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[Music] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you were doing thanks
00:01:46
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who knows you don't go swimming with Phil Collins he
00:01:53
is the captain thank you thank you thank you it's good to be seen and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks
00:02:00
for telling a [Music] friend today we are drinking Magic Hat number nine not quite pale ale this is a
00:02:12
sort of dry sort of crisp and refreshing not quite pale ale with notes of fruit and floral hop bitterness garage grade
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three and a quarter bottle caps out of five and here are some people that I would like to think that as Drew Barry
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Moore would say are are truly magical first up we have kitty in Broad Ripple Indiana and a big shout out to Katy in
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Brooklyn New York next up Captain we have a cheers that's going out to Robert in Bay St Louis Mississippi and a big we
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like your jib to cat in alela Australia and here's a cheers to Jennifer in New Town
00:02:53
Connecticut who says she has listened to every episode of True Crime garage and every episode of off the Record and last
00:03:02
but certainly not least we have Jill and her son in Garder Maine cheers to everyone who went to True Crim
00:03:09
garage.com and contributed to this week's beer F yeah stop the show right now and go to the website cuz it is time
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not only can you support the show but you get something in return we have the pre-order going on for ban the tan sedan
00:03:25
and for our more talented listeners keep listening and go to the web site and check out the new the new t-shirt I'll
00:03:32
tell you what Captain look it's just a good way to support the show but you get something in return we did ban the van
00:03:40
the van ban the camper we did the creepy camper creepy camper and now ban the tan
00:03:46
sedan which out of the three this one's my favorite I love all three of them but
00:03:51
this one's my favorite make sure you check it out at true Crim garage.com is that enough of the business Captain well
00:03:57
no the funny thing is we had a listener one time say I drive a white van What's your deal and I said it's just a joke
00:04:04
and he went oh I thought you guys were like serious I'm like no it's just a joke it's just a joke and that is enough
00:04:12
of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:04:28
crime [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] each evening as the day slips away and
00:05:21
the sun slides down the West Sky we lock our doors and we put our children to bed
00:05:29
there is a sense of calm and safety as we turn off our lights count those sheep and dream of what's to
00:05:38
come but sometimes evil slips into our home out of the night and past the locked
00:05:48
doors sometime in the small hours of June 6th 1986 that is just what happened a sleeping child was awakened
00:06:00
by a shadowy figure that entered the bedroom the room was almost totally dark but still she could see something what
00:06:12
was it who was it the terrified child watched in silence as the man slowly approached the
00:06:22
bed now he was standing right next to her still sleeping sister the man very carefully lifted the little sister up
00:06:33
turned and walked out was this real the girl thought was this some kind of dream she turned and looked to the empty
00:06:43
spot in the bed where her sister should be then her eyes moved to the door to their tiny bedroom where was the man
00:06:54
where was her sister and is he coming back frightened she remained silent she didn't want the man to hear her she
00:07:05
didn't want him to see her she lifted the blanket up over her head completely covering her entire body she laid there
00:07:16
under the blankets silent and still her eyes shut tight until the morning when she heard
00:07:27
her mother ask where's your sister the little girl still scared said she's gone the man with the magic hat
00:07:39
took [Music] her Jessica Suzanne Gutierrez was born on December 3rd 1981 to Mother Deborah
00:08:06
Gutierrez and her father David Deborah and David divorced in 1983 and David moved away now according
00:08:14
to Deborah David had a green card so he could reside in the US but had no custodial rights to their children as a
00:08:24
result Deborah was left alone in Lexington South Carolina to raise her four young children this all on a postal
00:08:33
service workers salary Jessica to all of her family and friends was simply Jesse a cute nickname
00:08:42
for this cute little four-year-old girl Jesse had an older sister Rebecca who went by Becky she was 6 years old the
00:08:51
two shared a bedroom and a bed in the family's trailer home there are four kids as we said so J Jessica also had
00:09:00
another sister named Kim who was 10 years old and then an 8-year-old brother it was tight quarters to say the least
00:09:08
in a trailer for the family of five when our story takes place Deborah had quite
00:09:14
recently broken things off with her boyfriend and told him hey buddy it's time to move out it's time for you to
00:09:21
leave she claims that he abused alcohol and was extremely possessive and jealous
00:09:28
it was not a fit she did not need that in her life so now it is just her and the kids on the night of Thursday June
00:09:37
5th the gutierre family shared BLTs for dinner after working in the yard Deborah
00:09:44
painted little Jessica's Nails for her Jesse wanted to sleep with her mom that night but she had been allowed to do so
00:09:52
the night before it sounds to me Captain like this is kind of a reoccurring musical chairs so to speak where we have
00:09:59
four young kids small quarters and one of them always wants to sleep in Mom's room now Jesse had taken slept in there
00:10:08
the night before and her older brother had an ear infection he wasn't feeling well so Deborah opted to let the boy
00:10:15
stay with her and put Jesse to bed with her sister as said Jesse and Becky shared a
00:10:23
bed in the kids room and their older sister Kim was also in the room with the girls Deborah did not notice anything
00:10:32
unusual that night it was business as usual she put the kids to bed and went to bed herself in her own room she says
00:10:39
that everyone was shut down around 11:30 specifically meaning she saw Jessica asleep in her bed at this time
00:10:50
11:30 p.m. nothing out of the ordinary happened until the next morning this is when she heard Becky calling out around
00:10:59
9:00 a.m. and asking if they could have cereal for breakfast when Deborah left her room she
00:11:07
walked into the living room area of the trailer home now this is where things get strange because she was shocked to
00:11:15
find that the front door is wide open there are like papers all scattered about this area and the screen and the
00:11:24
curtains to one of the windows had been forcibly removed from from the living room window this is in the rear of the
00:11:32
trailer the other thing that is odd to her was that the dog was found the family dog was found in the house in the
00:11:40
trailer at that time that might seem like a weird statement my guess here Captain is what
00:11:46
we're talking about is a dog that typically would sleep outside of the trailer but now with the door open found
00:11:53
its way inside and just to be clear you're saying the trailer door is open the front door door let's call it the
00:12:00
main door yeah and then we have a screen and a curtain from one of the family rooms windows that is removed and then
00:12:10
we have a dog that possibly sleeps outside is now inside the trailer yes this woman
00:12:17
Deborah she's waking up and she's finding all kinds of things that are not as they were when she went to bed the
00:12:23
night before now walking into the girl's room Deborah asked where Jesse was she doesn't see the little girl her sister
00:12:32
Becky answered saying quote she's gone the man with the magic hat and beard came and took her last night Deborah
00:12:41
started looking around for her daughter this this answer that she gets from her other daughter Becky doesn't make a
00:12:47
whole lot of sense to her uh it's frightening it's it's frightening yes it's very frightening when I first heard
00:12:54
it I was it was was frightening to me yeah the answer you want to get is I don't know and that's normally the
00:13:01
answer You' get right but not oh by the way this guy with the magic beard and Magic Hat took her right right so now we
00:13:11
have a mother who's confused I think more so than scared at this moment she's looking
00:13:17
under the bed in the closet she goes outside uh she's even looking under the trailer itself unfortunately Jessica
00:13:27
Jesse is nowhere to be seen now the confusion turns to panic so she's frantic and a bit upset too at this time
00:13:38
and she's pushing Becky about what she could have witnessed she was understandably a little harsh with the
00:13:46
little six-year-old she wanted to know if this is true why didn't you scream for help why didn't you run and come and
00:13:56
get me right again her story just sounded crazy to Deborah yeah but it's so crazy that it's like it doesn't look
00:14:05
we have a missing daughter and she's saying that I saw a guy take him um and she's describing this individual the
00:14:14
best she can mhm but Magic Hat what does that mean do it you know to me I'd think
00:14:20
possibly like a wizard's hat yeah um so almost like a pointy top but how does she describe hat a lot of people uh
00:14:30
reference you know that magicians will wear a top hat yeah pull the rabbit out of the Hat we have a mother who is
00:14:37
confused starting to become awfully scared frightened that her her daughter is not where she's supposed to be she's
00:14:43
asking the six-year-old daughter who's 2 years older than the missing girl what could have happened the answer is not
00:14:49
making any sense to her again Becky would only repeat over and over again that she what she had said before about
00:14:56
the man in the magic hat came and took her sister and she said that she offers up a little more detail as the Panic
00:15:06
sets in saying Jesse stayed asleep when this man picked her up Becky said that she was too scared to do anything and
00:15:15
she didn't remember falling back asleep the way that I think this works Captain is from my understanding from Becky
00:15:22
statements is at some point in the middle of the night that's the other crucial thing here we don't really have
00:15:29
any reference of time other than sometime after 11:30 when Deborah saw her children sleeping and went to bed
00:15:37
herself and then 9:00 a.m. when she woke up to greet her daughter Becky and talk
00:15:43
about breakfast and notice that all of this bizarre stuff is going on sometime in that time frame according to Becky
00:15:51
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
00:15:59
this man enter the room he goes over to the side of the bed where where Jesse is
00:16:06
and without even waking the child picks her up and carries her out of the room with her with Jesse's head like up near
00:16:14
his shoulder she is terrified she doesn't know who this man is she doesn't know what's going on M she's six years
00:16:24
old right and that and that's the other problem here is that she's six would have a hard time telling you what time
00:16:30
it was or being able to look at a clock for one but then also like just as an adult you can look outside and sometimes
00:16:39
there's there's lights on from other houses so it might look a little bit earlier in the morning than it is or you
00:16:47
might be able to tell that the sun is uh slowly coming up and so that would give
00:16:51
us more of a reference point was it closer to the 11:30 Mark or was it closer to uh the 8:00 Mark where
00:16:59
everybody's waking up well and often times there's no good reason to even put a clock in into the bedroom of small
00:17:06
children so very likely there may not have been one and this poor girl is so afraid of what she saw and what she prob
00:17:15
likely doesn't even really understand or comprehend what just really happened that out of fear she pulls the covers up
00:17:23
over her head and she's just hoping nothing bad happens to her she's just oping whatever this is goes away or
00:17:30
maybe it was just a bad dream right and it being the middle of the night she very likely fell back asleep at some
00:17:37
time but she she says even to this day she doesn't remember doesn't recall falling back asleep right and so I think
00:17:46
a question becomes if we want to try to narrow down that time frame a little bit
00:17:50
better is what do we have with inside our our means that we can even determine any length of time
00:17:59
obviously she's six years old so we can't really go too much we can't you know simple questions like did you see
00:18:05
the sun coming up might not matter in this case but what we do know is we have a dog that is normally outside that's
00:18:13
inside how often does this dog have to go out before it actually uses the restroom how how potty trained is the
00:18:20
dog uh did the dog go to the bathroom on the floor anywhere well the dog could have went back outside the the door is
00:18:28
open the the dog from my understanding lives outside and made its way into the house all right so okay my great
00:18:35
detective work is already shut down here's where I would go with this if I if I were trying to close the gap a
00:18:43
little bit because what we have here Captain is a time frame of 9 and 1 half hours right from 11:30 to 9:00 a.m.
00:18:54
that's too big of a window that nobody's going to be comfortable with if I were to try to narrow this down I would
00:19:00
probably put the window of time at 6 hours thinking about midnight as my my place marker there because here's the
00:19:09
thing with the window open the curtains off forcibly off of the window it doesn't sound to me like this is a
00:19:20
cat burglar like a super stealthy dude right it sounds to me like there was a little bit of commotion we're talking
00:19:27
about a trailer we're not talking about a mcmansion somewhere this would have been close quarters I want enough of a
00:19:35
buffer in time that we have Deborah the responsible mother who has fallen asleep
00:19:43
she you know this noise didn't didn't wake her from her her sleep and get her to run out of her room so and we don't
00:19:49
have any eyewitnesses that saw somebody come in or going from the trailer that night no we don't and the other thing
00:19:56
that I I would I would also kind of cap it at 6: a.m. because roughly that would
00:20:00
be about uh Sunrise that next morning and really all we have is the very vague description that is given provided to us
00:20:11
by the older sister Becky who again is just six and probably doesn't comprehend everything that's going on she is
00:20:19
reacting and observing out of fear so that's going to Cloud everything she's not thinking oh I should make note of
00:20:28
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
00:20:35
able to run to her mother's room and and and say hey somebody took her you know and that would help out obviously but
00:20:44
obviously when you're six years old well is that idea that you see the Boogeyman
00:20:48
in your room and if I just cover up and and and he can't see me then then I'm going to be protected when all of us sit
00:20:57
and think about the dozens of things in our lives that we would have done differently none of
00:21:03
them compare to what this girl what the regret she has for that night of not notifying anybody not being
00:21:13
able to leave her bed now Deborah calls the police and the responding Authority was the Lexington
00:21:21
County Sheriff's Department this is run by Sheriff James Mets the deputies responded to the scene
00:21:29
and searched the trailer they searched the perimeter and all of the surrounding areas now it's worth noting here that
00:21:36
this mobile home was not located in a trailer park this doesn't help us for possible eyewitnesses right this this
00:21:45
hinders everything yeah this is not in a trailer park rather it is on a secluded
00:21:50
private lot near the town of Redbank investigators branched out to look in abandoned buildings and other
00:21:58
structures in the area this would this is something that's necessary to do but also would lead me to believe that they
00:22:07
they might be working under the premise that this girl may have just wandered off meanwhile
00:22:15
Deborah was interviewed at the sheriff's department she tells the deputies the same story that Becky told her that
00:22:26
morning an additional interview with Sheriff Mets over the next few days she also said that immediately she suspected
00:22:34
her recent ex-boyfriend had taken Jesse she had no proof it was just really a gut
00:22:42
feeling the difficult thing about that though Captain is if Becky was able to see the face of
00:22:50
the man that took her sister clearly enough to identify that he has a beard again we don't have have any
00:22:58
description of what type of beard is this is this a big one of those big ZZ Top deals right or is this a uh a
00:23:05
captain and Colonel close to the chin beard MH and I if if it's a ezy top deal then you don't really need to be able to
00:23:13
see this guy's face much at all or or is it even a beard is it a type of mask or
00:23:19
something that's true but what I'm trying to point out here I think is that it's clear to me that while the mother
00:23:27
may have a gut feeling that the ex-boyfriend was involved Becky would have been able to
00:23:33
identify this man as the ex-boyfriend uh maybe not because maybe again well if he was wearing a disguise
00:23:41
that's true he has a goofy hat on and and something on his face it doesn't have to be a a fake beard or it like I
00:23:47
said it could just been a mask and and she didn't she wasn't able to get the details of it because it was a dark room
00:23:55
it wasn't like the lights were all on but the other thing though too is clearly she does not recognize him to be
00:24:03
anybody that she knows yeah but hold on a second sixy old right how many times do families have
00:24:12
somebody in a family dress up like Santa Claus at a family party and the kids sit
00:24:19
on the Santa Claus's lap and say I want no I get what you're saying if if if if I drove up to your house in a different
00:24:26
car and in a disguise you might not as an adult might not recognize me what I'm what I'm saying is Becky is not saying
00:24:34
Joe Smith took my sister or Uncle Johnny took my sister right the description she's providing is saying that she did
00:24:43
not recognize the person who took her sister regardless of why that may be right his appearance we're not we're not
00:24:51
saying it could not have been somebody she knew we're saying that that's not what the kid the only eyewitness that we
00:24:57
have she's not stating that right but what we also have going on here is that sheriff
00:25:04
Mets is skeptical of Deborah's story about an intruder wearing a strange hat who was heard by no one who had
00:25:13
silently taken away this child and he and his deputies were apparently suspicious enough that that Deborah
00:25:21
herself had something to do with Jesse's appearance we've seen this in other cases
00:25:28
where something happened something went wrong with the child and now we have somebody who was supposed to be
00:25:36
responsible for the child they have to cover it up they have to come up with some kind of story uh specifically when
00:25:43
we covered Dewan Sims case right we have a mother who who claims that she took her son to a shopping mall and then says
00:25:53
somebody took him while we were in the mall and security and police review the the security tapes
00:26:01
and camera footage they never see the boy with the mom so it's not out of bounds for law enforcement to be
00:26:10
skeptical of a story of a woman of a a child taken in the night first of all that's a very rare abduction a child
00:26:19
taken from their home in the middle of the night right and then the fact that a kid is taken in a room with other
00:26:27
children mhm right you know so then you have a scenario if if the mother is pointing towards the ex-boyfriend and
00:26:35
they're going well the kid didn't recognize this individuals so it could have been her her boyfriend dressed up
00:26:42
or it could be her dressed up like like somebody else because of the sheriff's department
00:26:51
because of their suspicions that something else may have happened to the little girl and that Deborah was hiding
00:26:58
something they decided that what we're going to do here is we're going to tap Deborah's
00:27:03
phone this would be for two reasons and they've not publicly stated this I'm giving my opinion
00:27:13
here you're going to tap the phone for two reasons one so the authorities could hear if Deborah was colluding with
00:27:20
someone if there was something going on and she confided in somebody that something actually happened to the
00:27:26
little girl right this is also in Deborah's best interest in the fact that should somebody call with either a
00:27:38
threat or calling in with a ransom yeah now you've been able to capture that [Music]
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00:30:21
cheers to you Mr capton eventually the sheriff's department seems to have ruled out been
00:30:28
able to rule out Deborah mhm the state division of law enforcement or sled which is South Carolina's highest
00:30:37
investigative agency got involved in the case by that Saturday so very quickly in
00:30:43
the early stages of the investigation sled becomes involved their processing of the trailer uncovered a fresh
00:30:51
fingerprint on the living room window where they came to believe an abductor entered the trailer M this was the
00:30:59
window that had the screen removed and the curtains torn down right the print was sent off to the FBI but no match was
00:31:08
made Captain Ford we got a now we got two captains in the story Captain Ford said quote we are going under the
00:31:16
premise that she was taken from the mobile home we don't believe she simply wandered off and quote do we have a hold
00:31:23
on do we have a on this print is it female or male do we know well there's no match to the
00:31:31
fingerprint mhm so we don't know anything about it at this time in in our investigation what we do know is that
00:31:39
nothing was stolen from the house and there was no sign of a struggle at any place in the trailer itself yet Jessica
00:31:48
had vanished and it looked more and more like she had been taken right out the front door so you can kind of picture
00:31:54
this this bearded man with the Magic Hat figures his way into the living room via
00:32:01
the window sneaks into the girl's bedroom takes the youngest of the three daughters and then leaves out the front
00:32:11
door and in his haste leaves the door open behind him or maybe he was born in a barn yeah or he didn't want to put
00:32:19
down the child and cuz she could have W woke up right if you put the child down so it's just leave your car door open or
00:32:28
your truck 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
00:32:35
your truck and then take off who cares what happens behind you and this this type of abduction is really one of the
00:32:43
rarest of all child abductions a stranger abduction from within the child's own bedroom I was trying to find
00:32:50
some good numbers on this some good statistics that when I say good I mean reliable and I don't know how reliable
00:32:59
the information is that I found we do know and we can all agree that it is a very rare thing for not
00:33:07
only a a child to be abducted by a stranger but then take it the step further and say a child abducted in her
00:33:15
own home or in his own home they put the numbers at at of the child abductions out there that it's
00:33:24
roughly about 15 % actually occur in the home which was a lot higher than I thought that that I
00:33:35
would find but we've covered some cases here in the garage most recently we covered Heather
00:33:44
Don Church's case from 1991 she was abducted from her home that was episodes 339 and 340 available for
00:33:54
free on the free Stitcher app mhm and then a couple cases that we've not covered but are very well-known cases
00:34:03
are that of paully class in 1993 and Elizabeth Smart in 2002 so it does happen and it's probably the
00:34:14
scariest of circumstances that I could think of now sled issued a national alert for Jessica that described the
00:34:22
missing little girl as white 3ft tall 32 lb with brown shoulder length hair and brown eyes and pierced ears she has a
00:34:32
scar on her upper forehead and a brown birthmark on one of her buttocks she was last seen wearing a sleeveless pink and
00:34:41
white flower t-shirt and white underwear David Jessica's father was very quickly
00:34:47
ruled out as a potential suspect in his daughter's abduction we know that often when a child goes missing it it's
00:34:56
usually a custodial deal that we're dealing with now he could prove that he was in California at the time that the
00:35:04
abduction took place so he's very very far away from South Carolina when little Jesse went missing as for the
00:35:13
ex-boyfriend that's a bit of a different story though we have some bickering going on between him and Deborah he says
00:35:21
that he was not involved he didn't know that the child was missing but Deborah would stick to her guns for years and
00:35:28
years and say you know in in my gut of guts and in my heart of hearts I know that somehow he was involved I just
00:35:37
can't prove it well a couple tough things here is one they could set up some kind of sting or ruse to get
00:35:45
fingerprints from him but then you have the argument of well of course my fingerprints in there or even on that
00:35:54
window sill because I lived there or I was there often mhm mhm well the searches for little Jesse really came to
00:36:04
nothing a little while after she vanished Deborah told she she decided to sell her trailer and move away from
00:36:12
lexingon County for a time but she returned after just a few months because she was worried that someone might
00:36:19
return the little girl and the child being so young would not be able to find her mom
00:36:27
now devastated by her young daughter's abduction Deborah refused to allow her other children to celebrate Christmas
00:36:35
saying that it just did not seem right to really celebrate anything with the young girl being gone over the coming
00:36:44
years Jesse's case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted I could not find the America's
00:36:53
Most Wanted episodes Captain but I looked up the the Unsolved Mysteries yeah and it was actually featured with
00:37:00
with three other missing kids stories missing kids cases well that was a depressing episode very depressing and
00:37:10
then I I looked into each one of their cases and from what I could find right it looks like all four of them are
00:37:19
still unsolved yeah and they still they remain Unsolved Mysteries one of them got close to having some action on it
00:37:27
but the charges were dropped right before it could go to trial so hopefully that will change in one or all of these
00:37:35
cases in January of 1987 Deborah was flown to Kansas so we're sitting here just about
00:37:43
a half a year later 6 months later roughly in 1987 the mother of this missing little
00:37:51
girl she's flown to Kansas to look at a young girl who had been found alive and she matches Jessica's description
00:38:00
down to the scars and some of the dental work now when you're when you're four you don't have much dental work so well
00:38:08
hopefully you don't yeah yeah it was not Jesse and in fact it was the poor mother
00:38:16
she's walking up to you know like the two-way mirror cuz you don't want to traumatize the child you find this kid
00:38:25
kid doesn't really know who where she is supposed to go off to you bring in Deborah to to identify is this your
00:38:34
daughter or not as she's walking up to the two-way mirror she says she could hear the girl talking and knew
00:38:43
immediately it was not her daughter right can you imagine that you want to talk about an emotional roller coaster
00:38:50
ride I mean I I can't even begin to to Fathom yeah I mean just think about this at some point please come to her and say
00:38:58
we we think we might have found your daughter we think we might have found Jessica all by the way we're going to
00:39:04
have to take you there so now you have this whole preparation you're going and and before you even get a look at her
00:39:11
because that's the moment you're preparing for in your head and she doesn't even have to get to that moment
00:39:17
because she can tell audibly that oh that is not my that is not my child and then obviously probably is then double
00:39:26
confirmed by that by seeing the child well and also hey we think it's a possibility that this is your missing
00:39:32
little girl and she matches to the point of the scars you know up to the point of of
00:39:38
identifiers on the child as time went on it you know this case really just kind of drug on and it didn't
00:39:47
go really much in the way of finding Jessica or finding a potential suspect but then we have in 2005 a report by a
00:39:57
local TV channel this is wv10 news which has continued to cover Jesse's case they quote Sheriff Mets and
00:40:08
in the quote says Lexington County Sheriff James Mets says the investigation turned up a person of
00:40:16
interest but never a suspect he still believes it's a solvable case but with a sad
00:40:23
ending I don't believe Jessica is alive I think Jessica was taken for a specific
00:40:29
reason and I think maybe what happened in this case is that things didn't work out the way the abductor thought it was
00:40:38
going to work out and got scared and then killed Jessica and then dumped her body here somewhere in Lexington
00:40:47
County then in 2007 there seemed to be some movement on the case WV published a series of of articles about Jesse
00:40:58
Gutierrez and said there seemed to be some hope but the first of these articles exposed a feud that early on
00:41:06
may have hampered the investigation if you recall we said that in the early days of the investigation
00:41:14
Sheriff Mets ordered Deborah's home phone to be tapped right the sheriff's department clearly did
00:41:22
not hear what they were expecting to hear on calls made on the phone that the family was somehow involved in the
00:41:30
toddler's disappearance but Sheriff Mets also seems to have forgotten himself or
00:41:36
perhaps he just assumed that the recordings of those phone taps would never be made public because somehow
00:41:42
that TV station got their hands on some of these recordings and one of them backed up what Deb was saying all along
00:41:52
that she had always alleged that the sheriff was initially not responsive to her and could possibly have done more to
00:42:00
find her child MH here's a transcript of of the call that they played that will show the feud between the sheriff and
00:42:11
the the victim here Sheriff met says what do you want me to do someone's got to hold your hand or be out working and
00:42:21
Deborah says listen here I don't need you to hold my hand and I I don't need you to get smart with me either Sheriff
00:42:29
Mets responds I'm not going to get smart with you but you're not going to get smart with me either lady I've been up
00:42:36
all night long working on your case and I don't need your smart mouth Deborah replies oh really Mets
00:42:44
says no Gutierrez then says when I ask you questions I need answers the sheriff responds well we'll give you answers
00:42:54
when we got answers to give now you mess with me and I'll pull all my people off
00:43:00
and we'll go home and go to bed and forget about your case Deborah says you mean to tell me
00:43:06
that if I mess with you you will pull all of your people off this case and go home and forget about my child right
00:43:14
that's it's not about her or the case it's about this little girl the sheriff replies that's right Deborah then says
00:43:23
what about the public that elected you to be in this office and Mets replies they
00:43:29
can elect me or not elect me because I don't really give a damn what they do Deborah says I understand those
00:43:36
detectives are ti tired because so am I that's my young and then the sheriff says I know that's you're young and
00:43:44
ma'am and we're trying to do everything to try and help you um that's a shitty thing to say
00:43:51
but sometimes look there's not much to go off of here right it's not like we have a mountain of evidence and I know
00:43:59
like especially in in missing person cases right M uh the Tyler Davis case for example Britney Davis is frustrated
00:44:09
with detectives they're frustrated with her you know what I mean like they both want to find um
00:44:17
Tyler but there's no information that they can go off of every turn that they go down turn left turn right there's
00:44:26
nothing there mhm and so she's frustrated they're frustrated and I'm sure there's things in that case that
00:44:33
the detectives have said to Britney that they wish they could take back yeah and
00:44:38
in this case here I mean I'm I'm not looking to go out of my way to defend Sheriff Mets but what I think we're
00:44:47
we're we're getting a snippet of a of a bigger conversation well it's a shitty thing to say I mean we both agree oh
00:44:54
horrible horrible a piece of [ __ ] thing to say but I also want to point out here
00:45:00
what we have going on from my observation is this we have a a woman who who is tired she's scared she's
00:45:09
afraid for her daughter she's probably been up for days by this point but on the flip side of that we have a sheriff
00:45:17
and his detectives who have very likely been working around the clock they've been up for a very long time at this
00:45:23
point as well and we have a mother saying look I want some answers and he's saying
00:45:28
we we don't have anything we don't have any information for you we don't have anything we don't have any leads or
00:45:33
nothing and she's saying well that's cuz you're not doing a good enough job and we got this team of people working
00:45:41
around the clock and and now you go and the point person is going we've been working our asses off here it's not
00:45:48
there's just nothing to go on and it's not because we're not doing a good enough job we're trying our hearts out
00:45:53
and when you have people that are tired and they're frustrated they say things that they often don't mean and I think
00:46:02
that that's probably what we have here so I'm going to give the sheriff a little bit of of the benefit of the
00:46:08
doubt this is coming from someone myself who look I've never been a sheriff and I
00:46:12
understand that you're elected official you should carry yourself and conduct yourself as such at all times regardless
00:46:18
of the situation but I'm also a dude that's worked shifts that that you wouldn't believe I I mean one time I
00:46:25
worked a shift that was 37 hours long and I was not a very pleasant person to be around after about the 25 hour mark
00:46:35
So I get I get it a little bit let's talk about how many hours did you say several times in in my in my last job I
00:46:44
worked shifts that were over 30 hours now let's get to this suspect or this person of interest or whatever you want
00:46:52
to call him I'm going to call this guy a suspect even though in that one interview Mets didn't refer to him as
00:47:00
such a story in the 2007 series that was on that wiv entitled 21-year-old case could move
00:47:11
to court with solicitors approval before we move on just to clear up any confusion the solicitor in South
00:47:19
Carolina is basically your district attorney okay so if you hear me say solicitor think of District attorney I
00:47:26
might even call him district attorney yeah just call him district attorney from now well that's going to be tough
00:47:30
because all of my notes say solicitor well well if you don't do this I'm going to make you work a 36 hour shift
00:47:37
apparently Deborah and Sheriff Mets had finally been able to agree on something and that was that there was
00:47:45
significant evidence to charge a suspect in this case this was someone who had been the prime suspect ever since uh
00:47:55
just a few days or a few weeks into this abduction but the sheriff's department had not been able to convince the
00:48:02
Lexington County district attorney or solicitor Donnie Meyers that there was sufficient evidence to make charges
00:48:11
stick so who is this guy this is a West Columbia South Carolina man he's been described only as a an acquaintance of
00:48:20
the family or in some circles even maybe a family friend in in releases his name is not out there in
00:48:30
the public domain and he's never been named by either the sheriff or Deborah Gutierrez and I also want to point
00:48:38
something else out too as we're moving along in this case too the the ex-boyfriend's name has never been
00:48:44
publicly stated either but what we have here Captain is 10 weeks after Jesse disappeared this
00:48:53
man well he ended up behind bars according to The State newspaper he stole a van in Lexington County there's
00:49:01
a new shirt for you beware banned the stolen van and drove to North Carolina I think I've created enough where he broke
00:49:10
into a home and raped a woman oh God he was charged and later convicted and he was sent to prison now here's where the
00:49:19
story of this guy becomes relevant while in prison the now convicted rapist told
00:49:24
a cellmate that he had kidnapped a girl in Lexington County South Carolina and that
00:49:31
he was wearing a tall cowboy hat when he did it this could explain the magic hat
00:49:38
that little Becky had seen in the dark the convicted rapist claimed to have buried the girl in a landfill in
00:49:46
Lexington County the cellmate relay this information to authorities and sent a letter to Deborah explaining what his
00:49:54
cmate told him now the clencher this convicted rapist his fingerprints were a match to
00:50:04
the one that was found on the window at the Gutierrez home a weeks long search of the
00:50:13
landfill in Lexington County turned up nothing according to The State newspaper investigators questioned the rapist now
00:50:21
a suspect in the Abduction of Jesse multiple times about the child's AB abduction he offered to talk about the
00:50:29
case in exchange for immunity but prosecutors denied his offer as a result this guy shut down
00:50:42
he's going to talk about it no more so he wanted immunity for the whole thing I'll tell you what it looks like I'll
00:50:49
tell you what happened oh you have my fingerprint by the way but I'm going to tell you everything but I want you to
00:50:57
then tell me it's okay and I'm not going to be charged with anything Sheriff Mets
00:51:02
his office confirmed all of these details to the public the suspect was released from prison after serving out
00:51:10
his sentence I've seen a few different numbers thrown out there but it looks like he served about 10 or 11 years at
00:51:17
some point he fails to register as a sex offender in South Carolina as required his last known address I'm not going to
00:51:27
give the actual address was in Wake Forest but this was U at least 10 years ago Deborah Gutierrez has made a couple
00:51:36
of other claims about this suspect that are a little harder to wrap one's head around one was that she felt that this
00:51:45
suspect and her ex-boyfriend the one she had the gut feeling about knew each other this family
00:51:54
acquaintance and and the ex-boyfriend Gutierrez kicked out days before Jesse's disappearance they denied knowing one
00:52:02
another however Deborah says that she she knows that the two actually met a a Waffle House several months before Jesse
00:52:11
disappeared now there's no way to know whether this is true or whether it even matters uh another strange thing Deborah
00:52:18
has repeatedly claimed that she located fibers this is an odd story here that she located fibers related to her
00:52:27
missing daughter in an abandoned car that belonged to the suspect I don't know how this comes
00:52:36
about right that she so now we have a fingerprint and we have possible fibers that this suspect owned that vehicle and
00:52:46
now we believe that this suspect also knew uh her ex that's Deborah's claims that that the
00:52:55
the two knew one another and that Deborah found fibers that would be connected to her missing daughter in
00:53:01
this suspect's vehicle but to be quite Frank here there's nowhere that that says that
00:53:10
these fibers were reviewed and compared in a laboratory somewhere by people that are educated to
00:53:17
do so this is just one poor grieving mother who has found what she believes might be
00:53:25
possible evidence it's it's tough too because if she sees these whatever they are and she goes oh that's that's from
00:53:34
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
00:53:43
that you have a suspect that again let's not even call suspect we have his fingerprint there's no reason for his
00:53:49
fingerprint to be there right so well that's the problem why aren aren't they charging this guy with abduction
00:54:00
yeah and I think that that is Deborah's that that I mean that is her already know he's a piece of [ __ ] that's
00:54:08
been her her second concern for almost the entirety of her life her first concern is finding her daughter her
00:54:15
second concern is why when we have this guy that that sheriff Mets let's keep in
00:54:21
mind Deborah and Sheriff Mets didn't get along they didn't see eye to eye on many
00:54:25
things they both publicly have stated this is our guy we believe that we can solve this case we believe that we know
00:54:33
who did it we believe that we knew who did it fairly quickly into the investigation however the solicitor SL
00:54:42
the district attorney says we don't have enough evidence to charge this individual so something we talked about
00:54:51
a little bit on off the Record was okay this fingerprint well is there a reasonable explanation for why there is
00:54:59
this fingerprint there or can it be explained away at least to a point where it confuses a jury enough that they
00:55:06
don't get a conviction of this guy I think what we have here Captain is I think that we have a
00:55:12
guy that was sitting in prison and was going to be there for quite some time 10 11 years what have you and I think that
00:55:20
they thought that they now that they had honed in on who it was or who they believed it was that they could build a
00:55:26
case with significant evidence against this guy in the time period where this guy is locked up he can't hurt anybody
00:55:32
he's not going anywhere the problem is past that fingerprint that's found by sled that
00:55:40
that's a legit investigative agency the fibers in the car don't mean anything if
00:55:47
I found them or if Deborah found them or if you found them we need somebody to tell us hey these are connected to this
00:55:53
case and it's connected to the victim and it's connected to the suspect but we don't have that yeah but law enforcement
00:55:59
could do those tests yes yes unless now they worried that the the scene the vehicle was contaminated by right the
00:56:10
victim's mother it it gets very complicated very quickly and you can see how this is stacking up really against
00:56:18
Deborah and against the case for her daughter rather than against the guy that's sitting in prison and by the time
00:56:25
he gets released they've not collected any more evidence against this guy I think the problem that we have
00:56:32
here the major major problem is we know how difficult it is to get a conviction in a nobody case yeah but we don't have
00:56:41
to get a conviction of murder that's true we can get a conviction of the fact that we we know we have a
00:56:50
eyewitness um that may not may not be able to put that person at the scene because she didn't know that person it
00:56:57
was in the dark but the finger print puts you there and we know that the child was abducted so what what do
00:57:04
kidnap charges uh how many years can he spend in jail over kidnap charges right and chances are if you go
00:57:13
ahead and charge him with it and then you offer him a deal you know maybe he spends half that time in jail but that's
00:57:21
on top of the charges the rape charges he's already in jail for I mean this is a scumbag piece of [ __ ] dude that needs
00:57:28
to be behind bars you know cuz all he's going to do okay we know that he's willing to kidnap children and we know
00:57:36
he's a rapist is he raping children is he killing children I mean this this is a bad
00:57:43
dude well and I thought about that because the the statement from the sheriff that really stands out to
00:57:51
me is We believe We Know Who did this we believe that Jesse was abducted for a specific reason and when things didn't
00:58:01
go the way that the abductor thought that they would work out he got scared he killed her and he dumped her
00:58:07
somewhere in Lexington County that whole statement makes me it really made me wonder okay what would that specific
00:58:14
reason be now that doesn't mean that law enforcement knows what that specific reason was but when we look at it I
00:58:23
thought okay would it have been for a ransom well it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to
00:58:29
abduct a child from from a mobile home where we have only one parent who's trying to provide for four doesn't seem
00:58:39
to be much money to pay a ransom is what I'm pointing out there with the with the
00:58:43
family situation and then I've seen several cases where unfortunately kids are harmed whether it be abducted or
00:58:51
murdered because there's some kind of debt that was was unpaid or some kind of bad drug dealings going on between an
00:59:01
adult male and the eventual offender the problem with that is the boyfriend's been removed from the home
00:59:09
it seems like it it seems like a really dumb idea to if you're going to take the
00:59:16
child for some unpaid debt or for some kind of Ransom against the boyfriend MH it seems like you've you've created
00:59:25
there's a whole degree of separation that doesn't seem like it would play out the way that you wanted it to so with
00:59:30
the with the rape charges if in fact this is our guy and I have no problem saying that I believe that it is very
00:59:37
much the guy because I I put my faith in the evidence that was collected there's
00:59:43
a fingerprint and there's no reason for him to be there well not only that we have a mother who says look I I cleaned
00:59:50
the home inside and out regularly that she says that that print would have been a new print that whoever
00:59:59
took her daughter came in through that window left their print and she says that with confidence because she says I
01:00:06
clean that same area just shortly before the abduction again it's a grieving mother
01:00:13
and you go Nick take it with a grain of salt however what we have here is sled took that evidence they sent it off to
01:00:21
the FBI it was labeled by one of the agencies or both as a fresh print a fresh print right the experts
01:00:32
agree that it was a relatively new print so not only do you have to explain away
01:00:37
why your fingerprint was on that in that area that was used to gain access to the
01:00:43
home you have to explain why it was there in a short time frame that's all centered around the Abduction of a
01:00:51
child well what pisses me off and and you know this cuz we covered so many cases there's there's a lot of missing
01:00:58
person cases where there's just there's just nothing there you know and and this
01:01:04
is abduction case it's a little different but again you take away that uh fingerprint we have nothing there mhm
01:01:13
we don't even have a time period of when this individual I mean a time period within an hour or two we don't have we
01:01:21
have from midnight till 8:00 in the morning we don't know and we don't know what the motivation would be for this
01:01:28
individual to take this girl and it's but there's so many cases with with the rape charge my fear is that it that
01:01:36
it's sexually motivated crime what a dirt bag no but the but the thing is is okay so here's a case that we have a
01:01:47
fingerprint now we have a possible connection between this individual and her ex we possibly have these fibers
01:01:54
that need to be tested again could be contaminated because she collected them but it's just so sad that we have so
01:02:01
many things pointing us to having this case be solved and they can't get it done yeah and I think what you have here
01:02:11
too is look there might have been some missteps very early on by the sheriff's department but we also stated that sled
01:02:19
was brought in by that Saturday this is that State's top invest instigative agency and we've also referenced the FBI
01:02:27
a couple times in this very short case right it's it's not short in TimeWise but it's short in our in our garage time
01:02:35
here today so you have I think very capable agencies looking into this case and to
01:02:43
the credit of the Sheriff's Office that's the same Sheriff's Office that took down that took down Larry Jean Bell who
01:02:53
we discussed on this show in our episode titled last will and testament episode 263 Larry Jean Bell was
01:03:05
being this was a Manhunt well it was an investigation that led to a short man hunt but it was the sheriff's department
01:03:12
it was sled it was the FBI all working together against this guy this is one of the most sadistic
01:03:20
despicable he had he had a very bizarre way of mentally torturing his victims and that was to have them write a
01:03:30
goodbye letter to to their family before he killed them so this is this is agencies that are used to high-profile
01:03:40
complicated cases so I don't think that that's the situation here I think that what we have
01:03:46
is unfortunately there just is not a lot of evidence and as soon as this guy says
01:03:53
oh you're taking taking immunity off of the table I'm no longer willing to talk MH but now I that makes me wonder about
01:04:01
the ex-boyfriend what did this suspect have to say was it that I gave the girl off to the
01:04:11
ex-boyfriend what if they did know each other that's that's the tricky part in here too Captain where we have do we
01:04:17
have two suspects or do we have one well and again I I think there's a lot of things that you can't prove but if there
01:04:26
was a connection between these two individuals I think there would be a way to do so even if it's just through um
01:04:33
you know hearsay even people just going yeah I I've saw them hanging out before well and I'll give the ex-boyfriend a
01:04:39
little credit because remember both men claim they both men deny ever knowing each other
01:04:46
and here here's the thing unless the ex-boyfriend is involved somehow in this Disappearance in this AB uction he has
01:04:55
no reason to deny knowing this other man if he in fact did know him so I I I I don't know I can't I
01:05:06
can't say that they didn't know one another but because one thing that I was really
01:05:11
trying to think about in this case and we we know this happens unfortunately in in the real world here where often bad
01:05:19
people will get a hold of some information they get a hold of some information that they it doesn't matter
01:05:27
that in the grand scheme of things it does matter but it doesn't matter at the time that they hear it because people
01:05:32
don't know that they're bad people with bad intentions I thought is there a chance that these two knew each other
01:05:37
and it's as simple of a story as the ex-boyfriend goes yeah she kicked me out man she kicked me out I've been out I've
01:05:44
been Outdoors for days now right and now this this this pervert this rapist goes
01:05:50
oh we have a we have a house full of that's full of just a woman and children well that's an easy target there's
01:05:58
nobody there to fight me off in the middle of nowhere and it's and it's a trailer but then again the problem with
01:06:04
that is then why would the boyfriend deny knowing this man if if that's what in fact went down I I don't think that
01:06:11
that's likely because I think that if the ex-boyfriend had did know the guy and did not have any involvement in the
01:06:17
abduction he would want to be helpful to the investigation and to this poor family and I keep going back to the
01:06:25
vague description of our suspect that was given by that poor frightened girl so many years ago and Becky in recent
01:06:34
years has said in interviews she's still scared about that night and of course she has regrets that she didn't run to
01:06:41
her mom or scream or cry out for help and unfortunately that's something that she's going to have to live with
01:06:48
that's a burden that she's going to have to carry for the rest of her days but I keep going back to her
01:06:54
description of the bearded man with the magic hat and one thing she has said in recent interviews is that still to this
01:07:01
day she sees that face when she lies in bed at night she sees that face over and
01:07:09
over and over again that leads me to believe one of two things either because she was so scared that she created some
01:07:19
version of this face and some version of these events that may not be 100% spot-on And
01:07:28
real or she does remember the face just as it is and just as she saw it that night and if that would be the case i'
01:07:39
then say well why have we not heard all these years later from now an adult woman who can articulate what she saw
01:07:47
that night and give us a better description of that man and his face and I think what we have here Captain is a
01:07:55
situation where maybe the face that she remembers seeing that night matches up with the suspect that they can't bring
01:08:03
to trial in an interview with the state Deborah Gutierrez said the following I've got a kid that's lost in the dark
01:08:13
I'm not going to stop searching for my kid my baby's lost somewhere in the dark gutier said her voice cracking and I'm
01:08:22
not going to stop until I find [Music] her all right make sure you get your pre-order in of the new t-shirt ban the
01:08:50
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
01:08:59
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