Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 23 - Saving Face - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] a woman in austin texas mysteriously disappeared without saying anything to
her friends or family and she wasn't the only one two other women had also disappeared under similar
circumstances a tooth a single hair an anthropologist and a forensic artist implicated a man
who had killed before in another country [Applause] [Music] [Music] in 1998 54 year old olivia estrada was
going through a very difficult time she had recently been divorced and was unemployed the only bright spot in her
life was her family she was funny heart as big as texas or even bigger she just had compassion
for everyone one night out of the blue a woman who refused to identify herself called
olivia's family with a warning she said to go and check on your mother that something was wrong with her
so family members went to investigate her car's there her keys are there her house is locked something happened
that was against her will the type of door it was you had to lock it with a key when you went out
so whoever left last locked it with a key her keys were inside by the time i got here
my cousin who lives next door he had broken into the house to see if my mom was here and when i looked down
the carpet was soaking wet like why is the carpet wet detective bob merrill found traces of
blood in the water-soaked carpet an obvious sign of a hasty clean-up so at that point we're going to start
investigating it as a homicide until you're no different outside in the carport next to olivia's
car investigators found evidence of a struggle there was a ring by the tire and he says do you know
whose ring that is and i said yeah that's my mom's ring so what's it doing out here
there were traces of blood on the ring as well as on the inside of olivia's car but there were no foreign fingerprints
the few clues we did have there at the house became very crucial the blood in the house the blood in the
car the blood on the carport the bloody ring that was found in the carport those sort of became
the factors that determined whether or not we would be able to turn this into a homicide case
unfortunately investigators were not able to trace the anonymous call made to the estrada
family it was strange that the woman was never identified who called she must have been
scared to come forward i don't know the next day investigators took a second look around
olivia's home tucked away in the bottom of a dresser drawer they found a photograph of olivia
with an unidentified man and on the back of the photograph was written the name martine
no one knew his last name no one knew where he was from no one knew anything about the man
but olivia's daughter recalled speaking with martine on the telephone when she called to speak with her mother
she said it was a bizarre conversation the only thing i remember he told me was that he wanted to marry my mother
i don't even i mean she just met him and i said my mom will never marry you i said i don't know who you are who you
think you are but my mom will never marry you investigators released the photograph to
the media hoping that someone could identify him [Music] after olivia strata's disappearance
police released the photograph of the unidentified man in the picture found in her home
several callers identified the man as 47 year old martine gonzalez an illegal immigrant from mexico who was working in
austin texas as a laborer when questioned gonzales said he didn't know anything about olivia's
disappearance when he was searched however investigators found the house key to olivia estrada's home
at the time that mr gonzalez was picked up he had the only other key that anybody knew
existed in his pocket so that was a very strong indicator that he was the last one to leave that house which
would indicate that he had something to do with her leaving gonzalez said he had dated olivia
casually but the last time he was at her home he said she was there with another man
manuel barbosa they ended up getting to a fight emmanuel pulled a gun on him and he left
and martine left manual stay but a check on barbosa's whereabouts showed this was impossible
we checked out manuel and he happened to be in federal custody and for a long time
and was not any anywhere near austin texas during that particular incident investigators searched their criminal
database they discovered that gonzales had spent time in a mexican prison for murder
the first murder was a fake deal got a man to meet him out in a desolate area and beat him to death and took his money
when he got out of prison he killed another person in mexico and shortly thereafter came up here
to texas and five months earlier gonzalez reported another girlfriend missing maria flores
so it was really starting to connect that we were looking at more than one missing woman involved
in his life investigators called what's known as the missing person's clearing house an
organization that tracks missing persons reports with unidentified bodies found in texas
and they found something three years before maria flores and olivia estrada disappeared another
woman's body was discovered in a field just one block away from martine gonzalez's home
that was a huge break i don't know that that connection would have been made without that call
so who was this person forensic anthropologist dr david glassman examined the remains
he noted blunt force trauma to the skull and most of the teeth were missing the size of the skull indicated the
victim was female and the cranial sutures revealed her approximate age there were some of the sutures in the
top of the head in the back of the head that were already fused on the external surface
so from that i ascertained that she would have had to have been at least 35 years of age
dr glassman also found evidence of the woman's race she had a condition which is called
wormy and bones which are extra bones found in the suture in the back of the skull which we see very often in asians
and native americans but without someone's dna or dental records for comparison investigators had
no way to identify her to put a face with the bones investigators turned to forensic artist
karen taylor since the skull was so fragile taylor decided against creating a forensic sculpture instead she used a
technique she had developed called two-dimensional facial reconstruction taylor assumed the victim was hispanic
and over 35 years old using anthropologic data taylor used rubber markers to show the
appropriate tissue thickness which differs from race to race [Music] that forms a basis of the contours of
the face so once the tissue depth markers are glued onto the skull then we literally connect the dots to
develop the contours of the face taylor then photographed the skull and placed a piece of translucent vellum
on top of the picture vellum is the finest type of parchment available usually made from calves skin
taylor then started to draw the facial features in life-size the average human eye is about 25 millimeters in diameter
that happens to be about the same size as the diameter of a us quarter so i'll often take a quarter and center
it in the bony orbit of the skull and trace around it but the nose caused the most difficulty
since it's made of cartilage that decomposes i look at the piriform aperture this
pear-shaped nasal opening i had five millimeters on each side of the the opening of the nose
and that gives me a sense of the width the angle can often be determined by analyzing the bone called the interior
nasal spine we use that to measure and determine the projection of the nose there's a formula of three times the
length of the nasal spine that is used for that projection since most of the teeth were missing
taylor relied on the principle known as the facial triangle there is an equilateral triangle created
between the two corners of the eye and the middle of the bottom of the lower lip and i thought aha that's going to
help me to project how the mouth might have been positioned in that blank space on the skull
taylor chose an appropriate hair color and an approximate weight then put the finishing touches on her work
the incorporation of the proportional arrangement of features in a face is very important to the recognition
factor taking place investigators released the forensic drawing to the media hoping to learn her
identity and in so doing help solve a mystery just days after the forensic drawing
appeared in the austin newspapers a family member called from mexico to say it looked like his mother 48 year old
sylvia garcia she was none other than martine gonzalez's wife we got a call from sylvia's family
saying that their mother had married him and had come up here and they'd never seen him or heard from her again
or seen her again court records indicated sylvia garcia had filed for a divorce from gonzalez
shortly before her disappearance when questioned gonzales denied having a wife and denied even knowing sylvia
garcia he just perfects ignorance and it was unbelievable but inside gonzalez's home
investigators found a photograph which bore a striking resemblance to the forensic drawing
and that's when i really got excited because everything did seem to fit it was what i would expect to see
the proportions were correct uh things did seem to fit once we got pictures we were we were convinced
that that was sylvia is just proving it was the next problem to find out scientifically whether the
skull was sylvia garcia's investigators discovered that sylvia mailed letters to her relatives in
mexico and those letters might have sylvia's dna profile we looked at the envelope and saw that
in fact the flap had either been licked or that the stamp had been licked and so
i attempted to extract dna from the flap and from the stamp and i was able to generate a dna profile
from the flap of the envelope i think it's very fascinating and also that her family would have saved those
envelopes i mean how how many people save letters that somebody sent a couple of years ago and who would have thought
that it would help solve a police investigation it's just it's just unbelievable
for comparison criminalist jody kohler used tooth pulp found in one of the few molars still in the skull
tooth pulp can be a rich source of dna a pcr dna test revealed the skull matched the dna extracted from sylvia's
letters damn that was good you know you just never expected that to happen you hear
it can happen it just had never happened for me until then i was very excited that we had actually
identified this person because the skeletal remains were fairly old and so it was it was really a shot in the dark
to be able to do this it was great when investigators re-examined the bed sheet that covered sylvia's body
they noticed a single strand of hair in the knot since there was no root material
investigators decided to perform a mitochondrial dna test now the unique difference with
mitochondrial dna is it's only inherited from your mother and so men don't pass theirs on to their
children this means that siblings in the same family or all maternal relatives in
a family for example will share the same type the hair was first cleaned in an ultrasonic water bath to make sure no
cells from another source adhered to it once the hair is thoroughly cleaned then
we grind it up in a small glass grinder that is almost like a mortar and pestle apparatus
this powders the hair into a liquid buffer and to this are added some chemicals that effectively purify the dna
away from everything else in the hair and this same procedure was repeated on a hair sample from
martine gonzalez the result the hair found with sylvia garcia's body belonged to martine gonzalez
if you find a type that's never been seen before as was the case in this case you would be able to eliminate at least
99.96 percent of north americans as having that type his hair being with the remains was crucial to show
that he was involved in her ending up in that vacant field with with trauma to the head
martine gonzalez was arrested and charged with sylvia garcia's murder but the question remained
where were the other two missing women olivia estrada and maria flores when martine gonzalez was in prison
awaiting trial for the murder of his wife sylvia garcia investigators received a telephone call
the farmer actually is a retired detective was clearing some area for a fence and he stumbled onto some bones
in bastrop county dental records confirmed the remains were those of olivia estrada
the 54 year old divorcee who was dating martine gonzalez around the time of her disappearance
the skull showed signs of blunt force trauma as well as a gunshot wound i mean i still didn't really believe it
and i said detective morrow is it her is it really her and he says yes and he and he had a tear in his eye
less than a mile away in another deserted field investigators found the remains of the
third missing woman maria flores she had also been dating martine gonzalez and it was he who reported her missing
her skull showed evidence of blunt force trauma to the head martine gonzalez was charged with all
three murders we had mitochondrial dna which had never been used in texas at that point we had
other kinds of dna forensic anthropologists forensic dentists a multitude of civilian and law enforcement witnesses
many of which were spanish speakers and the logistics of putting that case together were
astounding prosecutors learned that gonzales frequented bars where he met vulnerable
women some were illegal immigrants with no family or connection to austin others like olivia estrada were
emotionally vulnerable she still loved my father i think she was just down on herself
i really believe when she met him she was at her lowest that is the only way i could see that
she would ever let a person like nothing in her life this man had a history of abusing women
and charming them and choosing isolated women or most of them isolated and and then lying to them saying he owned land
and becoming jealous and possessive [Music] prosecutors presented evidence that the
motive in these murders was anger after having been rejected gonzalez refused to accept that these
women no longer wanted him in their lives [Music] gonzalez's telephone conversation with
olivia's daughter revealed he wanted to marry olivia but olivia told her daughter later she
wanted no part of him i said mom what is he talking about he says he's going to marry she goes he's
crazy i said i'm telling you what he just told me she says no he's crazy don't pay
attention to him he doesn't know what he's talking about i'm like mom what are you doing
it wasn't long after this incident that olivia disappeared in september 2000 martine gonzalez was convicted of three
counts of first degree murder and sentenced to the life in prison you left her you threw her away like she
was garbage she wasn't martin she was not she was my mother his eyes are just void of any kind of human
anything there's nothing there nothing that's human anyway to me it's just a monster
he's just a truly evil person with no conscience i wish he was sitting on death row
instead but he needs to be behind bars for the rest of his life to this day texas authorities remain convinced there
are other victims linked to martine gonzalez victims they have yet to find without the forensic drawing
investigators wouldn't have identified the skull found in the field i don't think he had
any any perception of forensic art in his entire imagination but i bet he wishes he did
it's just amazing that we can combine those types of science where she can do the facial reconstruction and then we
can confirm her facial reconstruction using this type of dna technology an anthropologist friend of mine dr
william maples was fond of saying patient and silent while we live our skeletons shout to heaven and posterity
after we die and i think that's a wonderful um a wonderful quote it it says the same thing
the dead can speak through facial reconstruction through forensic art [Music] [Applause]
[Music] you

When a woman disappeared without a trace, there were two possible explanations: kidnapping or murder. Careful investigation, a forensic artist, and DNA profiling enabled police to find a single suspect, who was known to prey upon vulnerable women.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Three women disappeared in Austin, Texas, leading to Martine Gonzalez's conviction for their murders through forensic evidence.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearances. Three women vanish under similar circumstances, raising alarms in Austin, Texas.
A Bizarre Warning Call. A mysterious woman warns Olivia's family to check on her, leading to a chilling discovery.
Martine Gonzalez's Arrest. Martine Gonzalez is arrested and charged with multiple murders after a series of investigations.
Forensic Breakthrough. Forensic artists and anthropologists work together to reconstruct a victim's face, leading to identification.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She had a heart as big as Texas.

Describing Olivia Estrada's compassionate nature.

1:14WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.