Amory Monos was last seen on a crisp Ellie winter day, a Friday afternoon in January of two thousand and six. Do you have memories of that day? Yeah, we were all getting ready for school and myself, my brother, and my sister, Crystal, her younger sister, was six. They used to share a room and I used to sleep in the next room with my mom, and I remember I woke up and they were yelling at each other, my brother and my sister, and I was like, what's happening?
You know? Then my mom went over and she was like, why are you guys fighting? They were fighting because my brother unplugged her straight inner, plugged in his game boy and they got in like the biggest fight ever. Crystal was young, but she remembers the energy of that morning, of the last day she saw her sister, the kind of explosive feelings I remember having as a team whenever anybody moved my stuff. The last memory that Crystal has of her older sister isn't from that fight that morning.
Later that afternoon, after school, it was right before she left that day. I looked outside. We had a really long hallway and at the end of the door we can see, like that garden that I had told you about that we had. It was a big, lush garden filled with flowers on one of the highest hills in City Terrace. It's where her big sister taught her to dance. We had like a wall. I remember she was sitting
on it. She was sitting on it, and she was wearing a white that white hoodie that she had and some jeans, and like there's no context behind it, you know. I just I remember I looked, and I've seen her sitting on that wall. But I do remember. It's my aunt next door. She said that she saw her through her window. That's Becky, Emory's aunt and godmother her knee. She says a family member saw Emory that afternoon standing
outside of the house. My aunt said that she saw Emory inside the fence and this guy outside the fence talking, and then she said that next time she looked, they were gone. She saw Emory talking to a friend. It was reported at the time that he was a member of a male party crew. According to Emory's mother, Emory left to go to a friend's house and said she would be back by seven thirty or eight pm. When her mom got home from the market, Emory wasn't there.
The next morning, Emory's mom reported her missing. I remember those copies, the fires. I remember we were walking around putting them up. Crystal remembers they went looking for Emory and posting flyers in the area. She remembers walking down the street by her house. I remember we put one on a red pull and we were just it was an all night thing, like it was dark. I remember it being dark. I remember being cold. We were just going up and down the streets putting them on, and
I think I think it was the next day. I was calling her cell phone and I remember I was in her room and I was calling her phone, and I think I maybe left her about twenty voicemails that day. Crystal assumed that Emory run away because she was mad at their brother John, And I remember I was calling her and I was like, you could come home now, John's not mad at you anymore. Can you come home? From my heart? Michael Duda Podcast Network, Vice and Ellie's Studios,
This is Party Cruz The Untold Story. I'm Jenness Malca. There are a lot of questions about what happened to Emory that night. Where she went and why she didn't come home. Emory Miunius's lifeless body was found nearby this warehouse on Marosol and Olympic and Boyle Heights, a popular area for underground parties. Emory's murder was quickly connected to the party crew scene by the LPD and the media. Her killing, they think she was strangled, now tied to
the world of illegal underground parties. She went to one and never came home. Oh, this is exactly the kind of industrial neighborhood where a rave promoter can find a warehouse to use for a night. In fact, it was here on Mirosol, just south of Olympic where a fourteen year old girl was found dead. Emory's links to the party crew world was part of why her murder got a lot of media attention. Emory reportedly was part of
a crew girls who attended underground parties. The Vicious Ladies are among the local party crews with their own websites and party lines. Vicious Ladies was the name of the party crew belonged to. They think her murder may be connected to an underground rave party, but what evidence was there that her murder was tied to party crews and why is her key still unsolved. I want to understand what happened with the investigation, what's clear, and what remains
a mystery to this day. A warning that this episode gets graphic and talks in detail about a violent death. On Wednesday morning, January twenty fifth, two thousand and six, and six days after Emory went missing, an employee of a warehouse in boil Heights who went to go pick up some lumber found Emory's body. She was less than five miles away from her home. Becky got the call with the news when she was at work. I don't even remember. I just remembered going crazy and staircal and
the customer came and tried to call me down. But then everybody I'll start coming to my office, and then my supervisor wouldn't let me drive home about myself and stuff. So my son came and picked me up, and then that's when we went over there, and he's crazy. I mean, it's like you're trying to think that it's a nightmare that you're having, just can't believe it. That's when the
investigation began. I remember it so vividly because this was one of the times where you didn't expect to be called out on a suspicious death, especially involving a child. This is Carrie Ricard. He's a former LPD homicide detective. He retired in twenty thirteen after working for LPD for over thirty five years. He's still volunteers as a reserve officer. He started at the Holland Back stationeteen seventy nine. Most
of our homicides here gang related. Majority of them are, you know, and the victims have either ties to gangs or you know, maybe even we're looking at as a suspect and a murder themselves. As a rule, you don't get many child homicides. I met Carrie at the station and Boil Heights. Hollenbeck serves the community surrounding Elsarino, Lincoln Heights and Boil Heights. Carrie wore a striped long sleeve button up with a blue tie. He rocked a mustache and his hair was neatly combed to one side. He
also had a gun on his hip. He may be retired, but he still looks like an old school TV detective to me. We met in the afternoon, and by that time most of the officers had gone home and in two thousand and six. You were one of the detectives. Yes, I was the original lead detective on the Emory Muno's death. He was the first detective to be called out to the scene where she was found. It was midweek is the Wednesday, to be precise, and I was at my desk.
I had the watch commander called up upstairs and told me that the body of a young female had been found in an abandoned warehouse area in our industrial section of the division. When I got to the scene, you know, I knew this was a young girl. I put her at thirteen or fourteen years old. Emory was fourteen, just a few months shy of fifteen. There was a hole in the fence that led from where we parked on the street and walked up the street a little bit to the hole in the fence, through the hole in
the fence back into the loading dock. Carrie was joined by his partner and fellow homicide detective, Joe Braciato. He's also now retired after over thirty years with the LPD. And that's where Emory's body was located. In the loading dock area, Emory's body was lying on the concrete. She was wearing jeans, white tennis shoes, and a white hoodie. You just remember, I know she had like was a
Tinkerbell sweatshirt. When the corner investigator got there and one of the first things we found was a school lunch card, no picture on it, it had a name on it, it was It turned out to be her card, and so they did some background found out she had been reported missing. She didn't have a cell phone on her or any type of backpack or purse, so the school lunch card helped them to identify her. And the clutter and the loading dock area was a lot of drug
paraphernalia that we're on the ground. I remember the building had discarded needles and it was a warehouse. The detective set at the time had been used as a quote grave site before. Despite all the litter and dust and dirt around her, her clothes were very clean, even the bottom of her white tennis shoes, So Carrie thought it was likely that she didn't die here, that her body was brought here after her death, maybe even by several people.
The chain link fence nearby had some holes in it big enough for a person carrying a body, though is awkward yeah, and you know, one can surmise things from well, you know, how do you carry a body and get it through a hole in a fence and not snagged the clothing on exposed chain link wires or not wrinkle the clothing unless you've got maybe someone helping you. At first, the detectives had difficulty understanding what had happened to Emory. One of the issues I had is we couldn't determine
what she died from on the scene. It wasn't immediately clear how she had died at first glance. There was no gunshot or blood on her body, anything that told him what had happened to Emory or how long she had been dead. There were visible marks around Emory's neck, but it wasn't clear at first if they were the cause of death or if the marks happened after her death. And you know, at first I thought, probably would be an overdose, and but why would why would that be
something that comes to mind? Well, when you have no apparent cause of death, you know, when there's there's no evidence of foul play. I mean, she was impeccably dressed, her clothes weren't dirty. Kerry thought Emory's death might have been an accident. We know that back in that era that nitrous ox side was widely widely being used, and different ways of using it too, where they could put a bag over their head elastic band, well they could,
and then so they could better inhale it. I just want to jump in and say, I've watched friends and a lot of different people do not and I've never seen or heard of anyone putting a bag over their head with an elastic band and the balloons people were, Yeah, there's all sorts of methods. So yeah, Carrie thought maybe Emory had accidentally taken too much of something with a friend and they had panicked and left her body there.
If we suspect foul play from the beginning, then we'll handle it as a homicide, even if we don't call it a homicide, such as in Emory's case. To better understand the details of what might have happened to Emory, we filed a public records request for the autopsy report. The report was clinical, but there were small details about how she was found that stuck with me. She had her jeans bunched up at the bottom with an elastic band.
It was a style thing. When I was in high school in the midouts rubber bands around the ankles to make her pants slimmer, DIY cuffs for jeans. Her fingers had tandlnes like maybe rings were missing from her hand. She had on a gold chain with a religious pendant, the type of jewelry that's gifted by family, and she had a pair of eyebrowt tweezers on her and the Tinkerbelt key chain on her belt loop that matched her
Tinkerbelt hoodie. It reminded me again that she was fourteen a teen, a child, and the autopsy would reveal that she hadn't died from an overdose. It was a homicide. It was difficult to say how long Emory had been dead when she was found, but she had been strangled. Emory has a cause of death that's listed as asphyxia
due to net compression. This is Denise Brutone that I worked for the Coroner's office investigating pediatric deaths for fifteen years, and prior to that, I was an emergency room nurse at Los Angeles County Hospital. She specifically worked on deaths involving children, which is anyone under fourteen years old. Denise was the coroner investigator who came to the crime scene the day that Emory was found. She's seen over twenty five hundred cases in her career, but she immediately remembered
this case. These don't happen very often, so when you called me, I didn't remember the year it happened, but you called and started talking to me about it, and I can still picture the warehouse and I can still picture her there on the scene. Denise did a cursory exam on the body and wrote the initial report. Denise told us it wasn't clear what Emory had been strangled with, but it was likely with something about the width of
a shoelace at an upward angle. So is it that the perpetrator, her assailant, was behind her and a little bit taller than her. That would be a reasonable thing to conclude. She also has on a gold chain and that chain is not disturbed, it's not broken. Denise also pointed out that the autopsy showed no signs of struggle from Emery, no fingernail marks, no struggling to breathe, no other wounds that were the signs of a fight. We have to wonder about her level of consciousness. When this
assailant kills her. As part of her work, Denise in her colleagues took all evident samples, samples from her fingernails, stems from her clothing, a hair clipping, and a sexual assault kit. I don't know if it was ever run. It would be important to know that it was run, and that it's very important that the DNA is tested.
She wonders if any of the samples of DNA from the crime scene were tested, whether the nail clippings actually were tested in looking for DNA under her fingernails, and whether the DNA that was under her fingernails was put into Codis Codas is a database of DNA that the FBI maintains if Emery's killer was in the system, it's possible that running the samples would help the police identify them.
There are other marks, Like I mentioned, it looked like there was a hickey on her chest that would have saliva that would have DNA. Was that actually ran and tested. We asked Joe, one of the former detectives, about the DNA samples that were taken and what had happened with them.
I know she had possible evidence underneath their fingernails. So that was one of the requests that I had made that DNA to be tested, but unfortunately I didn't come up with a suspect at the time the amount of DNA that they had, they were unable to identify anyone with that amount. We reached out to LPD about any DNA evidence in her case and they wouldn't share anything
about the investigation. But later on a detective supervisor for the cold case unit told us that any DNA evidence that was taken had been put into CODIS, the national database for DNA, but there hadn't yet been a match. I asked Denise, the corner investigator, what does she think happened? This is something that we've been just asking everyone who has touched the case in some way if they personally have a theory based on the outopsy or the evidence to how she might have died. A young teenager is
a vulnerable victim. It just seems that she was incapacitated in some way when this attack occurs, because she doesn't have the typical injuries that you would see. All I need for sure at this point was that Emory, a fourteen year old girl, was strangled to death, who killed her and where and why we don't know, but Emory's friends and family have theories. That's after the break To
this day, Emory's family is looking for answers. Little is known about the evening she disappeared, so there are a lot of theories coming from family, friends, anyone close to the case, and given how few answers the family has gotten from the police, I think it's important to look at these theories to try and understand what was happening
in Emory's world around the time she was killed. The family members we spoke to didn't really know much about the party cruisine, but they did know about her circle of friends, which at times overlapped because many were miners at the time. We're not using the names of the people that family and friends have talked about. One of the theories, and for information that we had at the time, somebody said that they thought her boyfriend. This is Becky again,
Emory's aunt. She's talking about one of Emery's old boyfriends, who we're going to call R. A friend said that he was in a party care at the time. R is currently serving an almost thirty five years sentence at Cincinnella State Prison for attempted second degree murderer with an enhancement for discharge of a firearm because they saw her fighting one time with him on the steps of his house,
all outside steps, and that he pushed her. And then I verified with my sister and she said, yeah, she did come home one day with a scrape on her leg and a bruise on her arm. So then when she passed, we were thinking, well, maybe that wasn't the first time that he did it, and who knows, maybe by accident it happened that was one of them. The other one that I think is more believable to me is those four girls. Another thing that came up was the possibility that her dad had to do with a
fight with her friends from a previous middle school. Some of those friends later joined the party. Creusne that at one time there were her friends and then I don't know what happened, but the DA didn't like her. I don't know why, you know, and I don't know the whole story, but they came over and they call her name, and so my mom came out there and Mary asked her to go out there. My mom saw a movement behind a park car, so my mom went out of the gate to look and she saw two more girls
behind this car. Total was four, two of them long with a back. Her mom ended up transferring Emory to a different school, But what we heard Becky and others talk most about was that her dad had something to do with her friend's ex boyfriend who were going to call us that between them there had been some tense moments.
Becky heard a story that Emory had introduced her friend to a new guy at a party and the x S had found out, and he called Emory and told her that she had no business battling between them two. Emory was going to be sorry that she did this. We've tried to get in contact with Emory's friend who used to date us. We called, texted, written emails, commented on social media posts, reached out to her in various ways over the course of months. While we believed she
saw our messages, she never responded to us. This friend was also the person that Emory said she was going to visit on the evening she disappeared, and according to another friend, she may have been a member of the Vicious Ladies, Emory's party crew. We've also tried to find and reach out to s the friend's ex boyfriend, but we haven't gotten any responses to our calls and emails, and we haven't been able to confirm if he was in a party crew. We also emailed Emory's old boyfriend
are in prison. He did not respond. It's hard to hear about all these difficult relationships and Emory's life, and while some of the details are scary, none of the stories or rumors are by any means evidence of murder. One thing that Emory's family and the LAPD agree on is that whoever killed Emory was likely someone who knew her.
This is Carrie Ricard, the former detective again. To meticulously take someone somewhere, and it's kind of almost not posing them, but to gingerly handle them, meticulously place them, and that's kind of like handling them with a degree of respect, and a stranger wouldn't do that, but someone with maybe some remorse might. According to Kerry, there won't be any answers on our case without someone new coming forward with information. Witnesses is going to be the primary solution factor in
this case. This is not a case that's scientifically going to be solved without In the absence of witnesses, it's not going to happen. I'm curious, what do you want people to know about this case. I would like them to know that if people think the police don't care, they won't care. That's why I mentioned a lot of the resources that went into the investigation from the start. Kerry says, the entire homicide squad was actually on duty that day and so a lot of its colleagues were
able to go to the crime scene. It's almost unheard of. They have five homicide detectives that one homicide scene when you're not even sure it's a homicide. You know, it's always at the ready for just the right tip to come in and your listeners, you know, I would want them to know that that just remember the three words Central Bureau Homicide. They're the ones that have the case.
In twenty nineteen, Hollenbeck Community Police Station closed down their homicide unit and all of their cases were sent to Central Bureau. Central Bureau now handles homicides across a large part of eastern Los Angeles like downtown La MacArthur Park, Foil Heights, and Eagle Rock. They are the ones that now have Emory's case. And because there are a few leads on it right now. It's been pulled off the shelf.
About five months after we started calling LAPD and looking into her unsolved case, we found out that Emory's case was being worked on again with new detectives, and it has a two detectives that actually are a signed it and are working on it. But it can easily get cold again. The LAPD told us in an email that while it is a cold case because of its age,
it's currently being worked on as fresh. They told us this was because there was new information provided, but they didn't tell us what the information is, and they told us they don't talk to the media during a fresh investigation. Carrie was only on the case for about three months before his assignment changed, but he says they had already done a ton of talking to people. I think before I left we were up too close to thirty interviews and then and things were just getting started on it.
So I would assume, my gotcha, it's got to be sixty or more people that have been spoken. According to Becky, there have been at least seven different detectives that have been put on Emory's case since two thousand and six, as it's been shuffled around whether or not this fresh investigation will mean any new information for the family, We don't know. There remains a lot unknown about what happened to Emory, including whether her death was directly tied to
the party crew scene. Even the detectives we spoke to couldn't pin down any concrete connection. We don't even know really where the crime scene is. We're calling the crime scene where the body was found. And when we talk about time of death, if one was to look at the death report, it would be you know, January twenty fifty nine o'clock. Well, no, she didn't die then. We don't know what time she died. I think we couldn't even verify that she even went to a rape party
that night. We had conflicting information on that. So did she go or didn't she go? You know, she was telling people that she was going to go, but and when we never came up with a location, we just know it wasn't It wasn't that location where she was found. We're not sure who Emory was telling that she was going to a party. Nobody we interviewed, friends or family told us that she was going to one that night. When Emory was found she was wearing a Tingerbell hoodie
and tennis shoes. Close she was found with with the close she went missing with, and it was nothing party is that she would actually wear to be at a party, especially if there was a party that her party crew was throwing. Brian Garcia, also known as Spooky, dated Emory. He wasn't in the party crew scene, but he attended
flyer parties and he knew the Vicious Ladies. Their party crew was a whole female party crew at the time, so they, you know, it was always like trying to compete and see who looked better, So they always wanted to be out there and just looked good, you know. Brian met Emory on an old school party line, the kind were you dial a number and get connected with
teams from all over, just random people. Before all this Instagram MySpace thing, there used to be a party line and Emory happened to be at one of her friend's house. The phone was handed over to her. We had a conversation, the vibe was great. We kicked it off and you know, we exchanged numbers. He has a picture of the m chuck e cheese when they went for her birthday. Their faces are smoshed against each other. Pookie has his tongue out, Emory's eyes big and dark even in a black and
white photo. Pooky couldn't believe the response when she disappeared and was found murdered. I was very upset at the media and LAPD because the coverage was based of her being part of a party crew and a party goer. And I guess they based it off because of where she was found, being in an abandoned warehouse on Boil Heights in fact, to be based it off, oh you know, she was at a flier party being a minor, you know, and probably at a point overdosed in some type of
drugs at whatnot. It was just not right. It wasn't. She wasn't at this party. But the party crewsine became cemented as part of her public image. They're advertised not only through the flyers being passed out at schools, but they are all also advertised on the MySpace dot com. That's the former detective speaking at a two thousand and seven press conference for Emory's case. Police say the rave
was posted on the popular MySpace website. In a two thousand and six press release by LAPD about Emory's case, they meet it a point to include the line quote her death may be related to underground rave parties, which are held in local abandoned warehouses common to the area and advertised on MySpace dot com. The party scene well was thrown out there, and I know that created a lot of Internet chatter, but LA then didn't really helped
haste too much. This is Joe Braciato today. When I asked him about his views of party crews sixteen years later, he said, I mean they were in my opinion, they were basically harmless. They were victims. In our interview, he told me they even checked Emory's MySpace to look for any online messages related to partying, but it didn't help them get any closer to who killed her. And in our interview with Kerrie Ricard, the other detective we spoke to, he says he didn't see any evidence of a recent
party at the abandoned warehouse. That particular building wasn't too conducive to a rape party. There's just too much debris around where you could hurt yourself or step on something. You know, you need a little bit more of a space.
But still that was the one line of information that would get added to any news reports about her by LPD and by reporters that our death might have been related to rape or underground parties, illegal rave party, illegal rave party, underground parties, I flyer parties, party crews, flyer parties, underground flyer party, flyer parties, party cruiser, underground party. Like the scene was the Boogeyman or some kind of monster
looming in the dark. This is spooky again. These party crews would go really hard at these parties to compete to those the best parties, become a popular party crew, and I guess game across to being put out of the gang because people started franking people and some party boards wouldn't go to certain events because they were scared that this party crew was going to show up, you know, stuff like that. But it was definitely not a game. Gangs,
gang adjacent illegal parties, kids drinking. That's how the party crewsine came across in the media. I know it sounds bad. Sometimes gang members did go to parties and there were a lot of people under twenty one drinking. People did stupid things, and sometimes people got hurt. But there was another side of the party creusine, but I feel was ignored, misunderstood and rarely talked about. That it wasn't just any teens gone wild party. It was a whole world built
intentionally for us by us. From how we designed our logos. Our logo was a play with money, but it was smoking a blunt. It was like a south Park beam like the link characters from South Park, like dressing blue wood glasses, to how we secured the spot. The parties were always like somebody's grandma's backyard. Hey, shout out to the grandma's at pas for allowing us to party on
our spots for like one hundred and fifty bucks. And the economics of party that was the majority of the money that was being made in any Flyer party was through the nas. Did our goals so like just do like three to four, three to five racks? That's next time. This episode was written, reported, and hosted by me Ja. Our show is produced and reported by Sofia Pelissa car Victoria Lejandro, and Kyle Chang, and edited by Antonia Shido.
Additional editing by Annie Abelis, fact checking by Nadia Alista, Sound design and original music composition by Kyle Murdock. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee. Art by Julie Ruiz and Victua Collon. Our executive producer from Vice Audio is Kate Osbourne. Our executive producers from Elias Studios are Antonia Seedhivo and leog. Our Vice President of Podcasts from Elias Studios is China Naomi Krocomo. Special thanks to the UCLA Department of Communication
Archives for access to their news collections. Party Cruise. The Untold Story is a production of Elias Studios and Vice Audio in partnership with Ihearts Michael Buddha podcast Network. For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and Hey, were you and a party crew? Send its your party flyers or photos. I'd love to see them, even a voice
message about your memories. Anything. You can send us a message or a picture at Party Crews at Elliot Studios dot com. Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people,