Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Unearthed in Vegas - The Esmeralda Gonzalez Story

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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Unearthed in Vegas - The Esmeralda Gonzalez Story · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. I guess some folks
0:21
Speaker 1: might think that, given my profession as a medical legal
0:24
Speaker 1: death investigator, that I have a morbid fascination with death.
0:30
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that. I certainly have a fascination with
0:34
Speaker 1: a science, something I have always had an attraction to,
0:39
Speaker 1: And I mean that in a puir of sense. Our graveyards.
0:43
Speaker 1: There's something about the way the dead or remembered stone
0:49
Speaker 1: monuments that are created that are left behind by those
0:52
Speaker 1: that once walked among us, and they're to different degrees,
0:57
Speaker 1: aren't they. You can actually learn a lot about maybe
1:02
Speaker 1: a family history based upon how much money was spent
1:06
Speaker 1: in memorializing family members. But Stone says something. It has
1:12
Speaker 1: a permanence to it. You know, if you think about
1:15
Speaker 1: a wooden cross and it just doesn't hold up like Stone.
1:19
Speaker 1: I want to talk about a tune that was created
1:24
Speaker 1: in haste for a young woman who lost her life
1:28
Speaker 1: in a most horrible way. Today we're going to have
1:33
Speaker 1: a discussion about the kidnapping, murder and concrete encasement of
1:39
Speaker 1: the remains of Esma Relda Gonzalez. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
1:44
Speaker 1: and this is Body Bags Dave mac I want to
1:52
Speaker 1: ask you something. I'm from New Orleans. We're famous for
1:56
Speaker 1: our graveyards down home. People take tours, you sure. Many
2:00
Speaker 1: of our listeners have been to New Orleans, and I've
2:04
Speaker 1: spent time just walking through the grace because it's amazing.
2:07
Speaker 1: It's like walking through a huge kind of museum, if
2:11
Speaker 1: you will, an outdoor museum that never seems to diminish.
2:14
Speaker 1: Everywhere you turn. There's beauty to it. But in case today,
2:19
Speaker 1: there's not much beauty involved in this. As a matter
2:22
Speaker 1: of fact, it may be one of the more horrible
2:23
Speaker 1: things we've covered it in some time.
2:25
Speaker 2: When I think about forensics, Joe and I think about it.
2:29
Speaker 2: Oftentimes when we cover stories and the crime, you cover
2:32
Speaker 2: a lot of background. When we get into the forensic,
2:36
Speaker 2: the body bags part, it oftentimes would not make sense
2:39
Speaker 2: if you didn't have more of the story, like knowing
2:43
Speaker 2: what the significance is of a person being placed inside
2:48
Speaker 2: a cement tomb. That boggles my mind when it comes
2:51
Speaker 2: to the death of Esmurel de Gonzalez. There are so
2:54
Speaker 2: many aspects of this particular story, and if any of
2:57
Speaker 2: you have followed it, if you didn't follow each step
2:59
Speaker 2: along the way, you missed a major thing. Starting right
3:02
Speaker 2: off the bat, A beautiful twenty four year old Instagram model. Okay,
3:06
Speaker 2: that's for starters. Three hundred thousand followers, that's nothing to
3:10
Speaker 2: sneeze at. I don't know if you do Instagram and
3:12
Speaker 2: stuff like that, but having three hundred thousand followers, that's good.
3:15
Speaker 2: You're onto something there. Her family said that Esmerelda had
3:19
Speaker 2: gone to school and was looking forward to going to
3:22
Speaker 2: law school. Beautiful, smart, but she did have a few
3:26
Speaker 2: issues along the way that brought her into a situation
3:30
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas and the suburbs of Vegas that it's
3:33
Speaker 2: just heartbreaking. The family is crushed. They oftentimes looked at
3:36
Speaker 2: Esmerelda Gonzalez she was so smart, and looked at her
3:38
Speaker 2: as somebody they needed to protect from the world and
3:41
Speaker 2: the craziness in the world, And in this particular case,
3:44
Speaker 2: they were unable to protect her from herself and the
3:47
Speaker 2: crazies that she ended up with. I don't knows she
3:50
Speaker 2: became involved with them at all. I think she ended
3:52
Speaker 2: up with them purely out of happenstance as much as
3:56
Speaker 2: anything else.
3:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they don't call Vegas sense for nothing. Look,
4:01
Speaker 1: I mean, who am I to throw stones at Vegas.
4:03
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed myself in Vegas many times. But you have
4:07
Speaker 1: a lot of hustlers out there. You have a lot
4:09
Speaker 1: of people that are trying to make a buck any
4:11
Speaker 1: way that they possibly can, and sometimes, you know, you
4:14
Speaker 1: get off into these very dark areas. In es Morelda's case,
4:19
Speaker 1: use a metaphor her tiny little ship, the rudder on
4:22
Speaker 1: her ship. It was impacted by mental illness. She, according
4:26
Speaker 1: to her family, you know, was dealing with multiple issues,
4:29
Speaker 1: you know, everything from schizophrenia to bipolar.
4:32
Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought that up because it was her
4:34
Speaker 2: brother that said this early on in the investigation. Joe, Yeah,
4:37
Speaker 2: he's the one that said it. And oftentimes that's not
4:39
Speaker 2: something people lead with because immediately if you say this
4:43
Speaker 2: person is living with mental illness, okay, immediately and I
4:47
Speaker 2: guess we're bad like this, but we immediately say, oh,
4:49
Speaker 2: it's her fault. Yeah, yeah, you know what, nobody deserves
4:53
Speaker 2: to have what happened to her. Mental illness is something
4:55
Speaker 2: that needs to be treated. It's not something that needs
4:57
Speaker 2: to be used as an excuse for bad behavior of others.
5:00
Speaker 1: I know, absolutely not. As a matter of fact, it's
5:02
Speaker 1: even more striking when you consider that you've got someone
5:06
Speaker 1: that is essentially this handicapped in a world that's very dynamic,
5:12
Speaker 1: moving quickly, you're surrounded by people that are predators and look.
5:17
Speaker 1: Predators can spot folks that are weak in particular areas.
5:21
Speaker 1: If you know people that have drug addiction problems, predators
5:25
Speaker 1: can take advantage of that by enticement and those sorts
5:28
Speaker 1: of things. If you have an individual that is suffering
5:32
Speaker 1: from some type of mental illness, particularly that makes them paranoid,
5:35
Speaker 1: you can threaten them and then promise to protect them
5:39
Speaker 1: from those things that they think they're seeing or that
5:41
Speaker 1: they're hearing, and they can be easily manipulated. Or if
5:46
Speaker 1: you have a sadistic streak running through you, you can use
5:52
Speaker 1: that to your advantage to terrify the person and keep
5:56
Speaker 1: them in a state of terror. And I got to
5:58
Speaker 1: tell you that's a sin actually what happened with es
6:01
Speaker 1: morel Today.
6:02
Speaker 2: When we think of Vegas, oftentimes we think of the
6:05
Speaker 2: Vegas Strip and movies about Vegas, or I've never actually
6:08
Speaker 2: been Joe. Knowing myself the way I do, that's not
6:11
Speaker 2: a good place for me to go. I'm that guy
6:13
Speaker 2: that would lose five dollars on a slot machine and
6:15
Speaker 2: mortgage my house trying to get it back, so I
6:18
Speaker 2: avoid that in this particular case where es Morel di
6:21
Speaker 2: Gonzalez lived in Las Vegas, and she was an Instagram model,
6:24
Speaker 2: as we mentioned on May thirty first, which in the
6:27
Speaker 2: desert of Vegas it gets hot early. It's not like
6:29
Speaker 2: in other parts of the country where late May can
6:31
Speaker 2: oftentimes be like springtime. It's dead summer in Vegas at
6:35
Speaker 2: this time. And mis Gonzales, as we mentioned, she had
6:39
Speaker 2: some mental health things going on. She had been seen
6:42
Speaker 2: wearing lingerie and high heels trying to work a deal
6:45
Speaker 2: on a car at a car dealership. Okay, not something
6:48
Speaker 2: people would normally do. But in the pre dawn hours
6:52
Speaker 2: of May thirty first, she was seen on surveillance cameras
6:55
Speaker 2: walking in her neighborhood wearing the lingerie and seemed to
7:00
Speaker 2: be unsteady on her feet, and she knocks on the
7:03
Speaker 2: door of a house and I don't know who she
7:06
Speaker 2: asked for or way she said, but the people living
7:08
Speaker 2: in the home said, you're at the wrong house, dear.
7:11
Speaker 2: When she left that house in the pre dawn hours
7:13
Speaker 2: of May thirty first, she went to another house. What
7:17
Speaker 2: she ran into was not somebody who said, no, you're
7:20
Speaker 2: at the wrong house. It was somebody who said, I'm
7:23
Speaker 2: the devil, come in and let's party. And this is
7:25
Speaker 2: where the kidnapping comes in, when she knocked on that
7:29
Speaker 2: wrong door and was taken into Christopher Presteppino's house, where
7:34
Speaker 2: all of the evil that can befall any one person
7:36
Speaker 2: began with a five foot tall, twenty four year old
7:39
Speaker 2: Instagram model.
7:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the thing about this Prespatino character is that
7:45
Speaker 1: he's a felon who has previously been hooked up on
7:49
Speaker 1: drug charges, certainly been on probation, and has been associated
7:55
Speaker 1: with cooking meth.
7:57
Speaker 2: Actually that was one of his charges. He had gone
8:00
Speaker 2: to Jael as early as I think two thousand and
8:02
Speaker 2: two thousand and one on drug charges, and in two
8:05
Speaker 2: thousand and five he actually was convicted. He was actually
8:08
Speaker 2: far deeper into it than most people would ever get
8:12
Speaker 2: as a multi drug dealer. But he did have a
8:14
Speaker 2: job too.
8:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he did. And I got to say something
8:17
Speaker 1: about this. I was amazed just this past year, this
8:22
Speaker 1: last iteration of crime con we were actually here, we
8:26
Speaker 1: were at he worked for Valley's Paris. You know they're
8:30
Speaker 1: both connected. We were walking these same hallways at Crime
8:33
Speaker 1: Con this past year and where we were doing presentations
8:36
Speaker 1: and everything relative to true crime. Body Bags had a
8:39
Speaker 1: table set up there on podcast a row And when
8:42
Speaker 1: I saw that he worked there as a stage hand
8:46
Speaker 1: and had been working there Dave for a while, I
8:49
Speaker 1: think he got I think yeah, I think he got
8:50
Speaker 1: his first gig in like nineteen ninety nine. So it's
8:54
Speaker 1: not like this guy is not familiar with the environment,
8:57
Speaker 1: like he just kind of was plopped down in the
8:58
Speaker 1: middle of it. Understands the guts, he knows how the
9:02
Speaker 1: sausage is made in this environment, and more than likely
9:05
Speaker 1: he can spot people a mile away and know who
9:09
Speaker 1: is easily preyed upon.
9:10
Speaker 2: Perhaps, and that's probably the exact explanation of what happened
9:15
Speaker 2: to prey upon. When somebody shows up at your house
9:17
Speaker 2: in the pre dawn hours dressed in lingerie and high
9:20
Speaker 2: hills and doesn't know where they are and they're at
9:23
Speaker 2: the wrong house and you say, no, this is the
9:24
Speaker 2: right house, come on in. They tied her up.
9:27
Speaker 1: It's important to understand that this guy has actually got
9:33
Speaker 1: a girlfriend as well who was involved in this with him,
9:38
Speaker 1: and I don't quite understand the degree of her involvement,
9:43
Speaker 1: but I do know this that once he got her
9:46
Speaker 1: as Marialda fragile, probably not taking medication. Once he got
9:52
Speaker 1: her inside this house, Dave all hell broke loose because
9:57
Speaker 1: he gave her myth. He tied her to a chair,
10:00
Speaker 1: then he said she started speaking with a devil's tongue.
10:23
Speaker 1: A little known fact about your host. And when I
10:25
Speaker 1: was in college, I actually worked as a psych tech.
10:29
Speaker 1: And it's not that I had special training in psychology.
10:33
Speaker 1: I was an undergraduate student. But what I did have
10:36
Speaker 1: was I was a bigger guy that was kind of quiet.
10:39
Speaker 1: I could work on the psych unit and then particularly
10:42
Speaker 1: they had me working with acute patients that and what
10:45
Speaker 1: that means is that patients that had a tendency toward
10:48
Speaker 1: acting out and violence and that sort of thing. So
10:51
Speaker 1: essentially I became a person that would restrain individuals. I
10:55
Speaker 1: witnessed a lot even in that short period of time
10:57
Speaker 1: that I worked in that environment. And what I conclusion
11:00
Speaker 1: that I arrived at was that people that are suffering
11:04
Speaker 1: from acute mental illness, in particular those that are not
11:07
Speaker 1: taking their medication. First off, they're fragile first and Secondly,
11:14
Speaker 1: they can act violently when they're confronted or cornered in
11:18
Speaker 1: any manner. You take a drug like methamphetamine and you
11:24
Speaker 1: apply it to someone Dave, and you talk about a
11:28
Speaker 1: recipe for disaster, You talk about a violent reaction. It's
11:32
Speaker 1: something that I don't know if anybody can really understand
11:35
Speaker 1: unless they witness it.
11:36
Speaker 2: It actually is something that goes beyond what then I
11:41
Speaker 2: say normal, But I don't want to act like what
11:42
Speaker 2: you have done in your life is abnormal, Judge. It's
11:45
Speaker 2: just we don't have that experience. We don't have the
11:47
Speaker 2: same experience you have. I've been in radio and television
11:49
Speaker 2: my entire adult life, so I can talk about camera angles, lighting,
11:53
Speaker 2: microphones and things like that, whereas you can talk about
11:55
Speaker 2: the inner workings of the body and as it starts
11:58
Speaker 2: to break down after death, and how it can lead
12:00
Speaker 2: you back to the guy, the person that did the crime.
12:02
Speaker 2: Everything you say is foreign to me. My question here
12:07
Speaker 2: is that this young woman twenty four years old, five
12:09
Speaker 2: feet tall, she knocks at the wrong door at in
12:12
Speaker 2: the pre dawn hours and is invited in. She's fairly quickly,
12:16
Speaker 2: according to prosecutors, tied to a chair by Christopher pressed Tippino.
12:20
Speaker 2: He ties her up to a chair, feeds her methomphetamine.
12:23
Speaker 2: That's when you mentioned the other issues that she, as
12:27
Speaker 2: Morella dealt with. As Marilla Gonzalez, according to her family,
12:30
Speaker 2: was bipolar, schizophrenic, and she started saying things that just
12:35
Speaker 2: sounded crazy, evil, And in his own psyche thought he
12:39
Speaker 2: was dealing with somebody who was speaking the devil, and
12:42
Speaker 2: he ropes in his girlfriend and his roommate to now
12:46
Speaker 2: help him deal with the problem. He decides to undo her.
12:50
Speaker 2: He's kept her trying. According to prosecutors, he kept her
12:52
Speaker 2: tied up for a few days. Joe, what would that
12:55
Speaker 2: do to somebody being tied up? Not just for a
12:57
Speaker 2: couple hours we're having fun playing games. We're talking about
13:01
Speaker 2: a number of days of being tied up. You don't
13:04
Speaker 2: know what's going on. What would that do to a
13:06
Speaker 2: person who already is walking a fine line of mental health.
13:10
Speaker 1: We all have this kind of sense about us where
13:13
Speaker 1: you get the hair you know that'll stand up on
13:16
Speaker 1: the back of your neck if you feel uncomfortable. You know,
13:18
Speaker 1: it kind of is like this kind of indwelling thing
13:21
Speaker 1: that tells us beware, there's a danger ahead. Imagine if
13:25
Speaker 1: you live in that heightened state all of the time,
13:28
Speaker 1: if you're paranoid, for instance, you believe that people are
13:32
Speaker 1: after you. And then you couple that with some of
13:35
Speaker 1: the other issues that come along with schizphrenia, like auditory hallucinations,
13:40
Speaker 1: maybe visual hallucinations. It makes for a horrible set of circumstances.
13:46
Speaker 1: And if somebody has given you methamphetamine, which is going
13:50
Speaker 1: to ramp you up at a baseline physiological state, you know,
13:55
Speaker 1: where a profuse sweating, you know, heart palpitations, shallow breathing,
14:00
Speaker 1: the world is racing anyway. I've always kind of envisioned
14:04
Speaker 1: it to be like a horror show, which is really
14:09
Speaker 1: amazing because it's so highly addictive. And then can you
14:12
Speaker 1: imagine being caught in that loop. So you take someone
14:15
Speaker 1: that has this kind of mental illness and then apply
14:17
Speaker 1: the drug to them, Yeah, they're going to start, probably
14:21
Speaker 1: at least in your perception, speaking with the devil's tongue
14:24
Speaker 1: because they can't get loose. And the critical error that
14:27
Speaker 1: was made here is that she threatened to call the
14:29
Speaker 1: police about the drugs. I guess in some lucid moment.
14:32
Speaker 1: And this is a guy that keep in mind he's
14:36
Speaker 1: been hooked up on felonious charges before. He is a felon.
14:41
Speaker 1: He's a felon, and he knows what's going to happen
14:45
Speaker 1: to him because he's looking at this. He's been around
14:47
Speaker 1: other people that have been charged and probably convicted of kidnapping.
14:51
Speaker 1: He knows that he's involved in a kidnapping event at
14:54
Speaker 1: this point in time, and he's had this girl restrained.
14:57
Speaker 1: Now he's getting off into the area of tortured. Obviously
15:01
Speaker 1: there are sexual elements to this. He's probably sexualized her
15:04
Speaker 1: in some way. I don't know if he actually and
15:06
Speaker 1: I don't know that we will ever know if he
15:09
Speaker 1: put his hands on her, if he raped her, or
15:12
Speaker 1: whatever the case might be. Now I don't believe that
15:15
Speaker 1: he was actually charged with that, but one never knows
15:18
Speaker 1: what has happened. And this goes more toward her state
15:21
Speaker 1: of mind. But what he did understand is that, at
15:25
Speaker 1: least in his mind, he had to find a way
15:28
Speaker 1: to make her be quiet. And secondly, once he kind
15:32
Speaker 1: of crossed that rubicon, if you will, a dead body
15:36
Speaker 1: on his hands, now, what in the world are you
15:38
Speaker 1: going to do? And backing up Dave on top of it,
15:43
Speaker 1: he injected this poor woman allegedly with pool cleaner, you know,
15:49
Speaker 1: and there's any number of compounds that are out there
15:51
Speaker 1: that pool cleaner is made from. None of them are
15:56
Speaker 1: compatible with life. But apparently what happened was that it
16:04
Speaker 1: didn't kill her. So now he's got to close in
16:07
Speaker 1: and he's got to finish her off. What is believed
16:10
Speaker 1: to have happened at this moment with all screaming, the shouting,
16:14
Speaker 1: the torture. She's been restrained for all of these days
16:18
Speaker 1: in a place that she just walks up to the door.
16:21
Speaker 1: As you painted that picture, she walks into hell essentially,
16:25
Speaker 1: and now he's faced with having to quiet her and
16:29
Speaker 1: in an attempt to take her life. I would assume
16:31
Speaker 1: he injects her with a pool cleaner doesn't do the job,
16:34
Speaker 1: so now he does have to put his hands on her,
16:36
Speaker 1: and it's at that point in time that he asphyxiates her.
16:38
Speaker 1: Day asphyxiate her.
16:40
Speaker 2: Now she's sitting in a chair, she's been tied up.
16:43
Speaker 2: One thing I did want to bring up, okay, you
16:45
Speaker 2: said in a lucid moment, she said, I'm calling the
16:48
Speaker 2: cops in that lucid moment. Okay, they untied her hands.
16:52
Speaker 2: She hit him as Marelda was lucid enough to try
16:55
Speaker 2: to get away, she hit him right in the face.
16:58
Speaker 2: As soon as her hands were free. She wanted to
17:00
Speaker 2: get away. I want to make sure everybody knows that
17:02
Speaker 2: in that moment, she knew what had befallen her, and
17:05
Speaker 2: she tried to get away. She fought back. That's when
17:09
Speaker 2: they injected the pool cleaner. And I've got a real
17:11
Speaker 2: question for you about that. And according to the police,
17:13
Speaker 2: she was strangled. Okay, Now, she's five foot nothing, twenty
17:18
Speaker 2: four years old, faced with a convicted felon who doesn't
17:22
Speaker 2: want to go back to prison, and two other women
17:25
Speaker 2: who are out of their minds helping him. What would
17:28
Speaker 2: pool cleaner do if you injected it into somebody.
17:32
Speaker 1: It's a horrible reaction because let's just say that the
17:35
Speaker 1: base element is in fact chlorine. We know what the
17:38
Speaker 1: purpose of chlorine is. It's to you know, essentially shock
17:43
Speaker 1: the environment of the pool to get rid of any
17:45
Speaker 1: of the nasties that are in dwelling in here. But
17:49
Speaker 1: just exposure to just say chlorine, because they're very nonspecific
17:54
Speaker 1: about what has been applied or the compound specifically, but
17:59
Speaker 1: in me, pool cleaner. It's one of the base elements
18:01
Speaker 1: is in fact chlorine. There are different forms of it,
18:04
Speaker 1: and actually clorin gas has been used. And to give
18:07
Speaker 1: you an idea how horrific this is, if this kind
18:09
Speaker 1: of frames it for youchloring gas has actually been used
18:13
Speaker 1: as a tool of war, and it's horrible, I mean,
18:16
Speaker 1: absolutely horrible way to die. All the mucous linings of
18:20
Speaker 1: your airway are going to become inflamed, Your throat will swell,
18:24
Speaker 1: Your ability to uptake oxygen, it's going to be greatly compromised.
18:28
Speaker 1: You're struggling to breathe, and there's burning that's associated with this,
18:32
Speaker 1: and on top of it, there is violent fits of
18:36
Speaker 1: vomiting as well. So you've got all of this going on.
18:39
Speaker 1: Is this is raging through your system, on top of methamphetamine,
18:44
Speaker 1: on top of all of the mental health issues that
18:48
Speaker 1: this poor woman is suffering from. It's not necessarily a
18:53
Speaker 1: merciful event. I don't know that she could have recovered
18:56
Speaker 1: from this. It would have eventually killed her. But he
19:00
Speaker 1: saw that it wasn't working. He wrapped his hands around
19:03
Speaker 1: her throat and choked the life out of it. For
19:25
Speaker 1: a moment in time, I can imagine these are merely
19:29
Speaker 1: my own thoughts. Here a Prespotino wished that he had
19:33
Speaker 1: never opened that door, because now after having this poor
19:39
Speaker 1: young woman, he's kidnapped her. He knows by now at
19:45
Speaker 1: least he has a perception that she's got mental illness.
19:48
Speaker 1: He knows that he's got a tiger by the tale. Essentially,
19:50
Speaker 1: he's ended her life now with his bare hands. What
19:53
Speaker 1: are you going to do? That's the amazing thing, Dave
19:56
Speaker 1: about people that take the lives of other folks. They
20:00
Speaker 1: do these things in a heat of passion, and then
20:02
Speaker 1: they look over what has resulted from their actions, and
20:07
Speaker 1: they say, what next, what next? Indeed, what could you do?
20:13
Speaker 2: In her case, she was reported missing May thirty first
20:16
Speaker 2: as Marilla to Gonzalez, and they did not find her
20:20
Speaker 2: body until October. We know that she was injected with
20:24
Speaker 2: pool cleaner. We know that she was strangled. When her
20:27
Speaker 2: body was found, it wasn't found out in the open,
20:30
Speaker 2: It wasn't even found in a hole. It was actually
20:33
Speaker 2: found in a tomb, and it was when they were
20:37
Speaker 2: undoing this assume. That's why I have all these questions, Joe,
20:39
Speaker 2: because I'm trying to figure out what damage the pool
20:42
Speaker 2: cleaner would do to her internal organs in causing her
20:45
Speaker 2: to decompose. You know, we hear about bodies being wrapped
20:48
Speaker 2: up and put in holes and things like that, and
20:50
Speaker 2: unless you've seen it, you don't even know what we're
20:53
Speaker 2: going to be looking at. Are we going to be
20:54
Speaker 2: looking at skeletalized remains or are we going to look
20:57
Speaker 2: at somebody who's fairly well preserved after ninety day In this.
21:00
Speaker 1: Particular case, Dave, you're talking about Vegas and we're going
21:06
Speaker 1: into one of the hottest times of the year, and
21:09
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how you're entombed in that environment, the
21:13
Speaker 1: body's going to begin to break down. But here's the
21:15
Speaker 1: interesting thing. Back to Prespotino, He's actually visualized going into
21:22
Speaker 1: a store and buying I dig this, buying five five
21:27
Speaker 1: sixty pound bags of concrete. Well, let me do the
21:30
Speaker 1: math real quick. That's three hundred pounds, man, three hundred
21:34
Speaker 1: pounds of quick crete, which, if you've never seen it,
21:38
Speaker 1: if you're going to put up a I don't know,
21:40
Speaker 1: a mailbox in your yard or something like that, you
21:42
Speaker 1: know you're going to pour it into a form and
21:43
Speaker 1: you set the post, and it's very heavy. There's a
21:48
Speaker 1: reason you use it because it ain't going nowhere, at
21:51
Speaker 1: least for a while. Right, So you've got three hundred
21:54
Speaker 1: pounds of just these bags alone. What are you going
21:58
Speaker 1: to do with this? Because you're living inside of a residence.
22:01
Speaker 1: He took off work. And here's where investigations come in, really,
22:05
Speaker 1: and one of the things that we were going to
22:07
Speaker 1: look at with an individual that might be associated with crime.
22:10
Speaker 1: Are there any kind of gaps in time here where
22:12
Speaker 1: there were because he took a week off when she disappeared.
22:17
Speaker 1: I think that you and I can probably come to
22:19
Speaker 1: an agreement here why he took that time off? He's
22:21
Speaker 1: thinking any thinking, how am I going to deal with this?
22:25
Speaker 1: How am I going to get her out of my
22:27
Speaker 1: residence and put as much distance between myself and her? Well,
22:31
Speaker 1: not only did he take time off from work, but
22:34
Speaker 1: in addition to that, he rented a you all, Dave,
22:38
Speaker 1: he rented a U Haul And I got to tell you,
22:41
Speaker 1: I've spent more time driving U hauls in my life
22:43
Speaker 1: than I care to remember. If I never get inside
22:45
Speaker 1: of another nothing against U haul company. It could be anybody.
22:49
Speaker 1: I'm sick and tired of moving in my life of
22:51
Speaker 1: how to move a lot. But that's what he did.
22:53
Speaker 1: You look at somebody from an investigative standpoint, you try
22:56
Speaker 1: to think, well, why are you renting a U haul?
22:59
Speaker 1: Did you say, have this moment Tom where you decide
23:01
Speaker 1: I'm going to pick up and leave town. There's no
23:04
Speaker 1: indication of you actually leaving town, So why do you
23:06
Speaker 1: need a U haul? What are you moving? And those
23:08
Speaker 1: are questions that any investigator would begin to ask. You know,
23:12
Speaker 1: it's like that old proverbial thread on the sweater that's
23:14
Speaker 1: hanging down. You pull on that sucker and the thing
23:17
Speaker 1: becomes unraveled and the picture begins to become a bit more.
23:22
Speaker 2: Clear when they start at the end okay, and start backtracking,
23:26
Speaker 2: and they're able to see the ending and try to
23:30
Speaker 2: figure out how it got there. When he buys the
23:32
Speaker 2: three hundred pounds worth of quick creed, it means very
23:35
Speaker 2: little if you don't know the rest of the Paul Harvey,
23:38
Speaker 2: the rest of the story. But once they know the
23:41
Speaker 2: rest of the story and they're backtracking, Okay, you're right,
23:44
Speaker 2: he's got three hundred pounds of quick creed, he's got
23:46
Speaker 2: a U haul. Obviously he's going to be moving something
23:49
Speaker 2: very heavy. I don't know where his mind was in
23:53
Speaker 2: the thinking process, and I have to think this was
23:55
Speaker 2: something he had thought of before in his crazy life, because,
24:00
Speaker 2: as you said, he took a week off of work
24:01
Speaker 2: to figure out what to do and what he came
24:04
Speaker 2: up with. I'm gonna be honest, Joe, from the outside
24:07
Speaker 2: looking in, not knowing anything about forensics, really, I thought
24:11
Speaker 2: what he did in trying to cover up the crime
24:15
Speaker 2: by trying to put the body in a place in
24:18
Speaker 2: an area that would not be found and also would
24:21
Speaker 2: not create the odor of decomposition, I thought it would work.
24:26
Speaker 2: From the outside looking in.
24:27
Speaker 1: Every time a perpetrator takes a step, any kind of
24:32
Speaker 1: step in any direction, you're going to begin to leave
24:36
Speaker 1: that trail of breadcrumbs behind. So yeah, I mean in theory,
24:41
Speaker 1: you would think, yeah, okay, let's get quick crete and
24:44
Speaker 1: intomb a body in it and put a much distance. Well, look, man,
24:48
Speaker 1: if you're mixing quick crete, first off, you've got to
24:51
Speaker 1: purchase it, then you got to mix it. It's a
24:53
Speaker 1: bloody mess. I mean, it truly is. You know, if
24:56
Speaker 1: you've ever dealt with it, you're leaving dust behind. If
24:59
Speaker 1: you're in a environment, say for instance, that where one
25:03
Speaker 1: would not normally expect to be mixing quick creek because
25:06
Speaker 1: if you're dealing with a dead body, you're going to
25:08
Speaker 1: have to do it in a sequestered area. There's no
25:10
Speaker 1: way you can go out in the front yard and
25:12
Speaker 1: do this and wave it. Everybody's there going down the road.
25:15
Speaker 1: So when investigators get to a location, they begin to
25:19
Speaker 1: kind of dig. They're walking through an individual's house per
25:22
Speaker 1: a warrant, and they see evidence of something that has occurred. Yeah,
25:26
Speaker 1: in principle, it seems like a jam up idea, but
25:31
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it goes to a
25:33
Speaker 1: bigger picture. There's one other thing I forgot to mention
25:35
Speaker 1: that he purchased. In addition to this you were talking
25:38
Speaker 1: about knocking down the odor of decomposition. He also bought
25:41
Speaker 1: lime as well, which is something you know you see
25:43
Speaker 1: in the movies where people will throw lime on graves
25:46
Speaker 1: to knock down the smell. Some people claim that it
25:49
Speaker 1: promotes decomposition for the body to decompose quicker, And you
25:54
Speaker 1: see this played out in the movies, and it's almost
25:56
Speaker 1: like this guy has taken notes from Hollywood here as
26:00
Speaker 1: to what he's going to try to do. But once
26:02
Speaker 1: you've created this huge block of concrete, and I'll go
26:06
Speaker 1: ahead and bury the lead here and say that her
26:08
Speaker 1: remains are now entombed inside of this block of concrete,
26:13
Speaker 1: which is also inside of a tank. It's like an
26:16
Speaker 1: old water tank with a wooden frame that has been
26:20
Speaker 1: created for this purpose. You got to move it. So
26:24
Speaker 1: what are you going to do it?
26:25
Speaker 2: The two hundred and fifty gallon tank. It's a big tank.
26:28
Speaker 1: It's a big tank. Yeah, and I'll give him this.
26:32
Speaker 1: A water tank being moved out of your house doesn't
26:34
Speaker 1: look like a dead body being moved out of your house,
26:36
Speaker 1: all right. That would obviously give you the idea you're
26:40
Speaker 1: going to be able to, you know, transport without maybe
26:43
Speaker 1: drawing as much attention. Okay, but still, you've got one
26:47
Speaker 1: thing that you've got to account for. You've got a
26:49
Speaker 1: missing young woman. So the last place she is perhaps
26:53
Speaker 1: seen is at his house. The next thing you know,
26:56
Speaker 1: he's rented a U haul, he's bought quick crete, he's
26:59
Speaker 1: bought in line, and he's got this tank. Maybe he
27:02
Speaker 1: just had it laying around and all of that's gone
27:05
Speaker 1: now along with the U haul, and no one knows
27:08
Speaker 1: where Esmarel is.
27:09
Speaker 2: He has the body encased in the cement inside the
27:12
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty gallon tank. We know he's got
27:15
Speaker 2: the U haul, and we know, as the police like
27:18
Speaker 2: to say, it's a big desert out there. As most
27:21
Speaker 2: drug addicts do. They talk. As most drug addicts do,
27:24
Speaker 2: especially with meth, they get paranoid pressed. Bettina, he needed
27:27
Speaker 2: help to get this done, and he was his own
27:30
Speaker 2: worst enemy in helping the police solve the entire crime.
27:35
Speaker 1: What's the old adage about one person can keep a
27:37
Speaker 1: secret when you begin to involve these other people. A
27:41
Speaker 1: girlfriend in particular, a lady named Lisa, mort that she
27:44
Speaker 1: would look have an awareness of what he was doing
27:48
Speaker 1: with her, but then she would enter into an agreement
27:51
Speaker 1: with him to help him cover this crime up. It's
27:54
Speaker 1: just it's mind blowing. But we've covered on bodybags, we've
27:58
Speaker 1: covered other cases involving the desert out there, and it
28:02
Speaker 1: is just seemingly endless. But again, this water tank and
28:08
Speaker 1: wooden structure, that's really I urge anybody that can go
28:12
Speaker 1: online to take a look at this thing. It's just
28:14
Speaker 1: sitting kind of like on this rise out in the
28:16
Speaker 1: middle of the desert. It is an entument that's not
28:22
Speaker 1: buried it's just right there. And for me, I've worked
28:26
Speaker 1: cases similar to this. I've also had friends that have
28:29
Speaker 1: had to if you can imagine this, dislodge a block
28:34
Speaker 1: of concrete that literally had to be lifted up with
28:38
Speaker 1: a crane because you had individuals that were buried within
28:42
Speaker 1: an entumbment like this. And then this is where it
28:46
Speaker 1: gets really fascinating to me. You're dealing with something that
28:51
Speaker 1: is outside of your depth here as a forensic scientist.
28:54
Speaker 1: Contained within here is more than likely human remains that
28:58
Speaker 1: you're looking for. And if you, for instance, with those
29:00
Speaker 1: that are burying the ground, you can actually use ground
29:02
Speaker 1: penetrating radar even on a concrete surface. You know that
29:06
Speaker 1: something is in here, how are you going to be
29:09
Speaker 1: able to appreciate it, visualize it? Where are you going
29:11
Speaker 1: to know to go so that you don't destroy anything
29:14
Speaker 1: that's contained in there. So it's a painstaking process. It's
29:17
Speaker 1: not like the crane can place this onto the back
29:20
Speaker 1: of a truck and you're going to take it to
29:22
Speaker 1: the morgue and put it up on a table in
29:25
Speaker 1: your autopsy suite and begin to knock away all of
29:29
Speaker 1: the concrete. You're going to have to use heavy equipment
29:31
Speaker 1: to do this, You're going to have to bust this
29:33
Speaker 1: up in order to get to the body that is
29:37
Speaker 1: contained therein and you don't want to destroy any kind
29:40
Speaker 1: of evidence. And with Esmeralda, you'd ask me the question
29:44
Speaker 1: about decomposition. I wanted to kind of revisit that a bit.
29:49
Speaker 1: There was probably some tissue remaining, but a goodly portion
29:55
Speaker 1: of all that remained with her was bone. But there
29:59
Speaker 1: was something else. Her jewelry was actually still there, and
30:03
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about just common everyday jewelry. There was
30:06
Speaker 1: actually a Rolex watch that was found entombed with her
30:10
Speaker 1: that belonged to her. That's something that if you're looking
30:13
Speaker 1: at say a crime, a property crime where maybe a
30:17
Speaker 1: robbery has gone bad, you're not going to have somebody
30:19
Speaker 1: that's perpetrating that kind of crime that's going to leave
30:22
Speaker 1: a Rolex behind that's going to be at the top
30:23
Speaker 1: of the list. You're going to take that well in
30:26
Speaker 1: any kind of gold and their necklaces, rings, all kinds
30:29
Speaker 1: of stuff that are in this mix that had contained
30:34
Speaker 1: her remains and essentially her skeletal remains. The trick is
30:38
Speaker 1: this when you have a death related to asphyxi and
30:42
Speaker 1: we've seen this played out a lot recently in the news,
30:45
Speaker 1: and you have decomposition. It's really really difficult, Dave, to
30:50
Speaker 1: try to understand what exactly was it that brought about
30:54
Speaker 1: this death because there's no soft tissue. You can't look
30:57
Speaker 1: back and say, well, we've got hemorrhage here, we've got
30:59
Speaker 1: hemorrhage there. All that remained were the bones. And so
31:02
Speaker 1: it's going to require some circumstantial evidence to come into play,
31:06
Speaker 1: some testimonial evidence from somebody that may have had directcknowledge
31:10
Speaker 1: of it. And of course that's what happened with these
31:12
Speaker 1: associates that pres Patino had.
31:15
Speaker 2: I'm shocked, okay about the jewelry. When I saw the
31:18
Speaker 2: police had taken pictures of the jewelry and that rolex
31:22
Speaker 2: and things like that, I thought, okay, this criminal had
31:25
Speaker 2: the presence of mind to say, do not keep any
31:27
Speaker 2: of this because you're you know, girls like jewelry, and
31:30
Speaker 2: it was Gurly jewelry, of the Gurly Rolex. He had
31:33
Speaker 2: to have the presence of mind and say, no, you
31:35
Speaker 2: can't go walking around with her jewelry. You can't go
31:36
Speaker 2: walking around with her rolex. Put then in there. But Joe,
31:39
Speaker 2: these criminals they killed this twenty four year old woman,
31:42
Speaker 2: a beautiful young woman. They kill her with their bare hands.
31:46
Speaker 2: They figure out a way is to put her in
31:48
Speaker 2: a two hundred and fifty gallon water tank. Poor quick
31:51
Speaker 2: create Oliver. They wrapped her body up first in a blanket.
31:54
Speaker 1: In blankets from the home.
31:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they did that, this is what I was thinking.
31:58
Speaker 2: And that's why I'm kind of shocked when you say
31:59
Speaker 2: that her her body was pretty much just going to
32:01
Speaker 2: be bones, because I thought wrapping her up in the blanket,
32:04
Speaker 2: putting her in the tomb, and then covering her up
32:07
Speaker 2: with three hundred pounds of quick read, I thought that
32:09
Speaker 2: would seal in her body, you know, and prevent that
32:12
Speaker 2: from happening. That's what I was thinking. I had no
32:14
Speaker 2: idea that they would have to use bone marrow to
32:17
Speaker 2: get her DNA and match it with her parents, because
32:19
Speaker 2: there wasn't anything left of her. I just assumed putting
32:22
Speaker 2: her in that way that her body would have been
32:24
Speaker 2: well preserved.
32:25
Speaker 1: You think about it, anytime you have this kind of
32:29
Speaker 1: environmental temperature. The desert around Vegas is so hostile. I
32:33
Speaker 1: mean it truly is, and you're going to have remains
32:36
Speaker 1: that are out there that are literally cooking in this heat,
32:39
Speaker 1: and the body will begin to render down. Essentially, you know,
32:43
Speaker 1: the human body is very fragile. We think of ourselves
32:45
Speaker 1: as being very robust, but in death, you know, after
32:48
Speaker 1: all this metabolic activity has ceased and everything else, you're
32:52
Speaker 1: subject to the environment which you're in. So you have
32:55
Speaker 1: this encasement that's going to be superheated out there on
32:57
Speaker 1: the floor of the desert. Bodies are going to down.
33:00
Speaker 1: But we do know this. All that remained of Esmeralda
33:05
Speaker 1: wound up telling her tale and eventually wound up seeing
33:09
Speaker 1: Presbattino going to prison. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this is
33:19
Speaker 1: body bags.