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subject to credit approval see store or ashley.com for details [Music] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage Wherever
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You Are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that knows
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that when the XFL starts our ratings go way up here is the captain it's because it's crap it's good to be seen and good
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to see you thanks for listening thanks for tell him a [Music] friend this week we are happy to be
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featuring pavement from foam Brewers pavement is a double India Pale Ale smooth F out with some juicy tropical
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bottle caps out of five and how about a couple of cheers to some of our friends a big we like your JB to Timmy from that
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crime garage.com and carel that's enough of the Beers N all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer
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let's talk some true crime [Music] [Music] murder that is one of the most common cases
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that we discuss here in the garage now with over 650 episodes of True Crime garage we have seen just about
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everything when it comes to the topic of murder murder means the manner of someone's death is a homicide the cause
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of that homicide can vary we have discussed shootings stabbings victims who were beaten or bludgeon to death
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some suffocated drowned burned or even dragged by a vehic vehicle the victims themselves are even
00:04:03
more drastically different from one another than the causes of a homicide every case is unique every
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victim is different be it an innocent victim or a lowlife drug dealer in the end they are all listed as homicide
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victims most annual crime statistics will typically show that the majority of homicides stem from domestic disputes or
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they are drug rated deaths more than one law enforcement official has told me that often the Silver Lining is that it
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is mostly criminals killing criminals but they will also tell you that no murder is Justified but there is
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a phrase or a term common amongst law enforcement officials and that term is true
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victim a true victim are the kids moms dads brothers or sisters who either did not know their Killers or
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did nothing to provoke them this week's True Crime Story would be much easier for us to tell if it were just another
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criminal killing criminal story but it is not this week's story is about one of those true
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victims Little Rosie Topia was just 6 years old when she disappeared from her bedroom in the middle of of the night
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back in August of 1995 Rosie lived with her family at the Heartland apartments at 1616 Snow Queen
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place in beautiful Salt Lake City Utah this was just one of 75 homicide cases Statewide for the year of
00:05:50
1995 unfortunately this was a year that saw a rise in the state's homicide numbers
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Rosie was taken from her bedroom and dumped into a nearby Canal where her body was discovered hours later her
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killer has never been arrested now over 27 years later her family still seeks Justice they want an arrest they want
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you not to just help but to solve this horrendous crime from the website who killed
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rosie.com the family is asking for people to come forward with any information that might help and be useful in any
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way they want to hear from everyone who might have information but particularly if you lived in the Heartland apartments
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in 1995 visited the apartments or were in the area in the months surrounding the
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murder were friends with Rosie or family members had kids who played on the playground there or new kids who did we
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familiar with anyone who lived in the apartments who might have seen someone on the playground or around the
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area help us solve this crime there is a reward of up to $100,000 in Rosie tapia's case someone
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somewhere as information that can help solve this crime you may not even know it no fact
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is insignificant no detail is too small if you have any information please call 38525
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3313 this number is answered by representatives of the family and not the police or you can email who killed Rosie
00:07:46
at gmail.com this is also monitored by Family Representatives this phone number and
00:07:53
email address will be listed in our show notes join us as we discuss Rosie topia
00:07:59
case in detail and talk about some cases that share some commonalities with Rosie's case as we search for the man
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that we called the Barbie doll killer this is a still unsolved homicide case of Rosie Topia and this is true crime
00:08:21
[Music] garage this was no accident Captain but that is certainly what police thought that they
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were responding to when they arrived on the scene in the early morning hours of August 13th
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1995 the police responded to a call about a missing little girl the call came in just before 6:00 a.m. so we have
00:08:57
a police car or two on the their way to an apartment complex back in 1995 these apartments were called the
00:09:05
heartland Apartments located at 1616 West Snow Queen place this is a very large sprawling apartment complex
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located in the Glendale neighborhood just 4 miles Southwest from downtown Salt Lake City Utah in the quaint
00:09:24
neighborhood of Glendale we have what is currently named Seasons at Pebble Creek
00:09:29
Apartments now they say that they provide residents with the ease and convenience of a central city with a
00:09:36
peaceful environment of a residential community so back in 1995 Captain they were listed as the Heartland Apartments
00:09:44
today if people want to look them up they are listed as Seasons at Pebble Creek Apartments these are very Nic
00:09:51
looking apartments from what I can see they have four different types of layouts we're talking one-bedroom two
00:09:57
bedroom three bedroom all the the way up to four bedroom apartments but again this is a large apartment complex
00:10:04
there's 15 buildings and in some of these buildings they could vary from 12 units I saw one unit that I suspect may
00:10:13
have up to 30 units so a lot of people living in this area police and law enforcement are going to get a call just
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before 6:00 a.m. and they're going to be on the scene relatively quickly they're
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on the scene they're in the apartment and what they are observing is a open window in a child's
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bedroom the Venetian blinds have been knocked to the floor mhm the screen to the window has been removed and is
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sitting outside of the apartment propped up against the apartment wall and doesn't it almost have like a pry mark
00:10:51
on it correct but there's a little bit of confusion when police first arrive on the scene so so the apartment itself is
00:11:02
what's referred to as a basement level apartment and there is one window for this bedroom in the bedroom we have
00:11:11
three children sleeping there we have six-year-old Rosie Topia and we have her two younger siblings this is a brother
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and sister they're twins they're about 3 4 years old at the time underneath the window from the the
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inside of the bedroom there is a chest which is like a a dresser drawer when police arrive on the scene there is
00:11:38
a bit of a suspicion from the police angle they're looking at this and they're wondering could this child have
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climbed up on the chest and then climbed out the window yeah that's a possibility
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and went wandering around in the middle of the night right now the parents are frantic of course they they are already
00:12:00
and have already been searching the neighborhood for their little one to no avail they are telling police look she
00:12:08
would not have taken off in the middle of the night now keep in mind the majority of the time when police show up
00:12:13
on scene and we have a missing kid they're usually just not where they should be and kids do wander
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off sadly around 10:00 a.m. a body is discovered in a nearby Canal this is listed is one of those Surplus canals so
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this Surplus Canal would be feeding water into the Jordan River the body that is found is quickly identified to
00:12:40
be that of Little Rosie Topia and this is around approximately 10:00 a.m. this morning so they start looking for her
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around 6:00 and around 10:00 a.m. the body is discovered but not discovered by police discovered by a man who was
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walking or jogging with his dog and he says that when he first spotted this object floating in the canal right he
00:13:05
thought that maybe it was a large doll and this would make some sense because she was found floating face down and she
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was fully clothed but only a portion of the body was visible from the shoreline we know this because he alerts police
00:13:23
and it's not until police are over there and we have other people involved that the body is removed moved from the water
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at that time they very quickly identify the body to be that of Rosie Topia and they send her off to be examined by the
00:13:40
medical examiner now this does not change the police suspicions at the time in fact it kind of underlines what they
00:13:48
had already suspected and they started to think well she probably climbed out the window and for whatever reason
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wandered down to this canal well the canal wasn't that far from her apartment no we're talking this is approximately
00:14:03
about a football field to a football field and a half from not just the apartment complex from their physical
00:14:10
actual apartment that they lived in right now her body's going to be found further away but it's very possible that
00:14:16
she could have climbed out the window walked down like you said not that far had an accident fell into the canal and
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then floated down Downstream yeah so we should be clear here here because I don't know that we're giving a great
00:14:30
description of this canal or where the body was found so the canal does in fact run directly
00:14:37
behind the apartment building that Rosie and her family lives in okay but her body is found about a football field and
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a half from that apartment building so the canal runs so her body was found south of their apartment complex the
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canal does run directly behind it and it would be a Stones Throw you know um one
00:15:04
of us captain could punt a football from her apartment building into this canal now if you go south south of South
00:15:15
Street nonetheless you're going to find her body is about a football field to a football field and a half away from her
00:15:23
apartment building so this is all in very close proximity to to where she goes missing from and I can tell you
00:15:32
unfortunately with personal experience that this type of situation is not incredibly uncommon in fact I know of a
00:15:42
situation that took place about a year and a half ago that is so similar to this It's haunting but in this situation
00:15:49
that I'm talking about the girl snuck out in the middle of the night in the wee hours of the morning in fact left
00:15:56
the home and was known to to feed the ducks have a love for feeding the Ducks and the Fish at a nearby Pond and
00:16:04
unfortunately they found her body in the pond later that day and it was a complete accident now with the removal
00:16:12
of Rosie's body police have not change their stance on it they're still looking at this as a possible accident that the
00:16:19
girl willingly left her own apartment in the middle of the night yeah because what was going on that day was her
00:16:26
parents Rosie's parents went out for a in her and to go dancing and she was being watched by her older sister so
00:16:34
they go out dancing and going out to eat and they opened up the sister opened up
00:16:40
the window just to crack because it was hot so what law enforcement think is while the window was open up a crack is
00:16:48
it possible that she decided to leave in the middle of the night and then went down to the canal and accidentally fell
00:16:56
in and then drowned what's terrible here Captain is after the medical examiner after they do the autopsy they contact
00:17:05
the police and say hang on a second this is a homicide the injury substained by this young girl we could fully know that
00:17:16
one she was sexually assaulted and two this is a homicide now the well she was also badly beaten the cause of death is
00:17:24
listed as drowning but due to the injuries and due to the sexual assault the medical examiner could confidently
00:17:32
say that this is a homicide so now we have police shifting gears here and you did say badly beating you did say badly
00:17:41
beaten and that is true the difficult thing here though is I've seen this reported so many different ways and it's
00:17:49
reported that there was some kind of blunt force trauma to the body and it's also been reported that that when they
00:17:59
pulled her from the canal that it was not clear and would not have been obvious to
00:18:06
anyone to switch this from an accident to a homicide based off of what they were seeing when they pulled her from
00:18:12
the canal it was only once the medical examiner did the autopsy that they had to shift gears yeah my my guess is that
00:18:21
there was blunt force trauma to her skull and they probably just weren't able to see that due to her hair and
00:18:29
whatever well we don't know for certain because they've never released the official results of the
00:18:34
autopsy again it gets to be difficult because a large amount of those injuries could have been covered up by her
00:18:42
clothing she was found fully clothed when they pulled her from the canal let's go through this
00:18:49
timeline before the murder and leading up to the body being found in a little more detail well I you always say the
00:18:59
timeline matters but the devil is in the details as the captain said we have Roberto and Len who are the parents of
00:19:09
six-year-old Rosie Topia they are going out on a date night on that night they have their daughter they have their
00:19:18
daughter Amelia who is 18 she will be babysitting Rosie and the four-year-old twins Robert and Angelica for the night
00:19:28
now around 700 p.m. Amelia drops Rosie off at the park this park is it's referred to as a park on some online
00:19:39
websites however this is simply a small playground area that exist inside the apartment complex and is relatively
00:19:47
close to the building that Rosie lives in and so she takes Rosie to the playground area and does leave her there
00:19:58
which which is a little surprising to me given that Rosy's only 6 years old it's
00:20:03
not so surprising giving the very close proximity to the apartment building that
00:20:07
they live in and again this could be part of some kind of routine she drops the girl off there returns to the
00:20:16
apartment where she has the two younger kids and then we have a person who would
00:20:24
later be labeled as a Good Samaritan because they've not identified this individual who returns Rosie to the
00:20:33
apartment this takes place within about 15 minutes of Amelia taking Rosie to the
00:20:39
playground area this Good Samaritan is a male and he arrives at the doorstep of Rosie's apartment with Rosie in his arms
00:20:51
he tells 18-year-old Amelia that Rosie was kicked in the back while on the slide that she had slid down the slide
00:21:00
and another kid comes down right behind her kicking her in the back very likely an accident yet Rosie is injured from
00:21:08
this and so this guy says I carried her home to return her to you Amelia thanks the man she's a little surprised by the
00:21:17
events but thanks him and informs him that she will look and make sure that there's no severe injuries to
00:21:24
Rosie the weird thing here and this has always been a strange part of this story
00:21:29
and I don't know what to make of it Captain I'm I'm going to be perfectly upfront and honest with everybody
00:21:35
regarding this scenario according to Amelia the man who she did not know the Good Samaritan says goodbye Rosie right
00:21:45
and what Amelia would later say is she does not know this man she asked Rosie did you tell this man your name and
00:21:55
Rosie tells her no she did not Amelia is uncertain how this man would have known
00:22:02
where Rosie lived again this is a large apartment complex and this is not the only playground in this apartment
00:22:09
complex Rosie could have lived in any of those apartments yeah I think it's odd obviously that he knows where Rosie
00:22:16
lives but not so odd that might he might have heard her name being called to her
00:22:21
on the playground or when he went to attend to her when she got injured did somebody say her name at that point to
00:22:28
add further suspicion to this story Amelia says a couple of things one Rosie was not crying when the man brought her
00:22:39
carried her to the door which she thought was a little surprising why wouldn't you just walk the
00:22:45
six-year-old two she could find no sign of an injury on Rosie and Rosie told her
00:22:52
that she was not hurt now the reason why I say I don't know what to make of this
00:22:59
is because I think we have two sides to the story one we have Amelia's story where she's saying there's these parts
00:23:08
of the story that raised my suspicion level and especially of course after we later learned that Rosie was abducted
00:23:15
and murdered of course she's going to be suspicious of these different items I've had a lot of interaction with
00:23:23
five six and seven-year-old children and I think anybody that had has talking to you parents out there I
00:23:31
think you'll back me up on this children do not always tell the truth especially when they're trying to
00:23:39
get something they want and we've all experienced how much fun it is to take a child from the playground when they do
00:23:46
not want to leave when they're not ready to leave yet they will throw a fit they
00:23:51
will make up every excuse in the book why they should be able to stay there maybe Rosie was in fact kick Ked in the
00:23:58
back and this guy was just trying to help out maybe she did say and tell this man where she lived maybe she did tell
00:24:06
this man her name and when questioned by her older sister thought that maybe I'll
00:24:12
get in trouble if I maybe I've done something wrong yeah because she could have been told multiple times by her
00:24:18
parents or family members or teachers don't talk to strangers and so then she was hurt and the stranger comes up and
00:24:25
maybe she gave the stranger information and now she feels bad about it one thing
00:24:29
we do know for certain is Amelia does not know who this man is so that's interesting and that's insightful but at
00:24:37
the end of the day you could have three different scenarios you could have a scenario where this man labeled as a
00:24:43
Good Samaritan could be responsible for her disappearing in the middle of the night and was watching the girl and
00:24:54
learned information about her one investigator had something very interesting to say about the scenario
00:25:00
saying that taking the girl to the apartment could have been a bit of a surveillance Gathering Intel situation
00:25:08
for this perpetrator if in fact this man was involved in right the Abduction of Rosie toia yeah maybe he was carrying
00:25:18
her there to one verify where she lived and to kind of see once the door opens up who all's in the apartment what do we
00:25:27
got going on verifi that it is her apartment so that's an interesting angle but you could also have the angle where
00:25:34
this guy was just trying to help and nothing nefarious was going on with the situation the problem here Captain
00:25:41
remains with this individual being unidentified even all of these years later well it gets quite complicated it
00:25:48
gets difficult to sort it out and police move on from this Good Samaritan man and
00:25:55
we'll discuss that in a bit because at one point they thought they had identified this
00:26:01
man so in our timeline before Rosie goes missing that brings us now to 7:30 or a
00:26:10
little thereafter this is when Amelia prepares dinner for Rosie and her two younger siblings it's bath time after
00:26:18
that and then we're going to get everybody ready for bed and again this playground situation Captain sounds to
00:26:26
me like it was Common Place that she would go to the playground leading up to dinner bath and then
00:26:34
bedtime bedtime that night for Rosie and her two siblings is listed at 9 to 9:30
00:26:40
p.m. let's get back to the abduction in murder of Rosie Tapia after this quick beer
00:26:51
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freedom all right we are back cheers mates cheers to you Captain let's go through a
00:29:36
story that ran in the Salt Lake City Tribune September 10th 1995 because this provides us with the most thorough
00:29:46
breakdown of our timeline here and we're going to go back and revisit some things
00:29:51
as we go through this timeline so before the murder Rosie's mother Len topia and
00:29:57
her father Roberto toia went dancing at the LA frona cafe and bar the night of Saturday August
00:30:06
12th 1995 as we said earlier their 18-year-old daughter Amelia would be babysitting Rosie and the four-year-old
00:30:15
twins Robert and Angelica Amelia says that she put the three children to bed between 9 and 9:30 p.m. that night she
00:30:24
left the window open because it was hot in their basement apartment I think we need to describe
00:30:31
this basement apartment for those that have not experienced this because this was something that was a little new to
00:30:39
me right so I've reviewed photos and I've spoke to people that have visited the crime scene and what they were able
00:30:47
to tell me and what we are able to see from these photos is that the basement apartment is kind of what it says where
00:30:55
a portion of the the apartment itself is below ground level but a portion of it is above ground level so in this
00:31:04
particular building Captain you have apartments on three levels so they stack them three High basically you have a
00:31:12
basement level you have a midlevel and then you have a top level and in this apartment they have
00:31:19
two bedrooms in Rosie's apartment it's one of the two-bedroom units right so we have the parents sleeping in one bedroom
00:31:28
in the other bedroom we have three of the children we have Rosie and her two younger twin
00:31:36
siblings the 18-year-old daughter Amelia was sleeping on the couch so Amelia lived there for a good period of time
00:31:46
and then moved out and went and stayed with another relative for an extended period of time and came back to stay and
00:31:53
it sounds to me Captain like this was scheduled to be somewhat of a brief stay I don't know if brief stay meant weeks
00:32:02
or months but it's always been reported as she was going to be living there briefly so just sleeping on the couch
00:32:10
now that she's back in their only TW bedroom apartment the basement level so if you are inside this bedroom inside of
00:32:19
Rosie's bedroom right you and I captain we're over 6 foot tall you're taller than I am if we were in there we're
00:32:26
Giants the window would start at about our chest level if you were standing outside of
00:32:35
the apartment the window to that bedroom is only like 6 to 8 in off of the ground
00:32:41
uhhuh so if somebody came in there in the middle of the night like we all think happened this did not require a
00:32:49
ladder or any method of getting up to get into the window you're actually getting down and crawling in right so
00:32:58
you don't need a ladder to get up into the window but when you're coming down from the window that conveniently you
00:33:05
have that chest there and so you'd have to have something to step down on cuz it'd be quite a quite a long drop when
00:33:13
Len and Roberto got home that night they get home around 2:30 a.m. Len says that
00:33:20
she then went to the children's bedroom she kisses them gently and she pulled the window closed remember it's in the
00:33:26
up position when she arrives she pulls it closed but this is not one of those windows captain that we see typically
00:33:34
today where it has the latch on the top of the bottom pane where you close it and then you twist it or turn it and it
00:33:42
seals it and it locks it and you know it's locked right this is those ones that you saw a lot in the 9s where they
00:33:49
had the locks on the sides where you would push them in open up the window and then when you would pull it closed
00:33:56
it you would hear it click and it would lock and it would latch great sound effect now Len says that while she
00:34:03
pulled it closed she pulled it closed and she did not pull it tight she was afraid that the clicking of that lock
00:34:11
would wake up the children right so as far as she's concerned the window is closed but not in the locked position
00:34:21
she also says that she closed the curtains to that window at that time now here is where she becomes incredibly
00:34:31
concerned because at 5:30 a.m. she wakes up she's walking through the living room
00:34:38
but to her surprise she can see that the children's door to the bedroom is now shut mm she left it open when she went
00:34:48
to bed she goes inside the bedroom she immediately notices that Rosie is gone and the window is open the the screen is
00:34:57
removed and the Venetian blinds knocked to the floor from my understanding of this crime scene here Captain it is
00:35:06
exactly like what you said there was some kind of marking on this screen that was placed outside of the
00:35:14
apartment Window and now leaning up against the apartment wall there was markings on the screen that indicated
00:35:21
that somebody used some kind of tool to pry the screen from the window what's terrifying here Not only would this
00:35:29
Intruder need to climb down and use this chest as a stepping stool into the children's bedroom but the positioning
00:35:41
of the beds and where all the kids were sleeping this individual would have had to crawl over one of the other children
00:35:48
to get to Rosie yeah it reminds me a lot of the meline McAn case where you have multiple kids in a room but only one of
00:35:59
them was abducted and that's probably because if you if you have only one individual you can only carry so many
00:36:07
children but the the marking on the screen it could be a nothing Burger in the sense of that Rosie's sister would
00:36:18
have her boyfriend sneak into that room and he would use the same window so is it possible that these Pride marks are
00:36:26
from earlier events of the boyfriend sneaking into that window regardless of how they got the screen off we know that
00:36:33
the screen was removed Intruder climbs into the window crawls over another child to get to Rosie what's difficult
00:36:42
here though Captain I can see reasons why I would suspect maybe two persons were involved I would like to know if
00:36:50
they have any clue or any evidence to suggest how the Intruder left the apartment because just because they
00:36:58
gained access to the apartment through the child's bedroom does not mean that they had to exit that way as well what
00:37:06
we do have as far as evidence goes there are fingerprints on this screen as the captain pointed out these could be the
00:37:16
offenders fingerprints these could be maintenance workers fingerprints could be the
00:37:23
boyfriendboyfriend the ex-boyfriend the big piece of evidence here that we have in her bedroom is on that chest there
00:37:30
was a towel and there's a footprint in the towel that's a bit of a difficult thing you're exactly right they found a
00:37:38
partial footprint in the room in that bedroom the difficult thing is how it's reported it's been reported a couple
00:37:46
different ways one on the towel on that chest leading up to the window the other
00:37:53
reports state that it was on the blinds that it was found on the blinds now could we have two partial footprints
00:38:00
in the apartment possibly right or somebody's just got some information wrong the problem too with this case
00:38:08
captain that I don't love and I think that the Salt Lake City police have done a good job working this case that
00:38:16
they've at least spent a lot of time and resources on the case I think that there's some crowdsourcing that they
00:38:23
could be doing that they are not participating in there there's a there's information there's meat on the bone
00:38:30
here in this case but they don't want to release hardly anything on Rosie's case
00:38:35
well the biggest problem right away is the size of the apartment complex and how many people you have living within
00:38:42
that small area so all those individuals become suspects upon discovering her daughter is missing Len then calls 911
00:38:52
and phones family members and we have family members and and police both on the scene who arve to help to search
00:39:00
this is Before Dawn we have police combing the banks of the Jordan River and they drove through the neighborhood
00:39:07
of course family members posted Flyers they're already posting Flyers at nearby convenience stores with Rosie's pictures
00:39:15
so we have two things going on the police they're thinking maybe this girl had wandered off and immediately the
00:39:22
parents are of the idea that she might have been Abdu abducted now just by posting Flyers doesn't mean that they
00:39:30
believe 100% that she's abducted just straight up missing but what happens is they spring into action very quickly
00:39:38
yeah but you have to applaud them for that she has her brother or brother-in-law who's at Kinkos nearby
00:39:44
making flyers around 8:00 a.m. that morning and he goes out with the sister-in-law and immediately starts
00:39:51
posting these flyers everywhere that they can unfortunately this is all for not because a man by the name of Gustavo
00:40:00
abara was jogging with his dog and at 10:15 a.m. according to this report spots Rosy's body floating in a surplus
00:40:08
Canal at the 1900 block of West and 1200 Block of South let's get into this investigation or at least the
00:40:16
information that's been released in this investigation the autopsy report was completed within a couple of days of f
00:40:26
ing the little girl and officially listed the cause of death as drowning but the case was ruled a homicide as we
00:40:33
said earlier because trauma to Rosie's body would indicate that this is a homicide now they state that trauma to
00:40:39
Rosie's body was limited to wounds of a sexual nature in this report she was not
00:40:44
stabbed nor was she beaten according to this report which is a little weird because a lot of the other reports do
00:40:51
list blunt force trauma yeah the majority of the reports that you read on on this case list BL force trauma so why
00:40:59
wouldn't we think that there's trauma there that that makes no sense to me again we can't prove one way or another
00:41:08
because the autopsy report has never been revealed to the public we can simply go off of what persons who have
00:41:16
reviewed those documents and what their statements are to the media well then the other question becomes because she's
00:41:23
found in water and we know water is one of the it's a it's a horrible thing to find a body in water because it
00:41:32
washes away so much evidence so with this sexual assault you you wonder if they have DNA of the murderer they've
00:41:40
always been Cy about the DNA and we'll get into that as we continue along but looking for physical evidence we know
00:41:48
that investigators publicly have stated that they looked for signs on Rosie's mouth to see if it was taped shut to
00:41:55
silence her they found no signs of her mouth being taped closed they wondered if the killer
00:42:02
may have used chloroform a clear liquid that if inhaled can leave a victim unconscious unfortunately the rain the
00:42:10
river water would have washed away traces of that chemical this is per the pathologist who performed the autopsy
00:42:20
and then as far as the family goes this report again this is coming out less than a month
00:42:26
after the homicide and this report states that the Tapia family members have been cooperating fully with police
00:42:34
they have provided fingerprints to match against those lifted from Rosie's window
00:42:38
and have even found clues in Rosie's room that they provided to police yeah if you're in law enforcement you have to
00:42:46
look at this case from the inside out so you want to start going through the timeline of her her father her mother
00:42:53
her older sister and then you wonder were their visitors to the older sister and is she is she telling the
00:43:02
full story about what her events were that night this gets difficult too unfortunately the oldest sister Amelia
00:43:09
has passed away she passed away just a couple years ago so she was involved in this case and she was upfront and Center
00:43:17
for a lot of the media attenion that was given to this case let's go through the
00:43:23
reports first because there were reports that came out years later that had some
00:43:27
speculation in it that Amelia may have thrown a party or had a gathering at the apartment that night before Rosie goes
00:43:37
missing the speculation was that maybe one of the attendees of that Gathering took the girl there's a couple problems
00:43:45
with that well first off we have the mother who says that she physically saw and kissed the girl good night when she
00:43:53
arrived at 2:30 in the morning right and there's there's no reason not to believe
00:43:57
her also we have police that went on the record after this rumor starts going about and made its way to the paper the
00:44:03
police they're not very upfront and Center about a lot of things in this case but one thing they were was
00:44:09
regarding this this air quotes party that did not happen they said they they spoke to a lot of people they could find
00:44:16
no evidence that such a party took place now if somehow this party managed to happen and nobody was aware of it that
00:44:26
the police found no evidence and mom and dad does not believe that a party happened if it managed to fly that far
00:44:32
under the radar well then that would mean that if one of the attendees is responsible then they came back and
00:44:39
entered the apartment through the window they didn't take the girl a on their way
00:44:44
out the door from the party because Len tells us the girl was there she was present at 2:30 in the morning when I
00:44:53
arrived home now police have said emphatically that the time frame that they are concerned about here in Rosie
00:45:01
tapia's case is that 2:30 a.m. window to 5:30 a.m. window we got a 3our time frame that they are concerned of and
00:45:11
they believe that that is the time frame in which Rosie Topia was abducted I wish
00:45:18
that they were able to narrow it down even more than that 3 hours but that is what we are currently left with right
00:45:25
now as far as Witnesses go we have some and their stories are a little difficult
00:45:31
because some of these people come forward years later but one potential witness statement that we have comes
00:45:40
from Robert Rosie's little brother who was asleep in the same bedroom as her that night right he gave a statement
00:45:48
that he may have seen someone in their room that night yeah but this statement wasn't made right away he tells this to
00:45:57
the parents who then relay this to the police now I'm a little hesitant to report on this because it's been
00:46:05
reported so many different ways that I have a bit of a a lot of question marks about this statement first off it's
00:46:14
coming from a four-year-old child we do not know exactly what he saw because the
00:46:21
reports vary the other thing too could some of this be from his imagination after the fact because now he's
00:46:29
terrified and likely having nightmares because he slept in the same room where his sister was abducted from well the
00:46:36
statement was something that there was a bearded man that told him to go back to
00:46:40
sleep bearded man that told him to go back to sleep it makes sense that Robert would have a statement compared to his
00:46:48
twin sister because that was the bed Robert's bed was the one that the perpetrator would have had to climb over
00:46:55
to get to Rosie but just so we're clear you're saying that this statement was made immediately to police where I
00:47:03
thought this was made years later the way it's been the from my understanding I should I should say that because it's
00:47:11
been reported different ways my understanding is that the child told Mom and Dad about this relatively
00:47:18
quickly in the investigation I believe it was within days of them finding Rosie's body
00:47:26
and that the parents relayed this statement to the police now I spoke with somebody that's very close to the case
00:47:35
and very close to the family and they gave me a much different story than what's been reported because I asked I
00:47:42
said was there any witness statements was there anything that the other two siblings may have seen that night and I
00:47:49
was told that Robert did say that he saw a man in their room I said was there anything distinctive about the
00:47:57
individual that he saw was there any identifiers that the child was able to provide regarding the man that he may
00:48:05
have seen in the room that night and this individual told me that the man Robert reported that the man had hair on
00:48:12
his arms nothing about a beard so while a beard might be helpful I think hair on
00:48:20
your arms would be much less helpful as most people have hair on their arms one thing that was a little bit of a
00:48:28
speed bump though was that Robert referred to this man as the Coco man which I think was misinterpreted by
00:48:38
police that we could be dealing with a person of color possibly an African-American man right however in
00:48:47
Spanish culture the Coco man is similar to The Boogeyman right it has nothing to
00:48:52
do with the color of an individual well I think it' also be very difficult in the dark this murderer is climbing over
00:49:00
the bed maybe his arms are close to Robert at the time so that's why he saw the hair but maybe that's why he can't
00:49:08
find couldn't see other details because it's dark in that room and I don't want to question a victim here and I believe
00:49:16
this little boy is simply trying to help but it also could be simply put that he's had some nightmares Since the
00:49:24
situation and tells parents I saw the Boogey Man I saw the bad man that took my sister yeah cuz the one of the
00:49:31
reports I was reading stated that there was no eyewitnesses or no credible eyewitnesses initially and that the the
00:49:41
twin siblings had nothing to report to police but again you know that's why we have to dive into multiple reports
00:49:50
because sometimes it's just bad reporting the other thing to keep in mind though too is that we are are
00:49:55
dealing with the situation where nobody knows 100% what happened for a couple of
00:50:00
days it wasn't until the conclusion of the autopsy which took a couple days after the body was recovered to make
00:50:09
this determination of homicide well then we also have an eyewitness that saw a a
00:50:15
teenager by the canal yes this person that was seen by the canal is later referred to as wet pants
00:50:23
man because the witness says that they saw this person the witness was up early that morning was
00:50:32
outside and says that they saw a truck a white truck right and the truck drives off and then later sees
00:50:41
a person who we're calling wet pants man and they describe this individual as a Hispanic male with slight build possibly
00:50:55
6 16 to 17 years of age with short dark hair and the eyewitness is a neighbor of
00:51:03
the topas yeah I believe at first uh they were stating okay he's wearing a white shirt he wear he's wearing
00:51:11
multicolored pants but as they got closer they're like oh that's not multiple colored pants just the bottom
00:51:17
of his pants are wet meaning that he probably was in The Canal at some point which is interesting because that's one
00:51:24
of the few facts that comes out about the autopsy the the investigators are stating that they have evidence that she
00:51:33
wasn't thrown from the shore into the Surplus Canal that she was held down and drown in the water so this is going to
00:51:43
make a lot of sense when we go through some other facts of that day after they recover the body police and search teams
00:51:52
are still doing the hard work they're still trying to piece pie everything together because they need to know the
00:51:58
full story of what happened so they bring out blood hounds to try to discern where this girl entered the water right
00:52:07
mind you they're still under the impression that there's a possibility that this is just simply an accident
00:52:12
that she wandered off and went into the water now the blood hounds are unable to
00:52:17
hit on anywhere providing them a location of where the girl may have walked into the water interesting so
00:52:25
this would go back to things that we've reviewed in other cases right often times they say when when dogs follow a
00:52:34
scent and then they stop especially when that scent leads them to the edge of a road once they stop that's an indicator
00:52:42
to police and investigators that the victim then got into a vehicle and the vehicle drove
00:52:49
off here we have the blood hounds unable to tell us where the girl went into the
00:52:54
water and based off of what they're saying about the autopsy that she was held down
00:53:01
in the water that indicates that the perpetrator's in the water with the victim it also indicates to me based off
00:53:08
of the lack of information from the scent dogs that the perpetrator carried her into the water yeah which would make
00:53:16
a lot of sense and and but first of all yeah I hate that we call him what pants man cuz that was my nickname in
00:53:22
kindergarten and if peeing your pants is cool then consider me Miles Davis but yeah I I think if anybody wants to go
00:53:32
online there is a map of the apartment complex and this canal and the canal doesn't run you know parallel or
00:53:41
perpendicular it's coming at an angle so where this eyewitness was seen or roughly where he was seen is the closest
00:53:52
entrance point to the canal from the apartment complex now she's found a little bit further down but you
00:54:00
would expect that once she's in that Canal that she would have moved around a little bit Captain we keep citing this
00:54:09
article here and I want to point something out here there's some disappointing angles to this case and
00:54:15
this investigation I was a little shocked because if you get online today and you
00:54:22
hunt Rosie Topia there is Captain's favorite word a plethora would you say I have a plethora I would say we
00:54:31
have a a plethora of stories regarding Rosie's case today as we sit in 2023 however back in 1995 96 97 98 99
00:54:45
2000 I can't count above 2000 so we'll stop there okay there was not a plethora in fact there were very few local
00:54:55
newspaper articles regarding this case there is one though that is key and Paramount to our storytelling and that
00:55:05
is the one that we referenced already it's the September 10th 1995 Salt Lake Tribune article and guess what it was
00:55:12
written by your boy Joshua be good parents out there if your last name is good you should always name your son
00:55:21
related to Johnny beg good yeah middle name Benjamin fits every single time now this article is interesting because
00:55:29
there's not a whole lot of information there's not a whole lot of articles that come out in fact this is just simply one
00:55:37
of a few that ran for the first five years locally in this case but this article itself is multiple Pages it's
00:55:47
pretty indepth it's pretty detailed and it's pretty thorough one thing I loved about this newspaper article and if had
00:55:56
I been reading it in September of 1995 when the article came out I would have had high hopes to solve this case
00:56:05
because they brought in a guy named Kenneth Lanning from the FBI and in the article they state that the victim was
00:56:13
thrown into the river of course later we would learn from future information that
00:56:17
comes out that the victim was actually held down and we just went through the whole scenario of why we believe she
00:56:23
would have been carried in to the canal going along with this witness statement of wet pants man the article states that
00:56:32
the FBI was working on a psychological profile of the killer that the FBI would be pouring over recent burglary
00:56:40
reports they would be reviewing recent paroled child molesters that were paroled in the state of
00:56:47
Utah the article goes on to State and remind us all that child abductions by strangers are rare only about 1% of kids
00:56:54
kidnappings a year fall into that category and they also point out that entering a child's home to abduct the
00:57:02
child through a window is even more Uncommon well I know that there's been some criticism of this investigation but
00:57:10
I always like it when they ask for help and we got the FBI the mfbi and it's not just any agent we have
00:57:19
Kenneth Lanning there right and as said had I been reading this article in 1995 I would have had high hopes that this
00:57:26
thing would have been solved because Kenneth Lanning is extremely capable and experienced at solving this type of
00:57:33
crime he's brought in to review the burglary reports review the recent parole leases in the state of Utah he's
00:57:41
going to go through the crime scene he's going to go through the police report in
00:57:47
fact we recommended one of his books before in a recommended segment on this very show his book is titled love bombs
00:57:56
and molesters bombs and molesters were two of his uh areas of expertise during his time with the FBI the [ __ ]
00:58:05
FBI unfortunately a couple things happen here captain we're told by law enforcement that there was a
00:58:12
psychological profile an offender profile that was put together by the FBI by the Behavioral Science unit of the
00:58:20
FBI that profile's never been released to the public it's not uncommon to not which is great
00:58:27
think about it some of our tax dollars go to the FBI right well yes and to the the law
00:58:35
enforcement agency investigating Ro top so so we have a a a six-year-old that was abducted a sexually
00:58:43
assault possibly brutally beaten and drowned and for like you said probably forcibly drowned in this canal
00:58:55
so we should have a community that's going hey we we we want this solved and and not just uh for the
00:59:03
justice of her family and the Justice of the community but the safety of our community and the safety of our
00:59:09
children's and you guys did a profile and you guys don't even want to tell us about it yeah and to so to back up the
00:59:16
FBI on this situation they had very minor involvement in the rosie toia case and we're being told that there was a
00:59:25
profile that was provided to Police from the FBI that statement comes from the police the choosing to not release that
00:59:34
profile comes from the police the investigating agency that's in charge what are we paying you guys for of the
00:59:40
case now I want I want to defend everybody here I think that it is a bit of a misstep to not release some of the
00:59:47
information from a profile in fact that's actually what the public sees most of the time there's been profiles
00:59:54
done on multiple Killers throughout the years and the profiles have never been released to the public there's also been
01:00:00
profiles done on Killers where they release a portion of the profile I can see without going into great detail here
01:00:09
Captain I can see reasons why you would not want to release the profile in its entirety because of things that I
01:00:17
suspect may be in the profile however I think that there are things that you could release to the public that would
01:00:24
help your investigation I think that there are things in that profile that once released to the public could hurt
01:00:30
the investigation so I get it but I also think that you could release a portion of that profile one thing that caught my
01:00:38
eye in that article in particular was that can that the FBI an agent Lanning would be reviewing and pouring over
01:00:47
recent burglary reports the reason why I thought that was interesting was because
01:00:54
given the nature of this crime we know there was an intruder we know somebody came into the home and removed the
01:01:00
victim from the home and she's later found dead when we spoke with retired FBI agent Jeffrey
01:01:07
rck he explained to us that it's very common to find serial rapists or abductors through these burglary reports
01:01:21
because often times they will get arrested for for what is misinterpreted as a potential burglary
01:01:29
they break into the home and the homeowner is able to stop them or police arrive on the scene and catch
01:01:39
the as salent fleeing from the home and the individuals arrested and charged with burglary yeah or it's criminal
01:01:49
escalation you have peeping Toms that decide that they want to then start entering homes and then once they're
01:01:56
entering homes and then then it's more likely once they get comfortable with entering the homes that they would then
01:02:04
abduct a victim correct but you're looking for somebody that's already passed that escalation if if that is the
01:02:12
if if that's the route that this criminal Behavior took what I'm simply saying is what
01:02:18
Jeffrey rck was saying was that often times these individuals who have already escalated to that are picked up on
01:02:25
burglary charges because what do they have to do to carry out the rape or the abduction they have to enter the home
01:02:33
and when they are arrested it's misinterpreted their intent for being in the home as burglary so very interesting
01:02:42
that they poured over this but again in this situation with the paroled child molesters from the state of Utah as well
01:02:51
as these burglary reports we don't get any followup [Music] information want to thank everybody for
01:03:09
joining us here in the garage if you're looking for the first 50 episodes those are now only available on our website
01:03:18
store so check those out thanks for joining us so much more to get to in this case join us back here in the
01:03:24
garage same bat Time same bat Channel and until then be good be kind and don't [Music]
01:03:40
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