00:00:03
[AUDIO LOGO] NARRATOR: This time
on "Killers Caught on Camera." A terrifying day amid the heat
and dust of New Mexico.
00:00:18
JESSIE WHITTAKER: When we're
dealing with a person who just committed a mass shooting, we
don't know what the mentality
00:00:23
of this person is. NARRATOR: And in snowbound
Colorado, a shocking discovery. SKYE WELLS: The scene
itself looked
00:00:32
like some sort
of altercation had taken place that was quite violent. [THEME MUSIC]
00:00:42
MAN 1: It just
sounds like something bad is happening to her. WOMAN 1: We know what
happened because the video
00:00:47
tells us what happened. MAN 2: I heard some gunshots. OFFICER 1: Drop it. Whatever it is, drop it.
00:00:52
MAN 3: That does not prove
that I killed my wife. MAN 4: The camera doesn't lie.
00:01:03
NARRATOR: In Northern
New Mexico, in Rio Arriba
County is La Madera. TONY LONG: La
Madera, New Mexico,
00:01:12
is a very small community,
a very rural area. There are a lot of families
that live there.
00:01:19
Everyone virtually
knows everyone else. [PHONE RINGING] A 911 call comes in. It is clearly panic.
00:01:45
There's a lot of yelling. There's a lot of screaming. Then essentially
the call goes dead.
00:02:02
NARRATOR: Deputies
arriving on the scene were met by distressed
neighbors. TONY LONG: The first law
enforcement agency that arrives
00:02:16
is the Rio Arriba
Sheriff's Office. They discover three victims. NARRATOR: The victims
were identified
00:02:27
as Max Trujillo, his
stepson Brendan Herrera, and Brendan's mother, Maria,
known to friends and family
00:02:38
as Brenda. JESSIE WHITTAKER: One
individual, the mother, Brenda, was still alive at the time,
so they were trying to get
00:02:52
medical attention for her. The other two individuals,
Brendan and Max, were deceased at the time that
law enforcement got there.
00:03:10
NARRATOR: The deputies
on scene urgently needed to locate the shooter. JESSIE WHITTAKER:
Officers are thinking
00:03:20
about if there's a suspect
still inside of the residence. Are they at risk
right now as well?
00:03:42
NARRATOR: More residents
appeared on scene. This was Brenda's teenage
daughter, Carissa.
00:04:02
CARISSA SAGRAVES: My mom
was such a selfless person. She was very inspirational.
00:04:11
She was my best friend. I wouldn't go anywhere
without my mom. She was very caring.
00:04:21
She wore her heart
on her sleeve. NARRATOR: Max was
a steelworker, and got together with Brenda
just before Carissa was born.
00:04:31
CARISSA SAGRAVES: My dad's
personality was so goofy. I mean, this man
would light up a room
00:04:36
anytime he would come in. He would just joke and he
would laugh and make us laugh.
00:04:41
And I loved his
personality so much. He was a good man. They were best friends. They would support each
other no matter what.
00:04:53
You could tell
they had true love. NARRATOR: Also living
at the property were two of Carissa's
brothers, Damian
00:05:04
and the third victim, Brendan. CARISSA SAGRAVES:
Brendan and I, there was a couple years apart.
00:05:12
He was just the best, most
genuine soul you'd ever meet. NARRATOR: At the crime
scene, Carissa
00:05:20
had troubling information
for the deputies. CARISSA SAGRAVES: The day
of the incident I remember
00:05:48
just hanging out at home. Brendan had his
day off, so he was in his room watching movies.
00:05:56
Damian was not working. He had just dropped
out of college. He quit his job. So he was struggling.
00:06:05
I remember just looking
out the front door, and, I mean, I
see my dad walking to the door to come inside.
00:06:16
And all of a sudden, I mean,
I saw him point the gun and you just hear
the shots go off.
00:06:21
And my dad just fell. My brother Brendan
had heard it, and he ran out at the same
time my mom did it.
00:06:31
My mom was just
on the ground with my dad and told me to call 911. She was trying to talk,
and he went and grabbed
00:06:38
the phone from
my mom and threw it across the roof of the house. So we had no phone
to finish calling.
00:06:48
Damian started just
fighting with Brendan. He just overpowered
Brendan, and he just had the gun by his neck--
00:06:56
between his neck
and his shoulder, and-- and he just-- he just
pulled that trigger.
00:07:10
My mom heard the gunshot
and she was just pleading, just don't do it,
just don't do it.
00:07:16
And he just looked
at her and pointed the gun straight at her. And she said,
please, don't do it
00:07:23
and he just let
that one go too. I just knew if I didn't
get out of there, I was going to be next
and I needed to get help.
00:07:39
I just ran. I ran to whatever house
I could find first. TONY LONG: Max Trujillo
Sr was shot in the back.
00:07:50
Brendan Herrera was
shot almost execution style in the back of the head. And Brenda was shot
on the side of her head,
00:07:58
basically on the right temple. All of those wounds were
clearly from someone that
00:08:05
intended to kill his victims. NARRATOR: By the time first
responders arrived, Damian
00:08:15
had already fled the scene. JESSIE WHITTAKER:
The suspect had stolen a pickup truck
from that property, as
00:08:23
well as some other firearms. When we're dealing with
a person who just committed
00:08:29
a mass shooting, we don't
know what the mentality of this person is. Are they going out
and are going to continue
00:08:35
a spree of murders afterwards? [PHONE RINGING] While we were en
route to La Madera,
00:08:57
there was another 911 call that
came out advising that a woman, she had just came home
and found her husband laying
00:09:04
shot in their front yard. NARRATOR: This incident
had taken place 35 miles away
in the equally small
00:09:12
community of Tres Piedras. JESSIE WHITTAKER: When
I arrived on scene, I observed an elderly male
laying down on the ground
00:09:20
with apparent gunshot wounds. He was deceased. The individual who shot him had
also stolen his pickup truck.
00:09:29
NARRATOR: The victim
was Michael Kyte, a retired archeologist
who had only recently moved to New Mexico.
00:09:38
TONY LONG: This is
a very remote area. It would be unusual,
highly unusual, to have that number
of fatalities
00:09:46
in that short of a time
period, that close together. So I think at that point
they probably had a good idea
00:09:52
that they were all related. NARRATOR: Shortly
after, those suspicions were confirmed when Herrera's
truck from La Madera
00:10:00
was found abandoned
not far away. It had run out of gas. JULIA SHAW: I think it would
be easy to think, well,
00:10:10
he's just a ruthless murderer
at this point on a spree. He's killing people, he's
killed his own family members,
00:10:16
now he's killing
strangers on the road. But probably what's going on in
his mind is he was desperate.
00:10:22
He is still trying
to escape, and he needs to put
distance between himself and the crime scene.
00:10:28
And the only way
he's going to do that is if he has another
vehicle or gas. And I think in that
moment you are
00:10:34
not thinking about this
individual as a human being. So I think it's
more of a practical,
00:10:40
an instrumental--
as we call it-- murder. NARRATOR: By now, Carissa's
mom, Brenda, had been
00:10:47
airlifted to the hospital. She was on life support. CARISSA SAGRAVES:
I held her hand.
00:10:53
I didn't want
to leave her side. They did inform us that
she was brain dead. There was no way of her
coming out of it.
00:11:01
Seeing her in that bed
was the hardest thing. She didn't look
like my mom anymore.
00:11:08
I just knew that
she couldn't suffer. I just knew that we had
to do something about it.
00:11:14
And, I mean, she
was just in pain. And so it was about a day, and
we took her off life support.
00:11:34
NARRATOR: Just a few
hours after they received the first call, the Rio
Arriba Sheriff's Office
00:11:40
got yet another 911 call. JESSIE WHITTAKER: It
was reported to us that over in the community
of Abiquiu,
00:11:59
a individual was shot
at the Bodes' gas station. NARRATOR: The victim was
identified as a local man.
00:12:08
JESSIE WHITTAKER: Manuel
Serrano was a family man who lived in that community. He worked as a security
guard at the
00:12:15
local Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. He was actually headed
to work at the time that he was shot and killed.
00:12:23
NARRATOR: Investigators
were able to access the store's CCTV. JESSIE WHITTAKER: Here we see
a black Chevy pickup truck
00:12:36
pulling up to pump number six. This is the truck that
was identified as being stolen from Michael Kyte.
00:12:48
At this point,
there's an individual that walks outside with
a straw cowboy hat,
00:12:53
and appears that he is going to
be getting gas for his truck. So here you see a white Jeep
pulling up to pump number four.
00:13:12
And we see Manuel Serrano
exiting his vehicle. And the individual
begins to take notice.
00:13:24
There doesn't appear
to be any sort of communication
between the two of them, but he's watching him.
00:13:29
He's observing everything
that he's doing. Manuel Serrano was still
going about his business.
00:13:40
He's actually cleaning
his windshield. And you see the black
truck, the lights come on
00:13:45
and the driver's side
window goes down. An arm comes out, and the
individual in that truck
00:13:54
discharges his firearm in the
direction of Manuel Serrano. From the ricochets
off the pavement,
00:14:04
we know that the gunshots
are coming from him. Manuel Serrano is seen actually
trying to escape the person
00:14:12
who's shooting at him. As he's running away,
that Black truck is seen pulling out.
00:14:21
This was a targeted attack. No altercation happened. NARRATOR: Manuel Serrano died
of his wounds shortly after.
00:14:33
For investigators,
there could be no doubt what they had witnessed. JESSIE WHITTAKER:
Manuel Serrano
00:14:39
was an innocent
victim who was shot in the back as a cold
blooded murderer by this individual
in the black truck.
00:14:49
We were able to identify the
individual as Damian Herrera. JULIA SHAW: This doesn't
feel like a situation
00:14:59
where he's got nothing else
to lose because the bigger question is, what does he have
to gain from shooting this guy?
00:15:03
This is so random. And so I think there must
be something going on in his own mind that we don't
see where this makes sense,
00:15:13
that shooting this man is a
good outcome because it either protects his escape, it
protects his identity
00:15:20
or maybe he thinks, what if
this is a cop who's after me? Or what if this guy
is out to get me?
00:15:25
So it points to paranoid
delusions for me, or some sort
of perception that we don't have just
watching this footage
00:15:31
that's only in his own mind. TONY LONG: At this point we've
got multiple law enforcement
00:15:40
agencies, Espanola
Police Department, Rio Arriba County
Sheriff's Department, New Mexico State
Police that are
00:15:45
all involved
in essentially this manhunt to find Damian Herrera. [POLICE SIREN] Herrera is speeding down
the highway pretty quickly
00:16:04
after killing Mr Serrano. You've got two law
enforcement officers that are chasing him there.
00:16:17
They're pretty close behind. JESSIE WHITTAKER: Damian
Herrera ends up pulling too far off onto the shoulder.
00:16:26
He goes off
the road, hits a rock and it causes his truck
to flip, and it rolls over.
00:16:35
TONY LONG: At that point
it's a very active situation. There's dust all over the
place, it's very hard to see.
00:16:44
They're looking around, looking
for the driver of the vehicle. They're actually
looking at the truck,
00:16:49
and it isn't until just
a few seconds later that they realize
that the driver is
00:16:54
actually already
out of the vehicle and begins to charge at them. He is wild. He's trying to get guns.
00:17:09
He is just fighting with
everything that he has. Damian Herrera, he's
not a large man,
00:17:27
but it took three
large and very healthy, very strong police
officers and a taser a couple
00:17:34
times to get him
into compliance and to get him into handcuffs. That's how wild
and crazy he was acting.
00:17:49
JULIA SHAW: He's in this
fight or flight mode. And he is full of adrenaline. It seems like a situation that
spiraled from that first shot
00:17:59
and then he just kept
shooting, and he kept running and he kept attacking. And he still in that mode
when he encounters the police,
00:18:05
and he doesn't know
how to shut it off. NARRATOR: Herrera was put
in the back of the police car.
00:18:11
Once he'd calmed down,
he was able to answer the officer's questions. TONY LONG: The police officer
then asked him about what
00:18:57
happened with Mr Kyte. And then the police officer
very artfully asked him, was there anything
else that happened?
00:19:16
He said, no, no, no. That's it, that's it. And then the police officer
asked him about Manuel Serrano.
00:19:36
He had essentially blamed
the killings on everyone else. And it's a story
that is absolutely
00:19:42
wild and unbelievable and just
not supported by any evidence. He was actually even
telling the police officer,
00:19:48
I'm not a violent person. Ask anybody. It was just
an alarming statement to hear out of his mouth,
considering that he
00:19:55
had just killed five people. NARRATOR: Damian Herrera
was charged with five counts of first degree murder.
00:20:07
Further charges arose
from his time in custody. TONY LONG: While
he was incarcerated
00:20:22
at the jail in Tierra Amarilla,
he attacked one of the guards. JULIA SHAW: This just
feels like someone
00:20:37
who isn't of sound
mind, who's making incredibly bad decisions. Maybe he's just
a violent person,
00:20:43
but there's nothing to suggest
from his criminal record or from his own past that
he was a violent, really,
00:20:49
before any of this happened. And so you've got that
first incredibly violent act
00:20:55
of shooting his stepfather
and then a cascade of violence that follows from there.
00:21:03
NARRATOR: Damian
Herrera had, in fact, been struggling with his
mental health for some time.
00:21:10
CARISSA SAGRAVES:
We all just kind of knew that something was wrong. I mean, we could see
the signs, but we never
00:21:17
thought it would get this far. Damian had told me it
would be cool to just see somebody hurt
and in pain, and just to see
00:21:27
them go through something. And I think at that
time I didn't really think of it as a way of him
hurting us, but at the time
00:21:37
I knew it was weird. It was scary. Just, where is
this coming from? And I remember my mom
just reaching out
00:21:45
to my siblings, my older
ones, to just let them know we need to help
him in way-- in a way,
00:21:51
we need to get him to talk. JULIA SHAW: This is
a 21-year-old man, a young man who is in a pretty dark place.
00:22:01
Fantasies of violence
are not totally uncommon, but it is uncommon
to voice to somebody else
00:22:08
that you think that this
is acceptable behavior. And it borders
on something that's
00:22:12
called criminal thinking. So criminal thinking
is a set of beliefs that predisposes people
to engage in crimes,
00:22:20
including violent crimes. And they include things
like rationalization that make it seem like
it's OK to be violent or
00:22:26
aggressive, that say,
if I do bad things or break the law it's because
other people had it coming
00:22:32
or that other people
are out to get me. And so it's the set of beliefs
that put you as the victim
00:22:38
often in these
situations and that make it easier
for you to justify lashing out against others.
00:22:46
NARRATOR: Herrera was found
guilty of the four murders in Rio Arriba
County and sentenced
00:22:51
to four consecutive
life sentences, a minimum of 120 years. The legal process
in Taos County
00:23:01
for the killing
of Michael Kyte is ongoing, because the charge
for the stolen truck
00:23:06
is currently under appeal. CARISSA SAGRAVES: Why,
why would he do this? Why would anyone
think like this?
00:23:15
To this day I still ask why. It was never really answered. Never a question that
he answered on his own.
00:23:22
It's gut wrenching,
is what it is. There's not a day that
goes by I don't think of my parents and Brendan.
00:23:31
I mean, there's times
where I'm doing something and I'm thinking they would
have enjoyed to see this.
00:23:37
It's the hardest thing
to come back to reality when I'm thinking and know that
I can't pick up that phone
00:23:43
and I can't give them a call,
I can't give my mom a hug. There's never
a day that goes by.
00:23:51
I mean, they were
my everything, really. NARRATOR: Damian
Herrera believed he could fight his way
out of the scenario
00:24:13
he'd created in his own mind. JULIA SHAW: Delusions
can take many forms. So they can be very
simple delusion
00:24:24
that you can fight
and flee your way out of a situation that is
actually already impossible,
00:24:30
or it can be a situation
where you see reality through distorted eyes. And so that borders more
on what we consider psychosis
00:24:40
where you have someone
reacting to cues that aren't really there,
but they're perceiving as such.
00:24:49
And so you can have
a delusion that ends up fueling
a crime in itself, which is when you think that
it's me or the other person.
00:24:57
That if I don't kill them,
they will kill me, even if it is completely implausible.
00:25:04
NARRATOR: And it
was another delusion that led to a brutal murder in
the cold mountains of Colorado.
00:25:19
In the West of Colorado
is Gunnison County. SKYE WELLS: Gunnison are
a very rural community
00:25:29
located in between
two mountain ranges, 7,000 feet above sea level. So there is a lot
of areas that are
00:25:36
inaccessible at certain
times of the year without special equipment,
and don't necessarily have cell
00:25:41
phone or even radio coverage. And so the job can get
quite difficult at times. NARRATOR: On March
7, 2021, police
00:25:52
received a report from
a remote corner of the county. SKYE WELLS: The Sheriff's
Office received a call
00:25:58
about an abandoned vehicle
on Alpine Plateau Road, which is the road
that would lead
00:26:02
to the Arrowhead subdivision. NARRATOR: Deputies made
their way up the snowy trail
00:26:10
to locate the vehicle. SKYE WELLS: It was
a small four door sedan, and it appeared it
had just gotten stuck
00:26:21
in the snow going up the road. Where was the driver
of the vehicle? And why aren't they
the ones calling for help?
00:26:31
NARRATOR: While the deputies
were on the scene, the dispatch center
received another call
00:26:37
from a nearby cabin. [PHONE RINGING] Officers were confronted
with a distressing scene.
00:27:09
SKYE WELLS: Looking
at the body, it was really hard
to tell what the injuries were because there was a large
amount of blood around it.
00:27:15
But the body had some
severe injuries to the head. The scene itself looked like
some sort of altercation
00:27:23
had taken place that
was quite violent. The whole living
room was in disarray. There was a bottle of lighter
fluid on the counter
00:27:40
and the coffee table
was smoldering. It appeared that some kind
of a fire had either started
00:27:48
or somebody intended to start. NARRATOR: In all
the chaos, investigators found a promising lead.
00:27:58
SKYE WELLS: We were able
to find a set of car keys. On those keys was
a tag that had
00:28:05
linked it
to the abandoned vehicle that was called in earlier. NARRATOR: The car
was registered
00:28:12
to 22-year-old Ana Rascon. EMMA VALDEZ: Ana was
the type of person that people tended
to gravitate towards.
00:28:27
She had this smile on her. She had like this light
heart and she was so kind. She did have a temper.
00:28:34
I'm not going to lie,
she did have a temper and she was stubborn, but she
was an amazing person.
00:28:46
NARRATOR: Ana was born
in Grand Junction, Colorado, but she moved back and forth
between the city and
00:28:52
her mother's home of Agua
Prieta in Sonora, Mexico. LUPITA LOPEZ: When she
first came from Mexico,
00:29:01
I remember she hardly
knew any English. She learned it. She picked it up
so quick, so fast.
00:29:08
GIL RASCON AVALOS:
She was really smart. LAURA ADAN: Always posing, and
she always looked cute in pink.
00:29:13
- Really really confident. - A lot of people found
it easy to talk to her. She, for sure, was
the person that you would
00:29:20
feel comfortable going to. LUPITA LOPEZ: She always
had that mother instinct. Like, she was
really nourishing.
00:29:31
NARRATOR: Ana was a devoted
mother who had her first child at the age of 17. EMMA VALDEZ: I knew Ana was
going to be a great mom.
00:29:40
One of her biggest
ambitions was to have that white picket fence life. Having that normal life
where she just kind of took
00:29:49
care of her kids,
everything was good, everything was stable,
that's what she dreamed of.
00:29:57
NARRATOR: Ana later
moved to Rifle, Colorado, to be with a new boyfriend. EMMA VALDEZ: She originally
had moved out there to be
00:30:06
with her daughter's father. She kind of stayed out there
after they split and ended up
00:30:12
finding a job working
at a hotel doing housekeeping, but she was more focused
on raising her kids
00:30:18
and being a mom for her kids. NARRATOR: But life
grew increasingly hard. EMMA VALDEZ: Ana really
started struggling and feeling
00:30:28
the pressure
of being a single mom and doing things on her own. She had overdue bills.
00:30:34
She was in negative,
her bank accounts. She did express,
like, my life's falling apart at this point.
00:30:41
I need some help. NARRATOR: Ana was prescribed
antidepressants and other medication to help
her mental health,
00:30:51
but by 2020, she also
began to self-medicate. EMMA VALDEZ: There were
signs that Ana was using,
00:30:59
but I think as a family, we all
found it very hard to accept. We didn't want to believe that.
00:31:08
Ana felt that she was putting
herself in a dark place, and she wanted to find
a way to get out of it.
00:31:14
She reached out to her
mom and she asked, hey, can you take the kids? Just so I can get into a new
apartment, find a job,
00:31:23
get back on my feet and then
I'll go back for the kids. LARISSA JOHNSON: Ana
loved being a mother,
00:31:29
and so to have to send her
children away, very likely left her feeling depressed,
isolated from her loved ones,
00:31:39
and also probably there was
an element of shame there. And so this cocktail
of emotions, these really
00:31:46
difficult emotions
to carry, they can really set
the stage for someone to start engaging
in unhealthy and
00:31:52
unhelpful coping strategies. But then that means that we can
end up in a cycle of suffering.
00:31:58
So we turn to the drug
use and then our emotional
and our financial pressures, they mount, they grow.
00:32:06
And then we then turn
to the drugs again, and then we fall
into this loop that becomes really difficult
to find our way out of.
00:32:15
NARRATOR: Eventually,
on Friday, March 5, Ana and her mother arranged
that Ana would
00:32:21
drive down to Sonora,
Mexico, to collect her children that weekend. EMMA VALDEZ: Come Sunday,
I get a call from my mom.
00:32:31
And she was like, hey,
have you heard from Ana? Nobody's heard from her. Her phone's off.
00:32:38
Nobody can get
in touch with her. NARRATOR: In Arrowhead,
investigators were taken aback
by the severity
00:32:48
of the victim's injuries. She'd been bludgeoned
around her face and head. Her arm was badly
broken, and she
00:32:57
had several large puncture
wounds in the back of her neck. SKYE WELLS: It was a very
horrific thing that took place.
00:33:11
We found almost an antique
pickaxe of some kind, maybe an ice pickaxe,
something like that.
00:33:18
It was pretty clear that
that was the murder weapon, and it absolutely came
from the residence.
00:33:26
We were able to track down some
photographs of the residence from an earlier time,
and it was actually hanging
00:33:33
on the wall above the door. Through a law
enforcement database, we were able to get
a description,
00:33:41
and we were able
to confirm that the female that was in the house
was, in fact, Ana Rascon.
00:33:51
GIL RASCON AVALOS: I picked up
the phone and she's like, OK, are you sitting down?
00:33:57
And I was like,
OK, don't scare me. Be prepared because I'm
going to say something to you
00:34:03
and it's something bad. My sister just told me
that my sister was gone. I started going crazy.
00:34:17
I didn't even listen
to her anymore. LAURA ADAN: My first
instinct was to go into denial because,
no, that wasn't possible.
00:34:28
And I said-- finally I was
like, well, what happened? Like, what happened with her?
00:34:33
And he's like,
at the moment we're treating this as a homicide,
so it's under investigation.
00:34:41
LUPITA LOPEZ: When
they called me, I started asking questions
like, what the hell.
00:34:46
Where did this happen? How did it all go down? And they did tell
me too, there's
00:34:51
not a lot we can tell you
but whoever did this to her is a monster. And I can tell you
that the way her--
00:35:03
I can tell you that
the way her knuckles were, she defended herself
to the best of her abilities.
00:35:17
EMMA VALDEZ: After the
realization really set in of it was a homicide
investigation, it
00:35:25
just made me think, like, who
would do that to a person who-- especially her? NARRATOR: Outside
the cabin, the snow
00:35:38
revealed further evidence,
footprints leading to and from the property. SKYE WELLS:
The initial size up was
00:35:48
two people had broken into a
house for an unknown reason, and one ended up dead.
00:35:55
We weren't sure how or why
they were in the area. NARRATOR: Over
in Rifle, investigators
00:36:02
were given the names
of people Ana had been known to associate with. One of them was
known to the police.
00:36:10
SKYE WELLS: Jorge
Solis had a bit of a criminal record, mostly
kind of small petty crimes.
00:36:16
A little bit of property crime
but primarily he had drug crimes going on in his record.
00:36:21
NARRATOR: Interviews with
neighbors on the mountain revealed that a man
fitting Solis's description
00:36:26
had been spotted with Ana
by the car early on Saturday morning. Later that day, the same
neighbors spotted the same man
00:36:49
further down the mountain. But this time he was alone. SKYE WELLS: At that point he
became our number one suspect.
00:37:23
NARRATOR: A search
of Ana's vehicle revealed promising leads. SKYE WELLS: In the midst
of that search,
00:37:35
we had located several
receipts from Walmart located in Rifle, Colorado. At that time, CBI
had sent agents
00:37:44
to request surveillance
around the approximate times that we saw on the receipts.
00:37:51
NARRATOR: CCTV showed
Ana with an unknown male. SKYE WELLS: The surveillance
footage around the store
00:37:59
picks them up getting
out of her car, walking into the store. And right as they
walk in the store,
00:38:04
there's a great shot
of the two of them where you can see
most of their faces. NARRATOR: Ana's companion
was wearing the same jacket
00:38:12
and pants described
by the witnesses who saw them on the mountain. Other evidence also linked
him to the crime scene.
00:38:22
SKYE WELLS: The male
seen with Ana Rascon has a very identifiable
baseball cap on.
00:38:30
We then locate this ball
cap inside the vehicle. NARRATOR: The man
was now positively
00:38:40
identified as Jorge Solis. SKYE WELLS: The Walmart
surveillance became a crucial
piece of evidence
00:38:48
because it linked the two
of them together-- which we knew was the last
known person she was with--
00:38:54
and to the car. We see him get in the car
and drive away. How do we go from
a shopping trip
00:39:04
to Walmart to Ana
Rascon's death? NARRATOR: Despite
the breakthrough, the trail now went cold.
00:39:14
SKYE WELLS: 10 days after
the investigation had started, we had no sign, no
word of anybody seeing
00:39:23
or hearing from Jorge Solis. And then we kind
of catch a break. NARRATOR: In Grand
Junction, 95 miles away
00:39:31
from the crime scene,
a member of the public called the police about
a man acting suspiciously.
00:39:42
SKYE WELLS: Officers
with the Grand Junction Police Department
were dispatched to the area.
00:40:12
He says his name is Jay Santos. This officer is not convinced
that this person is being
00:40:18
completely honest with him. One of the officers remembers
reading the bulletin about the warrant we had
for a homicide suspect,
00:40:42
and they're like,
absolutely, this is the guy we're looking for. JULIA SHAW: There's an unease
in this interaction where he's
00:40:57
obviously being a bit cagey. Certainly, psychologically,
he's trying to evade the answers to the questions.
00:41:05
And he's probably trying
to be strategic about it but in the end, he
gets detained anyway.
00:41:12
SKYE WELLS: When
Jorge was picked up by Grand Junction police,
he had a backpack with him.
00:41:18
And we locate several items
that were, without a doubt, inside the cabin. We had contacted
the cabin owner
00:41:26
and she had confirmed they were
in the basement of the house. NARRATOR: Solis's
fingerprint was also found
00:41:35
on a bottle in the cabin. SKYE WELLS: We're
positive this is the man who killed Ana Rascon.
00:41:43
NARRATOR: Agents from
the Colorado Bureau of investigation now
conducted an interrogation.
00:42:14
SKYE WELLS: I think they
got spun up on dope. They're somewhat lost
or not really sure
00:42:21
where they're going. He now starts getting
paranoid that she is a narc. - He has this bizarre story
that he was being set up
00:42:57
and that she had
to be sacrificed. And that sounds to me
like a almost what's called dissociative fugue
when you're not really there
00:43:08
and you're taking drugs. And we know that
they took drugs and that they took
them together.
00:43:14
And you're just somewhere else. You're on a different
planet, and you have your own
thoughts about what's
00:43:20
going on in the world. And it translates
into misperceiving reality in very weird ways.
00:43:56
What's striking
is that he seems to accept that he killed
her at this point, and he isn't really
making an effort
00:44:03
to patch together a plausible
story for the cops. SKYE WELLS: Jorge Solis has
made a conscious decision
00:44:18
to end Ana Rascon's life. Based on the scene we know she
fought, because the house was
00:44:24
torn apart, but he went
from such a violent act to, within hours,
talking to people
00:44:31
on the street nonchalantly
like nothing had happened. That tells you
the kind of man he was.
00:44:40
NARRATOR: Investigators had
enough evidence to charge Jorge Solis with Ana's murder.
00:44:48
On March 3, 2023, he was
sentenced to 42 years in prison following a plea deal. LUPITA LOPEZ: The verdict is
not really what we wanted.
00:45:01
He took that chance
for her to live life, to be a mother to her babies,
and he took that from them.
00:45:12
They need her. And she loved them so much. LARISSA JOHNSON: Ana's story
is a particularly tragic one.
00:45:22
She tried to build a life
for herself and her kids and just struggled, really,
to navigate this world.
00:45:30
She kept falling
on hard times, but I think that she
would constantly show that she had
the passion, the devotion
00:45:38
to be a good mother. She fought right up
until the very end. Even in the face
of senseless violence,
00:45:46
she tried to fight for her life
and the life of her children. GIL RASCON AVALOS: She
was the best sister I had.
00:45:57
And I still remember her
with her good things, not bad things. Trouble things, I still
remember the trouble things
00:46:05
because now they're funny. And I loved her. [AUDIO LOGO] [MUSIC PLAYING]