a syringe wrapper on the floor and a needle catheter on the stairs. Syringes and IV equipment in a medical bag were found inside the home.
SGT. MATA (police interview): Why would there be syringes in the home?
JOEL PELLOT: So, like, I don’t know.
Then, Pellot makes a hand gesture and taps his bicep.
SGT. MATA: Steroids?
JOEL PELLOT: Yeah, for, that’s me.
With Pellot at the police station, Maria’s close friend Angela Montoya and her husband Luis Ayala rushed over to the house to take care of the kids. Ayala, a coworker of Pellot, says he had begun to see changes in Pellot’s physique and personality two years before Maria’s death.
Joel Pellot
Facebook
Luis Ayala: He lose a lot of weight and then started gaining muscle.
Erin Moriarty: Did you suspect that maybe he was taking steroids?
Luis Ayala: Maybe, but … I mean he was changing like … more friendly with girls …
Erin Moriarty: Flirting more.
Luis Ayala: Yeah.
The family man who once had bragged to friends and colleagues about his wife and kids began changing his social media posts, too.
Angela Montoya: He deleted the pictures of Maria, or he just started posting … everything by himself … not with his kids.
Pellot, in demand as a nurse anesthetist, was making a lot of money, and according to Montoya, he enjoyed showing off his wealth.
Angela Montoya: He has this new sporty car … “I bought Maria that one and I bought myself this one,” bragging about it.
But friends say the changes they saw in Pellot went much deeper. In 2018, around the same time Maria gave birth to the couple’s second son, Joel began pursuing a woman named Janet Arredondo, a surgical nurse, he met at work.
Angela Montoya: Joel took Janet to like a vacation spree in Europe. I don’t recall which countries … he told me.
Erin Moriarty: Well, there was one trip— there was Spain, and the next trip was France and Greece.
Angela Montoya: There you go. There you go. So, Maria found out about that while he was there with Janet.
According to Montoya, Maria confirmed her suspicion about her husband’s infidelity when she found a plane ticket for one of his European trips. When her disappointment turned into a deep depression, she was prescribed medication.
An excerpt from one of Maria Muñoz’s journals.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
But perhaps the best medicine for Maria turned out to be her daily journals, discovered in her home by investigators:
I don’t want to be sad anymore.
I don’t want my heart to hurt.
I don’t want my mind to be in torture.
Yet, at times she seemed hopeful, believing her faith could mend the couple’s 10-year marriage:
Lord this is a lot for me,
All I really want to do is see change in him.
And it seemed to be working. Just months after her husband had taken his mistress on those European vacations, Pellot treated Maria to a lavish getaway in Las Vegas.
Maria Muñoz and Joel Pellot on their trip to Las Vegas in 2020.
Facebook
Angela Montoya: And she showed me a couple of Louis Vuitton … he purchased for her.
But what seemed like a second chance for her marriage didn’t last. Pellot could never quite leave Janet.
SGT. MATA (police interview): How long have you been with Janet?
JOEL PELLOT: About two years.
SGT. MATA: Out of those two years, how long has Maria known about it?
JOEL PELLOT: (sighs) For a while. For a long while.
In fact, Pellot told Mata that he no longer lived with his family and that he had moved in with Janet Arredondo five months before Maria’s death. Mata wondered how much the other woman knew and asked her to come to the police station to talk.
Janet Arredondo
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
SGT. MATA (police interview): What is your relationship with him? I wouldn’t have called you at 6:30 in the morning if it was just for, for being nosy. It’s not that I’m trying to be nosy, but I’ll get to where I’m going.
JANET ARREDONDO: Um, he’s — he’s my boyfriend.
Mata continued pressing Arredondo about Pellot – and then told her about Maria.
SGT. MATA (police interview): The reason that I’m here is because … last night Joel’s wife passed away. … There doesn’t appear to be any, right now, type of foul play … We’re still pending an autopsy. … So let’s get with, how did you, and Joel even start dating.
JANET ARREDONDO: Um, I’m sorry.
SGT. MATA: Um, I understand. Take your time. I know it’s all kind of thrown at you, so, you know, I, I told you at the very beginning, I’m gonna be honest with you. So I am, uh, our main thing now is obviously what happened.
JANET ARREDONDO (holds her head in her hands): Um, I’m sorry, what was your question?
SGT. MATA: How, when did — how long have you and Joel been dating?
JANET ARREDONDO: Uh … Um, almost two years now.
SGT. MATA: OK … Did Maria, his wife, did she do drugs?
JANET ARREDONDO: Not that I’m … aware of. … he just told me that he, she was very depressed.
When Sergeant Mata mentioned Maria may have overdosed, Arredondo seemed surprised.
JANET ARREDONDO: Wait minute, are, are you saying she overdosed?
SGT. MATA: We don’t know yet. … the main thing is this, Janet, is when we tell her family …They’re gonna think that either Joel … killed her or that you had something to do with it, that’s all we have to rule you out. OK. … Has Joel ever confided in you that he was, that he wanted to do something to his wife?
JANET ARREDONDO: No.
Pellot had told police Maria may have overdosed on the drug clonazepam, but when the autopsy was conducted — eight hours after Maria was declared dead — the medical examiner found no pill residue in her stomach. There was something on Maria’s body at the scene that puzzled both the medical examiner and investigators: a tiny mark on Maria’s right arm.
What investigators found particularly suspicious was a pinprick mark on Maria Muñoz’s right elbow crease, the type someone would get after getting an IV.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
Sgt. Luis Mata: It was a little, little prick — kind of like whenever you, the common person … has their blood checked when they go to the doctor. One little dot.
Erin Moriarty: That’s it.
Sgt. Luis Mata: On her right elbow crease.
Erin Moriarty: No other signs of drug use or anything like that?
Sgt. Luis Mata: Nothing, Nothing.
Officer Gregorio De La Cruz: Nothing.
The autopsy report states Maria died from a mixed drug intoxication. While the medical examiner couldn’t say how the drugs got in her system, she did rule out suicide after talking to Maria’s friends and reading her journal.
On the day before she died, Maria wrote:
What is it that I want?
#1 Move Forward!!
So, could Maria’s death have been an accidental overdose? Or was it murder? When Dr. John Huntsinger, an anesthesiologist and Pellot’s former boss, heard the autopsy results, he immediately became suspicious.
Dr. John Huntsinger: I called Detective Mata, and I told him my concerns.
He urged Mata to order a detailed toxicology screening to determine which drugs had killed Maria and how they got there.
SGT. MATA (police interview): Did you inject her … tonight?
JOEL PELLOT: No.
SGT. MATA: With anything?
JOEL PELLOT: No.
Authorities would have to wait nearly four months to get the answers they needed.
SUSPICIONS CONTINUE TO GROW AGAINST JOEL PELLOT
On a Sunday afternoon at the First Baptist Church in Laredo, a large crowd of family and friends came to mourn Maria Muñoz, including her estranged husband, Joel Pellot.
CHURCH SERVICE: The victorious life is — is also a life of service. … All of our lives were impacted by the precious life of Maria.
Yazmin Martinez: Her funeral was really sad … Joel was there and he was crying. He seemed very upset, very sad.
To Maria’s friend Yazmin Martinez, he seemed a little too upset, too sad.
Yazmin Martinez: What made me feel angry … was him near the casket … crying over her, giving her kisses. Like why now? You have made her suffer and cry so much and you’re doing this now?
Joel Pellot’s display of grief did nothing to deter the investigation into his wife’s death.
Sergeant Luis Mata and Officer Gregorio De La Cruz say that footage captured by the bodycam on the morning Maria died shows something curious. Remember the pills in a container that Pellot said his wife had taken? De La Cruz tossed it aside when he was giving Maria CPR.
OFFICER DE LA CRUZ (bodycam video): He had a prescription drug, where is it?
At some point it disappeared.
Erin Moriarty (watching the bodycam video): I see it’s still here right now.
Sgt. Luis Mata: It’s still there exactly.
And here’s how it happened. They say Pellot grabs the pill container and puts it in his pocket.
Officer Gregorio De La Cruz (watching the bodycam video): He just reached over and … put it right back in the shirt.
Officer Gregorio De La Cruz: If that’s really what she took, why would you want to hide that?
A needle catheter, the kind used for IVs, was discovered on the staircase.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
They were also suspicious of that needle catheter, the kind used for IVs, discovered at the scene. Remember, Maria had a tiny mark on her right arm. Mata shared his concerns with the Webb County District Attorney’s Office.
Marisela Jacaman: We have a 24/7 phone … and law enforcement can contact us with any questions.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Marisela Jacaman and District Attorney Isidro Alaniz knew the case would be tough to prove since even the medical examiner wasn’t sure exactly how Maria died.
Erin Moriarty: The medical examiner is saying, I can’t say for a fact this is homicide.
Isidro Alaniz: I remember having this conversation with the medical examiner early on … and I remember her saying look, I wasn’t there, and neither were you. All we know is that she has this combination of dangerous drugs in her bloodstream … we don’t know who gave them to her, if she had some in her system already, if she took some later on.
Erin Moriarty: Either accident or murder.
Isidro Alaniz: Accident or murder.
Investigators began to question Maria’s friends and discovered that the Saturday before Maria died, there was a confrontation at Janet Arredondo’s house when Maria saw Pellot’s car there.
Doorbell camera video of Maria Muñoz outside Janet Arredondo’s house.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
Angela Montoya: So, that’s when she stepped out of the car and then she rang the doorbell.
According to Montoya, Maria, seen on Janet’s doorbell camera, gave Pellot an ultimatum.
Angela Montoya: “Do you choose her, or you choose me?: And then he says … “I choose Janet.”
Arredondo called police, and when a responding officer arrived at her home, he called Maria who had by then had left with Pellot. When Maria answered her cellphone, the officer’s bodycam recorded the sound of Joel berating her in the background:
JOEL PELLOT (cellphone video with Maria in the car): Hey, I’m f—— talking to you right now. Hang up the f—— phone.
RESPONDING POLICE OFFICER: I guess that’s your boyfriend.
JANET ARREDONDO: Yeah.
According to Montoya, Maria told her that Pellot became violent.
Angela Montoya: And he got so frustrated with everything that he punched the windshield.
Erin Moriarty: He broke it —-didn’t he?
Angela Montoya: He broke it, yes, he broke it.
On Sunday morning, Maria texted her husband about hiring a divorce lawyer, and he replied:
JOEL PELLOT TEXT: We can do this with minimal lawyer intervention. It’s too much money.
Pellot then seems to have had a change of heart, and sends Maria this email:
JOEL PELLOT EMAIL: I am so sad I am hurting inside…
I want to sit down with you to talk, w/o arguing. A heart to heart.
They agreed to meet Monday night. Before Pellot arrived, Maria messaged her friend Yazmin Martinez to pray for her:
… I just ask if you can pray for me … tonight we are going to talk …
Yazmin Martinez: And then I answered her … And I told her that I would pray for her.
Maria’s request for prayers that night would be her final message to Martinez. Maria died early Tuesday morning.
Nearly four months after Maria’s death – Sergeant Mata and Officer De La Cruz finally get the toxicology test results they had been waiting for.
Sgt. Luis Mata: Zero clonazepam.
Joel Pellot had told police Maria Muñoz may have overdosed on the drug clonazepam, but when the autopsy was conducted — eight hours after she was declared dead — the medical examiner found no pill residue in her stomach.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
Zero clonazepam — the drug Pellot claimed Maria had taken. Instead, the toxicology report revealed seven other drugs in Maria’s system.
Sgt. Luis Mata: So, positive for morphine, Demerol, Versed, propofol — ketamine, lidocaine, Narcan.
Most of these medications are typically used during surgery and one of them can only be administered with an IV.
Erin Moriarty: What was your reaction?
Sgt. Luis Mata: He killed her. This guy killed his wife.
Authorities got a warrant, Officer De La Cruz, who had tried to save Maria’s life, returned to Pellot’s home to make the arrest.
Officer Gregorio De Laz Cruz: He knew why we were there.
Sgt. Luis Mata: By the time we knock on the door, and we announce our presence … just like the way you do in the movies, he comes out. “I’m here. I’m here.” Put’s his hands behind his back. Let us cuff him. Doesn’t put up a fight.
JOEL PELLOT: You can call my, uh, my attorney.
OFFICER De La Cruz: Oh, you can call them.
Pellot was taken to the police station and booked. Prosecutors believe he was the one who gave his wife the deadly mixture — but can they prove he wanted her to die?
DEATH BY PROPOFOL?
When Joel Pellot’s former boss, anesthesiologist Dr. John Huntsinger saw the list of drugs found in Maria Muñoz – seven different medications — he was surprised by one drug in particular.
Dr. John Huntsinger: I was very shocked to see propofol.
Erin Moriarty: Where would he get that propofol? You can’t just go to the drug store to get propofol?
Dr. John Huntsinger: You have to get it from a hospital.
While most of the drugs found in Maria’s system could be consumed by mouth, Propofol is usually injected by someone else with an IV.
John Huntsinger: One of the things about propofol … it relaxes you greatly … but it doesn’t last very long. … it makes you stop breathing if you have too much.
Erin Moriarty: I think most of us, when we hear about Propofol, we think of Michael Jackson.
Dr. John Huntsinger: Correct.
Singer Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009 was blamed, in part, on an accidental overdose of Propofol. And after Maria Muñoz’s death, a highly elevated level of the drug was found in her system.
Dr. John Huntsinger: Hers was the highest level I’ve seen.
Erin Moriarty: And what does that say to you?
Dr. John Huntsinger: I believe this was death by Propofol.
With Joel Pellot now under arrest, authorities were convinced that Pellot’s girlfriend Janet Arredondo knew more than what she shared in that first interview.
Arredondo agreed to a second police interview and, accompanied by attorneys, she now seemed ready to talk.
SGT. MATA (second police interview): Did Joel ever bring home any medical drugs?
JANET ARREDONDO: Yes.
Arredondo told police that Pellot had often brought drugs to her home – some for his own recreational use — including ketamine, morphine, lidocaine, fentanyl and more.
JANET ARREDONDO: Versed
LUIS MATA: OK.
JANET ARREDONDO: Propofol.
SGT. MATA: Propofol?
Arredondo’s information about propofol kicked the case into high gear. District Attorney Isidro Alaniz selected a team of attorneys – Katrina Rios, Ana Karen Garza, Cristal Calderon and led by Marisela Jacaman.
From left, prosecutors Karina Rios, Ana Karen Garza, Marisela Jacaman and Cristal Calderon.
CBS News
Marisela Jacaman: We are Maria’s team.
So, they got a search warrant for her home. Then, they offered her a deal. In exchange for more information, Arredondo would get immunity from prosecution.
All four prosecutors were convinced that Maria’s husband had methodically planned her murder, and that the devoted mother and wife had suffered in the months before her death.
Marisela Jacaman: I’ve heard of emotional abuse, I’ve seen it, I’ve worked around it …
Marisela Jacaman: … but I never realized how prevalent it is even in our lives where you can relate to some of the things that Maria was experiencing.
Erin Moriarty: On the face of it, this is a couple having problems, he’s having an affair, but to you, this is domestic violence, how?
Karina Rios: Well, I think … it goes so much further than just being a spouse … you could see the power struggle that existed or the — the lack thereof.
Assistant District Attorney Karina Rios.
Karina Rios: Maria had no power in this relationship.
And the evidence of that, prosecutors say, is found in Maria’s own journals. Prosecutor Jacaman read one of those entries:
Life is so unfair.
My husband the man I love so much is causing me so much pain
Maria also left evidence on her cellphone that she secretly recorded approximately four months before her death:
MARIA MUÑOZ (cellphone video in the car with Joel Pellot): I want to know, what is it that you want me to do?
MARIA MUÑOZ (cellphone video in the car with Joel Pellot): What are the expectations you have on this — this marriage?
Cellphone video secretly recorded by Maria Muñoz shows her and Joel Pellot arguing in the car.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
Marisela Jacaman:She gave us this very powerful video.
MARIA MUÑOZ (cellphone video in the car with Joel Pellot): You walk out that door, we’re getting a divorce.
JOEL PELLOT: Alright fine, you got it (slams car door)
Marisela Jacaman: She was having a discussion … with him … and that was so painful to watch.
But prosecutors would need much more than that video and Maria’s journal entries. How did they believe that Joel Pellot dosed his wife with all those drugs?
Marisela Jacaman: That was the million-dollar question. We kept saying, how did he get her to submit to this?
During Janet Arredondo’s second police interview, she said Pellot had told her about the night Maria died: he had gone there, he said, to have that heart-to-heart talk and then injected her — not to kill her, Pellot said, but to calm her down.
During her second interview with police, Janet Arredondo told Laredo Police Sgt. Luis Mata that Joel Pellot had often brought drugs to her home – some for his own recreational use — including ketamine, morphine, lidocaine, fentanyl and more.
Laredo Police Department
SGT. LUIS MATA (second police interview): Why did he tell you that he injected her? Because she was erratic?
JANET ARREDONDO: Right, he wanted to uh, just calm her down, so he did it with medication.
But Investigators believe the sedatives were part of Pellot’s plan to kill Maria — that before Pellot put an IV needle in Maria’s arm, he could have slipped several sedative drugs into her favorite drink: coffee.
Marisela Jacaman: Ketamine, Versed, morphine and Demerol. Those four could have been put in her coffee, she then passes out.
After that, they say, Pellot injected Maria with a deadly dose of propofol. Then-Chief Assistant District Attorney Ana Karen Garza Gutierrez says Pellot deliberately waited to call for help.
Ana Karen Garza: I believe he waited until she was dead to call 911 to make sure that no one can bring her back.
SGT MATA (second police interview): Did you play any role in Maria’s death at all? You?
JANET ARREDONDO: No.
Arredondosaid Pellot did admit to her that he got rid of some of the medical equipment he used to inject Maria before first responders arrived.
JANET ARREDONDO: He just told me he got rid of them.
Pellot was out on bail, so prosecutors had him rearrested and along with murder, he was charged with tampering with evidence. Again, he made bail and would wear an ankle monitor.
In March 2023, two-and-a-half years after Maria Muñoz’s death, her husband went on trial for her murder.
“48 Hours” made several interview requests to Joel Pellot’s defense team, but never received a response. Joel Pellot declined our request for an interview.
MARISELA JACAMAN (opening statement in court): The evidence will show that Joel Pellot had the motive, he had the intent, and he had the means to kill Maria.
Prosecutors presented 15 witnesses to prove to a jury that Pellot had carefully and intentionally selected the drugs to kill Maria. Their star witness, Janet Arredondo, told the jury what she had shared with police.
MARISELA JACAMAN (in court): Did Mr. Pellot indicate to you that he dumped or discarded the IV catheter and the vials?
JANET ARREDONDO: Yes.
When the defense case begins, Pellot’s lawyers admit their client injected his wife, but they say he wasn’t trying to kill her, he was trying to save her.
ACCIDENT OR MURDER?
Joel Pellot, wearing a blue suit and a dark grey tie, listened carefully as his defense team presented his case.
ROBERTO BALLI (in court): Now, Maria died and there’s no question that Joel was there.
Defense attorney Roberto Balli claims Maria was terribly depressed and had been drinking and abusing drugs for months.
ROBERTO BALLI (in court): When Joel arrived Maria was already on something…
Joel Pellot during his trial for the murder of his wife.
KYLX Laredo
According to the defense, Pellot didn’t intend to kill his wife and the proof, his attorneys say, is in that toxicology report. They admit Pellot gave his wife medication to calm her down, and then when he found her unconscious they say, he gave her Narcan, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose.
ROBERTO BALLI (in court): Someone tried to bring her back to life, and it wasn’t the paramedics, it wasn’t the police. It was Joel. So he did not want her dead. This was a terrible accident.
A terrible accident, the defense argues, that was caused by a combination of whatever Maria had taken and the medication Pellot used to inject her.
Erin Moriarty: How do you know that Narcan wasn’t there because he tried to save her, that he went too far, realized that he had gone too far.
Ana Karen Garza Guiterrez: Narcan is not a reversal agent for Propofol and Propofol was what stopped her heart at the end.
The defense never explained to the jury how the propofol got into Maria’s system, but prosecutors say that the level of drugs discovered in Maria’s body could not have been accidental.
Marisela Jacaman: It was enough medication to survive two major surgeries. It was so much.
Erin Moriarty: And why do you think he gave her so much?
Marisela Jacaman: To be sure.
While Pellot himself didn’t testify, his emotional mother did. Miriam Carrasquillo told prosecutors, during cross examination, that Maria had talked about how sad she was about her marriage.
MARISELA JACAMAN (in court): Were you aware that Joel Pellot was seeing Janet, weren’t you?
MIRIAM CARRASQUILLO: Yes, she told me.
MARISELA JACAMAN: Who told you?
MIRIAM CARRASQUILLO: Maria.
MARISELA JACAMAN: And did you encourage her to stay in the marriage?
MIRIAM CARRASQUILLO: I told her that everybody have a limit and she have a limit. When she decide that she don’t want to be no more with him I have a house open for her.
But prosecutors insist as sad as Maria may have been about her marriage, there is no evidence that she abused either drugs or alcohol.
They believe Pellot’s motive was money and that he murdered Maria because he didn’t want to pay for a divorce and split his assets.
After eight days of testimony, the jury got the case. It took them less than an hour to decide Joel Pellot’s fate: guilty of murdering his wife Maria and tampering with the evidence.
Many members of the medical community attended the trial, including Pellot’s former colleague, Tina Dores.
Tina Dores: He’s not dumb, I mean he’s a smart guy … so I don’t know if he just got caught up with his God complex that he thought he was smarter than everyone and that he was going to outsmart them.
Just hours after the guilty verdict, Pellot was sentenced to life in prison, cuffed and escorted out of the courtroom.
Maria’s friend Angela Montoya.
Angela Montoya: She loved him, and she adored him. She just loved him too much.
Prosecutors got justice for Maria, but it’s a tragic ending for the family she loved and fought so hard to keep together.
Karina Rios: I think sometimes the worst injuries don’t even leave a mark … the injuries on your heart, on your mind. We could never see those on Maria, but she told us about them … but she carried a lot of scars with her from this relationship.
Maria’s team say the most important witness at trial ended up being Maria herself, and that her journals showed those scars were healing.
” I want a life that’s mine, different and unique. A life that’s balanced with every emotion, but a happy fulfilling life,” Maria Muñoz wrote in one of her journals.
Rosalinda Villarreal Photography
Ana Karen Garza: She was a wonderful soul.
Marisela Jacaman: And she was a great mother. She was just an amazing person. And that energy? We felt it.
The couple’s children are living with Joel Pellot’s mother.
Produced by Marcelena Spencer. Iris Carreras is the field producer. Marlon Disla, Michael Vele and Phil Tangel are the editors. Elizabeth Caholo is the development producer. Lourdes Aguiar is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
Maria Muñoz, a young and healthy Texas mother, died unexpectedly. A toxicology report later revealed seven different surgical drugs were found in her system. Was it murder or a terrible accident? The evidence presented at Joel Pellot’s trial for the murder of his wife tells a different story from what he told police happened the day Muñoz died.
Sept. 22, 2020
Maria Muñoz
Facebook
Muñoz, 31, a stay-at-home mother, lived in Laredo, Texas, with her two young sons and her husband, Pellot. On Sept. 22, 2020, Pellot called 911 saying Muñoz may have taken some prescription pills and was not breathing. First responders tried to save her but after failed attempts, Muñoz was declared dead at 3:58 a.m. that day. The first officer on the scene, Gregorio De La Cruz, told “48 Hours” that Pellot’s behavior seemed suspicious and certain aspects about the scene didn’t quite make sense.
Police bodycam video
Joel Pellot as seen on Laredo, Texas, police bodycam video on Sept. 22, 2020 after calling 911.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
When Officer De La Cruz from the Laredo Police Department responded to the 911 call, his bodycam was recording. Pellot, a nurse anesthetist, is seen dressed in teal surgical scrubs. The video captured some key moments that made De La Cruz suspect that Pellot may have had something to do with his wife’s death.
The pill container
Joel Pellot had told police Maria Muñoz may have overdosed on the drug clonazepam, but when the autopsy was conducted — eight hours after she was declared dead — the medical examiner found no pill residue in her stomach.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
One of those key moments was when De La Cruz asked for the pills Pellot said Muñoz had taken. Pellot went to the bathroom and De La Cruz says he heard him pull a container from the medicine cabinet. De La Cruz thought it was odd because in his experience when someone overdoses on drugs, they are usually found near the person. In this case, the clonazepam pills prescribed to Pellot, were in another room.
Later, Pellot is seen on camera grabbing the pill container from the floor and putting it in his pocket. De La Cruz wondered, why would he take the pills back? Was he hiding something?
Suspicious behavior
Joel Pellot talks to police in his Laredo, Texas, kitchen.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
In addition to Pellot putting the pills in his pocket, there was something about his appearance that De La Cruz said seemed suspicious. De La Cruz observed Pellot sweating profusely through his scrubs, and De La Cruz said he seemed like he may have been under the influence of drugs.
Evidence at the scene
A needle catheter, the kind used for IVs, was discovered on the carpeted staircase.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
De La Cruz also found a needle catheter on the stairs at the couple’s home. This didn’t make much sense to him. Pellot and Muñoz had two young children — why would there be a needle on the stairs?
A medical bag
Syringes and IV equipment were found in a medical bag inside the home.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
In addition to the needle, first responders also found syringes and IV equipment in a medical bag at the home. Although Pellot was a nurse anesthetist who worked in operating rooms, these types of supplies are normally found in a medical setting.
Police interview Joel Pellot
Cameras recorded Joel Pellot in the police interview room. While he was alone, “he’s hitting walls, he’s moving furniture … It was scaring some of the people down the hall in the dispatch room,” said Sgt. Luis Mata.
Laredo Police Department
Authorities put Pellot in the back of a cruiser and drove him to the police station for an interview. The cameras captured him crying, screaming, and pushing furniture around in the interview room.
During this interview, Pellot told lead investigator Sgt. Luis Mata that he had moved out of the house and was living with his girlfriend and that he went to see Muñoz to talk about their marriage. Pellot told Mata that his wife took the clonazepam pills at some point after they talked, and the medical supplies found at the home were his. Pellot said he was taking steroids.
An unexplained pinprick mark
What investigators found particularly suspicious was a pinprick mark on Maria Muñoz’s right elbow crease, the type someone would get after getting an IV.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
What Pellot couldn’t explain was a red mark on Muñoz’s right elbow crease. This mark, along with phone calls from concerned friends, family, and colleagues of Pellot telling Mata that Pellot may have killed Maria, is what led him to request a toxicology screening.
Maria Muñoz’s own words
Maria Muñoz’s journal
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
Investigators found a series of journals Muñoz used to write about what was happening in her life. Through her writings, they discovered Muñoz loved her husband and wanted to keep her family together, but accepted that he wanted to be with someone else.
The medical examiner also looked at the journals and determined Muñoz’s death was not a suicide.
Maria Muñoz’s cellphone recordings
Cellphone video secretly recorded by Maria Muñoz shows her and her husband Joel Pellot arguing in the car.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
Muñoz secretly recorded a conversation on her cellphone that provided a glimpse on how Pellot was treating her. In the cellphone video, Muñoz is heard asking her husband what he wanted out of their marriage. She was trying to keep her family together, but Pellot didn’t seem interested in having that conversation.
“Pray for me”
The day before Maria Muñoz died, she planned to meet with Joel Pellot to discuss their future. She texted a friend: “I just ask if you can pray for me … Tonight we are going to talk …”
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
The day before she died, Muñoz told her friend, Yazmin Martinez, that she and Pellot were going to have a “heart to heart” conversation that night. Muñoz asked Martinez to pray for her, but not because she suspected her husband was capable of killing her. Martinez said all Muñoz was hoping for was an honest conversation with him.
A bombshell toxicology report
The toxicology report showed no clonazepam — the drug Joel Pellot claimed Maria Muñoz had taken — in her system. It revealed seven other drugs in her system, most of them typically used during surgery and one of them can only be administered with an IV.
Webb County District Attorney’s Office
In January 2021, Mata and De La Cruz finally got the toxicology test results they had been waiting for. There was no clonazepam, the drug Pellot claimed Muñoz had taken. But there were seven other drugs in Muñoz’s system: morphine, Demerol, Versed, Propofol, ketamine, lidocaine, and Narcan. Most of them are typically used during surgery.
“Maria’s Team”
From left, Karina Rios, Ana Karen Garza, Marisela Jacaman and Cristal Calderon.
CBS News
District Attorney Isidro Alaniz selected a team of attorneys to represent Muñoz: Karina Rios, Ana Karen Garza Gutierrez, Marisela Jacaman, and Cristal Calderon. Based on the evidence collected at the scene, the extensive writings in Muñoz’s journals, interviews with friends, and expert accounts, they were convinced Pellot killed his wife.
A guilty verdict
Joel Pellot at his trial for the murder of Maria Muñoz.
KYLX, Laredo, Texas
The all-women prosecution team built a strong case against Joel Pellot, and showed the jury the type of wife and mother Maria Muñoz was. The prosecutors told “48 Hours” that Muñoz’s journals helped them understand what she was going through and motivated them to fight for justice in her case.
On March 30, 2023, after nine days of trial, a jury found Joel Pellot guilty of murdering his wife Maria
Maria’s journals were her testimony
Maria Muñoz
Rosalinda Villarreal Photography
“Maria’s team” says the most important witness at trial ended up being Muñoz herself. Prosecutors shared with “48 Hours” that they could feel Maria’s energy through her journals. They describe her as a great mother, loving and bright.
A Florida woman is facing manslaughter charges over the disturbing 2022 death of her newborn son.
Bianca DeSouza (pictured in her mugshot, above) was 19 years old at the time of the May 2022 incident when her hours-old infant died on a bed in her mother’s Boca Raton home. According to a probable cause affidavit in the case, Bianca was laying on a bed in another room when her mother came home to find the infant — who had been born only hours before — lying lifelessly on a bed alone.
The investigation into the infant’s death has been a long time in coming, and Bianca was only arrested on Friday of last week. Now, finally, details are coming to light about what transpired. Per the arrest affidavit uncovered on Wednesday by People, Bianca’s mother asked the teenager to call 911 to get medical help for the infant. However, the teen allegedly replied that her phone was going to die, and declined to make the call.
The mother rushed to call police, and first responders showed up to render aid. Sadly, it was too late, and the newborn baby was declared dead. The reason behind the baby’s death was later determined to be asphyxia, with homicide as the official cause listed in medical reports.
Cops questioned Bianca at the scene, and she confirmed to them that she went into labor at home while wearing shorts. Per the arrest affidavit, the teenager “pulled [the shorts] to the side during the birth,” and the child “came out of the right side of her shorts.” Officers noted in their write-up that they found the baby with shorts wrapped around its torso.
DeSouza’s mother claimed to officers that her daughter had previously been diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia and PTSD. She also indicated that Bianca had switched around her medications and dosages during pregnancy. To that end, Bianca told cops she considered terminating the pregnancy months before, but decided not to. In fact, Bianca had apparently been intending on giving up the baby for adoption as she was uncertain of her ability to care for the child.
Sadly, that didn’t happen, as the child died shortly after being born. Now, Bianca has been charged with manslaughter after she allegedly did nothing to help the struggling newborn or seek out first responders. In an interview with cops, the transcript of which is partially revealed in the arrest affidavit, Bianca reportedly admitted that she did exceedingly little:
“I didn’t know what was going on. I gave birth … and kind of just sat there. … I just didn’t do anything and I’m so mad. It was like my body stopped working.”
So sad…
Tragically, the teenager’s mom believes Bianca likely had “a psychotic break” during the birth, and was rendered helpless in the baby’s time of need. Indeed, the psychological effects of pregnancy and birth on a person can be larger than most think.
Regardless, cops have charged the teenager with counts of aggravated manslaughter of a child and child negligence. She is now being represented by a public defender, per People.
If you have sincere cause to suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org.
BALTIMORE (AP) — FBI investigators are planning to exhume the body of a young woman whose unsolved 1969 killing has been a source of widespread speculation, especially since Netflix’s documentary series “The Keepers” examined the slaying of a Baltimore nun that unfolded days earlier under eerily similar circumstances.
Joyce Malecki went Christmas shopping in November 1969 at a suburban mall outside Baltimore and never came home. Her body was found on a nearby military base days later and an autopsy determined she had been strangled.
An advocate for the Malecki family confirmed Tuesday that the exhumation was tentatively planned for Thursday.
FBI investigators are planning to exhume the body of Joyce Malecki, whose unsolved 1969 killing has been a source of widespread speculation, especially since Netflix’s documentary series “The Keepers.”
Baltimore Sun via Getty Images
The case received renewed attention after “The Keepers” was released in 2017, raising questions about whether Malecki’s disappearance was linked to that of Sister Cathy Cesnik, who was found dead from blunt force trauma after she went shopping and never returned.
Also in 2017, investigators exhumed the body of a Catholic priest, Father Joseph Maskell, to see if his DNA matched evidence from the scene of Cesnik’s death. The documentary questioned whether Cesnik was killed because she knew Maskell was sexually abusing students at the Catholic high school where they both worked. But the DNA testing didn’t reveal a match and the case remains unsolved.
The latest source of speculation came earlier this year, when federal and local authorities announced they had solved the case of yet another young woman’s homicide: 16-year-old Pamela Conyers, who went missing in 1970 from the same shopping mall as Malecki and similarly died from strangulation.
Investigators used relatively new DNA technology and genealogy research to identify a suspect in Conyers’ death: Forrest Clyde Williams III, who died in 2018 of natural causes after spending most of his adult life in Virginia. He incurred nothing more than a couple minor criminal charges over the subsequent decades.
When they pinned Conyers’ killing on Williams, officials said they didn’t have evidence connecting him to either of the other unsolved homicides. They also said they didn’t believe Conyers knew Williams.
Kurt Wolfgang, executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, said it appears investigators are now looking to extract DNA from Malecki’s body, although it’s unclear what they’re seeking to determine. He said the FBI has shared little information with the family about recent developments in the case, but the timing could suggest a link to Williams.
Wolfgang said relatives will be allowed to attend the exhumation, which will otherwise be closed to the public.
“They want justice out of this thing,” said Wolfgang, whose nonprofit has been working with the Malecki family. “Even though it was 54 years ago, it would certainly help them to know what happened.”
A spokesperson for the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office declined to comment, citing “respect for the ongoing investigation.” Federal investigators are in charge of the case because Malecki’s body was found on military property.
When Malecki was growing up, her family attended a Catholic church outside Baltimore where Maskell served as priest. They lived down the road while Maskell was living in the St. Clement Catholic Church rectory. He was later assigned to Archbishop Keough High School, where he was accused of abusing numerous girls.
Wolfgang said Malecki told her relatives “she did not like him one bit and told people to stay away from him.” But Wolfgang said the family doesn’t have any direct evidence suggesting she was one of Maskell’s abuse victims and they’re hesitant to jump to conclusions about linking the various cases.
A woman interviewed in “The Keepers” claimed Maskell showed her Cesnik’s body in the days after the nun disappeared. Cesnik was a teacher at Archbishop Keough High School when she was killed.
Earlier this year, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office released a report detailing decades of child sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore that identified Maskell as one of its most prolific abusers, saying he targeted at least 39 victims. According to the report, Maskell was transferred to St. Clement after being accused of abuse at his prior assignment — one of several times the archdiocese turned a blind eye to his misconduct.
He denied the allegations before his death in 2001 and was never criminally charged.
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Michelle Morris-Kerin is detained by police in 2021. A murder count against her was dismissed last year, but prosecutors have filed the charge again.
(Riverside County District Attorney’s Office)
The owner of a shuttered Riverside County foster home for disabled children has been charged with murder a second time in the death of a teenager in the home in 2019, which prompted an investigation that prosecutors say uncovered sexual abuse and other crimes involving multiple victims.
Michelle Morris-Kerin and her husband, Edward Lawrence “Larry” Kerin, were initially charged in 2021 with a 14-count indictment that alleged “child endangerment likely to cause great bodily injury or death, dependent adult endangerment likely to cause great bodily injury or death, and lewd acts on a dependent adult,” according to the Riverside County District Attorney’s office.
A judge last year dismissed the murder count against Morris-Kerin. Prosecutors filed the charge again after further investigation found additional evidence, the district attorney’s office announced Saturday.
Several agencies launched their investigation following the death of 17-year-old Dianne “Princess” Ramirez. The wheelchair-bound teenager was vomiting blood and was showing “inconsistent vital signs,” but Morris-Kerin decided not to seek help for the girl, prosecutors alleged.
The investigation found that “numerous other residents” of the home near Murrieta had been abused, and that some dependent adults “engaged in sexual activities encouraged by both defendants,” despite lacking “the mental capacity to give consent,” according to the district attorney’s office.
Morris-Kerin, now 82, was charged with 15 counts in an indictment unsealed Thursday, including lewd acts on a dependent adult, murder and other crimes. Kerin, 81, was charged with nine counts, including involuntary manslaughter.
The two were arraigned Thursday and entered not guilty pleas. Morris-Kerin and Kerin were released on bail set at $50,000 and $35,000, respectively.
