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Tonight, on Dateline. I haven't seen a person, my daughter, for a couple of days.
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I started thinking maybe somebody took her. You knew something was wrong right away?
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She didn't ever not answer her phone. It was maddening. It was crazy. When the officer tried to speak with the boyfriend, he was very confrontational.
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I'm not the best person when I do drink. Did you contact this ex-husband of hers?
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Yes, there was a domestic violence charge where her husband had been arrested. So your mom's not around?
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I was old enough to realize something serious was going on. The last person Rita was seen with was a suspect in a sex assault.
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I was trying to leave, and he kept, like, pushing me down. Did he tell you what he was going to do to you?
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He said he was going to kill me. There were just too many similarities to really discount.
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I knew something horrible had happened. Come on, where the heck are you? A heartbroken family and a determined detective search for a missing mom.
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Can a stranger who almost met the same fate help find her? You're along for every twist in the hunt.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Finding Rita. It was a Saturday evening in March 2018.
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It was St. Patrick's Day, and the downtown bars in Longmont, Colorado, were noisy, crowded, cheerful.
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So, did anyone pay attention to the man who moved about among them? Or wonder what he was thinking as he befriended strangers at the bar?
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Female strangers. Well, why would they? This was a place to relax, to be happy Which is exactly what Rita Gutierrez Garcia needed
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To get out, forget her troubles, to get a fresh start And wash that man right out of her hair
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Just that very day, Rita had broken up with her long-time boyfriend She was just like, I'm just going to go out and have fun
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And, you know, I don't even want to think about anything else. This is Diane, Rita's mom.
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What did they find to do? Well, it was St. Patrick's Day, so they were just going to go out and celebrate.
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Though not too much. She was a single mom, had three boys waiting at home. She's like, I'm not going to have a lot to drink.
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I just want to go out and have fun. Don't worry, she said. She'd be with family, and she'd be home early.
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Her middle son, Roman. It was like any other night. I mean, we were used to her being gone on nights because she used to work nights.
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When his mom wasn't home, said Roman, his older brother would be in charge. This night was no different.
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She'd got ready, and then said bye to all of us. We all said bye back, and she walked out the door.
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Her half-brother picked her up, and they drove downtown to the pub district in Longmont.
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It wasn't very big. Most places within a couple of blocks of each other. Throughout the evening, Rita kept in social media touch with her two sisters, Jessica and Nicole.
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We knew that she was out. She was posting stories on her Snapchat throughout the night.
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At home, her boys went to bed expecting to see their mom in the morning. But when they woke up, Rita wasn't there.
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This is her youngest son, Reyes, who was nine at the time. I remember me and Rowan were trying to call her, and she wouldn't pick up.
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I was scared. Just being scared and worried. Right around then, Rita's mom, Diane, showed up to take them to church
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and encountered worried boys and no Rita. I thought, well, maybe she decided to reconcile with David.
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That is, Rita's ex-boyfriend, David Bram, the one she'd just broken up with. Or maybe she just had too much to drink that night and stayed over with family.
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Anyway, they were sure she'd be home soon. Because later that Sunday was a big family event, a baby shower for Rita's sister, Nicole.
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She'd never miss that. But she did. So that's when we're like, where's Rita? Why isn't Rita here?
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Would she not show up for something of yours? Yeah, no, she wouldn't just do that.
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All afternoon into the evening, Diane and her daughters kept calling. No pickup, no callbacks, just a deafening silence.
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What happened in here? Did you feel it? Panic and fear. Right at the beginning? Because you knew something was wrong right away?
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I know, yeah. She did not ever not answer her phone or at least text you and let you know that she's okay or she's somewhere.
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So for her to not have her phone on wasn't Rita. Monday morning arrived, but not Rita.
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Diane, trying to maintain a sense of normalcy, drove her grandkids to school. she didn't say much to them, didn't want to alarm them.
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Our grandma and our family tried to protect us. They just didn't want to like scare us or tell us something that we wouldn't be able
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to handle After dropping off the kids at school Diane drove to David mom house that is the ex mother And I said I don know where Rita at She not answering her phone Is she with David
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So she called him and he said, no, she's not with me. Why would she be with me? She's probably, you know, she's probably off with some other guy.
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Full panic now. I was like, you know, come on, where the heck are you? I wanted to return my calls.
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And then the boys got out of school, and one of her sons had a recital. And then she didn't show up for that.
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First the baby shower, now the recital. Very worried now, Diane called the local hospitals.
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She wasn't there. Could you bring yourself to think that she'd been harmed somehow?
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Yeah, so I thought maybe somebody kidnapped my daughter. So Diane made the call she'd been dreading to the Longmont Police.
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I haven't seen or heard from my daughter for a couple of days. The police, like, sometimes people just, you know, they just go off.
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And I'm like, but Rita doesn't ever just go off this long without telling me, you know, especially her kids.
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That was enough. They assigned the case to Detective Cody Clark. there were some things that just weren't quite adding up,
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some things that didn't really make sense. Oh, he had no idea. Making sense of things would consume the next four years of his life
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and span two states and two countries, and at the center of it all, two women. It was like some alien creature had snatched her.
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Two days and no Rita anywhere. So Detective Cody Clark went about looking methodically.
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We were just getting that first little bit of information, and we were trying to figure out what are some of the places that she could have gone to,
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who might she have reached out to, and just trying to kind of piece together those last few hours that we absolutely knew where she was.
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But to know what happened, Detective Clark first had to know Rita. Her customs and habits, past and present.
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Any little detail that might put him on the path to finding her. So I initially start looking up for some background information on Rita,
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trying to learn who she was and figure out if there was anything that I needed to be aware of.
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Was she the sort of person who would want to disappear or not? Exactly, right. Did she have a pattern of doing those things? Yeah.
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So that was a huge part of it. And Detective Clark spoke with Rita's family, who had a lot to tell them about the woman they loved.
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Rita Gutierrez Garcia was smart and kind and happy. Someone who embraced life and those around her.
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She was funny. She had this little, you know, she'd do this. when she was joking with you or just being a little silly.
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She loved fashion, shoes, clothes, her hair, just always doing something with her hair.
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Rita was the eldest of Diane's three daughters, big sister to Nicole and Jessica.
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She had a really great sense of humor. She was always making us laugh. We used to call ourselves the Silly Sisters or Ciceroos.
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She was quite the character. She's a very thoughtful, sweet person, nurturing. She's a huge part of my heart.
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Rita married early, had her kids early. But by her 30s, she was divorced and raising the boys on her own.
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sometimes working two jobs, often at night. So she had to cram a lot into her life.
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So I'd say she was a very productive and complex woman. With plans. Big plans. She's going to be a paralegal, and she was already job searching,
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so she was very excited about that. She was like, I just want to have a better life for my kids.
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And she's like, I know I can do this. And I said, you're damn right you can. She even got her very own first car.
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She was so proud. I myself was like, you could have got something more economical.
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But she's like, just be proud of me. And I said, I am, I am. Would she buy? She got a 2005 Mercedes.
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Yeah. So would she leave all that and just take off? It didn't make any sense right off the bat, but it wasn't anything that pointed to us thinking that there was any foul play or anything nefarious going on either.
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Never assume, said Detective Clark. Still, there was an urgent task, and that was to take a closer look at the men in Rita's life.
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We try and look for the people who are most likely to have been involved, which would be former partners, boyfriends, husbands, things like that.
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people who knew them and would have a reason why. And there was one person who stood out to Clark, David Bram.
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Diane told the cops about Rita's on-again, off-again boyfriend. It sounded pretty tumultuous, that when things were good, they were really good,
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and when they were bad, they were pretty bad. And yet for whatever reason they would break up and then they get back together and break up and get back together And even though David himself told Diane Rita was not with him Longmont PD had to check him out
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Of course they did. So they called him. When the officer tried to speak with the boyfriend, he was very confrontational and didn't want to provide a lot of information.
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David told the officer that his last contact with Rita was by email on St. Patrick's Day.
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the night she disappeared. But when asked if he would forward the email, David refused.
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And that kind of keyed some concerns for him that, you know, maybe there was something else
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that we needed to look at here. Wow, that's a red flag right in front of you there.
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Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, no more phone calls. Now they went to see David in person.
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What was your breakup about? This time, this time was a whole lot different. I'm not the best person when I do drink, and I said some things that I shouldn't have.
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It was when the police got involved. That's when the cold reality hit Rita's sisters.
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When we were being interviewed by the police department, that was when it was the realest and the scariest.
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Like, I was just bawling, crying, sobbing, begging to find it for us. Ex-boyfriend David did not sob or beg when the police first spoke to him on the phone.
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He seemed angry, defensive. So detectives drove out to nearby Boulder where David lived,
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and this time they recorded the conversation. So I have a few things I wanted to go over with you.
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And David, without being prompted, offered this about his breakup with Rita. My pain is just like she hasn't even talked to me.
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She didn't say we're done. She just said I'm worn out of fighting. David admitted there were issues.
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I'm not the best person when I do drink, and, you know, she's dealt with a lot of my bull****,
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but at the same time, we love each other. He told the detectives that a couple of weeks prior,
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they got into a pretty bad argument. What was your breakup about? I had a mouth on me that day, so you bring up old things
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and she blocked my number from that moment. That, said David, was the last time he saw Rita.
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And then, two weeks later, on St. Patrick's Day, David sent Rita an email. Please talk to me.
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And before Rita went out that evening, she replied, My heart is tired. I hope you find someone who can change you and make you happy.
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God knows I tried. That's literally the last thing she said. It's like, Lord knows I've tried.
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When we found out that she had sent him this email basically telling him that, you know, she didn't want to be around him anymore and to enjoy the rest of your life without me,
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that obviously points us in that direction of trying to figure out whether he was involved.
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So they tried to pin down where David had been and what he had been doing that St. Patrick's Day.
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What do you guys do that day? How's your day work out? You get this email. Yeah. So I've been very down and I spend time with my mom.
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David let the detectives take a look around his apartment. Nothing stood out. He also agreed to give them his DNA.
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I'm going to rub on the side of your cheeks. But David's behavior, though cooperative-ish, was still unusual.
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He was very much focused on telling us how to conduct the investigation rather than telling us what exactly he had been doing.
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It almost seemed like everything that I was trying to put forward, nobody had even thought about it.
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When a person behaves that way, it doesn't make you want to say, okay, nevermind, I don't want to talk to you.
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Exactly. It continued to kind of stir up a lot of those feelings of unease. Detective Clark tried to explain to David
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how the process worked. My job was to gather information and figure out whether or not he had any involvement.
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And the sooner that I could determine that he wasn't involved like he claimed, then the sooner I could start focusing my efforts elsewhere.
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So was David trying to hide something? Or was he genuinely upset? He agreed to come to the police department and do a polygraph examination
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in order to kind of alleviate some of my concerns. I'm an agent with Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
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Longmont Police Department asked me to come in because obviously I'm impartial. I'm not involved in this case.
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David showed up at the police station without a lawyer. And even before the CBI agent got started.
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That's the first thing that we kind of have to rule out is somebody that has been in a relationship with a missing person.
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David fell apart. I want to bring her home more than anybody else. I'm sorry. It's okay.
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He answered every question. Regarding Rita, do you plan to answer these questions truthfully?
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Yes. Did you kill that woman? No. But could not hold back the tears. I can't stop thinking about her.
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Okay. Just every time you sit here and hear me, I'm going to f***ing cry. Okay. I've answered so much.
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After two hours and five tests, the results were in. Summarized in just one word.
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Inconclusive. The examiner told me that ultimately while the results were inconclusive just due to the fact of how emotional he was he said I don think this is your guy By now detectives had also spoken to David mom and confirmed his alibi for the night Rita went missing
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We were able to pretty conclusively confirm that he had been at his mom's house all evening.
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So how to explain David's emotional, defiant demeanor? There was all kinds of misinformation going around town about what had happened.
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and it was making him more upset about what was going on. Why would that make him more upset?
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There was allegations that he was involved, which I guess was just making it even harder for him
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to kind of focus on helping the investigation. Perhaps. But when we sat down with David, he told us
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that was the least of his concerns. I knew that I had no involvement with it, So why concern myself with that?
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To concern myself with what people may or may not think, that's the last thing I could care about.
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No, he said his mission was simply finding Rita. And if not finding her, finding out who knows what and how to find out what happened or where she is.
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That's where 100% of my attention was dedicated. As it was for Detective Clark, who, by now, had learned about another man in Rita's life.
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There was a domestic violence charge where her husband had been arrested. Obviously, that's a huge piece of information.
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That is, if he could only find him. They found it buried in an old crime report.
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It practically leapt out at Detective Cody Clark, something in Rita's past he could not ignore.
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She was a battered wife, beaten and bruised repeatedly by the father of her three boys,
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her ex-husband. The guy's name was Gutierrez, Royce Gutierrez. For years, Rita had kept the abuse secret.
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from her own mother, Diane. I found out that later on that he was being abusive.
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She didn't want you to know at first. She didn't want me to know. And they got separated a couple of times, and she would go back.
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And then finally one day I just said, when you're completely ready to walk away, you will know.
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And Rita did know. After one terrifying night when Royce held her down on the bed
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and covered her mouth and nose so she couldn't breathe. And then he yelled and he beat her,
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and when he finally let up, she sneaked a text to her mom, Help! Diane called 911.
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You've rescued her from a situation in a way, or at least she's rescued herself,
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but you were there watching it. She rescued herself, but I helped her, yeah. Royce was arrested and was convicted for assaulting Rita.
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She filed for divorce. And then there was trouble again when Royce violated Rita's protective order,
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and he was deported to Mexico. So, an angry ex-husband with unfinished business?
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It was somebody that I wanted to look into and learn more about. I mean, that's the obvious suspect in many cases.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. Was it possible that Royce secretly returned to Longmont?
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Maybe something, you know, happened between them and he wanted to do something else to her.
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Clark tracked down his Mexican phone number and called him and asked him about Rita.
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He explained that he very, very rarely ever spoke with Rita. They had a decent relationship as parents,
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but that the majority of their conversations were focused on the boys. So where was he when Rita vanished?
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Well, he certainly wasn't in Longmont, Colorado. No way. I was able to confirm through Department of Homeland Security that he had not been in the country for years at that point,
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and there was no record of him coming back over the border into the United States.
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Dead end. So Diane and Rita's sisters, worried, upset, frustrated, had a press conference.
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NBC affiliate KUSA was there. Rita's my soulmate. She's my older sister and I've never had to go a day without her in my entire life.
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Rita, you're my oldest and you are Jessica's soulmate. Nicole walked away because she's really hurting and we just want you to come home.
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And she told them all just what it was like to be her in that awful time. I just want to scream inside.
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She's my daughter, and I just need her back home. Watching it all on a live stream were Rita's boys.
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When they actually went on the news for the first time, that's when, like, the worry of it all...
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They would hit you with a wallop at that point. Yeah. Because we didn't know they were going to do that.
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And then, hey, they're on the news right now. That's for me when I get all hit. Like, this is for real. This is happening.
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Suddenly, Rita's case was big news. In Colorado. The search for a missing mother.
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34-year-old Rita Gutierrez Garcia. Rita Gutierrez Garcia left a Longmont bar on St. Patrick's Day.
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It's just how worried and devastated her family really is. She's been missing since March 18th.
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The search for answers is still going strong. Rita's story was so prevalent in the media and out in the community
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that everybody wanted to know what had happened and were willing to help. Volunteers quickly mobilized and fanned out across Boulder County
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to post flyers and look for Rita anywhere they could think of. One of those searching was David Brim.
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I don't want anybody to understand the pain, what it feels like to be searching for your loved one.
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It's a horrible circumstance to have to go through. With, in his case, suffocating guilt, David told us.
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Guilt for starting that awful argument, the one that finally drove her away just before St. Patrick's Day.
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If I didn't drink that beer that day she might still be here. That day could have
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been the catalyst to whatever happened but if it would have went differently we wouldn't be sitting here
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today. Nothing to do now but keep searching. Very early on Detective Clark encountered
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was it a clue? Oh, just a coincidence. Something like this had happened before to another young woman who'd met a man
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in the very same bar district. The immediacy of finding that out kind of made my heart skip beat.
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Who was this woman? And what happened to her? He had begun strangling me. Detective Clark was stymied.
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It seemed the whole town was looking for Rita. But neither the search nor his investigation had produced any real leads.
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Except there was this one clue. In fact, it walked right over to find him. A colleague thought Clark should know about another active case
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about a woman named Kayleen, KK to her friends and the hair-raising story of what happened to her
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after a night at one of the very same bars where Rita went before she disappeared.
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It was four months earlier on Thanksgiving night 2017. Here is KK to tell the story.
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It was a good time just to get out and listen to music with my friends. A casual meet-up for a group of 20-somethings to let loose a bit after family dinner.
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You didn't want it to end. So that's why we ended up going to the after party. She and some of her friends kept the party going at a house nearby, and then...
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Was it the booze or something in it? She began to feel unwell. Confused, nauseous, intoxicated.
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I just wanted to go home. She'd arranged beforehand to call a friend for a ride,
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but her phone was dead. So I plugged my phone in, trying to get it to charge, and then that's where everything went to like a blur.
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She went outside to get some air, and a guy followed her, a guy she'd met earlier at the bar.
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Now he'd unplugged her phone before it could charge and handed it to her, along with her purse,
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told her something bad was happening inside. They had to leave right away. He picked me up and just started walking with me,
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arm around my waist and was like carrying me because I could hardly walk or stand.
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I was starting to get scared, but I didn't know what to do. The guy brought her to this house.
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It was really cold outside. It was like dead winter. and I went inside and that's kind of where everything flipped.
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He told her she could plug in her phone at the top of a flight of stairs. It turned out to be a bedroom.
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He just started pushing me, throwing me on the bed. It's like your mind is going, what can I do to get out of this situation?
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But it's like my body can't do that. Do you recall what happened after that? He had begun strangling me and then kind of like slapped me awake and then do it again.
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And you can't breathe? No, you can't even swallow. You can't breathe. You can't make sound. And it just goes black.
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Again and again, she struggled, tried to breathe, blacked out. I was fully clothed when he had started and I wasn't when I woke back up at some point.
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Did he tell you what he was going to do to you? He said he was going to kill me, and he just laughed in my face.
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You know, you go from, like, panic to fight mode to, um, sorry. It's a hard thing to remember.
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But you go to where you're thinking in your head about people that you love, and you're never going to see them, I guess.
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then finally he turned away for a moment and i just started running you know screaming for help
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and banging on the walls she ran down the stairs and with her attacker chasing her
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she made it to the front door it was locked and that's when she saw in the living room
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a man a woman and kids i was like i won call the cops um i just want to go home Please let me go home At that she said her attacker backed off
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And living room man, the one with the woman and the kids, told her he'd drive her home,
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gave her a shirt to partially cover her nakedness. And we had been driving and we stopped at a stop light or a stop sign.
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And I got out. You just jumped out of the car? I just got out and ran, and I ran to my mom's house.
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Four blocks in the winter cold, barefoot, all but naked, and she fell on the floor at her mother's feet.
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A guy attacked my daughter-in-law and reached her. A Longmont police officer drove Kayleen to the hospital,
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where Detective Sandy Jones met Kayleen. It was the worst I'd ever seen. Her eyes had hemorrhaged. She had marks on the back of her neck.
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She had bruises on her arms and her legs. The nurses took photos and collected the evidence of rape.
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This was a horrible, horrible crime, and I wanted to find him. So first she found the host of that after-party KK attended.
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And what were the chances? The house just happened to have a security camera. which captured the moment that guy handed KK her purse, her phone, and her charger as she sat outside.
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And then, here they are, walking away. The party host didn't know the guy, so asked around, got a name.
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Juan Figueroa, the name Detective Jones recognized. I knew that he was one of our cadets.
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Juan had once been enrolled in the Explorer program. at Longmont PD. He wanted to be a police officer.
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He did a ride-along with me when I was in the traffic unit. Chris Merkel with the Longmont PD then.
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I remembered him hanging out with me, being very talkative, and being, you know, very gung-ho.
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But then Juan stole a police department taser, and they caught him, and he was out.
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And now he was a person of interest in a sexual assault case. And we were going to family members and talking with his friends and trying to find out where he was or where he lived.
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No luck. But then, a break. A huge one. A woman called Longmont PD. My husband had to give a girl a ride home that was with our roommates.
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And there was some allegations being sexual assault. It was Juan's housemate. She gave police the address,
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so Jones got a search warrant, went to the house, and collected what evidence she could.
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But what she really needed was a DNA sample to compare with the results of that rape kit.
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The trouble was, Juan seemed to have gone underground. Oh, he just wasn't around at all.
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No, I couldn't find him. But what was around town, spread apparently by Juan, was a poisonous story about Kayleen,
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a story completely at odds with what she experienced. What was his story? That I was drunk and I wanted to hook up,
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and I got upset because my ex-boyfriend was going to find out, and so I cried rape.
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It was like she'd been attacked all over again. She'd been injured, humiliated, now desperately frightened,
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and her attacker was still out there somewhere. I understand the police had to make a case to arrest him.
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They had to get evidence. So then it made people be like, you're a liar or else he'd be in jail.
00:33:56
He would have been charged. She felt like everybody was judging her. And she hid away.
00:34:04
She tried to end it all. What'd you do? I ate a bottle of pills and I cut my wrist.
00:34:11
She just felt like she was underground, five feet underground. and that there was no coming out of it.
00:34:17
Kayleen's sister Jasmine. It was hard. It was like we were living a nightmare, and it just broke my heart that she had been hurt
00:34:25
in our town that we call home. And now, in March 2018, Detective Clark and Detective Jones compared notes.
00:34:36
So here's Kayleen. One woman brutally raped, the other missing. Both had been at the same cluster of bars, just months apart.
00:34:45
Could they be related? Security cameras captured Rita on St. Patrick's Day, talking with someone.
00:34:54
Was it Juan Figueroa? Where is she? She's never gone for this long. Days had gone by, and Rita had still not made it home to her boys.
00:35:21
But Roman, Rita's middle child, held on to hope, or tried to. I tried to stay as positive as I could, and just think, like, I never wanted to say the phrase,
00:35:33
what if she doesn't come home, because then I felt like that'd be me giving up. Detective Sandy Jones
00:35:39
investigating the assault on Kayleen was worried that the same thing or worse might have happened to Rita
00:35:46
what on earth happened to her and if he had anything to do with this it was very scary
00:35:52
very very scary well in fact according to Rita companions just before she vanished a guy did try to hit on Rita They specifically mentioned that there was a person who had walked up to Rita and tried striking up a conversation with her
00:36:10
and they just kind of told him to leave and to leave her alone. Rita's cousin said the guy introduced himself as Juan, Juan Figueroa.
00:36:21
And he did go away, but later, said the cousin, sometime after 2 a.m., there he was again, outside in the parking lot, where Rita was waiting for her ride home.
00:36:35
Juan Figueroa, did you know that name? I didn't. He was not somebody that I was really familiar with.
00:36:41
Until, of course, Clark spoke to Jones. He had been convicted of a few different minor thefts and had been in jail numerous times.
00:36:53
So you're looking for a guy who has shown a propensity for making bad decisions?
00:36:59
Yeah. Even so, there was no evidence that he was responsible for Rita's disappearance.
00:37:06
Just because he was the last person seen in the parking lot doesn't mean that he was involved.
00:37:10
No, but maybe they figured maybe they could see him or even see him approaching Rita in the bar or in the parking lot.
00:37:22
Night she vanished. Up and down the streets and alleys of downtown Longmont were dozens of privately owned security cameras.
00:37:32
We did a canvas of, I want to say, 10 or 15 blocks of the downtown area of every business,
00:37:39
every, you know, residence that had cameras in that area. How many hours of footage did you have?
00:37:45
Oh, dozens. One business may have several cameras with different angles, you know, over this, you
00:37:51
know, several hour time period that we had to look at. It was chaotic at first, like tearing apart the haystack inch by inch looking for some
00:38:00
grainy image that might be Juan or Rita. And then finally, just a glimpse, but it was her.
00:38:10
It was Rita. Entering a bar in downtown Longmont at 1.08 a.m. with her cousin and her cousin's boyfriend.
00:38:19
It kind of helped start to fill in some of those pieces, you know, because we knew that they were at the bar that evening,
00:38:26
but what does that look like? What were they doing? Who else were they talking to?
00:38:30
Was there a fight? There were so many questions that we had. Like, for example, could they prove Juan Figueroa was at the bar that night?
00:38:40
Did Rita's cousin have the right name, the right person? And yes, Juan was there.
00:38:48
Cameras captured him entering the bar about 20 minutes after Rita. And then minutes later, here he was again, talking to someone off screen.
00:39:01
And pay close attention. The person he's talking to briefly comes into frame. It's Rita.
00:39:09
So now we want to know who else saw that conversation. What was that conversation about?
00:39:14
Again, it just, it opened up so many doors because it finally started to focus us a little bit more on what we needed to figure out.
00:39:23
And then, 1.52 a.m., Rita walked out of the bar. That same person was seen waving at her, trying to get her attention.
00:39:33
But she ignored him when she left the bar. A minute later, Juan made his way toward the same exit.
00:39:46
And eventually, Rita ended up at that parking lot where the cousin said she saw Juan Figueroa.
00:39:53
Had he followed her there? Trouble was, there was no video from that parking lot.
00:40:00
So what happened? Did Juan assault her there? Did he take her somewhere? Or had Rita, like KK, escaped?
00:40:09
Now, two detectives working two separate cases were looking for the same man. And once again, he was in the wind.
00:40:18
We were trying to track him down, but it always felt like we were a step behind.
00:40:23
Oh no, not just steps behind, but miles across states and beyond the border. Well, back home, they discovered a last, perhaps desperate call made from Rita's phone.
00:40:36
It was to 911. Spring 2018. I felt like I failed her. I couldn't do anything for my daughter.
00:41:03
Diane Romero was broken. No sign of her daughter Rita since St. Patrick's Day. Feeling helpless, she placed every shred of hope she had in Detective Cody Clark and the Longmont PD.
00:41:16
They told us that they were going to take care of us, they were going to help us.
00:41:19
For me, it was about giving the family that answer of where Rita was. that they deserved that closure of knowing what happened to her.
00:41:30
To do that, investigators dug into the bar's security camera video where they saw Rita heading out the door,
00:41:37
and the guy watching her leave was Juan Figueroa, the suspect in Kayleen's rape case.
00:41:43
But there was no video to show what happened after she left the bar. Except, Detective Clark got her phone records,
00:41:52
And there she was, eerily. Not actually her of course but her phone He could see where it went middle of the night The phone put her near this parking lot just behind the bars around 2 in the morning
00:42:08
after which it slowly moved. So she ends up walking a few blocks to the north, and then her phone is stationary.
00:42:16
It's not moving. It's not going anywhere for about 20 minutes or so. And when we went back and reviewed some of the other footage that we had found,
00:42:23
we found a vehicle that went into the same area where her phone was stationary. What was the vehicle?
00:42:30
It was a white pickup truck, and it had orange construction marker lights across the top,
00:42:36
which is pretty distinct, but one of those specific lights was actually out. So it made it even more distinctive on the video.
00:42:44
At 3.03 a.m., Rita's phone traveled again. But it's not moving like somebody's walking.
00:42:50
It's moving so quickly like somebody's driving. Right. And right at that same time, 3.03 a.m., there was the truck again.
00:43:00
Her phone pings in that area, and that same vehicle travels right through that area at that exact time.
00:43:07
A minute later, another security camera caught the same truck. And it wasn't just any truck.
00:43:14
Detective Jones confirmed it. That was the truck Juan was driving when she worked on Kayleen's case.
00:43:21
It just continued to kind of push us in the direction that he knew a lot more than we initially thought.
00:43:28
That he wasn't just the last person seen with her before she left, but that he may have been the last person with her, period.
00:43:36
And there was more Detective Clark Glean from Rita's cell phone records. At about 3.07 in the morning, her phone dialed 911.
00:43:45
When the operator answered, there was nobody there. It had already hung up. dispatch called the number back twice. Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging
00:43:58
system. But there was no answer. They tried to trace the call, but couldn't pinpoint its location.
00:44:06
A 911 call for help, and then nothing. Just an awful, deathly silence. My heart sank, and that's
00:44:14
when I knew that this wasn't just a missing person, that something horrible had happened.
00:44:21
And so he called her family into the police station and sat them down and delivered the news.
00:44:27
Rita wasn't coming home. It was awful. It was horrible to tear away that hope from them that they had been holding on to
00:44:37
and telling them to now prepare for the absolute worst thing imaginable. But the family?
00:44:44
I didn't want to accept that. I still had some hope and some faith that she was still going to come back.
00:44:53
And maybe it was hope or simply denial. But Rita's family was not about to give up.
00:44:59
In fact, they were just getting started. They began meeting at this park not far from Rita's house,
00:45:05
holding vigils, strategizing about searches, distributing flyers. That's when Diane noticed something that gave her a little comfort.
00:45:13
There was this tree. It was small, and it was in March, you know, so things aren't quite blooming.
00:45:21
It was kind of barren. It looked lonely. So we started decorating this tree for Rita.
00:45:27
Then we just kind of made it our tree. But though the searching continued, a harsh reality hovered like a cloud.
00:45:37
It was surely a body they were looking for. There was a part of me that wanted to find her.
00:45:42
more than anything. And then at the back of my mind, I'm like, but can you deal with it if you find her, Diane?
00:45:50
You know, what are you going to do? Why was it so important to you to find her, find her remains?
00:45:59
Because she's our sister, and we want her home. Whenever a loved one passed away, you lay in a rest,
00:46:04
you cremate them, you bury them. We didn't get that. Imagine the task. Find her. Find her body.
00:46:18
Somewhere around Longmont, Colorado. The trouble was, she could be anywhere. Five miles away.
00:46:27
Fifty miles away. Could be that way, or that way, or in the mountains behind me.
00:46:34
Back that way. The task was virtually impossible. But of course, it had to try. And they certainly did.
00:46:45
But not just for Rita. Detectives Clark and Jones knew the key to finding Rita and solving KK's case was finding Juan Figueroa.
00:46:55
By now, they had an arrest warrant for him for assaulting KK. A virtually Colorado-wide search was on for him and that truck of his.
00:47:03
We started backtracking the same thing we had done before. We went to his sister's house, the two sisters that live in Longmont,
00:47:11
we went to his mom's house and I spoke to his mom and she had no idea where he was.
00:47:19
They also contacted law enforcement agencies around the country and told them to be on the lookout
00:47:24
for a white pickup truck. And what do you know? Within a few days, they got a call.
00:47:31
Juan's truck had been spotted not in Colorado, but a thousand miles away. When we learned that it was like,
00:47:39
did he get away? Is this it? is this where the story ends? So It was infuriating.
00:48:02
The man suspected of raping one woman, and possibly murdering a second, was like a ghost.
00:48:10
And Rita was still missing. And KK, Kayleen, was living in fear. Where was Juan Figueroa?
00:48:19
It was a lot of anxiety. I wouldn't go grocery shopping. I wouldn't go to the store for anything.
00:48:24
You're always looking around you to see if he's there. Yeah, I didn't know where he was.
00:48:27
If he's done it twice, you could do it again. Right, at any moment. Yeah. And so trying to track him down became a priority.
00:48:36
And then investigators got word the Department of Homeland Security had a video they might want to see.
00:48:43
A white vehicle with plates matching Figueroa's truck, and surely that was him inside it,
00:48:49
had just crossed into Mexico, 1,000 miles from Longmont. When we learned that he had gone into Mexico, it was really deflating to kind of feel like, did he get away?
00:49:02
Is this it? Is this where the story ends? Maybe not quite. Detectives discovered he'd gotten himself a new phone and they were able to get the number.
00:49:13
They traced it to the town of Piedras Negras, just across the Texas border. So we're kind of watching that as we're trying to figure out what exactly he's doing, where he's going, all of those things.
00:49:24
And for the most part, that phone was super stationary. Somewhere here in Piedras Negras, Figueroa was laying low, apparently being careful.
00:49:34
And if he got a whiff, police were getting close. Well, surely he'd flee again. So, how to catch him?
00:49:43
Somehow, they had to figure out a way to get him to emerge from wherever he was hiding.
00:49:48
And they had an idea. While he was in Mexico, Juan was actually talking with several people and was asking
00:49:56
them for money. Well, if he's short of money, that might be a hook. Which is exactly what we did.
00:50:04
He wanted money by wire transfer. So that was the first thing. We knew if he's getting money that way, then we can figure out pretty darn close where
00:50:12
he's at. A female friend of Juan's, once reluctant, agreed to cooperate. Call it an attempted sting.
00:50:20
First this from the friend. I got some money. Hours later, Juan. How much? The next day, Juan again.
00:50:31
You don't understand how important it is that I get the money. In Mexico, about to sell my truck.
00:50:38
Figueroa told his friend to wire the money to Piedras Negras. So the cops gave her the money to use, and she sent it.
00:50:46
And Figueroa picked it up. which gave the detectives a better idea, at least, of where he was,
00:50:52
but getting an exact address, arresting him in a foreign country, extraditing him back?
00:50:58
Not so easy. And then, totally unexpected, they got lucky. We ended up getting a call from a former employer of Juan's,
00:51:09
who told them he'd fired Figueroa for stealing. So now he was more than happy to help catch him.
00:51:17
And he had an idea of his own. He told him that he had a job for him. The job wasn't real.
00:51:23
It was made up. And he told Juan that he was going to pay him some exorbitant amount of money.
00:51:30
The catch was that this primo job was in Colorado. It's like you've got voluntary deputies working for you.
00:51:38
Yeah. It was definitely a community effort. And Figueroa, apparently desperate for the money, took the bait.
00:51:47
Remember, detectives had been monitoring his phone. One day, without warning, it started to move.
00:51:54
All of a sudden, it jumps over the border. He was driving back. The border crossing was in a little place called Eagle Pass, Texas,
00:52:03
where a Customs and Border Protection officer, just following procedure, asked him what he had been doing in Mexico.
00:52:10
He explained that he was at a funeral for his grandmother. And the agent told him, oh, I'm really sorry to hear that.
00:52:18
When did she pass away? And he couldn't answer that question. And then he asked, well, where was she buried?
00:52:24
And he couldn't answer that question either. And all of a sudden, he started to sweat.
00:52:28
That kind of clued them in pretty quickly that something was amiss. The officer looked up Figaro's name.
00:52:35
And that's when he saw it. An arrest warrant for Kayleen's case, wanted for sexual assault back in Colorado.
00:52:43
A sergeant from the local sheriff's office went to meet him. But when he told Figueroa what the warrant was for, Juan didn't seem too worried.
00:52:52
That's the only warrant? That's it? It's for sexual assault? Yeah. Sweet. He was cuffed and taken into custody.
00:52:59
I was worried about having to get $200 to get back to Colorado. Chris Merkel, the very detective who'd met Juan Figueroa as a young police cadet,
00:53:08
went to Texas to pick him up and drove all the way back to Colorado, 19 hours on the road,
00:53:14
during which Juan talked almost nonstop. His chatter picked up by the detective's recorder.
00:53:20
Definitely gonna use a stretcher and smoke break, whatever. It's f***ing belts jamming up with my ribs.
00:53:27
It sucks. Knowing that the person next to you on the warrant with Kayleen, you know, raped and almost killed her,
00:53:34
and then knowing that we are pretty much sure that he was involved in Rita's disappearance and probably did something very similar, made for a really long ride.
00:53:44
They towed Figueroa's truck back to Colorado, too. We knew that there was potential evidence in that truck, and so that was a big thing. We really wanted that truck.
00:53:54
Kayleen heard about the arrest of course What were your thoughts right at that moment It was mixed It was happiness but also like okay here we go
00:54:06
Relief, yes, and dread about having to face that man in a courtroom. And Rita's family thought now, surely, they'd find her, or at least find out what happened.
00:54:20
I personally thought, maybe he'll just speak up right away. You know, he'll say where Reed is at.
00:54:24
He'll say what happened. If only. What they really wanted was at least some kind of answer.
00:54:32
Any answer. And they were about to get it. That tied the knot. That did. Four months after Kayleen was assaulted,
00:54:53
Juan Figueroa was sitting in a Boulder County jail on rape and attempted murder charges.
00:54:59
But detectives were far from done. They were still trying to build the case against him
00:55:04
for Rita's disappearance. One thing was painfully clear, what started out as a missing persons case
00:55:10
was now a homicide investigation. Is it possible for anybody to understand what it's like
00:55:18
if your daughter is missing, presumed dead, the police are investigating it as a murder, and you don't know what happened to her.
00:55:28
You don't know what it's going to feel like until it actually happens. And I had people who I know who said, I know what it feels like.
00:55:37
You know, I lost my child. And I'm like, you got to bury your child. I don't know where my child is.
00:55:44
In desperation, Rita's ex-boyfriend, David, even reached out to us back in 2018 to spotlight Rita's case for Dateline's Missing in America series.
00:55:57
Find information to lead to an arrest, to her body, anything that would help bring justice or bring her home.
00:56:06
That was my mission every day. But over time, the hope of finding Rita, or at least finding out what happened to her,
00:56:15
was slowly slipping away. Just searching, endless searching, to come to no fruition.
00:56:22
It was a very difficult time. There was one thing, though. Investigators had been bothered by it
00:56:29
ever since they seized Figueroa's pickup truck. A lot of people had told us that
00:56:33
that truck is a dump all the time. But now? Messy, yes, but clear to investigators
00:56:40
it had been scrubbed down. many times over. Juan had done a very good job of trying to clean that truck up.
00:56:47
Still, if he cleaned it, maybe he missed something. So they tore it apart, swabbed every surface.
00:56:57
And that's when they noticed, very faint, a mark on the passenger seat. A stained area where it almost looked like somebody had tried to clean that.
00:57:09
They swabbed it anyway, sent it off to the DNA lab. But... It came back as a mixture of numerous people.
00:57:18
So basically there were several different DNA profiles there, and we couldn't figure out which one belonged to who, essentially.
00:57:25
That had to be frustrating. Oh, it was incredibly frustrating. A dead end. They just couldn't tie Juan Figueroa to Rita's disappearance.
00:57:34
But then the lab sent back another set of test results from Kayleen's case. They compared a sample of one's DNA to her rape kit, and it was a perfect match.
00:57:49
They were able to confirm that his DNA was on Kayleen. That tied the knot. That did.
00:57:55
They set a trial date, 2019, and Kayleen would be the star witness. But the thought of having to testify about the worst day of her life
00:58:06
in front of the man on trial for raping her and the people who said she lied about it?
00:58:11
She wasn't sure she could do it. I was like, I'm tired of people thinking I'm trash
00:58:18
and I'm the skank or something, and I just want it to go away. And even though the trial was still months away...
00:58:27
I was getting messages after messages daily. Facebook messages, calls and texts from numbers she didn't recognize.
00:58:38
What did they say, these messages? That they were going to hurt my family and stuff,
00:58:43
and make sure they know that I'm a liar and I'm a slut, and just very hateful, hateful things.
00:58:53
It got so bad, said Kayleen, that she fled Longmont and secretly moved to the town of Greeley, 35 miles away,
00:59:00
to lay low and try at least to leave the past behind her. A trial months away was quick for the law,
00:59:09
but torture for Kayleen. And Diane still searching for Rita? When they went ahead with KK's case,
00:59:18
sort of full speed ahead, were you feeling like they were abandoning Rita at all?
00:59:24
No. No. We knew that it was going to help Rita's case. She's only going to make it stronger for us.
00:59:33
Christmas came, the first Christmas without Rita. For boys without their mother, there was really nothing to celebrate.
00:59:42
So Detective Cody Clark decided to help. Thinking about her kids not having a mom around for Christmas
00:59:51
had a nerve with me I brought her boys Christmas presents I had really come to care about them as a family When you think about her is there anything in particular that you miss
01:00:06
Her? Just her. On Rita's birthday, they went to the little park to decorate the tree that seemed to stand for her.
01:00:16
I don't have her here to nurture and to hold, but I'll just like touch the leaves, you know, the branches and just talk to Rita.
01:00:29
She's there. I just feel she's there. Yeah. And through all the grief, it was Diane who kept them all going.
01:00:38
She's like the log of the tree and we're all the branches. My grandma encouraged all of us to just never give up.
01:00:46
Pray as hard as you can. She will be found. No matter what, she will be found. But when and how?
01:00:54
It would take a miracle to find her somewhere out here. Or maybe Juan Figueroa would talk,
01:01:01
though it seemed unlikely he had lawyered up. Now, Figueroa wasn't talking to the cops.
01:01:07
But he was talking. Maybe too much. It's probably pretty close to what she's buried in our house.
01:01:30
While Juan Figueroa sat behind bars awaiting trial for Kayleen's sex assault case,
01:01:35
he talked. Talked nonstop. Just not to police. Juan did his talking to his cellmates.
01:01:45
I knew that he was telling them what was going on, so it was just a matter of hearing it from his own mouth.
01:01:50
And we eventually figured out how to get that bug in there. Meaning a hidden wire to record whatever Figueroa was blabbing about.
01:02:01
The hope was he'd say something, anything, about Rita. And sure enough, it took a while, but here was, well, it was something anyway.
01:02:12
I was there, I saw it. Were you there when I went down? Yeah. He was trying to say that somebody else had committed the murder, but that he was there when it happened, was what he was alluding to.
01:02:24
But that he had been the one who was responsible for burying her body. This cellmate was trying to kind of pry a little bit more information out of him on his own.
01:02:33
and asked him where it was at. That statement kind of sent shivers down my spine,
01:03:00
just because, again, it clearly showed that he was involved. Still, they wanted more, said Prosecutor Michelle Sudano.
01:03:08
We hadn't located her body. We didn't have a crime scene or anything to go on. And so there was so much work that had to go into building that case
01:03:18
because not only were we proving that Juan Figueroa was her murderer, but we also had to prove that she had, in fact, been killed.
01:03:25
This is really bothersome to me. And to prove murder, they had to buy time. And the way to do it, they had decided, was to secure a conviction in Kayleen's assault case.
01:03:35
That was the job of Sudano's co-counsel, Katerina Booth. It was very high pressure.
01:03:42
We knew it was extremely essential, obviously, to keep him in custody, to be able to get a conviction.
01:03:49
In March 2019, over a year since the attack on Kayleen, Prosecutor Booth got her shot when the trial opened at the Boulder County Courthouse.
01:04:01
What kind of person were you up against? Someone who craves the power and control of abusing others, especially women.
01:04:12
Prosecutor Booth laid it all out for the jury. There was the rape kit, of course, with the crucial DNA link to Juan Figueroa.
01:04:21
But also, evidence of KK's near-fatal injuries, which were well-documented and shown to the jury.
01:04:28
This was clearly a rape and attempted murder. I can see some defense attorneys saying, well, you can say that if you want,
01:04:34
but lots of people like rough sex and like to be choked when they're having sex.
01:04:39
So how can you prove it was anything other than that? You're right. And those were some of the arguments that were made.
01:04:45
There were a lot of other evidence that showed his guilt. For example, said Prosecutor Booth, video shot inside the party house where Kayleen went after the bars.
01:04:57
Remember when Kayleen stepped outside to get some fresh air at the after party? She said she'd left her phone charging inside the house.
01:05:05
well here it is on the home security system plugged into the wall and then moments later
01:05:14
Juan Figueroa comes into frame sits down with his arm oddly tucked away stands up
01:05:23
and tosses the phone onto the couch that part stands out to me to just really reflect how premeditated this was
01:05:34
of making sure she didn't have a charged phone. But the prosecution's key witness, of course, was Kayleen herself,
01:05:41
who lived to tell the story, and now steeled herself to face Juan Figueroa. It was a very emotional trial, and he was disgusting.
01:05:51
He laughed. In the trial? Yeah, it was a joke to him the whole trial. So he just laughed When Kayleen took the stand the defense challenged every bit of her story and focused on this video
01:06:09
Kayleen going up the stairs to what turned out to be a bedroom. Willingly, said the defense.
01:06:17
Nonsense, said the prosecutor. Yes, she walked up those stairs, but he had contrived an entire story to get her there,
01:06:26
starting all the way back at the party that they had been at, in order to get her away and lure her away from the safety of others.
01:06:38
And then for more than a year, said Kayleen, she'd been threatened, had been accused of making it all up,
01:06:44
had been surrounded by doubts and whispers and malicious gossip. And now, after a 10-day trial, 12 strangers would judge.
01:06:55
Would they believe her? I was just scared, because I'm like, that was very important to me for the fact everybody said I was a liar.
01:07:06
And there she sat in court, only a few feet away from the man who nearly took her life.
01:07:13
And she waited, waited for that jury to decide. unaware of what was waiting for her outside.
01:07:35
After 11 and a half hours, the wait was finally over. The jury had made their decision.
01:07:42
Kayleen's family and Rita's family took their seats inside a crowded courtroom. Kayleen herself, nerves as tight as they'd ever been.
01:07:51
And the verdict was... Guilty. I just broke down. Because it was somebody recognizing you were right?
01:08:00
Yeah. All along? Mm-hmm. Those other people were wrong. That finally was a moment of vindication that you desperately needed.
01:08:08
I just wanted everyone to hear it. Relieved? Yes. But... It felt like a weight had been lifted, but in the back of my head I knew it wasn't over.
01:08:20
And now we have to start Rita's. You felt that as a responsibility yourself? I felt like I had a responsibility to do what I could after that point to help.
01:08:31
And I'm like, you know, let's focus on Rita now. Where's Rita? Maybe not so easy, because within hours, Kayleen's life was in danger again.
01:08:44
She and friends and family had gathered at a local restaurant to celebrate. Within the first five minutes I was there, I had gotten a very gruesome death threat sent to me from a Facebook account and just saying really nasty stuff.
01:09:02
calling me like the B-word and saying, we're going to set your body on fire while you're alive.
01:09:09
And there was more in that message. I'm going to choke this s*** out of you. I will find you, bitch.
01:09:15
You're going to die just like all the whores. What was that like to get that? Shut down.
01:09:22
I completely shut down. Kayleen told the police, but they couldn't track down the sender.
01:09:29
And Jasmine saw her sister unravel. I just remember saying, this is never going to end.
01:09:35
The very next day, Kayleen left. Left town. Moved all the way to Kansas. It's what she needed to do in order to keep herself safe.
01:09:46
Meanwhile, back in Longmont, Detective Cody Clark was still looking every day for Rita.
01:09:53
There was a lot of pressure from the community of, you know, why hasn't Rita been found?
01:09:58
What are you doing to find her? what are you doing to bring somebody to justice and um i think there's an expectation that these
01:10:07
you know anybody watches television these things get solved in 45 minutes and this is going on for
01:10:12
months and then years yeah you know it just added to the anxiety from the community feeling like
01:10:19
you know the police had forgotten about this they hadn't of course but Time. Every day, every month of days somehow made it feel worse.
01:10:31
It's extremely difficult. I mean, how do you prove somebody's dead if you don't have a body?
01:10:36
He was stuck. Rita's family felt stuck too. It was just stagnant there for such a long time.
01:10:43
So you were sure it was him, but they couldn't do anything? Yeah. Then, a very big surprise.
01:10:50
Remember that stain investigators found on the passenger seat of Figueroa's pickup truck?
01:10:58
They extracted DNA back then, but the best they could get was a jumble. Several humans, but no way to ID any one of them.
01:11:09
But almost three years later, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation called Detective Clark and...
01:11:16
And told us about some new technology that would be able to look at that stain and be able to tell us not just that there were several people's DNA patterns, but who they belong to.
01:11:29
So they retested the stain and sent Detective Clark the results. When they sent back those results saying that it was Rita's DNA in that stain, I don't even know how to describe it.
01:11:46
I was elated. You know, like it was it was like that one final piece, that physical piece of evidence.
01:11:53
She was in his truck. In the summer of 2021, a grand jury indicted Juan Figueroa for the murder and kidnapping of Rita Gutierrez Garcia.
01:12:07
Wasn't an easy case, mind you. Even with that precious bit of DNA, still, it was the best they were going to get.
01:12:15
So we had certainly not all the evidence that we needed, but we were confident in the case.
01:12:21
Figueroa, already sentenced to 93 years for assaulting KK, was confident too. told cellmates he thought he could beat the murder charge.
01:12:31
Rita's mother, Diane, meanwhile, though glad he was going to face some kind of justice,
01:12:36
had about given up hope of actually finding Rita. It was hurting me. It was frustrating me.
01:12:43
It was depressing to come home and not nothing. And then prosecutors Booth and Sudano's trial prep
01:12:56
was interrupted. We were really close to trial. We were within a couple of weeks
01:13:02
before the defense attorneys reached out to us and said that maybe it was worth talking.
01:13:08
Figaro's attorneys wanted to make a deal. We said to them, you know, before we ever entertain anything,
01:13:16
he has to give us Rita back. And they said, yes. What did you think when you heard that?
01:13:23
We didn't believe it. We thought it was going to fall apart. at every possible moment.
01:13:28
Yeah. But what actually happened? Well, what a surprise. Juan Figueroa had a choice.
01:13:53
Take his chances in a murder trial or bargain for a deal. The price of getting such a deal?
01:14:00
Two things. Figaro would have to tell them what he did to Rita, and he'd have to reveal where he dumped her body.
01:14:09
Would he do it? Prosecutor Booth didn't know. Detective Cody Clark didn't know. I want to say it was like a day or two
01:14:17
of just sitting on pins and needles. And then an email arrived, and here it was.
01:14:24
six words, I, Juan Figueroa, killed Rita Gutierrez. But there was something else in that email too, something kind of amazing, because who
01:14:37
would think of keeping a specific bit of information like this It had GPS coordinates for us to locate Rita We never expected that It was more than you thought Oh it was more than we thought As the sun rose the next morning the cops were there the lawyers all were there
01:14:56
Maybe he was lying, sitting back in his cell enjoying this. Or maybe not. But this was it, their best and maybe last chance of finding Rita.
01:15:06
They stared out at that wide vista, even with coordinates. This wasn't going to be easy.
01:15:13
I was really starting to get disappointed because of the terrain. And we were in super high cattails, and it was so thick.
01:15:22
And I remember I was like, this is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
01:15:27
They slogged around. Ten minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes. And then suddenly, a shout.
01:15:35
It was Prosecutor Michelle Sudano. And I saw what looked like a white piece of bone.
01:15:45
There it was. What was left of a body, no doubt, human remains under a thicket of cattails.
01:15:51
We were really lucky because a lot of the cattails in this area weren't up to your chest, which they were everywhere else.
01:16:00
Eventually, they got DNA confirmation. Rita Gutierrez-Garcia was missing no longer.
01:16:08
You found her. We found her. Detective Clark dreaded telling Rita's family. I knew that it was going to be one of the hardest conversations that I had with them
01:16:23
because it was that finality that she wasn't coming back home alive. He met Diane and Rita's sisters at the police station.
01:16:35
Everyone was there. You know, Rita's 18. We all started crying. We're just like, what?
01:16:42
You know, like, oh my God. They did what they said they would do. And I am so grateful that they gave me my daughter back.
01:16:55
Cody kept his promise. But remember, as part of his plea deal, Juan agreed to tell investigators and prosecutors exactly what happened to Rita.
01:17:04
When we went into that interview, we had not told his defense counsel, or obviously then nor did he know that we had actually recovered Rita at that point.
01:17:16
So some of the details he provided, we could match and know was consistent with what we had located at the crime scene.
01:17:24
For nearly four hours Juan told his story as investigators listened intently to see if it rang true Juan claimed that after meeting Rita he offered her a ride home
01:17:38
And she said, yeah. So we turned around and we were walking back to my car casually, you know,
01:17:43
and we walked about 10 steps. And then all of a sudden she had stopped, looked at me.
01:17:51
She's like, you're a weirdo. and, you know, I snapped. I got mad and I punched her with my right hand.
01:18:02
And she fell to the ground and she hit her head really hard on the concrete. He said he panicked after punching her
01:18:13
and put her in his truck. I was just still angry, like just mad. and I just grabbed her and I just started choking.
01:18:24
I held her like that for about five minutes, let go, and I sat in the truck and I realized what I just did.
01:18:36
He started driving around, he said, trying to figure out what to do next when he noticed Rita's phone.
01:18:43
Remember that last call from her phone to 911? I was trying to figure out how to disable the phone, and I accidentally called 911.
01:18:53
It was Juan who made the call, not Rita. Of course, investigators had to ask. Did you have sex with her or anything like that?
01:19:02
No, absolutely not. Okay. Did you ever believe that he was telling the whole truth here?
01:19:07
No, I think there's always been some suspicion that more happened just knowing what happened with Kayleen.
01:19:14
That's not something that we could prove. They couldn't prove Juan sexually assaulted Rita.
01:19:19
But Detective Clark is convinced that is exactly what happened before he strangled her to death.
01:19:27
With Juan's confession, there would be no trial. And in June 2022, You understand what that charge of first year is?
01:19:34
he was sentenced. Then how do you plead to add a count for murder in the second degree?
01:19:39
The judge gave him 48 years on top of the 93 years he was serving for the rape and attempted murder of Kayleen.
01:19:49
After the sentencing, Rita's family spoke to the media. We have this victory, and we cannot wait to be able to give Rita the peace and the rest her body needs.
01:20:03
At a memorial service months later, Rita's friends and family were finally able to celebrate her life.
01:20:09
And Diane invited all the detectives and the prosecutors too She called you the A right They the A They really were fabulous We worked as a team Team Rita They asked Detective Clark to give the eulogy
01:20:27
Not an easy thing to do. How do I write a eulogy for somebody that I didn't know, that I'd never met?
01:20:33
So I tried to just do the best that I could to kind of memorialize what I knew about her
01:20:39
and how much of an impact she had had on me, even though I'd never known her. Over the last four years, I've learned about Rita from dozens, if not hundreds of people.
01:20:49
What I saw was a brave woman, a strong mother. Her son's lives are proof that a mother's love is a powerful force to be reckoned with.
01:20:59
And right there, listening to it all, was Kayleen, the young woman who will be forever connected to Rita.
01:21:07
I don't know that they ever would have solved her case if it hadn't been for you.
01:21:11
Everything played out. It played out the way it did for a reason, you know? What was the reason?
01:21:17
Like, so I could get him, and he was there, and they could hold him, and, you know, then they could find her, and they could get the truth.
01:21:26
And Diane? She likes to visit the park where Rita's tree still stands. It just blooms so beautifully.
01:21:35
It's green and the vines, they kind of like twine, you know, and it just spirals up and it's just grown so much.
01:21:44
It's so beautiful. You light up when you talk about the tree. I love that tree because it just reminds me of Rita.
01:21:51
And she sits on the bench that Cody Clark helped raise money for in Rita's memory.
01:21:58
There's a plaque on it. For the rest of our lives, we will search for moments full of you.
01:22:06
I didn't get Rita back as a person and as a body, but I got Rita back. I won't let no one take that from me.
01:22:19
That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Sunday at 7, 6 central.
01:22:25
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.
01:22:59
So if you're listening to Dateline, we're talking Dateline. Hope you join us wherever you're listening.