Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 28 - South of the Border - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: The cold-blooded murder of a guest in a Mexican resort concerned officials on both sides of the border.
The motive appeared to be robbery. But the forensic evidence pointed to something more
sinister and revealed a change of plans, identity, and gender. [theme music] Puerto Penasco, Mexico.
Americans call it Rocky Point. It's a small resort town about 60 miles from the Mexican-American border,
with everything that you'd expect. Beaches, sun, sport fishing, championship golf,
and even some culture. JIM HENDERSON: It's a nice place to just go hang around on the beach.
And you can buy shrimp straight off the boats in the evenings and people have cook outs on the beach.
NARRATOR: And it's where the Willoughby family chose to take their winter vacation in February of 1991.
After several days of enjoying the warm weather, Dan Willoughby decided to take his three
children to the local science museum. His wife, Trish, had a headache and chose to stay at the beach house.
When the family returned from the museum two hours later, they made a grisly discovery.
MIKE LESSLER: When young Thera and little Hayden went to the back bedroom, they saw their mother
there lying on the bed with her head wrapped in a blood-saturated towel. -Came out crying.
Something's wrong with mommy. She's all bloody and she's not breathe right. NARRATOR: Dan gathered his children on the porch
to say a prayer, then called for help. But neither prayers nor medicine could help Trish Willoughby.
She died several hours later at the hospital of blunt force trauma to the head. THERA HUISH: Well, Trish was a very
giving, loving wonderful person. And she touched the lives and the hearts of so many people
as we traveled. And they loved her because she was just so warm and so wonderful and so filled with life and enthusiasm.
NARRATOR: The medical examiner found a bruise on Trish's abdomen. And she had been struck in the head with a blunt object
at least nine times. She had also been stabbed with a kitchen knife. Police suspected the motive was robbery.
$400 was missing from Trish's wallet. Her wedding ring and an expensive pearl ring
were also missing. But the Mexican police did little to secure the crime scene. -They had very little investigative capacity.
The police department didn't even have a fingerprint kit. I think they basically arrived at the scene, took a quick look
and sealed it off. NARRATOR: A resort employee told Dan Willoughby that some suspicious men were lurking
in the area near the Willoughby's beach house around the time of the murder. The people living in the town closest to the resort
lived in abject poverty. The stolen cash and jewelry would've been the equivalent of six months
income for the average family. And the Mexican police had a significant problem.
They had no forensic evidence with which to identify the perpetrator. The murder of Trish Willoughby in Mexico
made headlines in the family's hometown of Gilbert, Arizona. This prompted numerous calls to the Arizona police department
from concerned citizens who said that all had not been well in the Willoughby household.
-What can you tell me about this girlfriend? What do you know about her? NARRATOR: The callers all said the same thing.
That Dan Willoughby had been having an affair with a woman named Yesenia Patino, a 34-year-old Mexican native.
-Clearly, Yesenia Patino was a gold digger. She basically leeched off of men. You could describe Yesenia as a full-time prostitute,
in the sense that she would hook up with a man and live off him. NARRATOR: Police also learned that Trish
knew about her husband's affair. MIKE LESSLER: And Trish came over to the apartment and confronted Yesenia
in the public pool area of the apartment complex and screamed at her. NARRATOR: When police interviewed Yesenia,
she readily admitted the affair. -She told me that Dan Willoughby paid for an apartment
and bought her gifts and a lot of her expenses and jewelry and things. NARRATOR: But Yesenia denied having anything
to do with Trish's murder and said she wasn't even in Mexico at that time. LT. JOE RUET: Yesenia was quite a character.
She was very flirtatious. And at one point, she leaned into me during the interview
and she said, I know what a man likes. NARRATOR: At the end of the interview, Lieutenant Ruet asked Yesenia for some identification.
LT. JOE RUET: I came across a social security card with a male name on it. The birth name was Alfredo Patino.
-And they ask, who is this? She said, oh, that's me. And then she told them that was before her corrective surgery.
-And while I sat there professionally deadpan, inside I was screaming, oh! I know why you know what a man likes.
You were one. But it was shocking that she was quite a character. NARRATOR: When they ran a background check,
police discovered that Yesenia, or rather Alfredo Patino, had a criminal record before her sex change operation.
LT. JOE RUET: We found out that she had been arrested in Oregon for male prostitution.
There was no question about her sex. NARRATOR: Surprisingly, Dan Willoughby said he knew nothing about this, despite the fact
the two were lovers. THERA HUISH: When we talk to Dan about Yesenia and told him what she was, or what he was before she was
a she, or an it or whatever it is, at that particular point, Dan sat there with sweat running out of his ears
and down his face and he's hanging his head down. And his only comment was, well, this is going to be something
that the "National Inquirer" is going to have a big time with. -I mean, goodness.
She was married twice. She had numerous boyfriends, before and after this crime.
This wasn't somebody that spoke in a baritone voice or had an Adam's apple popping out of their neck.
Huh-uh. NARRATOR: While all of this was interesting, police found nothing to link Yesenia with Trish's murder.
So they decided to drive down to Mexico to inspect the crime scene. LT. JOE RUET: The forensic science aspect of the evidence
is critical here. Like I say, the work that was done by the Mexican police really lacked resources.
It was just very good that we were able to get a lab crew down there to Mexico to get in there
and check for fingerprints. NARRATOR: And they found several on the back door and on a soda bottle in the kitchen.
These fingerprints belonged to Yesenia Patino. LT. JOE RUET: No matter what kind of excuse she gave,
it was absolutely clear based on the forensic evidence, she was there. NARRATOR: Police also learned that Dan Willoughby had been
fired from his job months earlier, partially because he had been padding his expense reports to pay
for his activities with Yesenia. -After he lost his last job, I think his life began to spin out of control, really.
He was living on his wife's income. He had a mistress to support. NARRATOR: This explained a possible motive.
Trish had a lucrative career of her own. She and her mother had built a very successful home business
selling nutritional supplements. THERA HUISH: He could see all this money that was coming in,
and I think he thought he was going to get half of all of this. NICK HUISH: He wanted the money so he and Yesenia could
gallivant off to Mexico and live like kings happily ever after. Because with a few million bucks in your pocket down in Mexico,
you're a hero. NARRATOR: But police had no forensic evidence against Dan Willoughby.
The fingerprints implicated Yesenia. And when police went to arrest her, she had vanished.
When Arizona police interviewed the three Willoughby children, they told a story very different from their father's.
The oldest daughter, 17-year-old Marsha said, that when they left their mother in the beach house
and got into the car, his father said he forgot something and went back inside alone.
He was gone for about 10 minutes. -Hayden, leave me alone. -Touching you. -Stop it.
NARRATOR: Marsha said she grew hungry and went back to the house to get a candy bar,
but found the door locked. -If I'm a dad taking my kids out to the beach and I run back in the house to get something that I forgot,
I don't lock the door behind me. NARRATOR: When Marsha knocked, her father answered and told her to wait in the car.
He came out a few minutes later. This meant he was alone with Trish just before her death.
Yesenia's fingerprints were found at the crime scene, but she had fled before she could be arrested.
Trish's family tried to find Yesenia on their on by posting flyers in Arizona, as well as Mexico.
Trish's mother also made television appearances in the hopes that someone could provide information
about Yesenia's whereabouts. REPORTER (ON TV): She went to the media because she believes, and so do prosecutors,
that if they can find one person this case may be solved. NARRATOR: And this produced results.
An informant spotted Yesenia working as a bartender in Mazatlan, Mexico. When she was arrested, police found
Trish Willoughby's rings in her possession. -I can only assume that she probably
removed it from Mrs. Willoughby's finger. NARRATOR: When confronted with the evidence against her,
Yesenia not only confessed, she implicated Dan Willoughby as the architect of the crime and said
he was the actual killer. She said Dan first suggested killing Trish months earlier at a restaurant in Arizona.
Yesenia and Dan both went to Rocky Point together to find an isolated beach house for the murder.
She said they both came up with the idea of taking the children to the museum to secure an alibi.
Yesenia admitted she was in Mexico on the day of the murder. And that she watched the house from a back road.
The plan called for Dan to take the children out to the car, pretend he left something behind, then go back inside,
subdue Trish with a blow to the stomach, then beat her to death. After he left with the children, Yesenia
went inside to stage the robbery and found Trish still breathing. Yesenia said she got a knife and stabbed her.
She took Trish's rings and cash, scattered some papers to make it look like a robbery and fled.
But she forgot to wear gloves. When Dan and the children returned home, he sent the children into the house first.
-Knowing full well what the kids were about to discover, he let the kids go in first as part of his alibi.
That was just terrible. -How could you let your children walk in and find your wife in the state that you left her?
That's-- that's demented. NARRATOR: At a trial in Mexico, Yesenia was convicted of Trish Willoughby's murder
and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Dan Willoughby went on trial in Arizona
and Yesenia was the state's star witness. -A lot of murder cases are prosecuted on strictly circumstantial evidence.
I think in this case, the circumstantial evidence was more compelling than you'd find in most cases.
NARRATOR: Dan Willoughby was convicted of first degree murder and conspiracy and sentenced to death.
NARRATOR: But that's not the end of the story. Several years passed and Yesenia Patino changed her story.
-Before she said anything, I struck her like this. MAN (OFF CAMERA): OK. -Six times.
NARRATOR: Investigators turned to forensic science to find the truth. Within months after he was sentenced to death
for his wife's murder, Dan Willoughby appealed his conviction on the grounds he was denied access
to effective counsel, and won. -Because a court determined that the lawyer who represented him
at the first trial was ineffective. He was a lousy lawyer. NARRATOR: So the state of Arizona
was forced to retry the case. -So he's been on death row for nine years. Since then, all of these major cases, OJ Simpson,
start popping up in your head. Do they have the same evidence? Is the guy that's going to be trying this case going
to be as good as the first guy? The Attorney General's different. Everything's different.
Everything is totally different. NARRATOR: And now, Yesenia was telling a different version
of how Trish Willoughby was murdered. She now said she killed Trish by herself and that Dan Willoughby knew nothing about it.
She said she used a homemade mace. -When she clawed me, I just went like this. When I hit her the first stroke, she was unconscious.
She felt unconscious. The blood was over sideways and on the walls. MIKE LESSLER: The defense in this case
can be stated in three words. Yesenia did it. NARRATOR: Prosecutors asked forensic scientist Tom
Bevel to analyze the evidence. The first thing Bevel noticed was an inconsistency.
The blood spatter at the crime scene was not produced by someone swinging a mace,
as Yesenia described in her deposition. TOM BEVEL: She actually described in the video
an overhand by holding the end of the tether of the mace. And looking at the physical confines as to what was there
and where the victim was placed, that would be a physical impossibility because there was
a two-foot depth shelf above the victim's head that the mace would've had to have-- to have gone through.
That simply was physically not possible. NARRATOR: And Yesenia's story also differed from the coroner's report.
-According to the coroner's testimony, it most likely was a linear object, that is an object that was long and narrow.
Not a spherical or ball-like object. NARRATOR: Bevel literally wrote the book on blood spatter evidence.
When he examined the bloodstained sheets, he found two types of spatter. Some of the droplets had a smooth appearance,
like pure liquid. But others had an irregular appearance, which was blood that had been exposed to the air
and begun to coagulate. TOM BEVEL: So we have spatter and/or castoff that is showing
a clotting process that is not consistent with blood loss at the very beginning of a beating.
But rather, blood that has been exposed, and then some time frame later, approximately 10 minutes or longer, that
is being disturbed and then landing on the sheets surrounding the victim. NARRATOR: Tom Bevel concluded that there were
two separate attacks on Trish Willoughby in the house at least 10 minutes apart.
A conclusion that matched Yesenia's original story. Prosecutors believe this proves that both Dan
and Yesenia were involved. -It made absolutely no sense that one person would create
that blood source, wait 10 minutes, and then agitate, if you will, that blood source
to create the coagulated spatter. That was probably the single most important piece of evidence in the case.
NARRATOR: And Marsha Willoughby remembered an important fact that she hadn't mentioned in the first trial.
She said when her father came to the door, he was tucking in his shirt tail. And it wasn't the same shirt he was
wearing when he went into the house. Prosecutors believe Willoughby changed his shirt because of the blood spatter.
At Dan Willoughby's second trial, Yesenia took the stand and surprisingly told the same story
she told in the first trial. Prosecutors believe Yesenia changed her story after the first trial because she was upset that her jewelry
and other personal items weren't returned to her in prison. Dan Willoughby was convicted, once
again, of first degree murder. This time, however, he escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison.
Dan Willoughby maintains his innocence. NARRATOR: Trish's family thinks Tom Bevel's analysis reveal the truth.
THERA HUISH: Many of the jurors told me that it was his testimony that totally convinced them that Dan
had committed the murder and Yesenia had come in after, just exactly like she said.
It was his testimony that had a great deal to do with his conviction the second time around,
but we didn't have him the first time. I was impressed. -The strangeness of the case-- I mean, it was a case that
was truth is stranger than fiction. You know, and you look at a case like this and think,
wow, this is too weird. [theme music]

The murder of an American tourist in a Mexican resort focused law enforcement resources on both sides of the border. At first glance, the motive appeared to be robbery, but careful analysis of the forensic evidence pointed to something more sinister.

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

The murder of Trish Willoughby reveals a complex plot involving her husband Dan and mistress Yesenia, leading to their convictions.

Key points

The Grisly Discovery. The Willoughby children return from a museum to find their mother murdered.
The Affair Uncovered. Calls to police reveal Dan Willoughby's affair with Yesenia Patino, raising suspicions.
Yesenia's Confession. Yesenia implicates Dan Willoughby as the mastermind behind Trish's murder.
The Second Trial. Dan Willoughby is retried and convicted of first-degree murder again, but escapes the death penalty.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Something's wrong with mommy.

A child's horrifying discovery of their mother's murder.

2:09WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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