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Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
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with me as always is a man that knows that when the XFL starts, our ratings go way up. Here is the captain.
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It's because it's crap. It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.
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This week we are happy to be featuring Pavement from Foam Brewers. Pavement is a double India Pale Ale smoothed out
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with some juicy tropical fruit including citrus, mango, and passion fruit. ABV a
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very deliciously dangerous 8.2% garage grade four and a quarter bottle caps out of five. And how about a couple
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of cheers to some of our friends? we like your jib to Timmy from that Green Mountain State.
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And we also have Jamie Gorton currently living at Fort Lee Army base in Virginia. Everyone we just mentioned,
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they went to our website truecrimegarage.com and they helped us out with this week's
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beer fund and for that, we thank you. Yeah, b e e r u n beer r u n beer run. For everything true crime, check out
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truecrimegarage.com and Colonel, that's enough of the business. All right, everybody gather around, grab
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a chair, grab a beer, let's talk some true crime. Murder. That is one of the most common cases
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that we discuss here in the garage. Now, with over 650 episodes of True Crime Garage, we have seen just about
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everything when it comes to the topic of murder. Murder means the manner of someone's
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death is a homicide. The cause of that homicide can vary. We have discussed shootings, stabbings,
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victims who were beaten or bludgeoned to death, some suffocated, drowned, burned,
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or even dragged by a vehicle. The victims themselves are even more drastically different from one another
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than the causes of a homicide. Every case is unique. Every victim is different. Be it an innocent victim or a low-life
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drug dealer. In the end, they are all listed as homicide victims. Most annual crime statistics will
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typically show that the majority of homicides stem from domestic disputes or they are drug-related deaths.
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More than one law enforcement official has told me that often the silver lining is that it is mostly criminals killing
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criminals. But, they will also tell you that no murder is justified. But, there is a phrase or a term
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common amongst law enforcement officials. And that term is true victim. A true victim are the kids, moms, dads,
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brothers, or sisters who either did not know their killers or did nothing to provoke them.
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This week's true crime story would be much easier for us to tell if it were just another criminal killing
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criminal story. But, it is not. This week's story is about one of those true victims.
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Little Rosie Tapia was just 6 years old when she disappeared from her bedroom in
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the middle of the night back in August of 1995. Rosie lived with her family at the
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Hartland Apartments at 1616 Snow Queen Place in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. This was just one of 75 homicide cases
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statewide for the year of 1995. Unfortunately, this was a year that saw a rise in the
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state's homicide numbers. Rosie was taken from her bedroom and dumped into a nearby canal where her
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body was discovered hours later. Her killer has never been arrested. Now, over 27 years later, her family still
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seeks justice. They want an arrest. They want you not to just help, but to solve this horrendous crime.
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From the website whokilledrosie.com, the family is asking for people to come forward with any information that might
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help and be useful in any way. They want to hear from everyone who might have information, but particularly
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if you lived in the Heartland Apartments in 1995, visited the apartments or were in the
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area in the months surrounding the murder, were friends with Rosie or family members,
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had kids who played on the playground there or knew kids who did, were familiar with anyone who lived in
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the apartments, who might have seen someone on the playground or around the area.
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Help us solve this crime. There is a reward of up to $100,000 in Rosie Tapia's case.
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Someone, somewhere has information that can help solve this crime. You may not even know it.
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No fact is insignificant. No detail is too small. If you have any information, please call
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385-258-3313. This number is answered by representatives of the family and not the police.
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Or you can email [email protected]. This is also monitored by family representatives.
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This phone number and email address will be listed in our show notes. Join us as we discuss Rosie Tapia's case
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in detail and talk about some cases that share some commonalities with Rosie's case
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as we search for the man that we call the Barbie Doll Killer. This is the still unsolved homicide case of
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Rosie Tapia and this is True Crime Garage. This was no accident, Captain, but that
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is certainly what police thought that they were responding to when they arrived on the scene in the early
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morning hours of August 13th, 1995. The police responded to a call about a missing little girl. The call came in
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just before 6:00 a.m. So, we have a police car two on their way to an apartment complex.
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Back in 1995, these apartments were called the Hartland Apartments, located at 1616
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West Snow Queen Place. This is a very large, sprawling apartment complex located in the
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Glendale neighborhood, just 4 mi southwest from downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. In the quaint neighborhood of Glendale,
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we have what is currently named Seasons at Pebble Creek Apartments. Now, they say that they provide residents with the
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ease and convenience of a central city with a peaceful environment of a residential community. So, back in 1995,
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Captain, they were listed as the Hartland Apartments. Today, if people want to look them up, they are listed as
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Seasons at Pebble Creek Apartments. These are very nice-looking apartments from what I can see. They have four
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different types of layouts. We're talking one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, all the way up to four bedroom
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apartments. But again, this is a large apartment complex. There's 15 buildings. And in some of these buildings,
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they could vary from 12 units. I saw one unit that I suspect may have up to 30 units. So, a lot of people living in
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this area. Police and law enforcement are going to get a call just before 6:00 a.m., and
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they're going to be on the scene relatively quickly. They're on the scene, they're in the
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apartment and what they are observing is a open window in a child's bedroom. The Venetian blinds have been knocked to
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the floor. Mhm. The screen to the window has been removed and is sitting outside of the
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apartment propped up against the apartment wall. And doesn't it almost have like a pry
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mark on it? Correct. But there's a little bit of confusion when police first arrive on
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the scene. So, the apartment itself is what's referred to as a basement level apartment.
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And there is one window for this bedroom. In the bedroom, we have three children
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sleeping there. We have 6-year-old Rosie Tapia and we have her two younger siblings. This is a brother and sister,
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they're twins. They're about 3 4 years old at the time. Underneath the window from the inside
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of the bedroom, there is a chest which is like a a dresser drawer. When police arrive on the scene, there's a
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bit of a suspicion from the police angle. They're looking at this and they're wondering, could this child have climbed
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up on the chest and then climbed out the window? Yeah, that's a possibility. And went wandering around in the middle
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of the night. Right. Now, the parents are frantic, of course. They are already and have already been
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searching the neighborhood for their little one to no avail. They are telling police,
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"Look, she would not have taken off in the middle of the night." Now, keep in mind, the majority of the time when
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police show up on scene and we have a missing kid, they're usually just not where they should be and kids do wander
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off. Sadly, around 10:00 a.m. a body is discovered in a nearby canal. This is listed as one of those surplus
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canals. So, this surplus canal would be feeding water into the Jordan River. The body that is found is quickly
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identified to be that of little Rosie Tapia. And this is around approximately 10:00 a.m. this morning. So,
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they start looking for her around 6:00, and around 10:00 a.m. the body is discovered, but not discovered by
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police, discovered by a man who was walking or jogging with his dog. And he says that when he first spotted this
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object floating in the canal, Right. he thought that maybe it was a large doll. And this would make some sense
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because she was found floating face down, and she was fully clothed, but only a portion of the body was visible
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from the shoreline. We know this because he alerts police, and it's not until police are over there, and we have other
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people involved that the body is removed from the water. At that time, they very quickly identify
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the body to be that of Rosie Tapia, and they send her off to be examined by the medical examiner. Now, this does not
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change the police suspicions at the time. In fact, it kind of underlines what they had already suspected. And
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they started to think, well, she probably climbed out the window, and for whatever reason, wandered down to this
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canal. Well, and the canal wasn't that far from her apartment. No, we're talking this is approximately
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about a football field to a football field and a half from not just the apartment complex, from their physical
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actual apartment that they lived in. Right now, her body's going to be found further away, but it's very possible
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that she could have climbed out the window, walked down, like you said, not that
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far, had an accident, fell into the canal, and then floated down downstream. Yeah, so we should be clear here because
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I don't know that we're giving a great description of this canal or where the body was found. So, the canal does in
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fact run directly behind the apartment building that Rosie and her family lives in, okay? But, her body
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is found about a football field and a half from that apartment building. So, the canal runs, so her body was found
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south of their apartment complex. The canal does run directly behind it, and it would be a stone's throw, you
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know, um one of us, Captain, could punt a football from her apartment building into this canal.
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Now, if you go south south of South Street, nonetheless, you're going to find her body is about a
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football field to a football field and a half away from her apartment building. So, this is all in very close proximity
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to where she goes missing from. And I can tell you, unfortunately, with personal experience,
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that this type of situation is not incredibly uncommon. In fact, I know of a situation that took place about a year
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and a half ago that is so similar to this, it's haunting. But, in this situation that I'm talking about, the
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girl snuck out in the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning, in fact, left the home,
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and was known to feed the ducks, have a love for feeding the ducks and the fish at a nearby pond. And unfortunately,
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they found her body in the pond later that day, and it was a complete accident. Now, with the removal of
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Rosie's body, police have not changed their stance on it. They're still looking at this as a
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possible accident that the girl willingly left her own apartment in the middle of the night.
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Yeah, because what was going on that day was her parents, Rosie's parents, went out for a dinner and to go dancing and
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she was being watched by her older sister. So, they go out dancing and going out to
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eat and they open up the sister opened up the window just a crack because it was
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hot. So, what law enforcement think is, well, the window was open up a crack, is it
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possible that she decided to leave in the middle of the night and then went down to the canal and accidentally fell
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in and then drowned. What's terrible here, Captain, is after the medical examiner, after they do the
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autopsy, they contact the police and say, "Hang on a second. This is a homicide. The injuries
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sustained by this young girl, we could fully know that one, she was sexually assaulted, and two, this is a
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homicide." Now, the Well, she was also badly beaten. The cause of death is listed as
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drowning, but due to the injuries and due to the sexual assault, the medical examiner could confidently say that this
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is a homicide. So, now we have police shifting gears here. And you did say badly beaten.
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You did say badly beaten and that is true. The difficult thing here, though, is I've seen this reported so many
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different ways. And it's reported that there was some kind of blunt force trauma to the body.
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And it's also been reported that when they pulled her from the canal, that it was not clear and would not have been
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obvious to anyone to switch this from an accident to a homicide based off of what they were
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seeing when they pulled her from the canal. It was only once the medical examiner did the autopsy that they had
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to shift gears. Yeah, my my guess is that there was blunt force trauma to her skull and they
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probably just weren't able to see that due to her hair and whatever. Well, we don't know for certain because
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they've never released the official results of the autopsy. Again, it gets to be difficult because a
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large amount of those injuries could have been covered up by her clothing. She was found fully clothed when they
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pulled her from the canal. Let's go through this timeline before the murder and leading up to the body
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being found in a little more detail. Well, like you always say, the timeline matters, but the devil is in the
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details. As the captain said, we have Roberto and Lewin, who are the parents of 6-year-old
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Rosie Tapia. They are going out on a date night on that night. They have their daughter They have their daughter
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Amelia, who is 18. She will be babysitting Rosie and the 4-year-old twins Robert and Angelica for the night.
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Now, around 7:00 p.m., Amelia drops Rosie off at the park. This park is it's referred to as a park
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on some online websites. However, this is simply a small playground area that exist inside the apartment complex and
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is relatively close to the building that Rosie lives in. And so, she takes Rosie
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to the playground area and does leave her there, which is a little surprising to
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me given that Rosie's only 6 years old. It's not so surprising giving the very close proximity to the apartment
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building that they live in. And again, this could be part of some kind of routine.
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She drops the girl off there, returns to the apartment where she has the two younger
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kids. And then we have a person who would later be labeled as a good Samaritan because
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they've not identified this individual who returns Rosie to the apartment. This takes place within about 15 minutes
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of Amelia taking Rosie to the playground area. This good Samaritan is a male. And he arrives at the doorstep of
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Rosie's apartment with Rosie in his arms. He tells 18-year-old Amelia that Rosie was kicked in the back while
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on the slide, that she had slid down the slide and another kid comes down right behind her kicking her in the back. Very
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likely an accident, yet Rosie is injured from this, and so this guy says, "I carried her home to return her to you."
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Amelia thanks the man. She's a little surprised by the events, but thanks him and informs him that she
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will look and make sure that there's no severe injuries to Rosie. The weird thing here, and this is always
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been a strange part of this story, and I don't know what to make of it, Captain.
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I'm I'm going to be perfectly upfront honest with everybody regarding this scenario. According to
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Amelia the man who she did not know The good Samaritan. says, "Goodbye, Rosie." Right.
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And what Amelia would later say is she does not know this man. She asked Rosie "Did you tell this man your name?"
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And Rosie tells her no, she did not. Amelia is uncertain how this man would have known where Rosie lived. Again,
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this is a large apartment complex. And this is not the only playground in this apartment complex.
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Rosie could have lived in any of those apartments. Yeah, I think it's odd, obviously, that
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he knows where Rosie lives, but not so odd that might he might have heard her name
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being called to her on the playground or when he went to attend to her when she got injured. Did somebody say her name
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at that point? To add further suspicion to this story, Amelia says a couple of things. One,
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Rosie was not crying when the man brought her carried her to the door, which she thought was a little
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surprising. Why wouldn't you just walk the 6-year-old? Two, she could find no sign of an injury
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on Rosie and Rosie told her that she was not hurt. Now, the reason why I say I don't know what
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to make of this is because I think we have two sides to the story. One, we have Amelia's story where she's
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saying there's these parts of the story that raised my suspicion level. And especially, of course, after we later
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learn that Rosie was abducted and murdered, of course, she's going to be suspicious
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of these different items. I've had a lot of interaction with 5, 6, and 7-year-old children,
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and I think anybody that has, talking to you parents out there, I think you'll back me up on this.
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Children do not always tell the truth, especially when they're trying to get something they want. And we've all
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experienced how much fun it is to take a child from the playground when they do not want to leave, when they're not
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ready to leave yet. they will throw a fit, they will make up every excuse in the book why they should be able to stay
00:23:07
there. Maybe Rosie was in fact kicked in the back and this guy was just trying to
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help out. Maybe she did say and tell this man where she lived. Maybe she did tell this
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man her name. And when questioned by her older sister, thought that maybe I'll get in trouble if I Maybe
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I've done something wrong. Yeah, because she could have been told multiple times by her parents, her
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family members, her teachers, don't talk to strangers. And so then she was hurt and the
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stranger comes up and maybe she gave the stranger information and now she feels bad about it.
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One thing we do know for certain is Amelia does not know who this man is. So that's interesting and that's
00:23:48
insightful. But at the end of the day, you could have three different scenarios. You could have a scenario
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where this man labeled as a good Samaritan could be responsible for her disappearing in the middle of
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the night and was watching the girl and learned information about her. One investigator had something very
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interesting to say about the scenario, saying that taking the girl to the apartment could
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have been a bit of a surveillance gathering intel situation for this perpetrator if in fact this man was
00:24:25
involved in Right. the abduction of Rosie Tapia. Yeah. Maybe he was carrying her there to one
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verify where she lived and to kind of see once the door opens up who all's in the apartment. What do we got going on?
00:24:41
Verify that it is her apartment. So that's an interesting angle. But you could also have the angle where this guy
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was just trying to help and nothing nefarious was going on with the situation. The problem here, Captain,
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remains with this individual being unidentified even all of these years later, well, it gets quite complicated. It gets
00:25:01
difficult to sort it out. And police move on from this good Samaritan man, and we'll discuss that in
00:25:08
a bit. Because at one point, they thought they had identified this man. So, in our timeline, before Rosie goes
00:25:18
missing, that brings us now to 7:30 or a little thereafter. This is when Amelia prepares dinner for Rosie
00:25:27
and her two younger siblings. It's bath time after that, and then we're going to
00:25:32
get everybody ready for bed. And again, this playground situation, Captain, sounds to me like it was
00:25:39
commonplace that she would go to the playground leading up to dinner, bath, and then bedtime. Bedtime
00:25:48
that night for Rosie and her two siblings is listed at 9:00 to 9:30 p.m. Let's get back to the abduction and
00:25:56
murder of Rosie Tapia after this quick beer break. All right, we are back. Cheers, mates.
00:26:32
Cheers to you, Captain. Let's go through a story that ran in the Salt Lake City Tribune, September 10th, 1995, because
00:26:41
this provides us with the most thorough breakdown of our timeline here. And we're going to go back and revisit some
00:26:48
things as we go through this timeline. So, before the murder, Rosie's mother, Luween Tapia, and her father, Roberto
00:26:57
Tapia, went dancing at the La Frontera Cafe and Bar the night of Saturday, August 12th,
00:27:05
1995. As we said earlier, their 18-year-old daughter, Amelia, would be babysitting
00:27:11
Rosie and the four-year-old twins, Robert and Angelica. Amelia says that she put the three children to bed
00:27:18
between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. that night. She left the window open because it was hot in their basement apartment.
00:27:28
I think we need to describe this basement apartment for those that have not experienced this because this was
00:27:34
something that was a little new to me. Right. So, I've reviewed photos and I've spoke
00:27:40
to people that have visited the crime scene. And what they were able to tell me and
00:27:46
what we are able to see from these photos is that the basement apartment is kind of what it says, where a portion of
00:27:54
the the apartment itself is below ground level. But a portion of it is above ground
00:28:00
level. So, in this particular building, Captain, you have apartments on three levels. So, they stack them three high,
00:28:09
basically. You have a basement level, you have a mid-level, and then you have a top level.
00:28:15
And in this apartment, they have two bedrooms in Rosie's apartment. It's one of the two-bedroom units.
00:28:22
Right. So, we have the parents sleeping in one bedroom, and the other bedroom we have
00:28:28
three of the children. We have Rosie and her two younger twin siblings. The 18-year-old daughter, Amelia,
00:28:39
was sleeping on the couch. So, Amelia lived there for a good period of time and then moved out and went and stayed
00:28:45
with another relative for an extended period of time. And came back to stay. And it sounds to
00:28:52
me, Captain, like this was scheduled to be somewhat of a brief stay. I don't know if brief stay meant weeks or
00:29:00
months, but it's always been reported as she was going to be living there briefly. So,
00:29:06
just sleeping on the couch now that she's back in their only two-bedroom apartment. The basement level. So, if
00:29:15
you are inside this bedroom, inside of Rosie's bedroom. Right. You and I, Captain, were over 6-ft tall,
00:29:22
you're taller than I am. If we were in there, We're giants. the window would start at about our chest level.
00:29:31
If you were standing outside of the apartment, the window to that bedroom is only like
00:29:36
6 to 8 in off of the ground. Uh-huh. So, if somebody came in there in the middle of the night, like we all think
00:29:44
happened, this did not require a bladder or any method of getting up to get into the
00:29:52
window. You're actually getting down and crawling in. Right. So, you don't need a ladder to
00:29:57
get up into the window, but when you're coming down from the window, that conveniently you have that chest
00:30:04
there. And so, you'd have to have something to step down on cuz it'd be quite a quite a
00:30:10
long drop. When Luween and Roberto got home that night, they get home around 2:30 a.m.
00:30:17
Luween says that she then went to the children's bedroom. She kisses them gently, and she pulled the window
00:30:23
closed. Remember, it's in the up position when she arrives. She pulls it closed, but this is not one
00:30:29
of those windows, Captain, that we see typically today where it has the latch on the top of the bottom pane,
00:30:37
where you close it and then you twist it or turn it and it seals it and it locks
00:30:41
it, and know it's locked. Right. This is those ones that you saw a lot in the '90s, where they had the locks on
00:30:48
the sides. Where you would push them in, open up the window, and then when you would pull
00:30:53
it closed, it you would hear it click, and it would lock, and it would latch. Great sound effects.
00:30:59
Now, Luween says that while she pulled it closed, she pulled it closed, and she did not pull it tight.
00:31:07
She was afraid that the clicking of that lock would wake up the children. Right.
00:31:12
So, as far as she's concerned, the window is closed, but not in the locked position. She also says
00:31:20
that she closed the curtains to that window at that time. Now, here is where she becomes
00:31:29
incredibly concerned. Because at 5:30 a.m., she wakes up. She's walking through the living room,
00:31:36
but to her surprise, she can see that the children's door to the bedroom is now shut.
00:31:43
Mhm. She left it open when she went to bed. She goes inside the bedroom. She immediately notices that Rosie is
00:31:52
gone, and the window is open, the screen is removed, and the Venetian blinds knocked to the floor.
00:32:00
From my understanding of this crime scene here, Captain, it is exactly what like what you said.
00:32:06
There was some kind of marking on this screen that was placed outside of the apartment
00:32:13
window, and now leaning up against the apartment wall. There was markings on this screen that indicated that somebody
00:32:19
used some kind of tool to pry the screen from the window. What's terrifying here, not only would
00:32:27
this intruder need to climb down and use this chest as a stepping stool into the children's
00:32:37
bedroom, but the positioning of the beds and where all the kids were sleeping, this individual would have had to crawl
00:32:44
over one of the other children to get to Rosie. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of the
00:32:50
Madeleine McCann case where you have multiple kids in a room, but only one of them was abducted. And it's probably
00:33:00
because if you if you have only one individual, you can only carry so many children.
00:33:06
But the the marking on the screen it could be a nothingburger in the sense of that
00:33:14
Rosie's sister would have her boyfriend sneak into that room, and he would use the same window. So, is it possible that
00:33:22
these pry marks are from earlier events of the boyfriend sneaking into that window?
00:33:28
Regardless of how they got the screen off, we know that the screen was removed. Intruder climbs into the
00:33:35
window, crawls over another child to get to Rosie. What's difficult here though, Captain, I
00:33:41
can see reasons why I would suspect maybe two persons were involved. I would like to know if they have any clue or
00:33:50
any evidence to suggest how the intruder left the apartment. Because just because
00:33:56
they gained access to the apartment through the child's bedroom, does not mean that they had to exit that way as
00:34:03
well. What we do have as far as evidence goes, there are fingerprints on this screen. As the captain pointed out,
00:34:12
these could be the offenders fingerprints. These could be maintenance workers fingerprints.
00:34:20
Could be the boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend. ex-boyfriend. The big piece of evidence here that we
00:34:26
have in her bedroom is on that chest. There was a towel. And there's a footprint in the towel.
00:34:33
That's a bit of a difficult thing. You're exactly right. They found a partial footprint in the room in that
00:34:40
bedroom. The difficult thing is how it's reported. It's been reported a couple different ways. One on the towel
00:34:47
on that chest leading up to the window. The other reports state that it was on the blinds,
00:34:53
that it was found on the blinds. Now, could we have two partial footprints in the apartment? Possibly.
00:35:00
Right. Or somebody's just got some information wrong. The problem too with this case,
00:35:06
Captain, that I don't love and I think that the Salt Lake City police have done a good job working this case that
00:35:14
they've at least spent a lot of time and resources on the case. I think that there's some crowd sourcing that they
00:35:21
could be doing that they are not participating in. There There's a There's information. There's meat on the
00:35:27
bone here in this case, but they don't want to release hardly anything on Rosie's case.
00:35:33
Well, the biggest problem right away is the size of the apartment complex and how many people you have living within
00:35:40
that small area. So, all those individuals become suspects. Upon discovering her daughter is
00:35:47
missing, Luween then calls 911 and phones family members. And we have family members and police
00:35:55
both on the scene who arrived to help to search. This is before dawn. We have police combing the banks of the Jordan
00:36:02
River and they drove through the neighborhood, of course. Family members posted flyers. They're already posting
00:36:08
flyers at nearby convenience stores with Rosie's pictures. So, we have two things
00:36:14
going on. The police, they're thinking maybe this girl had wandered off and immediately the parents are of the
00:36:22
idea that she might have been abducted. Now, just by posting flyers doesn't mean
00:36:27
that they believe 100% that she's abducted just straight up missing. But, what happens is they spring into
00:36:35
action very quickly. you have to applaud them for that. She has her brother or brother-in-law
00:36:40
who's at Kinko's nearby making flyers around 8:00 a.m. that morning. And he goes out with the sister-in-law
00:36:48
and immediately starts posting these flyers everywhere that they can. Unfortunately, this is all for naught
00:36:55
because a man by the name of Gustavo Abarca was jogging with his dog and at 10:15
00:37:02
a.m. according to this report, spots Rosie's body floating in a surplus canal at the 1900 block of West and 1200 block
00:37:11
of South. Let's get into this investigation or at least the information that's been released in this
00:37:17
investigation. The autopsy report was completed within a couple of days of finding the little
00:37:25
girl and officially listed the cause of death as drowning. But, the case was ruled a homicide as we said earlier
00:37:31
because trauma to Rosie's body would indicate that this is a homicide. Now, they state that trauma to Rosie's body
00:37:38
was limited to wounds of a sexual nature in this report. She was not stabbed nor
00:37:43
was she beaten according to this report which is a little weird because a lot of
00:37:47
the other reports do list blunt force trauma. Yeah, the majority of the reports that
00:37:53
you read on this case list blunt force trauma. So, why wouldn't we think that there's trauma there?
00:38:01
That that makes no sense to me. Again, we can't prove one way or another because the autopsy report has never
00:38:08
been revealed to the public. We can simply go off of what persons who have reviewed
00:38:15
those documents and what their statements are to the media. Well, then the other question becomes
00:38:20
because she's found in water and we know water is one of the it's a it's a horrible thing
00:38:27
to find a body in water because it washes away so much evidence. So with this sexual assault, you you
00:38:35
wonder if they have DNA of the murderer. They've always been cagey about the DNA
00:38:40
and we'll get into that as we continue along, but looking for physical evidence, we know the investigators
00:38:47
publicly have stated that they look for signs on Rosie's mouth to see if it was taped shut to silence her.
00:38:55
They found no signs of her mouth being taped closed. They wondered if the killer may have
00:39:00
used chloroform, a clear liquid that if inhaled can leave a victim unconscious. Unfortunately, the the river water would
00:39:10
have washed away traces of that chemical. This is per the pathologist who performed the autopsy.
00:39:18
And then as far as the family goes, this report, again, this is coming out less than a month after the homicide. And
00:39:26
this report states that the Tapia family members have been cooperating fully with
00:39:31
police. They have provided fingerprints to match against those lifted from Rosie's window and have even found clues
00:39:39
in Rosie's room that they provided to police. Yeah, if you're in law enforcement, you
00:39:44
have to look at this case from the inside out. So you want to start going through the timeline of her her father,
00:39:50
her mother, her older sister. And then you wonder were there visitors to the older sister
00:39:58
and is she is she telling the full story about what her events were that night? This gets difficult, too. Unfortunately,
00:40:05
the oldest sister, Amelia, has passed away. She passed away just a couple years ago.
00:40:12
So she was involved in this case and she was up front and center for a lot of the
00:40:17
media attention that was given to this case. Let's go through the reports first because there were reports that came out
00:40:23
years later that had some speculation in it that Amelia may have thrown a party or had a gathering
00:40:30
at the apartment that night before Rosie goes missing. The speculation was that maybe one of the attendees of that
00:40:39
gathering took the girl. There's a couple problems with that. Well, first off, we have the mother who
00:40:47
says that she physically saw and kissed the girl goodnight when she arrived at 2:30 in the morning.
00:40:53
Right, and there's no reason not to believe her. Also, we have police that went on the
00:40:57
record after this rumor starts going about and made its way to the paper. The police, they're not very up front and
00:41:03
center about a lot of things in this case, but one thing they were was regarding this this air quotes party
00:41:09
that did not happen. They said they they spoke to a lot of people. They could find no evidence that such a party took
00:41:17
place. Now, if somehow this party managed to happen and nobody was aware of it that
00:41:24
the police found no evidence and mom and dad does not believe that a party happened, if it managed to fly that far
00:41:30
under the radar, well, then that would mean that if one of the attendees is responsible, then they came back and
00:41:37
entered the apartment through the window. They didn't take the girl after on their way out the door from the
00:41:43
party. Because Leween tells us the girl was there. She was present at 2:30 in the
00:41:49
morning when I arrived home. Now, police have said emphatically that the time frame that they are concerned
00:41:57
about here in Rosie Tapia's case is that 2:30 a.m. window to 5:30 a.m. window. We
00:42:04
got a 3-hour time frame that they are concerned of and they believe that that is the time
00:42:11
frame in which Rosie Tapia was abducted. I wish that they were able to narrow it
00:42:17
down even more than that 3 hours, but that is what we are currently left with. Right.
00:42:23
Now, as far as eyewitnesses go, we have some and their stories are a little difficult because some of these people
00:42:30
come forward years later, but one potential witness statement that we have comes from
00:42:39
Robert, Rosie's little brother, who was asleep in the same bedroom as her that night.
00:42:45
Right. He gave a statement that he may have seen someone in their room that night.
00:42:51
Yeah, but this statement wasn't made right away. He tells this to the parents, who then
00:42:56
relay this to the police. Now, I'm a little hesitant to report on this because it's been reported so many
00:43:04
different ways that I have a bit of a a lot of question marks about this statement.
00:43:11
First off, it's coming from a 4-year-old child. We do not know exactly what he saw
00:43:18
because the reports vary. The other thing, too, could some of this be from his imagination after the fact because
00:43:26
now he's terrified and likely having nightmares because he slept in the same room where his sister was abducted from.
00:43:34
Well, the statement was something that there was a bearded man that told him to go back to sleep.
00:43:38
Bearded man that told him to go back to sleep. It makes sense that Robert would have a statement compared to his twin
00:43:46
sister because that was the bed. Robert's bed was the one that the perpetrator would have had to climb over
00:43:53
to get to Rosie. But just so we're clear, you're saying that this statement was made
00:43:59
immediately to police where I thought this was made years later. The way it's been the from my
00:44:06
understanding, I should I should say that. Because it's been reported different ways. My understanding is that
00:44:12
the child told mom and dad about this relatively quickly in the investigation. I believe it was within days of them
00:44:22
finding Rosie's body. And that the parents relayed this statement to the police.
00:44:29
Now, I spoke with somebody that's very close to the case and very close to the family. And they gave me a much
00:44:36
different story than what's been reported. Because I asked, I said, was there any witness statements? Was there
00:44:42
anything that the other two siblings may have seen that night? And I was told that Robert did say that
00:44:50
he saw a man in their room. I said, was there anything distinctive about the individual that he saw? Was there any
00:44:58
identifiers that the child was able to provide regarding the man that he may have seen in the room that night?
00:45:05
And this individual told me that the man Robert reported that the man had hair on
00:45:10
his arms. Nothing about a beard. So, while a beard might be helpful, I think hair on your arms would be much
00:45:20
less helpful as most people have hair on their arms. One thing that was a little
00:45:25
bit of a speed bump though was that Robert referred to this man as the coco man.
00:45:33
Which I think was misinterpreted by police. That we could be dealing with a person
00:45:39
of color, possibly an African-American man. Right. However, in Spanish culture, the coco
00:45:46
man is similar to the bogeyman. Right. It has nothing to do with the color of an individual.
00:45:53
Well, I think it would also be very difficult in the dark. This murderer is climbing over the bed, maybe his arms
00:46:00
are close to Robert at the time, so that's why he saw the hair, but maybe that's why he can't find couldn't see
00:46:07
other details because it's dark in that room. And I don't want to question a victim
00:46:13
here, and I believe this little boy is simply trying to help. But, it also could be simply put that
00:46:21
he's had some nightmares since the situation and tells parents, "I saw the boogeyman. I saw the
00:46:26
bad man that took my sister." Yeah, cuz the one of the reports I was reading stated that there was no
00:46:33
eyewitnesses or no credible eyewitnesses initially, and that the the twin siblings had nothing to report to
00:46:42
police. But again, you know, that's why we have to dive into multiple reports because
00:46:48
sometimes it's just bad reporting. The other thing to keep in mind though, too, is that we are dealing with the
00:46:54
situation where nobody knows 100% what happened for a couple of days. It wasn't until the conclusion of the
00:47:02
autopsy, which took a couple days after the body was recovered, to make this determination of homicide.
00:47:09
Well, then we also have a eyewitness that saw a a teenager by the canal. Yes, this person that was seen by the
00:47:17
canal is later referred to as wet pants man. Because the witness says that they saw
00:47:25
this person, the witness was up early that morning, was outside, and says that they saw a truck, a white
00:47:34
truck, Right. and the truck drives off, and then later sees a person who we're calling wet pants man,
00:47:44
and they describe this individual as a Hispanic male with slight build, possibly 16 to 17 years of age with
00:47:55
short dark hair. And the eyewitness is a neighbor of the Tapias. Yeah, I I I believe that first uh
00:48:05
they were stating, "Okay, he's wearing a white shirt. He wear He's wearing multi-colored pants." But as they got
00:48:11
closer, they're like, "Oh, that's not multiple colored pants. Just the bottom of his pants are wet."
00:48:17
Meaning that he probably was in the canal at some point. Which is interesting because that's one
00:48:23
of the few facts that comes out about the autopsy. The The investigators are stating that they
00:48:30
have evidence that she wasn't thrown from the shore into the Surplus Canal. That she was held down and drowned in
00:48:40
the water. So, this is going to make a lot of sense when we go through some other facts of that day. After they
00:48:46
recover the body, police and search teams are still doing the hard work. They're still trying to piece everything
00:48:53
together because they need to know the full story of what happened. So, they bring out
00:48:58
bloodhounds to try to discern where this girl entered the water. Right. Mind you, they're still under the
00:49:06
impression that there's a possibility that this is just simply an accident. That she wandered off and went into the
00:49:12
water. Now, the bloodhounds are unable to hit on anywhere providing them a location of
00:49:19
where the girl may have walked into the water. Interesting. So, this would go back to things that
00:49:25
we've reviewed in other cases. Right? Often times they say when when dogs follow a scent
00:49:33
and then they stop, especially when that scent leads them to the edge of a road, once they stop,
00:49:39
that's an indicator to police and investigators that the victim then got into a vehicle and the vehicle drove
00:49:46
off. Here, we have the bloodhounds unable to tell us where the girl went into the
00:49:53
water. And based off of what they're saying about the autopsy, that she was held down in the water,
00:50:00
that indicates that the perpetrators in the water with the victim. It also indicates to me, based off of the lack
00:50:07
of information from the scent dogs, that the perpetrator carried her into the water.
00:50:14
Yeah, which would make a lot of sense. And And but first of all, yeah, I hate that we call him what,
00:50:18
Pantsman? Cuz that was my nickname in kindergarten. And if peeing your pants is cool, then consider me Miles Davis.
00:50:26
But yeah, I I think if anybody wants to go online, there is a map of the apartment complex and this
00:50:35
canal. And the canal doesn't run, you know, parallel or perpendicular. It's coming at an angle.
00:50:42
So, where this eyewitness was seen, or roughly where he was seen, is the closest entrance point to the canal from
00:50:54
the apartment complex. Now, she's found a little bit further down, but you would
00:50:58
expect that once she's in that canal, that she would have moved around a little bit.
00:51:04
Captain, we keep citing this article here. And I want to point something out here.
00:51:10
There's some disappointing angles to this case and this investigation. I was a little shocked because if you
00:51:18
get online today and you hunt Rosie Tapia, there is Captain's favorite word, a plethora.
00:51:26
Would you say I have a plethora? I would say we have a a plethora of stories regarding Rosie's case today as
00:51:34
we sit in 2023. However, back in 1995, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000, I can't count above 2000, so we'll stop
00:51:47
there. Okay. There was not a plethora. In fact, there were very few local newspaper articles regarding this case.
00:51:57
There is one though that is key and paramount to our storytelling. And that is the one that we referenced already.
00:52:05
It's the September 10th, 1995 Salt Lake Tribune article. And guess what? It was written by your boy Joshua B. Good.
00:52:15
Parents out there, if your last name is good, you should always name your son Related to Johnny B. Goode.
00:52:20
Yeah. Middle name Benjamin. Fits every single time. Now, this article is interesting because there's not a
00:52:28
whole lot of information. There's not a whole lot of articles that come out. In fact, this is just simply one of a few
00:52:36
that ran for the first 5 years locally in this case. But this article itself is multiple pages.
00:52:45
It's pretty in-depth. It's pretty detailed. And it's pretty thorough. One thing I loved about this newspaper
00:52:53
article, and it had I been reading it in September of 1995 when the article came
00:52:58
out, I would have had high hopes to solve this case. Because they brought in a guy named
00:53:05
Kenneth Lanning from the FBI. And in the article, they state that the victim was
00:53:11
thrown into the river. Of course, later we would learn from future information that comes out that the victim was
00:53:16
actually held down. And we just went through the whole scenario of why we believe she would have been carried in
00:53:23
to the canal, going along with this witness statement of wet pants man. The article states that the FBI was
00:53:31
working on a psychological profile of the killer. That the FBI would be pouring over
00:53:36
recent burglary reports. They would be reviewing recent paroled child molesters that were paroled in the
00:53:44
state of Utah. The article goes on to state and remind us all that child abductions by
00:53:49
strangers are rare, only about 1% of kidnappings a year fall into that category.
00:53:56
And they also point out that entering a child's home to abduct the child through
00:54:01
a window is even more uncommon. Well, I know that there's been some criticism of this investigation, but I
00:54:08
always like it when they ask for help and we got the FBI, the MF FBI. And it's not just any agent.
00:54:17
We have Kenneth Lanning there. Right. And as said, had I been reading this article 1995, I would have had high
00:54:23
hopes that this thing would have been solved because Kenneth Lanning is extremely capable and experienced at
00:54:30
solving this type of crime. He's brought in to review the burglary reports, review the recent parolees in
00:54:38
the state of Utah. He's going to go through the crime scene, he's going to go through the police report.
00:54:44
In fact, we recommended one of his books before in a recommended segment on this
00:54:50
very show. His book is titled Love Bombs and Molesters. Bombs and molesters were
00:54:56
two of his uh areas of expertise during his time with the FBI. The [ __ ] FBI. Unfortunately, a couple things happened
00:55:05
here, Captain. We're told by law enforcement that there was a psychological profile, an offender
00:55:12
profile that was put together by the FBI, by the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI.
00:55:19
That profile's never been released to the public. It's not uncommon to not have that.
00:55:25
Which is great, think about it. Some of our tax dollars go to the FBI, right? Well, yes, and to the the law
00:55:34
enforcement agency investigating the top two. Right. So so we have a a 6-year-old that was abducted and
00:55:40
sexually assault possibly brutally beaten and drown. And for like you said, probably forcibly
00:55:49
drowned in this canal. So, we should have a community that's going, "Hey, we we we want this solved."
00:55:58
And and not just for the justice of her family and the justice of the community, but the safety
00:56:05
of our community and the safety of our children. And you guys did a profile and you guys don't even want to tell us
00:56:11
about it. Yeah, and to so to back up the FBI on this situation, they had very minor involvement in the
00:56:19
Rosie Tapia case. And we're being told that there was a profile that was provided to police from
00:56:25
the FBI. That statement comes from the police. The choosing to not release that profile
00:56:33
comes from the police, the investigating agency that's in charge you guys for? of the case. Now, I want I want to
00:56:40
defend everybody here. I think that it is a bit of a misstep to not release some of the information from
00:56:46
a profile. In fact, that's actually what the public sees most of the time. There's been profiles done on multiple
00:56:53
killers throughout the years and the profiles have never been released to the public. There's also been profiles done
00:56:59
on killers where they release a portion of the profile. I can see without going into great detail here, Captain, I can
00:57:08
see reasons why you would not want to release the profile in its entirety because of things that I suspect may be
00:57:16
in the profile. However, I think that there are things that you could release to the public that would help your
00:57:23
investigation. I think that there are things in that profile that once released to the public could hurt the
00:57:28
investigation. So, I get it, but I also think that you could release a portion of that profile.
00:57:34
One thing that caught my eye in that article in particular was that can that the FBI and agent Landing would be
00:57:44
reviewing and pouring over recent burglary reports. The reason why I thought that was
00:57:50
interesting was because given the nature of this crime. We know there was an intruder. We know somebody came into the
00:57:56
home and removed the victim from the home. And she's later found dead. When we spoke with retired FBI agent Jeffrey
00:58:05
Rineck, he explained to us that it's very common to find serial rapist or abductors
00:58:16
through these burglary reports. Because often times they will get arrested for what is misinterpreted
00:58:25
as a potential burglary. They break into the home and the homeowner is able to stop them
00:58:34
or police arrive on the scene and catch the assailant fleeing from the home and the individual's arrested and
00:58:44
charged with burglary. Yeah, or it's criminal escalation. You have peeping Toms that decide that they
00:58:50
want to then start entering homes and then once they're entering homes and they then
00:58:56
it's more likely once they get comfortable with entering the homes that they would then abduct a victim.
00:59:03
Correct, but you're looking for somebody that's already past that escalation. If
00:59:08
If that is the If If that's the route that this criminal behavior took. What I'm simply saying is what Jeffrey
00:59:17
Rineck was saying was that often times these individuals who have already escalated to that are picked up on
00:59:23
burglary charges because what do they have to do to carry out the rape or the abduction? They have to enter the home.
00:59:31
And when they are arrested, it's misinterpreted their intent for being in the home as burglary. So, very
00:59:40
interesting that they poured over this, but again, in this situation with the paroled child molesters from the state
00:59:47
of Utah, as well as these burglary reports, we don't get any follow-up information.
01:00:06
Want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage. If you're looking for the first 50 episodes, those are now
01:00:13
only available on our website store. So, check those out. Thanks for joining us. So much more
01:00:20
to get to in this case. Join us back here in the garage. Same bat time, same bat channel. And until then, be good, be
01:00:27
kind, and don't litter.