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foreign [Music] foreign garage wherever you are whatever you were doing thanks for listening I'm your
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host Nick and with me as always is a man who knows you don't go swimming with Phil Collins he is the captain thank you
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thank you thank you it's good to be seen and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend
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[Music] today we are drinking Magic Hat number nine not quite pale ale this is a sort
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of dry sort of crisp and refreshing not quite pale ale with notes of fruit and floral hop bitterness garage grade three
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and a quarter bottle caps out of five and here are some people that I would like to think that as Drew Barrymore
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would say are truly magical first up we have kitty and Broad Ripple Indiana and a big shout out to Katie in Brooklyn New
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York next up Captain we have a cheers it's going out to Robert in Bay St Louis Mississippi on a big we like your jib to
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cat meow an Adelaide Australia and here's the cheers to Jennifer in Newtown Connecticut who says she has listened to
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every episode of True Crime garage and every episode of off the Record and last but certainly not least we have Jill and
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her son in Gardner Maine mean cheers to everyone who went to truecrime garage.com and contributed to this
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week's beer [ __ ] yeah I stopped the show right now and go to the website because it is time not only can you
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support the show but you get something in return we have the pre-order going on for ban the tan sedan and for our more
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talented listeners keep listening and go to the website and check out the new the
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new t-shirt I'll tell you what Captain look it's just a good way to support the show but you get something in return we
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did ban the van the van ban the camper we did the creepy camper creepy camper and now ban the tan sedan which out of
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the three this one's my favorite I love all three of them but this one's my favorite make sure you check it out at
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truecrime garage.com is that enough of the business no the funny thing is we had a listener one time say I drive a
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white van What's your deal and I said it's just a joke anyway oh I thought you guys were like serious I'm
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like no it's just a joke just a joke and that is enough of the business all right everybody gather
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around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] thank you [Music]
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foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] each evening as the day Slips Away
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and the sun slides down the West sky we lock our doors we put our children to bed
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there is a sense of calm and safety as we turn off our lights count those sheep and dream of what's to come
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but sometimes evil slips into our home out of the night and past the locked doors
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sometime in the small hours of June 6th 1986 that is just what happened a sleeping child was awakened by a
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shadowy figure that entered the bedroom the room was almost totally dark but still
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she could see something what was it who was it the terrified child watched in silence
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as a man slowly approached the bed now he was standing right next to her still sleeping sister
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the man very carefully lifted the little sister up turned and walked out was this real the girl thought was this
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some kind of dream she turned and looked to the empty spot in the bed where her sister should be
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then her eyes moved to the door to their tiny bedroom where was the man where was her sister
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and is he coming back frightened she remains silent she didn't want the man to hear her
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she didn't want him to see her she lifted the blanket up over her head completely covering her entire body
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she laid there under the blankets silent and still her eyes shut tight until the morning
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when she heard her mother ask where's your sister the little girl still scared said
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she's gone the man with the magic hat took her [Music] Jessica Suzanne Gutierrez was born on
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December 3rd 1981 to Mother Deborah Gutierrez and her father David Deborah and David divorce in 1983 and David
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moved away now according to Deborah David had a green card so he could reside in the U.S but had no custodial
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rights to their children as a result Deborah was left alone in Lexington South Carolina to raise her
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four young children this all on a postal service worker's salary Jessica to all of her family and friends
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was simply Jesse a cute nickname for this cute little four-year-old girl Jesse had an older sister Rebecca who
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went by Becky she was six years old the two shared a bedroom and a bed in the family's trailer home
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there are four kids as we said so Jessica also had another sister named Kim who was 10 years old and then an
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eight-year-old brother it was tight quarters to say the least in a trailer for the family of five
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when our story takes place Deborah had quite recently broken things off with her boyfriend and told him hey buddy
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it's time to move out it's time for you to leave she claims that he abused alcohol and was extremely possessive and
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jealous it was not a good fit she did not need that in her life so now it is just her and the kids
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on the night of Thursday June 5th the Gutierrez family shared BLTs for dinner after working in the yard
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Deborah painted little Jessica's Nails for her Jesse wanted to sleep with her mom that
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night but she had been allowed to do so the night before it sounds to me Captain
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like this is kind of a reoccurring musical chairs so to speak where we have four young kids small quarters and one
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of them always wants to sleep in Mom's room now Jesse had taken slept in there the night before and her older brother
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had an ear infection he wasn't feeling well so Deborah opted to let the boy stay with her and put Jessie to bed with
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her sister as said Jesse and Becky shared a bed in the kid's room and their older sister Kim was also in
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the room with the girls Deborah did not notice anything unusual that night it was business as usual she
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put the kids to bed and went to bed herself in her own room she says that everyone was shut down around 11 30.
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specifically meaning she saw Jessica asleep in her bed at this time 11 30 P.M nothing out of the ordinary happened
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until the next morning this is when she heard Becky calling out around 9 A.M and asking if they could
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have cereal for breakfast when Deborah left her room she walked into the living room area of
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the trailer home now this is where things get strange because she was shocked to find that the
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front door is wide open there are like papers all scattered about this area and the screen and the curtains to one
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of the windows had been forcibly removed from the living room window this is in the rear of the trailer
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the other thing that is odd to her was that the dog was found the family dog was found in the house in the trailer at
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that time that might seem like a weird statement my guess here Captain is what we're
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talking about is a dog that typically would sleep outside of the trailer but now with the door open found its way
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inside and just to be clear you're saying the trailer door is open the front door let's call it the main door
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yeah and then we have a screen and a curtain from one of the family rooms windows that is removed and then we have
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a dog that possibly sleeps outside is now inside the trailer yes this woman Deborah she's
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waking up and she's finding all kinds of things that are not as they were when she went to bed the night before
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now walking into the girl's room Deborah asked where Jesse was she doesn't see the little girl
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her sister Becky answered saying quote she's gone the man with the magic hat and beard came and took her last night
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Deborah started looking around for her daughter this this answer that she gets from her other daughter Becky doesn't
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make a whole lot of sense to her uh it's frightening it's it's frightening yes it's very frightening when I first heard
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it I was it was it was interesting to me the answer you want to get is I don't know and that's normally the answer
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you'd get hit right yeah not oh by the way this guy with the magic beard and Magic Hat took her right
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right so now we have a mother who's confused I think more so than scared at this moment she's looking under the bed
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in the closet she goes outside she's even looking under the trailer itself unfortunately Jessica Jesse is nowhere
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to be seen now the confusion turns to panic so she's frantic and a bit upset too at this time and she's pushing Becky
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about what she could have witnessed she was understandably a little harsh with the little six-year-old
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she wanted to know if this is true why didn't you scream for help why didn't you run and come and
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get me right again her story just sounded crazy to Debra yeah but it's so crazy that it's like
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it doesn't look we have a missing daughter and she's saying that I saw a guy take him
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um and she's describing this individual the best she can but Magic Hat what does
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that mean does it you know to me I think possibly like a wizard's hat yeah um so it's almost like a pointy top but
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how does she do this or a top hat a lot of people uh reference you know that magicians will wear a top hat yeah pull
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the rabbit out of the Hat we have a mother who is confused starting to become awfully scared frightened that
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her her daughter is not where she's supposed to be she's asking the six-year-old daughter who's two years
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older than the missing girl what could have happened the answer is not making any sense to her
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again Becky would only repeat over and over again that she what she had said before about the man in the magic hat
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came and took her sister and she said that she offers up a little more detail as the Panic sets in saying Jesse stayed
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asleep when this man picked her up Becky said that she was too scared to do anything and she didn't remember falling
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back asleep the way that I think this works Captain is from my understanding from Becky's statements
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is at some point in the middle of the night that's the other crucial thing here we
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don't really have any reference of time other than sometime after 11 30 when Deborah saw
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her children sleeping and went to bed herself right and then 9 A.M when she woke up to greet her daughter Becky and
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talk about breakfast and notice that all of this bizarre stuff is going on sometime in that time frame according to
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Becky the man with a beard and a magic hat came into their bedroom and took her sister she says that she woke up and saw
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this man enter the room he goes over to the side of the bed where where Jesse is and without even
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waking the child picks her up and carries her out of the room with her with Jesse's head like up near his
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shoulder she is terrified she doesn't know who this man is she doesn't know what's going on mine she's six years old
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right and that's the other problem here is that she's six would have a hard time telling you what
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time it was or being able to look at a clock for one but then also like just as an
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adult you can look outside and sometimes there's there's lights on from other houses so it might look a little bit
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earlier in the morning than it is or you might be able to tell that the sun is uh
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slowly coming up and so that would give us more of a reference point was it closer to the 11 30 Mark or was it
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closer to the eight o'clock Mark where everybody's waking up well in an often times there's no good reason to even put
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a clock in it into the bedroom of small children so very likely there may not have been one and this poor girl is so
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afraid of what she saw and what she probably likely doesn't even really understand or comprehend what just
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really happened that out of fear she pulls the covers up over her head and she's just hoping nothing bad
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happens to her she's just hoping whatever this is goes away or maybe it was just a bad dream right and it being
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the middle of the night she very likely fell back asleep at some time but she she says even to this day she doesn't
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remember doesn't recall falling back asleep right and so I think a question becomes if we want to try to narrow down
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that time frame a little bit better is what do we have with inside our our means that we can even determine any
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length of time obviously she's six years old so we can't really go too much we can't you
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know simple questions like did you see the sun coming up might not matter in this case but what we do know is we have
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a dog that is normally outside that's inside how often does this dog have to go out
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before it actually uses the restroom how how potty trained is the dog uh did the
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dog go to the bathroom on the floor anywhere well the dog could have went back outside the the door is open the
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the dog from my understanding lives outside and made its way into the house all right so
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okay my great detective work is already shut down here's where I would go with this if I
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if I were trying to close the gap a little bit because what we have here Captain is a time frame of
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nine and a half hours right from 11 30 to 9 A.M that's too big of a window that nobody's
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going to be comfortable with if I were to try to narrow this down I would probably put the window of time at
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six hours thinking about midnight as my my place marker there because here's the thing with the window open
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the curtains off forcibly off of the window it doesn't sound to me like this is a cat
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burglar like a super stealthy dude right it sounds to me like there was a little
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bit of commotion we're talking about a trailer we're not talking about a mcmansion somewhere this would have been
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close quarters I want enough of a buffer in time that we have Deborah the responsible mother
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who has fallen asleep she you know this noise didn't didn't wake her from her her sleep and get her to run out of her
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room so and we don't have any eyewitnesses that saw somebody coming or going from the trailer that night no we
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don't and the other thing that I I would I would also kind of cap it at 6am because roughly that would be about uh
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Sunrise that next morning and really all we have is the very vague description that is given provided to us by the
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older sister Becky who again is just six and probably doesn't comprehend everything that's going on she is
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reacting and observing out of fear so that's going to Cloud everything she's not thinking oh I should make note
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of of about what time it is or if the sun was coming up or not right the other thing too it's just sad that she wasn't
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able to run to her mother's room and and say hey somebody took her you know and that
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would help out obviously but obviously when you're six years old what's that idea that you see the
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Boogeyman in your room and if I just cover up and and he can't see me then then I'm going to be protected when all
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of us sit and think about the dozens of things in our lives that we would have done differently none of them compare to
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what this girl what the regret she has for that night of not notifying anybody not being able
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to leave her bed now Deborah calls the police and the responding Authority was the
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Lexington County Sheriff's Department this is run by Sheriff James Metz the deputies responded to the scene and
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searched the trailer they searched the perimeter and all of the surrounding areas now it's worth noting here that
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this mobile home was not located in a trailer park this doesn't help us for possible eyewitnesses Right This is this
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hinders everything yeah this is not in a trailer park rather it is on a secluded
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private lot near the town of Red Bank investigators branched out to look in abandoned buildings and other structures
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in the area this would this is something that's necessary to do but also would lead me to believe that they
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they might be working under the premise that this girl may have just wandered off
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meanwhile Debra was interviewed at the Sheriff's Department she tells the deputies the same story
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that Becky told her that morning and additional interviews with Sheriff Mets over the next few days she also
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said that immediately she suspected her recent ex-boyfriend had taken Jesse she had no proof it was just really a
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gut feeling the difficult thing about that though Captain is if Becky was able to see the face of the
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man that took her sister clearly enough to identify that he has a beard again we don't have any description of
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what type of beard is this is this a big one of those big ZZ Top deals right or is this a uh a captain and Colonel close
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to the chin beard and if if it's a ZZ Top deal then you don't really need to be able to see this
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guy's face much at all or or is it even a beard is it a type of mask or something that's true but what I'm
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trying to point out here I think is that it's clear to me that while the mother may have a gut feeling that the
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ex-boyfriend was involved Becky would have been able to identify this man as the ex-boyfriend ah maybe
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not because maybe again well if he was wearing a disguise that's true he has a goofy hat on and and something on his
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face it doesn't have to be a a fake beard or like I said it could just have been a mask and and she didn't
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she wasn't able to get the details of it because it was a dark room it wasn't like the lights were all on but but the
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other thing though too is clearly she does not recognize him to be anybody that she knows
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yeah but hold on a second six year old right how many times do families have somebody in a family dress
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up like Santa Claus at a family party and the kids sit on the Santa Claus's lap and say hi no no I
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get what you're saying if if if if I drove up to your house in a different car and in Disguise you might not as an
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adult might not recognize me right what I'm what I'm saying is Becky is not saying Joe Smith took my sister or Uncle
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Johnny took my sister right the description she's providing is saying that she did not recognize the
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person who took her sister regardless of why that may be right his appearance we're not we're not saying it could not
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have been somebody she knew we're saying that that's not what the kid the only eyewitness that we have she's not
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stating that right but what we also have going on here is that sheriff Mets is skeptical of Deborah's story about an
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intruder wearing a strange hat who was heard by no one who had silently taken away this child
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and he and his deputies were apparently suspicious enough that that Deborah herself had something to do with Jesse's
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appearance we've seen this in other cases where something happened something went wrong
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with the child and now we have somebody who was supposed to be responsible for the child they have to cover it up they
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have to come up with some kind of story specifically when we covered Dewan Sims case right we have a mother who who
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claims that she took her son to a shopping mall and then it says somebody took him while
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we were in the mall and security and police review the security tapes and camera footage
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they never see the boy with the mom so it's not out of bounds for law enforcement to be skeptical of a story
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of a woman of a child taken in the night first of all that's a very rare abduction
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taken from their home in the middle of the night right and then the fact that a kid is taken
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in a room with other children right you know so then you have a scenario if if the mother is pointing
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towards the ex-boyfriend and they're going well the kid didn't recognize this individuals so it could have been her
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boyfriend dressed up or it could be her dressed up like like somebody else because of the sheriff's department
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because of their suspicions that something else may have happened to the little girl and that Deborah was hiding
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something they decided that what we're going to do here is we're going to tap Deborah's
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phone this would be for two reasons and they've not publicly stated this I'm giving my opinion here
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you're going to tap the phone for two reasons one so the authorities could hear if Deborah was colluding with
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someone if there was something going on and she can fight it in somebody that something
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actually happened to the little girl right this is also in endeavor's best interest in the fact
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that should somebody call with either a threat or calling in with a ransom yeah now you've been able to
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capture that audio [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] cheers everybody cheers to you Mr
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captain eventually the sheriff's department seems to have rolled out been able to
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rule out Deborah the state division of law enforcement or sled which is South Carolina's highest investigative agency
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got involved in the case by that Saturday so very quickly in the early stages of the investigation
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sled becomes involved their processing of the trailer uncovered a fresh fingerprint on the living room window
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where they came to believe an abductor entered the trailer this was the window that had the screen
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removed and the curtains torn down right the print was sent off to the FBI but no
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match was made Captain Ford we got a now we got two captains in this story Captain Ford said
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quote we are going under the premise that she was taken from the mobile home we don't believe she simply wandered off
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and quote hold on do we have a on this print is it female or male do we know well there's no match to the fingerprint
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so we don't know anything about it at this time in in our investigation what we do know is that nothing was stolen
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from the house and there was no sign of a struggle at any place in the trailer itself yet Jessica had vanished and it
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looked more and more like she had been taken right out the front door so you can kind of picture this this bearded
00:28:58
man with the magic hat figures his way into the living room via the window sneaks into the girl's bedroom takes the
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youngest of the three daughters and then leaves out the front door and in his haste leaves the door open behind
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him or maybe he was born in a barn yeah or he didn't want to put down the child and because she could have woke up
00:29:25
right if you put the child down so it's just leave your car door open or your truck
00:29:31
door open and once you get her out of the front door you just keep a hold of her put her into your car or your truck
00:29:38
and then take off who cares what happens behind you and this this type of abduction is really
00:29:45
one of the rarest of all child abductions a stranger abduction from within the child's own bedroom I was
00:29:52
trying to find some good numbers on this some good statistics that when I say good I mean reliable
00:29:59
and I don't know how reliable the information is that I found we do know and we can all agree that it
00:30:07
is a very rare thing for not only a child to be abducted by a stranger but then take it the step further and say a
00:30:15
child abducted in her own home or in his own home they put the numbers at at of the child abductions out there
00:30:26
that it's roughly about 15 16 percent actually occur in the home which was a lot higher than I thought
00:30:36
that that I would find but we've covered some cases here in the garage most recently we covered Heather
00:30:46
Dawn Church's case from 1991 she was abducted from her home that was episodes 339 and 340 available for free on the
00:30:57
free Stitcher app and then a couple cases that we've not covered but are very well-known cases or that of poly
00:31:06
class in 1993 and Elizabeth Smart in 2002 so it does happen and it's probably the
00:31:16
scariest of circumstances that I could think of now sled issued a national alert for
00:31:23
Jessica that described the missing little girl as white three foot tall 32 pounds with brown shoulder length hair
00:31:31
and brown eyes and pierced ears she has a scar on her upper forehead and a brown
00:31:37
birthmark on one of her buttocks she was last seen wearing a sleeveless pink and
00:31:44
white flower t-shirt and white underwear David Jessica's father was very quickly
00:31:50
ruled out as a potential suspect in his daughter's abduction we know that often when a child goes missing it it's
00:31:58
usually a custodial deal that we're dealing with now he could prove that he was in
00:32:04
California at the time that the abduction took place so he's very very far away from South Carolina when little
00:32:12
Jesse went missing as for the ex-boyfriend that's a bit of a different story though we have some
00:32:20
bickering going on between him and Deborah he says that he was not involved he didn't know that the child was
00:32:26
missing but Deborah would stick to her guns for years and years and say you know in in my gut of guts and in my
00:32:35
heart of hearts I know that somehow he was involved I just can't prove it well a couple tough things here is one they
00:32:44
could set up some kind of sting or ruse to get fingerprints from him but then you have the argument of well of course
00:32:53
my fingerprints in there or even on that windowsill because I lived there or I was there often
00:33:00
um well the search is for little Jesse really came to nothing a little while after she vanished Deborah told she she
00:33:11
decided to sell her trailer and move away from Lexington County for a Time but she returned after just a few months
00:33:19
because she was worried that someone might return the little girl and the child being so young
00:33:26
would not be able to find her mom now devastated by her young daughter's abduction
00:33:33
Deborah refused to allow her other children to celebrate Christmas saying that it just did not seem right to
00:33:40
really celebrate anything with the young girl being gone over the coming years Jesse's case was
00:33:48
featured on Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted I could not find the America's Most Wanted episodes
00:33:56
Captain but I looked up the Unsolved Mysteries yeah and it was actually featured with with three other missing
00:34:05
kids stories missing kids cases well that was a depressing episode very depressing and then I I looked into each
00:34:14
one of their cases and from what I could find right it looks like all four of them are still
00:34:21
unsolved yeah and they still they remain Unsolved Mysteries one of them got close
00:34:27
to having some action on it but the charges were dropped right before it could go to trial so hopefully that will
00:34:35
change in one or all of these cases in January of 1987 Deborah was flown to Kansas
00:34:43
so we're sitting here just about a half a year later six months later roughly in
00:34:49
1987 the mother of this missing little girl she's flown to Kansas to look at a young girl who had been found alive and
00:34:59
she matches Jessica's description down to the scars and some of the dental work now when you're when you're four you
00:35:08
don't have much dental work so well hopefully you know yeah yeah it was not Jesse and in fact it was the poor mother
00:35:18
she's walking up to you know like the two-way mirror because you don't want to traumatize the
00:35:24
child you find this kid the kid doesn't really know who or where she is supposed to go
00:35:30
off to you bring in Deborah to to identify is this your daughter or not as she's walking up to the two-way
00:35:41
mirror she says she could hear the girl talking and knew immediately it was not her daughter right can you imagine that
00:35:48
you want to talk about an emotional roller coaster ride I mean I I can't even begin to to Fathom
00:35:56
yeah I mean just think about this at some point please come to her and say we we think we might have found your
00:36:03
daughter we think we might have found Jessica all by the way we're gonna have to take you there so now you have this
00:36:08
whole preparation you're going and and before you even get a look at her because that's the moment you're
00:36:16
preparing for it in your head and she doesn't even have to get to that moment because she can tell audibly that oh
00:36:22
that is not my that is not my child and then I obviously probably is then double
00:36:28
confirmed by that by seeing the child well and also hey we think it's a possibility that this is your missing
00:36:35
little girl and she matches to the point of the scars you know up to the point of of
00:36:41
identifiers on the child as time went on it you know this case really just kind of drug on and it
00:36:49
didn't go really much in the way of finding Jessica or finding a potential suspect
00:36:56
but then we have in 2005 a report by a local TV channel this is w-i-s-tv 10 News which has continued to
00:37:06
cover Jesse's case they quote Sheriff Mets and and the quote says Lexington County Sheriff
00:37:14
James Metz says the investigation turned up a person of interest but never a suspect he still believes it's a
00:37:22
solvable case but with a sad ending I don't believe Jessica is alive I think Jessica was taken for a specific reason
00:37:32
and I think maybe what happened in this case is that things didn't work out the way the abductor thought it was going to
00:37:40
work out and got scared and then killed Jessica and then dumped her body here somewhere in Lexington County
00:37:50
then in 2007 there seemed to be some movement on the case WIS TV published a series of articles about Jesse Gutierrez
00:38:00
and said there seemed to be some hope but the first of these articles exposed a feud
00:38:08
that early on may have hampered the investigation if you recall we said that in the early
00:38:15
days of the investigation Sheriff Metz ordered Deborah's home phone to be tapped right the sheriff's department
00:38:22
clearly did not hear what they were expecting to hear on calls made on the phone that the family
00:38:31
was somehow involved in the toddler's disappearance but Sheriff Metz also seems to have
00:38:36
forgotten himself or perhaps he just assumed that the recordings of those phone taps would never be made public
00:38:43
because somehow that TV station got their hands on some of these recordings and one of them backed up what Deb was
00:38:52
saying all along that she had always alleged that the sheriff was initially not responsive to her and could possibly
00:39:01
have done more to find her child here's a transcript of of the call that they played that will show the feud
00:39:11
between the sheriff and the the victim here Sheriff Matt says what do you want me to
00:39:18
do someone's got to hold your hand or be out working and Deborah says listen here I don't
00:39:25
need you to hold my hand and I I don't need you to get smart with me either Sheriff Mets responds I'm not going to
00:39:33
get smart with you but you're not going to get smart with me either lady I've been up all night long working on your
00:39:40
case and I don't need your smart mouth Deborah replies oh really Matt says no Gutierrez then says when I ask you
00:39:50
questions I need answers the sheriff responds well we'll give you answers when we got answers to give now
00:39:58
you mess with me and I'll pull all my people off and we'll go home and go to bed and forget about your case
00:40:07
Deborah says you mean to tell me that if I mess with you you will pull all of your people off this case and go home
00:40:13
and forget about my child right that's it's not about her or the case it's about this little girl the sheriff
00:40:22
replies that's right Deborah then says what about the public that elected you to be in this office
00:40:29
and Mets replies they can elect me or not elect me because I don't really give a damn what they do
00:40:37
Deborah says I understand those detectives are child tired because so am I that's my youngin and then the sheriff
00:40:44
says I know that's your young and ma'am and we're trying to do everything to try
00:40:49
and help you um that's a shitty thing to say but sometimes look there's not much to go off of here
00:40:58
right it's not like we have a mountain of evidence and I know like especially in
00:41:04
missing person cases right uh the Tyler Davis case for example Brittany Davis is
00:41:10
frustrated with detectives they're frustrated with her you know I mean like they both want to
00:41:17
find um Tyler but there's no information that they can go off of every turn that they go down turn left turn
00:41:27
right there's nothing there and so she's frustrated they're frustrated and I'm sure there's things in that case that
00:41:35
the detectives have said to Brittany that they wish they could take back yeah and in this case here
00:41:43
I mean I'm not looking to go out of my way to defend Sheriff Mets but what I think we're we're getting a snippet of a
00:41:51
of a bigger conversation well it's a shitty thing to say I mean we both agree oh horrible you know horrible but a
00:41:58
piece of [ __ ] thing to say but I also want to point out here what we have going on from my observation is this we
00:42:07
have a a woman who who is tired she's scared she's afraid for her daughter she's probably been up for days by this
00:42:14
point but on the flip side of that we have a sheriff and his detectives who have very
00:42:21
likely been working around the clock they've been up for a very long time at this point as well and we have a mother
00:42:27
saying look I want some answers and he's saying we we don't have anything we don't have any information for you we
00:42:34
don't have anything we don't have any leads or nothing and she's saying well that's because you're not doing a good
00:42:39
enough job and we got this team of people working around the clock and and now you go and
00:42:46
the point person is going we've been working our asses off here it's not there's just nothing to go on and it's
00:42:52
not because we're not doing a good enough job we're trying our hearts out and when you have people that are tired
00:42:58
and they're frustrated they say things that they often don't mean and I think that that's probably what we
00:43:07
have here so I'm going to give the sheriff a little bit of a of the benefit of the doubt this is coming from someone
00:43:12
myself who look I've never been a sheriff and I understand that you're elected official you should carry
00:43:17
yourself and conduct yourself as such at all times regardless of the situation but I'm also a dude that's worked shifts
00:43:25
that you wouldn't believe I I mean one time I worked a shift that was 37 hours long and I was not a very pleasant
00:43:33
person to be around after about the 25 hour mark So I get I get it a little bit let's talk about how many hours did you
00:43:42
say several times in in my in my last job I worked shifts that were over 30 hours now
00:43:51
let's get to this suspect or this person of interest or whatever you want to call
00:43:55
them I'm going to call this guy a suspect even though in that one interview Mets didn't refer to him as
00:44:01
such a story in the 2007 series that was on that w-i-s-tv entitled 21 year old case could
00:44:12
move to court with solicitors approval before we move on just to clear up any confusion the solicitor in South
00:44:21
Carolina is basically your district attorney okay so if you hear me say solicitor think of district attorney I
00:44:28
might even call them district attorney just call them district attorney from now well that's going to be tough
00:44:33
because all of my notes say solicitor wow if you don't do this I'm going to make
00:44:38
you work a 36 hour shift apparently Deborah and Sheriff Mets had finally been able to agree on something and that
00:44:45
was that there was significant evidence to charge a suspect in this case this was someone who had been the prime
00:44:56
suspect ever since just a few days or a few weeks into this abduction but the sheriff's department had not been able
00:45:03
to convince the Lexington County district attorney or solicitor Donnie Myers that there was sufficient
00:45:11
evidence to make charges stick so who is this guy this is a West Columbia South Carolina man
00:45:19
he's been described only as a an acquaintance of the family or in some circles even maybe a family friend in in
00:45:27
some releases his name is not out there in the public domain and he's never been named by
00:45:35
either the sheriff or Deborah Gutierrez and I also want to point something else out too as we're moving along in this
00:45:43
case too the the ex-boyfriend's name has never been publicly stated either but what we have here Captain is ten
00:45:51
weeks after Jesse disappeared this man well he ended up behind bars according to The State newspaper he stole a van in
00:46:02
Lexington County there's a new shirt for you beware ban the stolen van and drove to North Carolina I think I've
00:46:10
created enough where he broke into a home and raped a woman oh God he was charged and later convicted and he was
00:46:18
sent to prison now here's where the story of this guy becomes relevant while in prison the now convicted rapist told
00:46:27
a cellmate that he had kidnapped a girl in Lexington County South Carolina and that he was wearing a tall cowboy hat
00:46:35
when he did it this could explain the magic hat that little Becky had seen in the dark
00:46:44
the convicted rapists claimed to have buried the girl in a landfill in Lexington County the cell mate relayed
00:46:52
this information to authorities and sent a letter to Deborah explaining what his
00:46:57
cell mate told him now the Clincher this convicted rapist his fingerprints were a match to the one
00:47:07
that was found on the window at the Gutierrez home a weeks-long search of the landfill
00:47:16
in Lexington County turned up nothing according to The State newspaper investigators questioned the rapist now
00:47:24
a suspect in the Abduction of Jesse multiple times about the child's abduction he offered to talk about the
00:47:32
case in exchange for immunity but prosecutors denied his offer as a result this guy shut down he's going to
00:47:45
talk about it no more so he wanted an immunity for the whole thing I'll tell you what
00:47:51
happened oh you have my fingerprint by the way but I'm going to tell you everything but
00:47:58
I want you to then tell me it's okay I'm not going to be charged with anything Sheriff Mets his office confirmed all of
00:48:06
these details to the public the suspect was released from prison after serving out his sentence I've seen
00:48:14
a few different numbers thrown out there but it looks like he served about 10 or
00:48:18
11 years at some point he fails to register as a sex offender in South Carolina as required
00:48:25
his last known address I'm not going to give the actual address was in Wake Forest but this was uh at least 10 years
00:48:35
ago Deborah Gutierrez has made a couple of other claims about this suspect that are a little harder to wrap one's head
00:48:44
around one was that she felt that this suspect and her ex-boyfriend the one she had the
00:48:51
gut feeling about knew each other this family acquaintance and the ex-boyfriend Gutierrez kicked out days
00:49:00
before Jesse's disappearance they denied knowing one another however Deborah says that she she knows
00:49:09
that the two actually met a a Waffle House several months before Jesse disappeared now there's no way to know
00:49:15
whether this is true or whether it even matters another strange thing Deborah has
00:49:21
repeatedly claimed that she located fibers this is an odd story here does she located fibers related to her missing
00:49:29
daughter in an abandoned car that belonged to the suspect I don't know how this comes about right that she
00:49:40
so now we have a fingerprint and we have possible fibers that this suspect owned
00:49:47
that vehicle and now we believe that this suspect also knew uh her ex that's Deborah's claims that that the
00:49:57
two knew one another and the Deborah found fibers that would be connected to her missing daughter in this suspect's
00:50:04
vehicle but to be quite Frank here there's nowhere that that says that these fibers
00:50:13
were reviewed and compared in a laboratory somewhere by people that are educated to do so
00:50:21
this is just a one poor grieving mother who has found what she believes might be possible
00:50:28
evidence it's it's tough too because if she sees these whatever they are and then she goes oh that's that's for
00:50:36
my daughter it's like you want to believe her but you also know that she's in extreme amount of pain and on top of
00:50:45
that you have a suspect that again oh that's not even called suspect we have his fingerprint there's no reason for
00:50:51
his fingerprint to be there right so well that's the problem why aren't they charging this guy with
00:51:00
abduction yeah and I think that that is Debra's that that I mean that is where I know
00:51:09
he's a piece of [ __ ] that's been her her second concern for almost the entirety
00:51:15
of her life her first concern is finding her daughter her second concern is why when we have this guy that that sheriff
00:51:22
Mets let's keep in mind Deborah and Sheriff Metz didn't get along they didn't see eye to eye on many things
00:51:28
right they both publicly have stated this is our guy we believe that we can solve this case we believe that we know
00:51:36
who did it we believe that we knew who did it fairly quickly into the investigation
00:51:42
however the solicitor slash the district attorney says we don't have enough evidence to
00:51:49
charge this individual so something we talked about a little bit on off the Record was okay this
00:51:56
fingerprint well is there a reasonable explanation for why there is this fingerprint there or can it be explained
00:52:04
away at least to a point where it confuses a jury enough that they don't get a conviction of this guy
00:52:11
I think what we have here Captain is I think that we have a guy that was sitting in prison and was going to be
00:52:17
there for quite some time 10 11 years what have you and I think that they thought that they
00:52:23
now that they had honed in on who it was or who they believed it was that they could build a case with significant
00:52:29
evidence against this guy in the time period where this guy is locked up he can't hurt anybody he's not going
00:52:35
anywhere the problem is past that fingerprint that's found by sled that that's a legit
00:52:44
investigative agency the fibers in the car don't mean anything if I found them or
00:52:50
if Deborah found them or if you found them we need somebody to tell us hey these are connected to this case and
00:52:56
it's connected to the victim and it's connected to the suspect but we don't have that yeah but law enforcement could
00:53:02
do those tests yes yes unless now they worried that the the scene the vehicle was contaminated
00:53:10
by right the victim's mother it gets very complicated very quickly and you can see how this is stacking up
00:53:18
really against Deborah and against the case for her daughter rather than against the guy that's sitting in prison
00:53:27
and by the time he gets released they've not collected any more evidence against
00:53:31
this guy I think the problem that we have here the major major problem is we know how
00:53:39
difficult it is to get a conviction in a no body case yeah but we don't have to get a conviction of murder
00:53:47
that's true we can get a conviction of the fact that we we know we have an eyewitness
00:53:53
that may not may not be able to put that person at the scene because she didn't know that person it was in the dark but
00:54:01
the fingerprint puts you there and we know that the child was abducted so what what do kidnap charges uh how many years
00:54:09
can he spend in jail over kidnap charges right and chances are if you go ahead and charge them with it and then you
00:54:18
offer them a deal you know maybe he spends half that time in jail but that's on top of the charges the rape charges
00:54:25
he's already in jail for I mean this is a scumbag piece of [ __ ] dude that needs
00:54:30
to be behind bars you know because all he's going to do okay we know that he's willing to kidnap
00:54:36
children I mean we know he's a rapist is he raping children is he killing children
00:54:43
I mean this this is a bad dude well and I thought about that because the the statement from the sheriff that
00:54:51
really stands out to me is we believe we know who did this we believe that Jesse was abducted for a
00:55:00
specific reason and when things didn't go the way that the abductor thought that they would
00:55:06
work out he got scared he killed her and he dumped her somewhere in Lexington County
00:55:11
that whole statement makes me it really made me wonder okay what would that specific reason be now that doesn't mean
00:55:18
that law enforcement knows what that specific reason was but when we look at it I thought
00:55:25
okay would it have been for a ransom well it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to
00:55:31
abduct a child from from a mobile home where we have only one parent who's trying to provide for four doesn't
00:55:41
seem to be much money to pay a ransom is what I'm pointing out there with the with the family situation and then I've
00:55:48
seen several cases where unfortunately kids are harmed whether it be abducted or murdered because there's some kind of
00:55:55
debt that was was unpaid or some kind of bad drug dealings going on between an adult male and the eventual offender
00:56:07
the problem with that is the boyfriend's been removed from the home it seems like
00:56:13
it seems like a really dumb idea to if you're going to take the child for some unpaid debt or for some kind of
00:56:22
Ransom against the boyfriend it seems like you've you've created a there's a whole degree of separation that doesn't
00:56:29
seem like it would play out the way that you wanted it to so with the with the rape charges if in fact this is our guy
00:56:36
and I have no problem saying that I believe that it is very much the guy because I
00:56:42
I put my faith in the evidence that was collected the fingerprint and there's no
00:56:47
reason for him to be there well not only that we have a mother who says look I I
00:56:51
cleaned the home inside and out regularly she says that that print would have been a new print that whoever
00:57:01
took her daughter came in through that window left their print and she says that with confidence because she says I
00:57:09
clean that same area just shortly before the abduction again it's a grieving mother and you go
00:57:16
Nick take it with a grain of salt however what we have here is sled took that evidence they sent it off to the
00:57:24
FBI it was labeled by one of the agencies or both as a fresh print a fresh print right the experts agree
00:57:35
that it was a relatively new print so not only do you have to explain away why your fingerprint was on that in that
00:57:42
area that was used to gain access to the home you have to explain why it was there in
00:57:49
a short time frame that's all centered around the Abduction of a child well what pisses me off and and you know
00:57:57
this because we've covered so many cases there's there's a lot of missing person
00:58:00
cases where there's this there's just nothing there you know and and this is abduction case
00:58:07
it's a little different but again you take away that uh fingerprint we have nothing there we don't even have a
00:58:16
time period of when this individual I mean a time period within an hour or two we
00:58:21
don't have we have from midnight till eight o'clock in the morning and we don't know
00:58:28
and we don't know what the motivation would be for this individual to take this girl and it's
00:58:34
but there's so many cases with the rape charge my fears that it that it's especially motivated crime
00:58:42
but uh dirt bag No but but the thing is is okay so here's a case that we have a fingerprint now we have a possible
00:58:51
connection between this individual and her ex we possibly have these fibers that need to be tested again could be
00:58:58
contaminated because she collected them but it's just so sad that we have so many things pointing us to having this
00:59:07
case be solved and they can't get it done yeah and I think what you have here too
00:59:14
is look there might have been some missteps very early on by the sheriff's department but we also stated that sled
00:59:21
was brought in by that Saturday this is that State's top investigative agency and we've also referenced the FBI a
00:59:30
couple times in this very short case right it's it's not short and time wise but it's short in our in our garage time
00:59:37
here today so you have I think very capable agencies looking into this case and to
00:59:45
the credit of the Sheriff's Office that's the same Sheriff's Office that took down
00:59:52
that took down Larry Gene Bell who we discussed on this show in our episode titled last will and testament episode
01:00:02
263. Larry Gene Bell was being this was a Manhunt well it was an investigation that led to a short man
01:00:12
hunt but it was the sheriff's department it was sled it was the FBI all working together against this guy this is one of
01:00:19
the most sadistic despicable he had he had a very bizarre way of mentally torturing his victims and that
01:00:31
was to have them write a goodbye letter to to their family before he killed them
01:00:36
so this is this is agencies that are used to high profile complicated cases so I don't think that that's the
01:00:46
situation here I think that what we have is unfortunately there just is not a lot of
01:00:52
evidence and as soon as this guy says oh you're taking immunity off of the table I'm no
01:00:58
longer willing to talk but now I that makes me wonder about the ex-boyfriend what did this suspect have to say
01:01:08
was it that I gave the girl off to the ex-boyfriend what if they did know each other that's
01:01:15
that's the tricky part in here too Captain where we have do we have two suspects
01:01:21
or do we have one well and again I I think there's a lot of things that you can't prove but if
01:01:28
there was a connection between these two individuals I think there would be a way
01:01:31
to do so even if it's just through um you know hearsay even people just going yeah I I've saw them hanging out
01:01:39
before well and I'll give the ex-boyfriend a little credit because remember both men claim they both men
01:01:45
deny ever knowing each other and here here's the thing unless the ex-boyfriend is involved somehow in this
01:01:55
Disappearance in this abduction he has no reason to deny knowing this other man if he in fact did know him
01:02:04
so I I I I don't know I can't I can't say that they didn't know one another but because one thing that I was really
01:02:13
trying to think about in this case and we we know this happens unfortunately in in the real world here where often bad
01:02:22
people will get a hold of some information they get a hold of some information that they
01:02:28
it doesn't matter that the in the grand scheme of things it does matter but it doesn't matter at the time that they
01:02:34
hear it because people don't know that they're bad people with bad intentions I thought is there a chance that these
01:02:39
two knew each other and it's as simple of a story as the ex-boyfriend goes yeah she kicked me out man
01:02:44
she kicked me out I've been out I've been Outdoors for days now right and now this this this pervert this rapist goes
01:02:52
oh we have a we have a house full of that's full of just a woman and children well
01:02:58
that's an easy target there's nobody there to fight me off in the middle of nowhere and it's yeah it's a trailer but
01:03:05
then again the problem with that is then why would the boyfriend deny knowing this man if if that's what in fact went
01:03:11
down I I don't think that that's likely because I think that if the ex-boyfriend
01:03:15
had did know the guy and did not have any involvement in the abduction he would want to be helpful to the
01:03:23
investigation into this poor family and I keep going back to the vague description of our suspect that was
01:03:30
given by that poor frightened girl so many years ago and Becky in recent years has said in interviews she's still
01:03:39
scared about that night and of course she has regrets that she didn't run to her mom or scream or cry out for help
01:03:46
and unfortunately that's something that she's going to have to live with that's a burden that she's going to have to
01:03:52
carry for the rest of her days but I keep going back to her vague description of the bearded man with the
01:03:58
magic hat and one thing she has said in recent interviews is that still to this day
01:04:05
she sees that face when she lies in bed at night she sees that face over and over and over again that leads me to
01:04:14
believe one of two things either because she was so scared that she created some version
01:04:22
of this face and some version of these events that may not be 100 spot on and real
01:04:31
or she does remember the face just as it is and just as she saw it that night and if
01:04:39
that would be the case I then say well why have we not heard all these years later from now an adult woman who can
01:04:48
articulate what she saw that night and give us a better description of that man and his face
01:04:54
and I think what we have here Captain is a situation where maybe the face that she remembers seeing that night matches
01:05:03
up with the suspect that they can't bring to trial in an interview with the state Deborah Gutierrez said the
01:05:11
following I've got a kid that's lost in the dark I'm not going to stop searching
01:05:17
for my kid my babies lost somewhere in the dark Gutierrez said her voice cracking and
01:05:24
I'm not going to stop until I find her [Music] all right make sure you get your pre-order in of the new t-shirt band the
01:05:52
tan sedan and thank you all for joining us here in the garage this week join us back here next week until then be good
01:06:01
be kind and don't litter [Music] thank you