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[Music] a woman in austin texas mysteriously disappeared without saying anything to
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her friends or family and she wasn't the only one two other women had also disappeared under similar
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circumstances a tooth a single hair an anthropologist and a forensic artist implicated a man
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who had killed before in another country [Applause] [Music] [Music] in 1998 54 year old olivia estrada was
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going through a very difficult time she had recently been divorced and was unemployed the only bright spot in her
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life was her family she was funny heart as big as texas or even bigger she just had compassion
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for everyone one night out of the blue a woman who refused to identify herself called
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olivia's family with a warning she said to go and check on your mother that something was wrong with her
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so family members went to investigate her car's there her keys are there her
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house is locked something happened that was against her will the type of door it was you had to lock
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it with a key when you went out so whoever left last locked it with a key her keys were inside by the time i
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got here my cousin who lives next door he had broken into the house to see if my mom
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was here and when i looked down the carpet was soaking wet like why is the carpet wet
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detective bob merrill found traces of blood in the water-soaked carpet an obvious sign of a hasty clean-up
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so at that point we're going to start investigating it as a homicide until you're no different
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outside in the carport next to olivia's car investigators found evidence of a
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struggle there was a ring by the tire and he says do you know whose ring that is and i said yeah
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that's my mom's ring so what's it doing out here there were traces of blood on the ring
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as well as on the inside of olivia's car but there were no foreign fingerprints
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the few clues we did have there at the house became very crucial the blood in the house the blood in the
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car the blood on the carport the bloody ring that was found in the carport those sort of became
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the factors that determined whether or not we would be able to turn this into a homicide case
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unfortunately investigators were not able to trace the anonymous call made to the estrada
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family it was strange that the woman was never identified who called she must have been
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scared to come forward i don't know the next day investigators took a second look around
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olivia's home tucked away in the bottom of a dresser drawer they found a photograph of olivia
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with an unidentified man and on the back of the photograph was written the name martine
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no one knew his last name no one knew where he was from no one knew anything about the man
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but olivia's daughter recalled speaking with martine on the telephone when she
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called to speak with her mother she said it was a bizarre conversation the only thing i remember he told me was
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that he wanted to marry my mother i don't even i mean she just met him and i said
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my mom will never marry you i said i don't know who you are who you think you are but my mom will never
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marry you investigators released the photograph to the media hoping that someone could identify him
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[Music] after olivia strata's disappearance police released the photograph of the
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unidentified man in the picture found in her home several callers identified the man as 47
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year old martine gonzalez an illegal immigrant from mexico who was working in austin texas as a laborer
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when questioned gonzales said he didn't know anything about olivia's disappearance
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when he was searched however investigators found the house key to olivia estrada's home
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at the time that mr gonzalez was picked up he had the only other key that anybody knew
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existed in his pocket so that was a very strong indicator that he was the last one to leave that house which
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would indicate that he had something to do with her leaving gonzalez said he had dated olivia
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casually but the last time he was at her home he said she was there with another man
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manuel barbosa they ended up getting to a fight emmanuel pulled a gun on him and he left
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and martine left manual stay but a check on barbosa's whereabouts showed this was impossible
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we checked out manuel and he happened to be in federal custody and for a long time
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and was not any anywhere near austin texas during that particular incident investigators searched their criminal
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database they discovered that gonzales had spent time in a mexican prison for murder
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the first murder was a fake deal got a man to meet him out in a desolate area and beat him to death and took his money
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when he got out of prison he killed another person in mexico and shortly thereafter came up here
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to texas and five months earlier gonzalez reported another girlfriend missing maria flores
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so it was really starting to connect that we were looking at more than one missing woman involved
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in his life investigators called what's known as the missing person's clearing house an
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organization that tracks missing persons reports with unidentified bodies found in texas
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and they found something three years before maria flores and olivia estrada disappeared another
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woman's body was discovered in a field just one block away from martine gonzalez's home
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that was a huge break i don't know that that connection would have been made
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without that call so who was this person forensic anthropologist dr david glassman
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examined the remains he noted blunt force trauma to the skull and most of the teeth were missing
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the size of the skull indicated the victim was female and the cranial sutures revealed her
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approximate age there were some of the sutures in the top of the head in the back of the head
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that were already fused on the external surface so from that i ascertained that she
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would have had to have been at least 35 years of age dr glassman also found evidence of the
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woman's race she had a condition which is called wormy and bones which are extra bones
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found in the suture in the back of the skull which we see very often in asians and native americans
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but without someone's dna or dental records for comparison investigators had
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no way to identify her to put a face with the bones investigators turned to forensic artist
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karen taylor since the skull was so fragile taylor decided against creating a forensic sculpture instead she used a
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technique she had developed called two-dimensional facial reconstruction taylor assumed the victim was hispanic
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and over 35 years old using anthropologic data taylor used rubber markers to show the
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appropriate tissue thickness which differs from race to race [Music] that forms a basis of the contours of
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the face so once the tissue depth markers are glued onto the skull then we literally connect the dots to
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develop the contours of the face taylor then photographed the skull and placed a piece of translucent vellum
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on top of the picture vellum is the finest type of parchment available usually made from calves skin
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taylor then started to draw the facial features in life-size the average human eye is about 25 millimeters in diameter
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that happens to be about the same size as the diameter of a us quarter so i'll often take a quarter and center
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it in the bony orbit of the skull and trace around it but the nose caused the most difficulty
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since it's made of cartilage that decomposes i look at the piriform aperture this
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pear-shaped nasal opening i had five millimeters on each side of the the opening of the nose
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and that gives me a sense of the width the angle can often be determined by analyzing the bone called the interior
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nasal spine we use that to measure and determine the projection of the nose there's a formula of three times the
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length of the nasal spine that is used for that projection since most of the teeth were missing
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taylor relied on the principle known as the facial triangle there is an equilateral triangle created
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between the two corners of the eye and the middle of the bottom of the lower lip and i thought aha that's going to
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help me to project how the mouth might have been positioned in that blank space on the skull
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taylor chose an appropriate hair color and an approximate weight then put the finishing touches on her work
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the incorporation of the proportional arrangement of features in a face is very important to the recognition
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factor taking place investigators released the forensic drawing to the media hoping to learn her
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identity and in so doing help solve a mystery just days after the forensic drawing
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appeared in the austin newspapers a family member called from mexico to say it looked like his mother 48 year old
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sylvia garcia she was none other than martine gonzalez's wife we got a call from sylvia's family
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saying that their mother had married him and had come up here and they'd never seen him or heard from her again
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or seen her again court records indicated sylvia garcia had filed for a divorce from gonzalez
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shortly before her disappearance when questioned gonzales denied having a wife and denied even knowing sylvia
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garcia he just perfects ignorance and it was unbelievable but inside gonzalez's home
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investigators found a photograph which bore a striking resemblance to the forensic drawing
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and that's when i really got excited because everything did seem to fit it was what i would expect to see
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the proportions were correct uh things did seem to fit once we got pictures we were we were convinced
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that that was sylvia is just proving it was the next problem to find out scientifically whether the
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skull was sylvia garcia's investigators discovered that sylvia mailed letters to her relatives in
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mexico and those letters might have sylvia's dna profile we looked at the envelope and saw that
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in fact the flap had either been licked or that the stamp had been licked and so
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i attempted to extract dna from the flap and from the stamp and i was able to generate a dna profile
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from the flap of the envelope i think it's very fascinating and also that her family would have saved those
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envelopes i mean how how many people save letters that somebody sent a couple of years ago and who would have thought
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that it would help solve a police investigation it's just it's just unbelievable
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for comparison criminalist jody kohler used tooth pulp found in one of the few molars still in the skull
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tooth pulp can be a rich source of dna a pcr dna test revealed the skull matched the dna extracted from sylvia's
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letters damn that was good you know you just never expected that to happen you hear
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it can happen it just had never happened for me until then i was very excited that we had actually
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identified this person because the skeletal remains were fairly old and so it was it was really a shot in the dark
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to be able to do this it was great when investigators re-examined the bed sheet that covered sylvia's body
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they noticed a single strand of hair in the knot since there was no root material
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investigators decided to perform a mitochondrial dna test now the unique difference with
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mitochondrial dna is it's only inherited from your mother and so men don't pass theirs on to their
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children this means that siblings in the same family or all maternal relatives in
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a family for example will share the same type the hair was first cleaned in an ultrasonic water bath to make sure no
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cells from another source adhered to it once the hair is thoroughly cleaned then
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we grind it up in a small glass grinder that is almost like a mortar and pestle apparatus
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this powders the hair into a liquid buffer and to this are added some chemicals that effectively purify the dna
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away from everything else in the hair and this same procedure was repeated on a hair sample from
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martine gonzalez the result the hair found with sylvia garcia's body belonged to martine gonzalez
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if you find a type that's never been seen before as was the case in this case
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you would be able to eliminate at least 99.96 percent of north americans as having that type
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his hair being with the remains was crucial to show that he was involved in her ending up in
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that vacant field with with trauma to the head martine gonzalez was arrested and
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charged with sylvia garcia's murder but the question remained where were the other two missing women
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olivia estrada and maria flores when martine gonzalez was in prison awaiting trial for the murder of his
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wife sylvia garcia investigators received a telephone call the farmer actually is a retired
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detective was clearing some area for a fence and he stumbled onto some bones in bastrop county
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dental records confirmed the remains were those of olivia estrada the 54 year old divorcee who was dating
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martine gonzalez around the time of her disappearance the skull showed signs of blunt force
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trauma as well as a gunshot wound i mean i still didn't really believe it and i said detective morrow is it her is
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it really her and he says yes and he and he had a tear in his eye less than a mile away
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in another deserted field investigators found the remains of the third missing woman maria flores
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she had also been dating martine gonzalez and it was he who reported her missing
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her skull showed evidence of blunt force trauma to the head martine gonzalez was charged with all
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three murders we had mitochondrial dna which had never been used in texas at that point we had
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other kinds of dna forensic anthropologists forensic dentists a multitude of civilian and law enforcement witnesses
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many of which were spanish speakers and the logistics of putting that case together were
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astounding prosecutors learned that gonzales frequented bars where he met vulnerable
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women some were illegal immigrants with no family or connection to austin others like olivia estrada were
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emotionally vulnerable she still loved my father i think she was just down on herself
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i really believe when she met him she was at her lowest that is the only way i could see that
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she would ever let a person like nothing in her life this man had a history of abusing women
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and charming them and choosing isolated women or most of them isolated and and then lying to them saying he owned land
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and becoming jealous and possessive [Music] prosecutors presented evidence that the
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motive in these murders was anger after having been rejected gonzalez refused to accept that these
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women no longer wanted him in their lives [Music] gonzalez's telephone conversation with
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olivia's daughter revealed he wanted to marry olivia but olivia told her daughter later she
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wanted no part of him i said mom what is he talking about he says he's going to marry she goes he's
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crazy i said i'm telling you what he just told me she says no he's crazy don't pay
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attention to him he doesn't know what he's talking about i'm like mom what are
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you doing it wasn't long after this incident that olivia disappeared in september 2000
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martine gonzalez was convicted of three counts of first degree murder and sentenced to the life in prison
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you left her you threw her away like she was garbage she wasn't martin she was not
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she was my mother his eyes are just void of any kind of human anything there's nothing there nothing
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that's human anyway to me it's just a monster he's just a truly evil person with no
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conscience i wish he was sitting on death row instead but he needs to be behind bars
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for the rest of his life to this day texas authorities remain convinced there are other victims linked to martine
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gonzalez victims they have yet to find without the forensic drawing investigators wouldn't have identified
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the skull found in the field i don't think he had any any perception of forensic art in
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his entire imagination but i bet he wishes he did it's just amazing that we can combine
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those types of science where she can do the facial reconstruction and then we can confirm her facial reconstruction
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using this type of dna technology an anthropologist friend of mine dr william maples was fond of saying
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patient and silent while we live our skeletons shout to heaven and posterity after we die and i think that's a
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wonderful um a wonderful quote it it says the same thing the dead can speak through facial reconstruction through
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forensic art [Music] [Applause] [Music] you