00:00:06
NARRATOR: Security cameras
tracked a young woman's whereabouts shortly
before she disappeared.
00:00:12
An internet search
provided some answers, and a cell phone call
revealed the others.
00:00:20
[theme music] Experts say that if
you're going to gamble, you should know two things,
first, the odds of the game
00:00:52
you're playing, and
second, that the odds are stacked in the casino's favor. 27-year-old Christie
Wilson believed
00:01:01
she could beat those odds in
her favorite game, blackjack. Her friends say
she was a natural.
00:01:06
PATRICK BOYD: She was
very sharp in numbers. She's mathematically
a whiz in her head,
00:01:10
and she can just look at
things and figure them out real quick, so
the odds, percentages.
00:01:14
-She had actually studied
on how to play the game, how to become
better at the game.
00:01:18
And she was actually
a pretty good gambler. NARRATOR: On October 4, 2005,
Christie went to the Thunder
00:01:24
Valley Casino in
Lincoln, California for a night of blackjack. Two days later, Christie's
live-in boyfriend,
00:01:33
Danny Burlando, called
police to report her missing. Burlando claimed she never
came home from the casino.
00:01:41
-He's as flaky as them
come the whole time. His-- his conversations
made him just as
00:01:45
innocent as they
made him look guilty. NARRATOR: 31-year-old Danny
Burlando was an unemployed car
00:01:50
salesman who met
Christie just a year earlier at a casino
blackjack table. They moved in together
shortly after that.
00:01:59
-Christie Wilson's relationship
with her boyfriend Daniel Burlando was a, I
would say-- describe
00:02:06
it as a tumultuous relationship. -She'd come home and visit,
and we found bruises on her.
00:02:12
I didn't find them myself. My wife did and told me about
them later on after she left.
00:02:16
And to say the
least, I was-- wanted to wring his neck at the time. NARRATOR: Police
found Christie's car
00:02:23
in the casino parking lot. A search of her
apartment found no signs of a struggle and no evidence
she was planning to leave.
00:02:33
-She left behind day-to-day
personal effects, toiletry items,
clothes, medication
00:02:38
she was taking regularly. She left behind her cat,
something very important to her.
00:02:43
So items that if she was to
take off and flee the area, perhaps she would take
those things with her.
00:02:49
So it was highly
suspicious and unusual. NARRATOR: A month before
Christie's disappearance,
00:02:55
she and Danny were
fighting so loudly that the neighbors
called police. DON MURCHISON: The police
department was then
00:03:01
unable to determine
who was the aggressor. So both of them,
at that time, were arrested for domestic violence.
00:03:07
Both of them had
suffered injuries. NARRATOR: A check of
Burlando's cell phone records
00:03:13
indicated he called
Christie's cell phone 78 times during the time she was missing.
00:03:30
GAREN HORST: The fact that he
had called her 78 times could be a way for him
to create an alibi.
00:03:34
A person might report
someone missing, but nonetheless be involved in
the commission of their murder
00:03:40
simply to cover their
tracks or to appear that they're not involved. NARRATOR: Christy's
parents and even police
00:03:46
wondered whether
Danny Burlando might have finally gone too far. -Now, to me, this guy stinks.
00:03:53
They've had violence in
the past between them. I don't like him. And I really wanted them
to look hard into this.
00:03:59
And you have that gut feeling,
as both a police officer and as a parent, something
really majorly wrong.
00:04:08
NARRATOR: Christie
Wilson went missing after a night of
casino gambling. Since her stepfather
was a local detective,
00:04:14
police officers all
over Southern California joined in the search. DON MURCHISON: San
Jose Police Department
00:04:20
had coordinated a
very large search. Hundreds and hundreds
of square miles was searched with
vehicles, on foot,
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by air, helicopter, airplane. There was an
extensive search done both publicly and privately.
00:04:35
NARRATOR: Christie's
family was convinced she'd been the
victim of foul play at the hands of her live-in
boyfriend, Danny Burlando.
00:04:44
-Most murderers
probably dump somebody at a fairly short distance to
where the crime would happen.
00:04:48
And I was-- felt so
strongly that it was Danny. I literally searched his entire
complex, close to his house,
00:04:56
and the rivers around it. NARRATOR: Burlando seemed
to be the only person with a motive to harm her.
00:05:04
-There's a whole bunch of
motives with a boyfriend. She was totally committed to
being out of that relationship.
00:05:10
This is, again, why I think
it was more of a abused woman, where she's drawn back
into a relationship
00:05:14
even though she knows
everything is bad for her there. NARRATOR: Burlando
had a partial alibi
00:05:20
for the night
Christie disappeared. He was having dinner
at his parents' house. But there were several hours
he couldn't account for.
00:05:28
-It was approximately 11:30 at
night, when his friend left him at his apartment,
to the morning hours
00:05:34
when he first used
his cell phone. We don't have anybody with him
to corroborate where he was.
00:05:40
NARRATOR: Investigators
asked the casino to review their
security camera video tapes to see
whether Christie was
00:05:46
there on the night
she disappeared. -They have approximately
700-plus cameras in the casino,
00:05:52
both on the exterior and
interior of the casino, and we actually had her vehicle
pulling in the parking lot.
00:05:58
I had her entering the
casino, and then we tracked her movement
through the entire casino
00:06:02
throughout the six hours
that she was there. NARRATOR: The tape showed
Christie playing blackjack.
00:06:08
There were no signs
that Danny Burlando was in the casino with her. Seated next to Christie
at the blackjack table,
00:06:17
however, was a stocky,
dark-haired man. GAREN HORST: You can see
their interaction together.
00:06:23
You can see when they would
win, they would high five. You can see him putting
his arm around her
00:06:29
as if he's trying
to pick up on her, romancing her in some fashion. NARRATOR: The dealers said
Christie was winning early,
00:06:38
but as the night progressed
her luck started to change. They also said she was
drinking, but not heavily.
00:06:48
-A detective looked
at the casino tape, and I believe he counted up
to 17 separate sips of what
00:06:55
appeared to be an
alcoholic beverage over the course of the night. That doesn't sound
like that much.
00:06:59
She had a noticeable
change in behavior towards the end of the evening. NARRATOR: Christie was
a regular in the casino,
00:07:07
but the employees found
her behavior on this night to be out of character. PATRICK BOYD: She
was being a real jerk
00:07:15
at the time from
what I understand. And by watching-- I could
only see her physical action,
00:07:19
couldn't hear her words-
and I could see the way her body got rigid and how
she would move differently.
00:07:24
-And some of the
employees had discussed asking her to leave the casino. NARRATOR: But the man next
to Christie intervened.
00:07:32
-The person of interest stepped
in and said, hey, she'll be OK. I'll take care of her, whatever.
00:07:40
NARRATOR: Fortunately,
the security tapes provided a clue to
the man's identity.
00:07:45
-He had actually
used his players card at playing a slot machine about
10 minutes before playing cards
00:07:52
with Christie
Wilson at the table. -With that players cards, they
can build credit and obtain
00:07:57
complimentary items
from the casino. -And so by charting that
play and that particular slot
00:08:04
machine, they were
able to figure out who the individual was. NARRATOR: He was 53-year-old
Mario Garcia, an executive
00:08:12
with a health care
computer company. -At one level, he didn't
seem like a suspicious type.
00:08:18
But when you've been in
this business for a while, you just never know. -He got a six-figure income.
00:08:23
He works for a very--
a very large company. He was managing a very large
project for that company.
00:08:30
He's married, had two children,
was involved with his children. He played soccer and
also was a soccer coach.
00:08:37
NARRATOR: The security
camera videotape showed that Christie and
Garcia both left the casino
00:08:42
at the same time, around
1 o'clock in the morning. The tapes also show Garcia
left in his car alone.
00:08:53
But Christie's car never moved. GAREN HORST: She never
went to her vehicle. She simply disappears
in that parking lot.
00:09:07
NARRATOR: Police
now had two suspects in the disappearance
of Christie Wilson. The first was her live-in
boyfriend, Danny Burlando,
00:09:16
who had no alibi for
the early morning hours that Christie went missing. GAREN HORST: His
home was searched.
00:09:22
His car was searched. He was scrutinized
in great detail. His phone records were
analyzed, his whereabouts.
00:09:30
And-- and cell tower
locations of use of his phone were analyzed. His computer was searched
forensically and analyzed.
00:09:38
NARRATOR: Police couldn't
find any evidence linking Burlando to
her disappearance.
00:09:44
The other suspect
was Mario Garcia, who was playing blackjack
with Christie in the casino.
00:09:50
Christie and Garcia left
the casino at the same time around 1:00 AM. PATRICK BOYD: It was
the most important thing
00:09:57
to find that person
on the video. Without finding
that information, we would have no
clue what happened,
00:10:02
and we'd probably be
assuming that all our life, right to our dying day,
that Danny was involved.
00:10:07
NARRATOR: A background
check revealed Mario Garcia had a shady past. 25 years earlier,
he was arrested
00:10:15
for kidnapping an ex-girlfriend. -He drove her to
another location, where he raped her in a vehicle.
00:10:21
Then he took her inside, and
he raped her again inside. And at one point, he had
stuck a gun in her mouth
00:10:26
and pulled the trigger. NARRATOR: Fortunately,
the gun wasn't loaded. Incredibly, Garcia was only
charged with a misdemeanor
00:10:35
and received probation. Garcia apparently had a
problem with girlfriends. He was involved in a
suspicious car accident
00:10:44
with another girlfriend
and her mother, who were both in Garcia's car
when it veered into a river.
00:10:52
GAREN HORST: There were
reports of people driving by, seeing a car pull to
the side of the road,
00:10:56
and then speed into the
body of water suspiciously. Mario Garcia was the sole
survivor of the incident.
00:11:04
His girlfriend, Lynette, washed
ashore about a week later. Her mother was trapped
in the car and drowned.
00:11:11
NARRATOR: When police questioned
Garcia about Christie Wilson's disappearance, he claimed
he knew nothing about it.
00:11:18
He said they walked to
the parking lot together and each went their
separate ways.
00:11:24
The security cameras
couldn't confirm this since they panned across
the lot and weren't fixed.
00:11:32
But Garcia's car had
a unique feature, which provided a timeline
for when he unlocked his car
00:11:40
and when he drove away. -The lights on his Toyota
Camry flashed four times. Four times means that
all four doors were open.
00:11:51
There was a 3
minute and 41 second gap between the time he got
in, or unlocked the doors,
00:11:56
and he turns on the
headlights to pull out. During that period
of time, I believe
00:12:01
that she was incapacitated
in some fashion and probably laid
in the backseat. NARRATOR: Garcia claimed
he drove straight home.
00:12:10
But if that were
true, he drove out of the parking lot
headed the wrong way. -The video footage showed
that he had actually
00:12:18
made a right turn out
of the casino, which was the opposite direction he
had indicated that he had went.
00:12:23
NARRATOR: Furthermore, Garcia
claimed he was home in bed all night until he left for
work the next morning at 8:30.
00:12:30
His wife refused to
speak with police. But his cell phone
records indicated he wasn't home at 8:30.
00:12:39
-We were able to find
that he had placed a phone call to his wife at 7:51 in
the morning on her cell phone.
00:12:47
It hit a cell tower that was
located north of his residence. NARRATOR: Garcia
also claimed he got
00:12:54
to work in time for a
9 o'clock appointment. But his coworkers recalled he
was late that morning, arriving
00:13:00
closer to 10:00 AM, and that
his face was severely scratched. -The first words that came
out of his employees' mouths,
00:13:10
some of the words were,
you know, who beat you up? I hope the other
guy looks worse.
00:13:14
You know, it was very apparent,
immediately in the morning, that he had injuries.
00:13:18
-It was a significant fact that
he had absolutely no injuries, observable injuries, on him at
the casino that night before.
00:13:27
NARRATOR: Garcia told
police the scratch marks were caused by yard work. -It didn't seem plausible.
00:13:44
I don't know of too many people
that would be up trimming trees between 1:13 in the morning and,
say, 8 o'clock in the morning,
00:13:51
when he's supposed to be ready
and leaving for a meeting. NARRATOR: Connie
Mitchell was asked
00:13:55
to review the photographs
of Garcia's injuries. -I'm a specialist in
emergency medicine.
00:14:01
And so, as anyone could imagine,
we see lots of injuries. NARRATOR: Mitchell was
particularly interested
00:14:10
in the location of
Garcia's injuries, the four parallel scratch
marks on the left side
00:14:17
of his chest and face. -The left side is sort
of important here, because if you have a
right-handed victim,
00:14:27
you'd be more likely that their
right hand would be clawing across the left side in
a struggle to get away.
00:14:34
NARRATOR: Christie
Wilson was right-handed. And the scratches had
a uniform pattern,
00:14:40
whereas an accident
creates random scratches. -When you see a distinct
geometric pattern,
00:14:49
that like the distinct
pattern of the claw marks, don't make sense for
a fall from a tree.
00:14:57
NARRATOR: Mitchell was convinced
that the scratch marks were caused by another person
during a violent struggle.
00:15:07
-Christie left a message for
her loved ones, her family, investigators, police,
forensic examiners to see.
00:15:17
NARRATOR: Next, forensic experts
searched Garcia's home computer and found more
incriminating evidence.
00:15:24
-We learned that he
had visited a website on forensic toxicology, forensic
firearm evidence, and also
00:15:31
a website on date rape drugs. NARRATOR: But if Mario Garcia
was responsible for Christie's
00:15:38
disappearance, investigators
faced a serious hurdle. Without her body, they
couldn't prove she was dead.
00:15:48
-Not only did we
not have a body, we had no confession,
no witnesses. We didn't know where
the murder happened.
00:15:53
We didn't know what
the murder weapon was. NARRATOR: The prime suspect in
Christie Wilson's disappearance
00:16:02
was Mario Garcia, who was with
Christie in the casino earlier on the night she went missing.
00:16:09
Investigators got a warrant
to search Garcia's car, but it had already been
cleaned inside and out.
00:16:16
The floor mats and the
trunk liner were gone. -So that right away
was suspicious.
00:16:22
NARRATOR: But cleaning,
vacuuming, and even shampooing doesn't remove everything.
00:16:28
-There was this brownish
discoloration on the seat, and just looked
like a dirt stain,
00:16:35
a dirty spot on the seat. NARRATOR: A presumptive test
indicated this was blood.
00:16:41
But the stain repellent on the
seats prevented a DNA analysis. -I could not process it for
DNA typing because there was
00:16:49
an inhibitor present
in the sample. An inhibitor is
something that prevents DNA typing from occurring.
00:16:56
NARRATOR: Analysts also
found traces of blood on the fibers of the seam
between the seats and blood
00:17:03
spatter on the
passenger side door. -Spatter was the
result of some medium to high-velocity incident
that caused the spatter
00:17:12
to have that kind
of a look to it. NARRATOR: And they made another
discovery, two strands of hair,
00:17:20
one in the trunk and the other
on the passenger side door handle. DNA extracted from the
hair in Mario's car
00:17:29
matched the DNA of the hair
on Christie's hairbrush. -The probability that a random,
unrelated individual would have
00:17:37
the profile found in the
hairs was 1 in 720 quintillion for Caucasians. NARRATOR: But that wasn't all.
00:17:46
The blood in Garcia's
car was a mixture of Christie's and
Garcia's, clear evidence
00:17:53
of physical contact
between them. -His statement to
investigators was that she never got in his car.
00:18:01
NARRATOR: Prosecutors
believe this was a crime of opportunity. Garcia met Christie at the
blackjack table, befriended
00:18:09
her, and may have slipped a
date rape drug into her drink since casino employees
noticed an abrupt change
00:18:19
in her behavior. Shortly after 1:00 AM, Christie
and Garcia left the casino. Garcia unlocked his car, and
for the next 3 minutes and 41
00:18:33
seconds, the
cameras were pointed in a different direction. Prosecutors believe that's
when Garcia slammed her head
00:18:46
into the front passenger
door, creating blood spatter and lodging a hair
under the door handle.
00:18:53
He forced Christie
into the backseat and drove out of the
casino parking lot without arousing suspicion.
00:19:03
Garcia drove to an area
somewhere north of his home, and there was most likely
another altercation.
00:19:12
They scratched and
hit each other, leaving a mixture of
their blood inside the car
00:19:18
and marks on his face and chest. Garcia apparently put
Christie's body in the trunk,
00:19:27
and she left a single
strand of hair behind. Garcia signaled his
general location at 7:51
00:19:35
in the morning when he called
his wife on his cell phone, proof that he wasn't
home as he had claimed.
00:19:43
Where he left Christie's
body remains a mystery. -There's so many unsettling
courses of this case.
00:19:50
But that-s that's
one that is still unresolved and unsettling, is
that the family has continued
00:19:58
to be victimized by their
inability to lay their daughter to rest, or at least
lay the remains to rest.
00:20:06
-We, the jury, in the
above entitled action find the defendant, Mario Fabio
Garcia, guilty of the felony
00:20:12
as charged in count
one of the information. NARRATOR: In January
of 2007, Mario Garcia
00:20:18
was tried and convicted of
Christie Wilson's murder and was sentenced to
59 years in prison.
00:20:27
-I am innocent. I did not kill Christie Wilson. NARRATOR: Forensics
helped solve the case,
00:20:37
but so did Christie Wilson. -Christie Wilson, in this
case, was the silent witness.
00:20:44
She was there at trial,
speaking to us of the injuries that she left on Mario Garcia.
00:20:51
-And I think I said that
in my family remarks to Mario at the
end of the trial, that yes, you-- you
won, you killed her.
00:20:59
But she left the
marks that are going to put you in jail for
the rest of your life
00:21:03
and save some other woman. [theme music]