You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand, KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. On any given day in southern California, hundreds of investigators are working more than ten thousand unsolved cases. That's thousands of friends and families who have lost loved ones, thousands of people who got away with a crime, and thousands of murderers who still walk the streets. Killers who may be your neighbor, go to your church, or could be dating a
close friend. For the next two hours, will highlight cases that have gone cold, baffled investigators, or just needs that one witness to speak up. This is Solved with Steve Gregory. Welcome to our season five recap. This was a very busy season and we brought in a few new agencies, the Redondo Beach Police Department and the La County Fire Department, Plus we were able to get the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department back as well as the FBI.
Now, for the next couple of hours, we'll highlight the cases from season five, Plus we'll tell you how you can be a part of our next live in person showtaping, where you might get the chance to be a part of our Unsolved studio audience. So let's get started up first. The La County Sheriffs Department's Homicide Bureau presents episode five h two, The Case of the grocery store ambush. Here's Detective Sean McCarthy. This murder occurred at a Northgate
Gonzales supermarket. It's not one of the bigger chains, but there's numerous Gonzales markets in the Crego, Los Angeles area. This one happened into being Lapointe on Hacienda Boulevard, and I was a part of this case. I wasn't the lead investigator. I happened to be on the assist team, and we processed the crime scene and did whatever the lead team wanted us to do. But basically we got called out. Got the call about shortly after ten o'clock
in the in the evening to respond. A security guard at the location had been murdered and it was unknown who the suspects were. It was unknown exactly when the crime occurred, but as the investigation went on and piecing it together was surveillance video, we are able to make determinations on suspects. At least general information on the suspects. A time of occurrence. Motive is a big question mark. There's some some people might say, as as I go on
with is that the motive is obvious? I don't. I don't think it's as obvious is many might think. But I think it's it's the most logical motive. But basically, what occurred after we I say we the lead two investigators in me and my partner, is somewhere around nine o'clock, two males entergy supermarket. Supermarket was still open. The supermarket closed around eleven o'clock. I believe it closed. There were still people in the in the market,
but not a lot of people because it was getting later. These two males, initially it didn't he would have never guessed that they were the suspect. They just appeared, based on dress, to be patrons of the market, and they began milling around the store. No shopping carts, just young male Hispanics, it appears, and they start milling around the store. A short time later, approximately ten ten, after nine, two additional males walk in.
And if I didn't mention it about the first two males, they didn't have specific dress that jumped out of it but one of them was wearing red and the other one was wearing what appeared to be a tan hoodie. The second two that came in four or five minutes later weren't all black, and they were wearing white baseball hats. At the time, you would never know
that they were related. In fact, other than the close proximity of the first two that came in, you wouldn't really know if they were together until later on. But they all start milling around the store and at some point they end up meeting up together. And the reason we know that is is surveillance video inside the store that was obtained showed them together, all four of them together what appeared to be the same four people. We believe that these
there was a certain level of planning to this. They are seen in near the back of the store. Initially there they made no attempts to disguise themselves, but they were clearly together, and that becomes clear probably about fifteen minutes after they're all in the store. During that time, one of the managers of the store, there's an armed security guard in there. His name was
Frutoso Anguiano. He's a sixty year old male, worked two jobs day job as a machinist night job as a security guard in the in the market, and he was asked by a manager to take some fish that was left out, to take it back to a rear cooler. Now, and this is all just theory and speculation, but the belief is is these guys made their
way to suspects, made the way to the back of the market. They then intended to conceal themselves for a period of time logically until the store closed and most of the employees were gone, or maybe conceal themselves until everyone was gone, and then do whatever they were going to do. The major portion of the money was at the front of the store, but keep in mind when they entered the store there was still business as usual. So they make
the way to the rear of the store. There's a catwalk, there's a storage room, there's a break room upstairs. It's on the second floor. And we believed the intent was to conceal themselves until there was a point where it was more manageable to either overtake employees or waited out until employees were all
gone. As I said, a manager had asked the security guard to take some meat that was fish that was left out take it to a rear cooler, and we believe in the process of doing that, he stumbles onto the suspects. They overtake him, they handcuff him with his own handcuffs, They
take his service weapon, and then something happens. Whether it was intended, whether there was something that that sparked it, but one of them either finds a knife and for whatever reason stabs as the security guard who apparently was incapacitated. He was no threat to him at the point. Once they handcuffed him and stabbed him fifty two times, I believe fifty two times. Autopsy determined it was overkilled. There's no doubt about that he was. He was handcuffed.
As I said, he didn't appear to be a threat to anybody at that point. You can hear the entire episode on the iHeartRadio app. Coming up more cases from the l County Sheriff's Department. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand, kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. Welcome back to our season five recap. Before we go to the next case, I wanted to tell you about episode five ZHO three, The Killer khn Man, presented by retired
San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy Peter Headley. It's a complicated case that would not fit into this episode, but I encourage you to download it from the iHeartRadio app. It's a fascinating cold case and we had so much material we had to create a bonus episode to talk about the DNA technology that helped to identify victims. Again, it's episode five ZHO three, The Killer khn Man. Now back to the La County Sheriff's Homicide Guerrero and Detective Sergeant Mike Austin as
he presents the case of the street takeover execution. It was a Saturday night into Sunday. There was a street takeover near the intersection of Pine and Bull in the city of Compton, and deputies were dispatched to that location to break up the illegal street takeover that was taking place at that time. And actually a deputy had staged a couple of blocks south of where this takeover was occurring,
and during that time there were shots fired. The deputy waited for an additional backup to roll in and so As they rolled in, it was mass chaos. Basically, people were just dispersing and going everywhere. There's two to three hundred people minimum at this takeover. The deputies were directed to a vehicle that was parked in the middle of the street on Bullis, just south of the Pine intersection. The vehicle was actually facing north, but it was in
the number one southbound lane. Because the cars it basically blocked the entire street. As they approached, people were running everywhere. They found two individuals, Wanna Rosco and Javier Menchaka, in a vehicle and they had been basically shot to death. So when you say deputies were directed to this car, who directed them? As they were approaching, there were witnesses saying, hey, over there, someone's been shot, okay, So that tells you right out
of the shoot someone witnessed the shoot absolutely. So this is a case of the street takeovers now. And this is one of the things that I know law enforcement post sheriffs Department, police departments have been battling with on something like this. Based on your experience, sergeant, a shooting at a street takeover is at common or uncommon, It's becoming more common over the last several years.
Unfortunately, I don't know the statistics, but I do know that there are multiple cases under investigation within our bureau that involved or have something to do with being in proximity to an illegal street takeover. So when you get the call and you roll up, what was the first thing you saw it? And it kind of walk us through that and paint the picture. So as I arrived, I was home sleeping, I get the phone call, and so I got there some time between three and three thirty in the morning,
and as I arrived, it's already taped off. The intersections are taped off. There's deputies, you know, everywhere around, and I contact the handling deputy who basically gives me and my partner an overview of what they have there. And there's basically the victim's vehicle as I described earlier. It's it's facing north in the number one southbound lane of Bullets just south of Pine. That was the intersection that the racing was going on. And there was an individual
who seated in the right passenger seat, Wanna Roscoe. He had been shot multiple times in his upper body. And then the apparent driver of the vehicle was actually laying partially out of the vehicle with a leg still inside on the driver's floorboard of the vehicle, and he had been shot in the upper body
and was deceased. Okay, So when you unpack this kind of thing and you walk up to a scene like this, first of all, what kind of an area are we talking about here at the intersection of Bullos and Pine? Pine? Is that industrial? Was it? So residential? Bullis is a north south street and Pine intersects with that street and Pine basically if you
turn east leads into a residential area. To the west side of Bullis is a super walmart on the north west corner, and then there was some sort of commercial building that was not being used to the south, to the west and south of Pine, so on something like that. I assumed bystanders were not there anymore. There were some still, some transients were there that were staying in there, and a lot of people. As the night grew, more people were showing up outside the tape and they were some of them were
friends of one of the victims that had heard what had happened. But it's it's pretty secure for me at that point because we have a big investigation to do and we made a very wide crime scene to ensure that we didn't miss anything. One of the issues we had at this scene was about one hundred yards away northwest of where this incident took place. We found additional cartridge casings in the roadway there, which perplexed us at that moment. Why is their
cartridge casings over here? You know? And we had cartridge casings at the scene near the car. Yeah, So when you get to a scene like that, Um, what the reason I was asking about the bystanders is were you able to interview any potential witnesses when you got there? Or where our daughter they held there for you? How does that work? At that point? There were no witnesses that I recall being there because every it was mass
chaos. Everybody scattered and fled the location. Sure, there was a few people that had been interviewed by deputies, and that's where that's where I was getting at. So will deputies actually do some initial interviews for you and then hand that off? Is that how that works? Yes? Yeah, they're they're they're they're trying to figure out, hey, do you see anything?
Yeah? I did? You know, They'll they'll try to, you know, hold those people there for us if they're willing, more curious than anything, because I've always been I've always wondered how that works, because again you've seen in the way that they do it in movies and TVs, TV shows.
But are they do the deputies dig deep at all or do they just get surface information at that at that level as a general rule, they get surface information and they know that we're coming okay, and they don't want to do anything that might disrupt our investigation, like what but well, they might have a suspect at the scene and then they start questioning him and they don't realize he's a suspect, or there's there should have been a miranda way,
something out of that nature should have occurred. But the deputies are good. They know what to do. When they know they have somebody with good information. They'll usually detain them and or get their cooperation and hold them at the scene or take them back of the station so we can interview them. And then you get those notes when you get on scene is and how it works.
They yet those notes. So we arrive and generally you know, as we're waiting for all the people that are going to assist us, we're waiting for the crime lab. I'm waiting for my boss, I'm waiting for everybody. We're chit chatting about what's going on, but we're not getting into the nitty gri you know, because once everybody's there, we're going to do a formal briefing, and then we're going to do a formal walkthrough of the scene, and the deputy explains what was going on at that time. Of course,
you can hear the entire episode on the iHeartRadio app. Coming up, the case of the Murdered Military Man. You're listening to kf I Am sixty on demand, k if I Am six forty heard everywhere live on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. If you're listening on the app, you can send us a tip about a case, a story idea, or a commentent about the show. Just tap the red microphone on the app and record your message. Welcome back to the Unsolved Season five recap.
Ella County Sheriff's Cold Case Detective Rich Tomlin is a friend of the show and always brings us interesting cases. This is part two of episode five h four, The Murdered Military Man. On April twenty first, twenty twelve, about ten minutes after midnight on a Saturday, Nathan Taylor, age thirty, was killed in the seven hundred block of West Avenue, aged seven, in Lancaster.
This area is a residential neighborhood with single family homes, and what we understand about this case is that deputies responded to a gunshot victim call for service. When they arrived, they saw Nathan slumped over the steering wheel of his white nineteen ninety six Cadillac Sedan. He was parked in front of a residence. And what caught the deputy's attention he was obviously suffering from gunshot moons to his upper torso, the car was running, and he had an unwrapped burrito
in his lap. At the scene, they spoke to Nathan's brother, Patrick, and Patrick told them the following. Patrick said his brother Nathan had called him a few minutes earlier and said hither he was in the neighborhood and that he wanted to stop by and visit him, but right before he's gonna stop by, he's gonna grab something to eat. So Patrick said he was in the backyard just waiting for his brother when suddenly he heard six or seven gunshots.
He ran outside and he saw his brother slumped over the wheel of the car, and he immediately started screaming for neighbors to call nine one one. Patrick also mentioned when he walked outside, he saw three young men running down the street around the corner, and there were hopping fences and out of his view. So at that point deputies arrived. They're trying to sort things out. They talked to a few witnesses in the area, and someone actually identified
that one house. Seeing three individuals run into a particular house on a street around the corner, debutes immediately got a search warrant and entered into that residence. There they spoke to three young men who told them the following. They had been walking down the street earlier when a red car they believed it was a Honda with two African American males inside, mad dogged them, basically meaning that they were giving them dirty looks. The car slowed down they were looking
at them, and then they continued driving. These three young men didn't think too much of it, continued walking when suddenly they saw that same red car pull next to a white Cadillac that was parked on the street, they heard several gunshots, believing that those gunshots came from that red car, and the red car had now suddenly accelerated away, believing that that car was going to
circle around and now shoot at them. But at the opportcitts of that car, we're going to shoot at them, they ran and they entered into the house. So what initially was believed to be a strong case with obvious suspects turned out to be just another witness, if you will, a clue to
what happened during this investigation. At the time, the Handling homicide detectives, who have since retired and moved out of state, said that they received the flood of information, more so regarding who the victim, Nathan Taylor, was very sad. Basically what they're telling detectives at the time. Nathan had moved to the area around nineteen ninety seven. Had moved to the Lancaster Era with his family. His family was a military family. His father had retired from
the Air Force after doing twenty plus years. He had two sisters, Rachel and Kinsey, who had also served time in the military. So after graduating, Nathan, following in his family's footsteps, joined the US Army, where he served eight years, topping out at the rank of sergeant. He served three tours in Iraq in Afghanistan, and upon completing his time, had recently left the military and was attending Antelope Valley College where he was studying computer software
engineering. He was close to graduation at the time of his murder, and it didn't back then and still to this day, is puzzling. Why was he shot, Why was he targeted? Was he targeted? And he's basically assassinated in an area that he had grown up And you can hear the entire episode on the iHeartRadio app. We'll get back to more Unsolved in just a moment, but I want to tell you about an opportunity for you to be
a part of the Unsolved studio audience. It's very simple. All you have to do is email us your favorite episode of any season, whyn't your favorite episode, and we need all your contact information, including your cell phone and your email, a work number of appropriate. All you have to do is email us Unsolved at iHeartMedia dot com. Unsolved at iHeartMedia dot com. Don't call us, don't leave a voicemail, we need an email. Unsolved at
iHeartMedia dot com. Our next showtaping is going to be an Orange County, then we plan on coming back up to LA Area. We want to be able to give you the opportunity. Now, not everyone's gonna be able to come in because we keep the seating pretty limited. That's so we can keep it more intimate and make it more comfortable for the guests and the detectives. But we want you to get your name in there so you can be selected as a member of our studio audience again. Unsolved at iHeartMedia dot com.
Unsolved at iHeartMedia dot com. Coming up a heartbreaking case with a transnational twist. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. Welcome back to our Season five recap. In February of this year, a woman was reported kidnapped from her home in Mexico. Her family says she has dual citizenship and retired to Mexico from La years ago. One afternoon, she
was grabbed from the front yard of her home. What exactly happened? Here's the woman's daughter Zoey Lopez telling us about her mother Maria. It's episode five oh five, The Case of the Missing Mom in Mexico, and I received a phone call from my sister. She was crying and frantically saying, Mom, Mom was kidnapped. I couldn't believe it. I just got up, shot up, and I was like, what just hearing the word kidnapped, it's like you going to I literally felt like I was like inside of a
tornado and I couldn't really hear much. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what happened. I was like in the blur and I was like, what are you talking about? What do you mean? What do you mean? Mom was kidnapped? She said they took her, they took her. I hung up the phone with her, and I just remember walking through the hall and my ears literally plugged up. I couldn't hear anything, and I just fell to the floor and my son came out and I just remember just
kind of looking at him seeing the kidnapped mom. Immediately was we have to find out is this real? Because it just feels like it's impossible. There's no way. So picked up the phone and you start I started making phone calls to whatever little family that I know, you know, lives in that town, and it was just one call of no answers basically because there is no reception there in the area. Is such a small town, there's no
phone connections. Everyone communicates through either WhatsApp or messenger. And I finally did get someone on the phone that was happened to actually be at the house with an officer, and they said, I said, where is is real? You know? Is this really happening? Talk about the town? Where where are we talking? The town is called Okay, and what's the nearest so people can understand, the nearest larger city or state would be Guadallahara. Okay,
it's two hours from Guadalajara. Got it Tuck area, So it's deep in the heart of Mexico. Yes, yeah, And um, your mother I remember from the press conference your mother had been down there at least retired there ten years ago, yes, okay, Um, and she moved down there by herself, both my dad and her. Oh okay, your parents
had moved down there at the same time. Okay. And then um, just to put some context in that, so I'm sorry, I go back to where you got a hold of someone in the house and what happened next? The agent got on the phone, he you know, asked who I was. I said, I'm her daughter. What's going on? He said. I remember him briefly saying, we have state police, we have Samad, which I believe is like the Marines and soldiers are here. And I was thinking, I mean, it really quickly crossed my head, like how
the town is so small and away from the city. It just seemed very odd to me that there was all this soldiers and Marina and everyone already there. It had just happened. And I remember asking, like when did this happen or how long ago? And I believe there had been a span of like maybe an hour and a half to two hours before you got the call, before we found out, before you found out. Okay, so how did they find out? There was witnesses? So my mom's property, that
her house is the only house that has Wi Fi. So the around the property, it's it's very there's kids or just the locals or anyone who they stand around the outside of the house to be able to connect to their social media. So it happens to be that towards the back of the house. There was two there was two young men there could just connect it to their social media and they actually witnessed the kidnapping. What were they able to provide
what kind of detail. The one street light that is there was broken, so it was later in the afternoon. So what they were able to capture was they weren't able to give exact details color of the car, but they were able to say what it was. It was a mini like a type minivan kind. They were just unsure of the color if it was between white, a tan color or silver because it was later in the afternoon. But what they said is my mom had my mom had been at a liquor store
or like a store. It's like a ten minute walk from her house. My aunt, one of my aunt's own zat store. If she had been there, went home because she wanted to go water her plants. My mom always watering her plants, taking care of her house. And they said she was watering her plants when they seen a van drive in all the way into the property. It's a pretty large long driveway, and there was an exchange of words. He says when he looked up. One of the witnesses says,
when he looked up. He says, he's unsure if my mom was pushed down to the floor or if she crouched down. But she was saying back to them, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving in Spanish and on my way at constatas, I'm not leaving with you. And then they had their heads covered. They said they had hoods on. One other individual, a heavy set man also with the hood came out of the van and they they picked up my mom. He covered her mouth and they put her in
the van and drove away. There was a the description of the vand the only thing that was unusual is the witness just say that the brake lights didn't break just in one solid flash. There was something different about the way that lights went on. But they drove away, and that was it. When you said that you spoke to an agent that was at the house down there, there were no US officials a vault at this point, right, It
was all Mexican officials. Okay, at this point you see the witness to say your mom was put into a van against her will, taken away. Then the time that from the time that she disappeared at the time she was taken away to the time you got the call you said was a little over an hour, closer to two closer to two hours, okay, closer to two hours. Did it give you some reassurance that so much law enforcement presence was there at her house so quickly, including the military. I think I
just I didn't really think about that. But the reason I'm asking is that it seemed like that because any of these kind of missing person cases or abductions usually the first few hours are critical. So were you getting any reassurance from the Mexican authorities that they had a handle on this, no other than they had said that there was this presence there, but there was no follow up call. There was nothing that said, this is what we're going to do.
Streets are or the road's going to be blocked off, and this is why we have this presence here. Now for the FBI's take on the case, please download this episode. It's five oh five on the iHeartRadio app. Coming up, the Case of the Dry Bones in DNA. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand, kf I AM six forty lie everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory. This is unsolved thank you for joining us on this season five recount. In early July of this year, we
sat down with retired Detective John Skipper with the Redondo Beach Police Department. He recounted episode five h six, The Case of the Dry Bones in DNA SO
August twenty ninth, two thousand and one. They were construction workers. They were doing this major remodel of a residence on sixteen twenty four Wallacott Street in Redondo Beach, and some plumbers were putting down a main line and they came across a bag, plastic bag, and inside this plastic bag they opened it and they discovered a partial human skeleton, did not have a skull significantly.
There was also the remnants of some other really even to this date unknown material in that bag, some type of synthetic or artificial material that the body may have been wrapped up in. However, the plumbers at the time thought it was not human remains and they tossed the bag aside. Subsequent to that, city Dando Beach building inspector came out, came across this bag and noticed it. He felt they were human remains. He called the police department and the
police responded. We initiated an investigation. We believed they were human remains. Contacted the LA Coroner's office and the FBI forensics team did a significant excavation of the entire backyard and at the end of that we were left with a partial human skeleton. The skull and other random bones were missing. We initiated rather intensive investigation. For a while, there was little or no clues. We were trying to obtain the identity of residents, previous residents of the location.
The house had been a rental. It was placed there in nineteen fifty four, moved from Wilmington to the one ten Freeway was being constructed. This house was purchased and moved intact from Wilmington to Nando Beach nineteen fifty four, had a series of owners, almost all of whom rented it and did not have records. The owners had either passed away or they had no record of the
renters, so it made it difficult. We did that investigation. Just a few weeks later, the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York nine to eleven happened, and law enforcement everywhere was trying to determine what their role was going to be in this terrorism and people were being pulled. I happened to be the lieutenant in charge of investigations at the time, and I got detailed to do a project on what the role of law enforcement and terrorism would
be. So I got pulled away, some of the other investigators were pulled away. That coupled with the fact that the DNA technology that we have today was not in place. In there was DNA because we were able to extract from the bone enough DNA to put a to enter it into the code as system for future identification, but the ability to use DNA in the manner in which it is used today did not exist. So all of those things after about a month, stonewall the investigation and it went cold. So that's kind
of an overview of what happened. Yeah, I didn't even think about the fact that you're talking about nine to eleven in how that put an end too, but put an endo a lot of things for law enforcement and investigation wise, because our country changed absolutely and I can't I didn't even think about,
you know, pending cases and cold cases. I didn't even think about what that would have done to those it did, you know, Because sadly, when you're a police department a smaller agency like Redondo Beach at the time, you know, you've got ten detectives maybe that are working assaults, devs burglaries, robberies, etc. We back then we conducted our own homicide investigations.
This was a cold case. The clues were minimal, the leads were minimal, and it was just one of those things that we got pulled over into doing other things that impacted our manpower even more so, all of that came together and it just this investigation just called and nothing happened on it for many years. So detective, how how that kind of impact you when you know that, you know, you've got these cases that are sitting off to the side, and you're like, you know what with just the reality is,
we can't focus on those anymore. We have life changing, life altering events happening in front of us. Was that was that on your mind as well? Or did you have to compartmentalize and say, I really have to let this go for now, or was that really weighing on you that you have pending cases, well, certainly pending cases. You know, it's just one of those decisions that management makes. I was part of management at the time.
The chief police ultimately made the decision that, you know, we weigh everything out, what is the likelihood of solving this case with the technology that ultimately led to the identification of the victim. Well, it's happened, you know, just this year, you know, over twenty years later, so that technology evolved, but it hadn't evolved at that point in time, so it was unlikely that we would have been able to identify the victim at all
at that period of time. And just a decision was made, a business decision was made that current cases are going to take that priority. Figured out what we're going to do about terrorism as a local law enforcement agency is going to take a priority. And this case, that where we've got some partial bones and the pre eminent method of identification at the time, you know, dental records and things like that, was an impossibility because the entire skull was
missing. It was just a decision that unfortunately was made. You know, before we go to break, I do want to ask because you did say bones were missing from the skull and that at one point there were like construction folks or plumbers or contractors that you said that they didn't even think it looked like human remains. What condition were those remains in? Well, they were
they were dry bones basically. But I think, you know, it was a matter of not having the training and ability to recognize individual bought dry bones that weren't assemboled in the form of a skeleton. You know, there was just a bunch of a bag of bones. And the idea I think in the construction worker's head might have been, you know, what's the chances there's human bones beard here? It's probably a dog or something. Of course,
you can hear the entire episode on the iHeartRadio app. Coming up, we head over to the La County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau for the case of the cul de Sac killer. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand k if I AM six forty heard everywhere live on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. If you're listening on the app, you can send us a tip about a case, a story idea, or a comment about the show. Just tap the red microphone on the app and record your message.
Thanks for tuning in to our season five recap. Detective Steve Blagg is a friend of the show and has been with the La County Sheriff's Homicide Bureau for many years. He reached out to us about a challenging case in el Monty. It's episode five h six, the case of the cul de Sac killer. So what approximately twelve thirty am on April third, twenty and eighteen, there was a vehicle that collided through a fence into a business complex on
Valley Boulevard just west of the six oh five Freeway. When El Monty police officers arrived at the scene, they found mister Brajas alone in the vehicle in the driver's seat, suffering from what they later found to be a gunshot wound. And he was eventually pronounced deceased. And the gunshot wound what part of the body he sustained? It to his upper torso like the right side of his upper torso shot one time, multiple times, one time one time?
So you say, on the early morning hours until thirty in the morning, a vehicle collided into a building. No, throw a wrought iron fence into a building complex, building complex, so through the rot aff so on the property. Correct, So the fence is what stopped the vehicle. Now that he was going at a pretty high rate of speed and actually probably landed about a good hundred yards into the property of the business complex with a big chunk
of the fence attached to his car. What kind of car he at that time? The victim was in a two thou and twelve white Infinity G thirty seven. Did corner give you manner of death homicide? Homicide? But cause of death gunshot? Gunshot? When what I was getting at was did he die from the gunshot wound or die from the car crash? No, he definitely died from the gunshot wound. Any evidence that the gunshot wound happened prior
to the crash, Yes, it did so. Then if he was speeding, if he's a high rate of speed going through this rought iyron fence, was that a reflex they were like foot down on the pedal thing or was he still alive? I mean, we do have some surveillance video that kind of shed some light on what we what happened and what led to the shooting from that night. Can you enlighten us? Sure? So Fabian's vehicle. There's a small little coul de sac along the north side of Valley Boulevard near
a scrap metal yard. We know that shortly before twelve thirty am, we were able to see Fabian's vehicle pull into this cul de sac from south to north and kind of angle to where it was going to make a U turn back facing southbound, but stopped. I was able to see one figure get out of the right front passenger seat. Figure to appeared to be a male.
The figure appeared to be pointing what looked like a firearm inside the car, and then it appeared is Fabian may have attempted to get away from that mail when a shot was fired and causing Fabian to now flee at a high rate of speed southbound on the col de Sac across Valley Boulevard and through that fence. So you saw that you saw the shooting. Then the video wasn't the best but best I could make out, Yes, so if I heard
you right, The person got out of the car then opened fire. Person got out of the car appeared to be pointing a gun, possibly at Fabian, when it appears that being afraid and trying to get away, hits the accelerator as the suspect fire as a shot okay, so as if so the suspect got a he shot off Basically basically, yes, it did. It was the car too damage. Could you tell if the if the round had gone through a window or windshield or no. It looked like the door was
open when the suspect fired the shot. So there was no bullet impacts to that vehicle at all. And so how far from that scene in the cul de Sac to the wrought iron fanc that he crashed through, that was maybe about five hundred yards or so? Five hundred yards? Yeah, then do you suppose it was there a hospital nearby there? Do you think he was trying to drive to a hospital or do you think he knew he was even I guess you can't really tell if he knew if he was shot or not.
It almost looked like it was simultaneous. Is Fabian's car drives onto the
cul de Sac and kind of angles that you turn and stops. The suspect gets out of the right front passengers seat, and I think that's when Fabian saw his opportunity maybe to get away from this the suspect, and as he hit the accelerator, the suspect fires a shot, and then that five hundred yards across Valley Boulevard because at that point Fabian was fatally shot, and he went across valley and through that fence where his car came to arrest, okay.
And then any type of a description on the shooter. All we can tell is a mail There were some transients because to the north of that cul de sac or railroad tracks, there were transients who were living along the railroad tracks. They reported seeing a male Hispanic running eastbound on the railroad tracks after they heard what sounded like a gunshot. But that was the only description we could get. And that area of La Monte, well, first of all, was Fabian from el Monty No, Okay? Where is he from?
At the time of the murder, Fabian resided with family in the city of Pomona, Okay. What is that area of Almonte like? Typically it's all industrial, all industrial, So what took him to that spot? Do you think? We have no idea? We know that Fabian worked at a machine shop in Walnut. He worked kind of the swing shift where he started about three or three thirty and would work till about midnight most days and usually he would close by himself according to the employer. His employer as well as his
father, who also worked at the same machine shop. So for him to go from Walnut to Elmani, we have no reason why. We have no idea why, because he actually lived in the city of Pomona, which would have been opposite from Elmani. And you can hear the entire episode on the iHeartRadio app. Coming up, part of our crime Fighter series, we discuss a new four legged firefighting fight out. You're listening to kf I AM sixty
on demand kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved. Thanks for making us a part of your weekend. This is our season five recap. Recently, the Los Angeles County Fire Department put into service an accelerant sniffing dog to detect things like gasoline, paint, thinner and lighter fluid. We had a chance to meet the dog and get some history from Captain Casey Flanders. So this is Julia. She's
two years old. She just had a birthday on July seventh, and she is a Golden Door half Golden Retriever half Labrador. And they basically use this breed for a couple of reasons. One they're great family dogs. Off duty, she comes home with me. She's great with the kids, great with the family. Another reason these dogs are in that sporting group of dogs, their hunting drive is what they're after, and that's what we like to see them go in a room and the hunting drive gets their nose down to find
that ignitable liquid. And we'll learn more about Julia in the next segment. But I wanted to offer some historical perspective, so I brought in Battalion Chief Pete Finnerty the Heat of the Arson Unit. He explains the department had inherited an Arson K nine twenty years ago, but that program fizzled out, but in twenty fourteen they created new policies to get a Key nine unit up and running, and now the chief says, the department is embracing all technologies old
and new to tackle arson investigations. So you have to have in lay in many crimes, as you would is, you have to have witnesses that it can identify people. You have to have evidence that supports the hypothesis of what we discover its seene, you have to have security video of that person, or in many cases you have to have a confession. So while cases will
we will work cases and they will stay open until they're done. We are getting cases back to back to back to back, So as a case would come up that maybe takes more precedent because we have that evidence and something we're sitting on. Hey, let's work going to put this in the background and we're gonna wait and we're going to come back to this case afterward. I don't have an exact number of how many of those cases are a lot of cases don't sit open like that. But another thing that we have to deal
with is in La County. As we're all aware, there's a lot of people experiencing homelessness. Those cases tend to be frequent for us, and there isn't a lot there because the county's looking at assisting people as long as there's no criminal intent involved in that. Well, let's go back historically then. You know, when you're talking about solving these arsons and determining cause and manner in origin, how many investigators do you have in your arson unit and how
busy are they? So it's interesting we have ten investigators of which I'm one, and I am on the entire county, yes, sir, for the entire county. And if you look at the numbers, that's one hundred and seventy seven fire stations, that's twenty three hundred square miles, that's twenty one contract cities. And now we do split the county with the sheriffs when it comes to the arson portion. If the sheriffs have patrolled duty for an area,
they are the primary, so they do divide that with us. An interesting point that a lot of people don't consider is that we cover sra A land for brushfires state responsibility. So we have that contract with cal Fire that's five hundred thousand acres of land and in this time of the year, as you know, we're getting daily starts and with that having to know what the cause is. So yes, we have a pretty big area to cover with
three on duty investigators, twenty four hours of captain and two investigators. But it's our mission that we have and we work diligently to solve that. And that's kind of goes back to what I said, we kind of have to prioritize what we've been given, not because we're not going to investigate it, but when things come up that maybe take priority because we have that good evidence actuate on or to act on right away that's going to come into play.
So chief how many fires out there remain like still up in the air or open. You know, I would say any one of my investigators probably has five cases that they're working simultaneously, something that we have concrete evidence on, something that's going to take a little longer, something that takes longer because we're
waiting on security video from a company or anything like that. I would say that there is a pretty good proportion of cases that's probably exaggerating a little that will go undetermined, and that simply is due to the fact that you narrow it down. And this is kind of arson, I would say, in a nutshell, you can say this, Hey, the fire started in this room. The room didn't have power to it, nobody was storing any chemicals in it. We didn't We don't have any indication that somebody walked in and
threw a match on the ground. So of the stuff that's in this room, based on the information we have, here's what it could have been, and you can get of You can give all the stuff that didn't cause it, and here's the couple things that could have. But you just don't have that last piece of evidence that is the thing that points directly to one thing.
Conversely, you have evidence on scene, You're looking at all this possibilities, and then all of a sudden somebody says, hey, I have a security footage and they bring something and you go, oh lo and behold there's the person running in with a gas can, dousing the room and throwing a match, and you know exactly what started that. It's no different than a
homicide investigation. It is very similar with respect to police work. It is very similar these guys myself to say, is word detectives who focus solely on arson crime are you know, fire. But it's one of the hardest ones to solve, right, I don't know how arson investigators did it thirty years ago, because I will say what we get now is we do get a lot of help from the amount of cameras that are out in the technology I
would think too, right, absolutely, science and tech advancements. Absolutely so they had a lot of stuff, but a lot of it don't. They didn't have as much as we have, and that's changing, you know, year over year. And Julia is kind of an example of something that's been around a long time, but something that can really bolster the case, I
do want to talk a little bit about advancements in technology. When you talk about, you know, decades ago, and this is the nation's largest fire department, you know, were you as innovative with arson investigations that you know
back then as you were with a lot of things in firefighting. You know, it's hard for me to answer that question without having the historical context of some of the folks that I do know that that worked in the unit as far back as right now, we don't have I would say a decade or a little bit more. Is the investigator that has been the longest in the
unit. I do know that one of the big things that I can answer looking at historical documentation is that the unit asked to have a fire administrative study done in ninety nine, and it outlined all the areas that the National Fire Administration would say, Hey, if you really want to change what you're doing, here's the suggestions we have for how you can upgrade or become more efficient. And some of that was scheduling. As I said, before, they
used to be on a forty hour schedule. They would be calling in after hours. The department saw some of the suggestions, they moved to a fifty six hour three investigator type shift works so they're on duty, ready to go at any moment. So that type of stuff advances in us working with the lab, Sheriff's, the county lab so we can get things looked at. And that's a lot of a lot of the advancements are those things for everybody. What it's going to come in the format of is a better reporting or
better use of technology. You know, in the past, you would take individual shots when you were putting together a photo array, which is something we
still do to this day. You now have technology where you can set a camera in the center of the room and it'll take three hundred and sixty degree photos, which, as I've been told by many people that are moving to that technology, when you go to court to try to bring this to a juror that doesn't understand arson when you're able to give that hey, here's the room we were looking at. Now, let me take you over to this corner. You can see this corner is unburned, but see where all the
damage is over here. And people relate to that versus single shot like they get disoriented, they don't understand what you're really referencing, so I would say things like that, drones are a big one, you know, especially like with brush fires. You know, we used to have to bring ladders out and climb the ladder and shoot these. You know. Now we have that you know us program, you know on man ail, and we can ask for that assistance from our own department because we have that technology, which is
just simply more efficient. It allows us to move on file the case and get to work on either something else or move on to what that next portion of the case might be. Of course, you can hear the entire episode on the iHeartRadio app. Coming up, a horrendous case from Covina, our final episode. It's the case of the Fast and Furious fatal house fire. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand, kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory. This is Unsolved.
Thanks for making us a part of your weekend. This is the season five recap. It's our final case of the season. It's in Covina, an eighty nine year old woman who was ambushed to break it down. Here are detectives Rich Tomlin and Sean McCarthy with the Ella County Sheriff's Cold Case Unit. It's the case of the fast and furious fatal house fire April eighth, twenty sixteen, early morning hours a residence at two zero nine five Mezzarica Road in
the Conyer, Covina. And to give a better perspective, it's it's in the general area of sandemas Bonelli par Raging Waters. I think your audience would be familiar generally with that area. I would describe it as an upper middle class community. Deputies get a call of aut house fire at that location. It was shortly after noon. They respond along with La County Fire and the house is not engulfed. It's pretty isolated to the master bedroom. The victim
in this case is a Helen Lambert. She's an eighty nine year old lady who lived at the location along with her grandson. And when when fire responds, they pretty quickly put out the fire and they discover her deceased body on the bed in the master bedroom. And I said the fire was isolated to
the master bedroom. I think I showed just some of the photographs. It did a It destroyed the master bedroom, but the rest of the house was other than minor smoke damage was relatively yeah, and just touched just to bring listeners up to speed. Yeah, you have been providing photos here and we'll talk a little bit more later. But it is the gruesome, real photos of this poor woman's body on her bed. But also from the outside, you can't tell there was a fire, correct, So that's what you're talking
about isolated. And it's a ranch style home here in the twenty thousand block of Messo Rica Road. So in fact, it was a neighbor who ultimately was determined to be her caregiver, who who had picked her grandson up from Charter Oak High School and was bringing him home when they approached the house and they noticed smoke. So it wasn't like they drove up to the into the
driveway and the house was fully engulfed. There was there was smoke coming from the master bedroom, but it wasn't like where you immediately notice that they actually walked up to the house. When so where is the bedroom out in the house. The bedroom is right when you enter through the front door into the there's a quick hallway to your right. You turn right down the hallway. The master bedroom was right off of the bedroom by the front door, if
you will. It was closest to the front door. Yes, and we have a sketch in there if you want to take a look at some points. Okay, So, now they've arrived, the house is not fully engulfed, but there is smoke coming out of the house. What happens The Elle County Fire arrives and pretty quickly puts out the fire, and when they go inside they discover her charred body on the bed in the master bedroom. She was bound, but I'm not going to get into details of how she was
bound. And it was later determined that the cause of death was not the fire. So so, in other words, there was no soot in her lungs and that would have been indicative of somebody in the fire, and they breathe in the smoke, and that's how the corner determines if, if if the fire was at least a contributing factor in her death. In this case, based on the corner report and my discussions with the original iOS, there was no soot in her lungs, so so she died before the fire was
set. So in your experience, Detective Tomlin, what does this tell you if someone has already killed somebody then then ignites a fire. What is that indicative of? Usually they're obviously trying to cover their tracks. They do not want to They're hoping that by setting the fire, any type of evidence that
would lead to their identification would be destroyed. McCarthy, this has got to be more complicated because, based on the photos you've shown me, you know how, first of all, how on earth do you identify a body like this? And secondly, you know, how does a homicide investigation begin when
you've got a very badly charred body that's on a bed. Based on your experience, where do you start on something like that, my experience with deaths with fire, and to be honest with you in general, because just the way I operate, I'm gonna I'm gonna see a crime scene like that. And honestly, Steve, the crime scene in this case was was pretty limited to that bedroom and the rest of the house. But that bedroom is certainly an important part of the crime scene. And I'm going to bring in experts
the Coroner's office Arson explosives. These are guys who deal with fires every day of their lives. They make determinations if the fire was uh intentionally set or not. I'm not qualified to do that. So so immediately arson explosives was called in this case, and detectives from arson explosives came out. Right, Now, are these detectives from your department or or arson detectives from the fire
department from our department? Your department? Okay, Now the fire department does their own our investigation, right, So, so now you've got experts from our department, arson explosives at the detectives, experts from the fire department. You've got the corner's office that becomes involved, and we already talked about about they have their own investigators as well. Yes, yeah, every death, every death scene, whether it's a crime or not, a corner investigator is
going to respond. Uh. You don't hear about them a lot in in in um in uh cases in the media, but they come to every single uh death case, right Uh. And they came in this case too. So so the iOS A homicide iOS are are at least initially their secondary because what's the first thing we want to determine as homicide investigators. Is this a homicide or is this accidental? Right? And and and and that may not
always be determined right away. It may it may be hours and maybe days, but homicide comes there because of the fact that it's it's a death of a suspicious nature that could be accidental, but could be criminal in nature. You can hear the entire episode on the iHeartRadio app and that's going to do it. Unsolved with Steve Gregory. The radio show is a production of the KFI News Department for iHeartMedia Los Angeles and is produced by Steve Gregory and Jacob
Gonzalez. Our field engineer is Tony Sorrentino, and our digital producer is Nate Ward. To hear this episode and others from past seasons, download Unsolved with Steve Gregory on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen KFI Am sixty on demand