Latest / Crime Night / The Blue Fiber and the Staged Disappearance

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The Blue Fiber and the Staged Disappearance · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So if you were like running away today to just
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: start a brand new life, what's the one single item
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: you would absolutely never leave behind?
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, definitely my cell phone. I mean, without a doubt.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Right, because it's your passport, a stash of cash, a
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bag of clothes. Sure, those are important. But universally across
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: almost every demographic, it's the cell phone.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, our entire lives are in there. Contacts, digital identities everywhere. banking.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: It's all in that little glass rectangle.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So when someone allegedly flees to start over, but
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: they leave their phone just sitting there on the kitchen counter,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: investigators know almost immediately, right, they didn't leave. They were taken.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: That instinct is usually what breaks these cases wide open. Because,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: you know, when you look at the mechanics of a disappearance,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the missing items tell a story, but the items left
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: behind tell the actual truth.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: So keep that in mind as we jump into this
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: deep dive today. I want you to picture the atmosphere
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: of this specific morning. It is Wednesday, July 1st, 2020
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: in East Haven, Connecticut.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Right in the middle of summer. Yeah.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: The air is thick. It's humid. And inside the small apartment,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a seven-year-old girl named Astrid wakes up in her bedroom.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: She rubs her eyes, pushes her door open, and steps
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: out into the hallway.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: And it's just quiet.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Eerily quiet. Her mother, Liz Bethalemine Popoka... She isn't in
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the kitchen. She isn't in her bed. She's simply gone.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: And Astrid's father, Jonathan, is just returning home, finishing up
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: his overnight shift at UPS.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: So on the surface, it just looks like a quiet,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: ordinary morning in this residential neighborhood.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: But underneath that stillness, a methodical, terrifying cover-up is actually
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: already in motion. Today, our mission is to trace the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: timeline of this exact morning. We're not just trying to
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: understand a crime, but we want to explore the mechanics
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: of how a staged disappearance completely falls apart under scrutiny.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Because the vulnerability of that exact moment is just striking.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: You have a seven-year-old child waking up to this fractured
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: reality and a perpetrator trying to, like, control the entire
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: narrative before the rest of the world even knows a
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: crime has happened.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Right, he's setting the state.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the clues to unraveling this, they weren't buried
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: in some remote forest right away. They were hidden in
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: plain sight. Literally, starting with the very first phone call
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Jonathan made.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's examine that call because it's so weird. Jonathan
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: dials Lisbeth's sister, Yaneth. Now, his established pattern is that
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: he normally only calls Yaneth when he needs her to
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: babysit Astrid.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: But this time is different.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Very different. His tone is totally casual. He just casually
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: mentions that Lisbeth is missing. Just gone. Wow. He claims
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: she'd just walk out. leaving their seven-year-old daughter completely alone
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: in the apartment. And he gives Yaneth this very specific
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: inventory of what's missing from the house.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: He had a list ready.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, he knew exactly what was gone. He says Lisbeth's
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: 2007 white Lexus is missing, her purse, her passport, and $ 10, 000
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: in cash that they kept in a safe.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: But he notes the cell phone.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Crucially, he notes that she left her cell phone behind.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: See, we really have to analyze Jonathan's behavior here through
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: the lens of cognitive load.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Well, when someone is in genuine distress about a missing partner,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: their brain prioritizes immediate action. They're calling hospitals. They're checking
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: with friends. They're dialing 911.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Total panic mode.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But Jonathan doesn't do any of that. Instead, he
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: tells Yaneth he's going to stay home and just do
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: a little laundry.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Laundry. Well, your wife is supposedly missing.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Right. And then, a few hours later, he drives over
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: to Yaneth's house.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: But he doesn't just drop off Astrid. he brings this
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: massive load of groceries.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Wait, groceries?
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's acting like a man preparing for a permanent
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: change in living arrangements. He's prioritizing domestic logistics over the
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: panic of a missing spouse, you know.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, I need to stop and just question the logic
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of his story for a second. If he's trying to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: convince the sister that Lisbeth packed up and ran away
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: to start a new life, why not just take the
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: cell phone and, I don't know, throw it in a river?
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: That would make sense, right?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Leaving the phone behind is the one massive glaring red
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: flag That proves she didn't leave voluntarily. Why leave the
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: single item that ruins your own alibi?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: It's crazy, but it reveals this really fascinating flaw in
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: how perpetrators understand crime scene staging. When someone stages a scene,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: they aren't recreating reality.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: What are they recreating?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: They're recreating a cinematic cliche of what they think a
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: getaway looks like. Jonathan thinks, okay, passport, cash, car, those
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: are the props of a fugitive.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Like in a movie. Exactly.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But staging requires immense mental bandwidth. The perpetrators trying
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: to manage their own guilt, construct a fabricated reality, and
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: predict what investigators will look for, all while adrenaline is
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: just flooding their system.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So they just miss the obvious human element.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Yes. In that panic, they completely fail to account for
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the victim's actual psychology. A devoted mother whose entire universe
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: revolves around her daughter, she does not abandon her seven-year-old
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: child without a word. Never.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Never.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Jonathan's narrative was built entirely on his own need to
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: explain the missing money and the missing car, completely ignoring
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Lisbeth's reality.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And to truly grasp why Lisbeth leaving Astrid was an
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: absolute impossibility, we have to kind of rewind and look
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: at the foundation of this relationship.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: It's a long one, right?
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A 10-year history. They started dating back in high school,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: but calling it toxic barely covers it. I mean, they
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: were trapped in this awful cycle of serial cheating, breakups, reconciliations.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: A very volatile dynamic.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Extremely. And by the spring of 2020, the emotional abuse
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: had really escalated into severe physical violence. Like, in May,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: just a few months prior to this, Lisbeth was supposed
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: to attend a family cookout.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: But she didn't show up.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: She canceled at the last minute, and the next time
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Yaneth saw her, Lisbeth was wearing a sling. Her shoulder
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: was heavily swollen, and three fingers on her left hand
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: were bruised, this dark, Mottled purple.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: God, that's awful. And that physical escalation, you know, it's
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: usually a critical inflection point in these cases.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Well, in the psychology of intimate partner violence, you often
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: see victims reach this threshold where the fear of staying
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: finally outweighs the fear of leaving.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: They hit a breaking point.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And after that incident in May, Lisbeth began quietly
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: recalibrating her life. She started reconnecting with her identity outside
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: of Jonathan.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: She was an artist, right?
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: She was a really talented artist. She started designing... stickers
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and decals, basically trying to build a small business to
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: secure her own financial independence.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: So she was really laying the groundwork for an exit,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: because on June 29th, exactly two days before she vanished,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: she took the most definitive step yet. She submitted a
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: rental application for a new apartment.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: And that rental application is the catalyst.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: It's like she was quietly building a lifeboat while he
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't looking, but the moment her foot touched the bow...
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: He just capsized the whole ship.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. You often hear people wonder, you know,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: why don't victims just leave? But the data is explicitly
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: clear on this.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: The danger spikes.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Huge spike. The most dangerous time in an abusive relationship
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: is the exact moment the victim tries to break free.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: For years, Jonathan maintained this illusion of absolute control.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: So her acting independently threatened all of that.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. When she started saving money and applying for apartments...
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: she stopped playing the role he had assigned her. She
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: stopped arguing and just started acting like someone who was
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: permanently done.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: And to him, that's unacceptable.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: To an abuser, that sudden shift in demeanor shatters their
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: perceived authority. It creates this vacuum of power, and they
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: will resort to ultimate lethal violence just to reclaim that control.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Wow. And the timeline just accelerates dramatically from there. By Friday,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: July 3rd, Elizabeth's family is refusing to accept Jonathan's story.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: They knew something was wrong.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: No, they were not buying it. Lisbeth's father, Albino, and
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: her sister, Yaneth, essentially ambushed Jonathan. They force him to
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: meet them, and they demand that they all go to
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the police station together to formally file a missing person report.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: They're forcing his hand.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Right. And right as they're standing there, preparing to walk
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: into the precinct, the timing becomes almost suspiciously perfect.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, this part is wild.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Yaneth's phone buzzes. She looks down and she sees a
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: text message in Spanish from an unknown number with the
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: 727 area code, which is based in Florida.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: A Florida number out of nowhere.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Right. And the sender claims to be Lisbeth. The message
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: basically says she just needs space, she's completely fine, and
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: she'll call Jonathan later.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: And, of course, Yaneth's immediate human reaction is to just
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: hit the call button, obviously.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: She dials the Florida number right there, but it just
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: rings endlessly. No voicemail, no answer. Just ringing.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Because it wasn't a real phone. Exactly.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly. When enforcement eventually pulls the records for that 727 number,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: they discover it doesn't belong to Verizon or AT & T.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: It's registered to an app called Pinger.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Right. For those who might not know, Pinger is this
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: free voiceover Internet protocol or VoIP service. It basically lets
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: you use a Wi-Fi connection to generate a temporary phone
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: number so you can sort of spoof your location.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: And his digital footprint here is just astonishingly amateur. The
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: account was created at 10.38 a.m. Those text messages were
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: sent to Yaneth at 10.40 a.m.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Two minutes.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: He spun up a fake identity literally two minutes before
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: hitting send, and he registered the account using the email
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: address JonathanJara2020.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: You're kidding. Nope.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: His actual first name, his middle name, and the current year.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And to top it off, police pulled the IP address
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: used to create the account.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Which is basically a digital fingerprint.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It logs exactly where an internet connection originates. And
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: it perfectly matched the Wi-Fi router sitting right inside Jonathan's
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: own apartment.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: It's just so blatant.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting to me as an investigator, though.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: He's smart enough to use a proxy app, but he
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: registers it with his actual full name and the current year.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Like everything. is this arrogance or is this just sheer panic?
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Honestly, it's where we see the God complex of an
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: abuser collide with forensic reality.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: A God complex.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because within the four walls of his home, Jonathan
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: was the supreme authority. He was used to manipulating Lisbeth,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: gaslighting her family, and just controlling the narrative without consequence.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: So he thinks that works on everyone.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: That environment breeds a profound arrogance. He genuinely believed his
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: manipulation skills were so superior that he could fool a
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: team of detectives with a free app he downloaded in
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: two minutes.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: He thought he was outsmarting the police.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Right. He didn't understand that digital spoofing might hide a
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: number from a sister, but it acts like a neon
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: sign to a subpoena. Telecom providers just bounce those VoIP
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: requests right back to the host's IP. unraveling the entire
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: illusion in seconds.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: And that arrogance really became his biggest liability. But the
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: problem was the system itself was moving at a frustratingly
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: bureaucratic pace.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: As it often does with missing adults.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, missing adult cases often face these initial hurdles, right?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Police wait to see if the person just returns voluntarily.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: But Lisbeth's family, they didn't have the luxury of patience.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: They weren't going to just sit around.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: No way. Albino and Yaneth bypassed the protocol completely and
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: hit the streets of Easthaven. They started conducting their own
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: grassroots investigation, knocking on neighbors' doors, pleading for anyone to
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: check their doorbell cameras or security systems.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: And that persistence paid off.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: It really did. One neighbor pulled up their video feed
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: from the evening of July 1st. And there, in high definition,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: was Lisbeth's supposedly missing white Lexus slowly driving down the street.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: And who was driving?
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: The family zoomed in on the driver's seat. It wasn't Lisbeth.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: It was Jonathan. Wow.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: The magnitude of that discovery, it just cannot be overstated.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, Jonathan had explicitly told the police and the
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: family that when he came home from his UPS shift
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: on the morning of July 1st, the Lexus was already gone.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that single frame of video completely incinerated his timeline.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: It just blew it apart.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: So armed with this video, the family confronts Jonathan right
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the street. They don't even wait
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: for the police. They corner him.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: That must have been intense.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. And I want to look at how his
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: alibi breaks down here because it doesn't just shift. It
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: completely derails.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Like a leaky dam, you know. He's just shoving fingers
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: into holes as the water bursts through, completely unaware the
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: whole structure has already collapsed.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Right, just panicking and plugging holes.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So when they ask him about the car, he
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: initially sticks to the script, feigning ignorance. Then, under pressure,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: he pivots, claiming Lisbeth actually ran off with an old
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: high school friend named Jose.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Mysterious other man. Right.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: And when the family immediately rejects that, he pivots again,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: inventing this elaborate scenario where Lisbeth, an undocumented immigrant, spontaneously
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: drove all the way to Mexico to marry a stranger
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: just to, quote, fix her immigration papers.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: It's just absurd. What you're describing is essentially a reverse
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: interrogation by the family.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good way to put it.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: When a narcissist is confronted with undeniable physical evidence like
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: that video, their brain sort of short-circuits. They don't carefully
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: revise their old lie because the cognitive load is just
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: too high for that.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So they just spitball.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They just invent a completely new contradictory reality right
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: on the spot. They throw out the Jose story, then
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: the Mexico story, hoping the sheer audacity and volume of
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: the lies will just overwhelm and confuse the listener.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: They're trying to tire them out.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: They're attempting to exhaust the people questioning them.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: But Yaneth and Ambino, they didn't get exhausted. They got leverage.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: They pressed him relentlessly about the car until he finally
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: broke and admitted he had dumped the Lexus at his
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: cousin Carlos' house in neighboring New Haven.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Which is a huge break for investigators.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Massive. Investigators immediately drove to Carlos' house. Now, Jonathan had
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: told his cousin he needed to park the Lexus there
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: because he had no room in his own yard due
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: to working on other vehicles.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Which was a lie.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: A verifiable lie. Detectives already knew this because they had
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: photographed Jonathan's completely empty driveway days earlier.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: This really highlights how grassroots investigating by families, especially in
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: marginalized communities, often forces the hand of the legal system.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: They did all the legwork.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: They really did. They gathered the exact pieces of circumstantial
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: evidence needed to trap this suspect in his own web
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: of lies and basically delivered it on a silver platter.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: So let's look at how detectives synthesized that evidence to
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: rebuild the actual timeline of the murder. They pulled Jonathan's
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: cell phone data. Using cell tower triangulation, they can pinpoint
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: his device's location to within a few meters.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Right, by measuring the signal bouncing off surrounding towers. Exactly.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: And they discover that on the night of June 30th,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: just hours before she vanished, Lisbeth and Jonathan engaged in
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a brutal hours-long text message argument.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: And she was done.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Lisbeth's final messages are resolute. She tells him she is done.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: She types the words, forget I existed. Wow. And the
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: tower data proves Jonathan never went to his overnight shift
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: at UPS. He was in or near their apartment throughout
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: those early morning hours.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: So he was there when she disappeared.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: He was there.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: The electronic data just shatters his alibi of being at work.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: And it places him at the exact scene of the
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: crime during that critical window.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: And the actions he took the very next day, July 1st,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: reveal a chilling level of calculation. While he was actively
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: telling Yeneth that Elizabeth was missing... Financial records show he
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: walked into a local Home Depot.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: And what did he buy?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: He purchased a shovel and a hoe.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. Yeah.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Later that same afternoon, less than 12 hours after Elizabeth
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: was last seen alive, he logged on to Facebook Marketplace.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: He created a listing trying to trade her white Lexus
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: for a pickup truck.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: The psychology here is just deeply disturbing. He is actively
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: attempting to liquidate the primary physical evidence of the crime
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: the vehicle used to transport the body. Before the police
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: even realize a murder has occurred.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: While playing the concerned dad.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He is managing the logistics of a cover-up while
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: pretending to be this abandoned father. So cold.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And then law enforcement uncovers visual evidence that is really
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: hard to shake. They pull security footage from an elementary
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: school parking lot located right next door to their apartment complex.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: What's on the tape?
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: In broad daylight, Jonathan is seen pulling the white Lexus
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: into the empty lot. He gets out. pops the trunk,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and pulls out a massive can of aerosol air freshener.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: The camera captures him spraying it frantically, just emptying the
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: entire can into the fabric of the trunk.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Which is a completely futile, desperate attempt to combat biology.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Because of decomposition. Right.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: When a human body begins to decompose, it releases really
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: specific chemical compounds, primarily putrescine and cadaverine. These gases seep
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: deeply into porous materials, like the carpet of a car trunk.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: So Febreze isn't going to cut it.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Not at all. Aerosol spray only masks odors temporarily for
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: human noses. It does absolutely nothing to eliminate the chemical
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: signature left behind.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: And that chemical signature is exactly what investigators relied on
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: two weeks later, on July 15th. The investigation zeroes in
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: on a closed restaurant where Jonathan occasionally worked a second job.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: So he knew the area.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: He knew the owner was out of town on vacation,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: making it a perfect, undisturbed location. The property backs up
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to a dense, overgrown, wooded area behind the dumpsters. Detectives
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: arrive and they notice a large wooden door discarded flat
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: on the ground.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Which is lined there.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Right. And beneath the edges of the door, the dirt
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: looks freshly turned. So they deploy specialized cadaver dogs.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Who are looking for those specific chemicals.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly. These dogs are specifically trained to bypass normal scents
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and alert only to the presence of putrescine and cadaverine.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: The moment the dogs approach the discarded door, they.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Hit on the scent. Because they ignore the garbage from
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: the restaurant, they ignore the wildlife in the woods. And
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: they focus entirely on that chemical footprint of human decay.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Forensics teams begin to dig beneath the door. Buried in
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: the shallow dirt, they unearth a bundle. It is wrapped
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: tightly in a thick blue fleece blanket, secured with yards
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of clear packing tape.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And inside?
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Inside that bundle, they find Elizabeth.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: And the physical evidence immediately linked that gravesite back to
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: the stage scene, right?
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, it did. When crime scene technicians processed the trunk
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: of that white Lexus, despite all that air freshener, they
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: found a single microscopic blue fiber embedded in the carpet.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Just one fiber?
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: One fiber. Using microscopic fiber analysis, forensic scientists examined the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: specific extrusion marks, you know, the tiny grooves left on
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: synthetic fibers during manufacturing, and the unique chemical dye batches.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: And it matched?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: That single fiber in the car was a perfect chemical
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: and physical match to the blue fleece blanket buried behind
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: the restaurant.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: So the science is just irrefutable at this point.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Irrefutable. But, you know, of all the forensic details in
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: this case, the most haunting pics of evidence didn't come
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: from a lab.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Where did it come from?
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: It came from Astrid. In August, an FBI child specialist
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: gently interviewed the seven-year-old about the morning of July 1st.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is the hardest part.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Astrid revealed that when she woke up in the quiet
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: apartment and realized her mother wasn't there, she tried to
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: walk out of her bedroom to search the house. She couldn't.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: The doorknob wouldn't turn.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: He locked her in.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Jonathan had locked her bedroom door from the outside. He
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: locked his own daughter in her room to ensure she
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: wouldn't wander out and discover him moving her mother's body.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: That detail is just... It's staggering.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Wait, does locking the seven-year-old in her room... Does that
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: show premeditation or was it a split second cold blooded
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: tactical decision in the aftermath?
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: It's highly tactical. You look at a man buying a
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: shovel at Home Depot, spraying air freshener, trying to swap
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: a car on Facebook Marketplace, and you might think, oh,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: he was operating in a state of blind panic.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: But locking a child's door from the outside, that is
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: a preventative measure. It requires a horrifying presence of mind.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: This wasn't just an explosion of rage. This was an
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: execution of logistics.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: He was managing the situation. Yes.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: He compartmentalized the murder of his partner from the management
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: of his household in real time.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Knowing all this, the family expected an immediate arrest. But
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the wait for justice was agonizing. Months ticked by. It
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: wasn't until December 27th that police finally made their move.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Almost six months later.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They orchestrated a careful, quiet operation, arresting Jonathan while
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: he was eating at a diner in New Haven. And
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I want to explore why they waited so long and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: why they chose a public diner instead of, you know,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: kicking his front door down. Right.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: He came down to international jurisdiction.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Because he was from Ecuador.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Jonathan was an Ecuadorian citizen. At that time, Ecuador
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: had incredibly strict non-extradition laws, deeply embedded in its constitution,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: protecting its citizens from facing trial in foreign courts.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: So if he made it back, he was safe.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. Extradition isn't just a matter of filing police paperwork.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: It involves intense diplomatic negotiations between state departments. If Jonathan
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: sensed the walls closing in, boarded a plane and landed
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: in Quito, U.S. jurisdictional power would just evaporate entirely.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: He would essentially be immune from prosecution.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Right. So the police had to play this high stakes
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: game of cat and mouse. They waited until they had
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: a rock solid indictment and they arrested him in a
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: public diner to ensure he was completely isolated from his passport,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: his vehicle and any immediate route to an airport.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Even with him securely in custody, though, the legal system
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: presented its own massive hurdles. Prosecutors had a mountain of evidence.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: The cell tower data, the Home Depot receipts, the blue fiber,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the fake text messages.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: But it was entirely circumstantial.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly. There was no confession and there was no eyewitness
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: to the actual murder.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And prosecutors carry a heavy burden of proof.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: They really do. There is always a lingering fear that
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: a defense attorney might convince a single juror that a
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: circumstantial case leaves room for reasonable doubt. They were terrified
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: of a murder acquittal.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: That fear of a trial, combined with the massive backlog
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: created by the global pandemic at the time, stalled the
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: case for years.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: It dragged on for nearly four years. Finally, in February
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: of 2024, a plea agreement was struck. In exchange for
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: pleading guilty to murder, Jonathan was sentenced to 25 years
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: in prison, followed by immediate deportation back to Ecuador upon
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: his release.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And to Lisbeth's family, a 25-year sentence feels like a
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: fraction of the justice required for a life stolen with
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: such cold calculation.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: But to understand the gravity of this, we have to
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: kind of pull the lens back. Lisbeth's murder is a
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: localized reflection of a staggering global epidemic. In 2020, the
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published a report
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: indicating that approximately 47,000 women and girls were killed worldwide
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: by an intimate partner or family member in a single year.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: 47,000. Yeah.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: If you break down that math, a woman or girl
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Wow. You hear a statistic like that and it's almost
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: too vast to even comprehend. By the time we finish
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: this deep dive with you statistically, another life has been
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: stolen in the exact same way. It's like a ticking
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: clock that society just keeps hitting snooze on.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: It is a systemic loop of violence. And we cannot
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: ignore the highly specific vulnerabilities that Hispanic and undocumented victims
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: face within this loop.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: How does that factor in?
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Abusers like Jonathan weaponize the victim's environment against them. They
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: exploit language barriers and leverage the terrifying threat of deportation
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: as a tool for silence.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: So the victim is trapped from all sides.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When an undocumented woman experiences severe domestic violence, she
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: isn't just terrified of her abuser's physical wrath. She is
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: often deeply afraid of the very legal system that is
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: theoretically designed to protect her.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Because calling for help could mean deportation.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Right. The abuser relies on that fear. They know their
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: victim won't call 911 if they believe calling the police
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: might result in their own family being torn apart by
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: immigration enforcement. It transforms this from a tragedy of a
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: single violent man into a glaring indictment of the systemic
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: gaps that allow these predators to operate with total impunity.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Alleman Popoka recognized the danger she was in, and
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: she did everything right. She was actively rebuilding her identity.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: She was applying for a new apartment. She was quietly
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and bravely constructing a lifeboat to carry herself and her
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: seven-year-old daughter to safety.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: And she was stopped.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: She was stopped in the most violent way imaginable by
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the person who demanded total control over her existence. Her
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: story is a harsh, necessary reality check. The signs of abuse,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: no matter how quiet or hidden, must be taken with
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: absolute seriousness. Because the moment of departure is the moment
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: of maximum lethality.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: As we finalize our analysis of the evidence today, there's
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: a really profound unresolved thread that extends far beyond the courtroom.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Just think about the generational trauma placed squarely on the
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: shoulders of that seven-year-old girl. Astrid will grow up knowing
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: that her father locked her in a room while he
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: erased her mother from the world.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: It's unimaginable.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: What happens to the psychology of a child who eventually
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: learns that her aunt and her grandfather had to turn
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: themselves into amateur street detectives begging neighbors for security footage
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: just to prove her father was a killer?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. How do we rebuild trust in a system that
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: requires a grieving family to do its investigative legwork?
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. How do we trust a justice infrastructure that moves
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: so slowly that a desperate family has to force the
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: system to pay attention?
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: That is the heavy, vital question we have to leave
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: you with today. We are left with the image of
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: a child waking up to a locked door and a
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: family forced to break down the doors of the justice
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: system simply to be heard. We appreciate you joining us
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: as we navigated the mechanics of this tragic reality. Keep
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: questioning the narratives you are handed, stay vigilant in your communities,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: and keep seeking the truth in your own deep dives.