Jessica Gutierrez ////// 408 | Forensic Files

foreign [Music] foreign garage wherever you are whatever you were doing thanks for listening I'm your
host Nick and with me as always is a man who knows you don't go swimming with Phil Collins he is the captain thank you
thank you thank you it's good to be seen and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend
[Music] today we are drinking Magic Hat number nine not quite pale ale this is a sort
of dry sort of crisp and refreshing not quite pale ale with notes of fruit and floral hop bitterness garage grade three
and a quarter bottle caps out of five and here are some people that I would like to think that as Drew Barrymore
would say are truly magical first up we have kitty and Broad Ripple Indiana and a big shout out to Katie in Brooklyn New
York next up Captain we have a cheers it's going out to Robert in Bay St Louis Mississippi on a big we like your jib to
cat meow an Adelaide Australia and here's the cheers to Jennifer in Newtown Connecticut who says she has listened to
every episode of True Crime garage and every episode of off the Record and last but certainly not least we have Jill and
her son in Gardner Maine mean cheers to everyone who went to truecrime garage.com and contributed to this
week's beer [ __ ] yeah I stopped the show right now and go to the website because it is time not only can you
support the show but you get something in return we have the pre-order going on for ban the tan sedan and for our more
talented listeners keep listening and go to the website and check out the new the
new t-shirt I'll tell you what Captain look it's just a good way to support the show but you get something in return we
did ban the van the van ban the camper we did the creepy camper creepy camper and now ban the tan sedan which out of
the three this one's my favorite I love all three of them but this one's my favorite make sure you check it out at
truecrime garage.com is that enough of the business no the funny thing is we had a listener one time say I drive a
white van What's your deal and I said it's just a joke anyway oh I thought you guys were like serious I'm
like no it's just a joke just a joke and that is enough of the business all right everybody gather
around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] thank you [Music]
foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] each evening as the day Slips Away
and the sun slides down the West sky we lock our doors we put our children to bed
there is a sense of calm and safety as we turn off our lights count those sheep and dream of what's to come
but sometimes evil slips into our home out of the night and past the locked doors
sometime in the small hours of June 6th 1986 that is just what happened a sleeping child was awakened by a
shadowy figure that entered the bedroom the room was almost totally dark but still
she could see something what was it who was it the terrified child watched in silence
as a man slowly approached the bed now he was standing right next to her still sleeping sister
the man very carefully lifted the little sister up turned and walked out was this real the girl thought was this
some kind of dream she turned and looked to the empty spot in the bed where her sister should be
then her eyes moved to the door to their tiny bedroom where was the man where was her sister
and is he coming back frightened she remains silent she didn't want the man to hear her
she didn't want him to see her she lifted the blanket up over her head completely covering her entire body
she laid there under the blankets silent and still her eyes shut tight until the morning
when she heard her mother ask where's your sister the little girl still scared said
she's gone the man with the magic hat took her [Music] Jessica Suzanne Gutierrez was born on
December 3rd 1981 to Mother Deborah Gutierrez and her father David Deborah and David divorce in 1983 and David
moved away now according to Deborah David had a green card so he could reside in the U.S but had no custodial
rights to their children as a result Deborah was left alone in Lexington South Carolina to raise her
four young children this all on a postal service worker's salary Jessica to all of her family and friends
was simply Jesse a cute nickname for this cute little four-year-old girl Jesse had an older sister Rebecca who
went by Becky she was six years old the two shared a bedroom and a bed in the family's trailer home
there are four kids as we said so Jessica also had another sister named Kim who was 10 years old and then an
eight-year-old brother it was tight quarters to say the least in a trailer for the family of five
when our story takes place Deborah had quite recently broken things off with her boyfriend and told him hey buddy
it's time to move out it's time for you to leave she claims that he abused alcohol and was extremely possessive and
jealous it was not a good fit she did not need that in her life so now it is just her and the kids
on the night of Thursday June 5th the Gutierrez family shared BLTs for dinner after working in the yard
Deborah painted little Jessica's Nails for her Jesse wanted to sleep with her mom that
night but she had been allowed to do so the night before it sounds to me Captain
like this is kind of a reoccurring musical chairs so to speak where we have four young kids small quarters and one
of them always wants to sleep in Mom's room now Jesse had taken slept in there the night before and her older brother
had an ear infection he wasn't feeling well so Deborah opted to let the boy stay with her and put Jessie to bed with
her sister as said Jesse and Becky shared a bed in the kid's room and their older sister Kim was also in
the room with the girls Deborah did not notice anything unusual that night it was business as usual she
put the kids to bed and went to bed herself in her own room she says that everyone was shut down around 11 30.
specifically meaning she saw Jessica asleep in her bed at this time 11 30 P.M nothing out of the ordinary happened
until the next morning this is when she heard Becky calling out around 9 A.M and asking if they could
have cereal for breakfast when Deborah left her room she walked into the living room area of
the trailer home now this is where things get strange because she was shocked to find that the
front door is wide open there are like papers all scattered about this area and the screen and the curtains to one
of the windows had been forcibly removed from the living room window this is in the rear of the trailer
the other thing that is odd to her was that the dog was found the family dog was found in the house in the trailer at
that time that might seem like a weird statement my guess here Captain is what we're
talking about is a dog that typically would sleep outside of the trailer but now with the door open found its way
inside and just to be clear you're saying the trailer door is open the front door let's call it the main door
yeah and then we have a screen and a curtain from one of the family rooms windows that is removed and then we have
a dog that possibly sleeps outside is now inside the trailer yes this woman Deborah she's
waking up and she's finding all kinds of things that are not as they were when she went to bed the night before
now walking into the girl's room Deborah asked where Jesse was she doesn't see the little girl
her sister Becky answered saying quote she's gone the man with the magic hat and beard came and took her last night
Deborah started looking around for her daughter this this answer that she gets from her other daughter Becky doesn't
make a whole lot of sense to her uh it's frightening it's it's frightening yes it's very frightening when I first heard
it I was it was it was interesting to me the answer you want to get is I don't know and that's normally the answer
you'd get hit right yeah not oh by the way this guy with the magic beard and Magic Hat took her right
right so now we have a mother who's confused I think more so than scared at this moment she's looking under the bed
in the closet she goes outside she's even looking under the trailer itself unfortunately Jessica Jesse is nowhere
to be seen now the confusion turns to panic so she's frantic and a bit upset too at this time and she's pushing Becky
about what she could have witnessed she was understandably a little harsh with the little six-year-old
she wanted to know if this is true why didn't you scream for help why didn't you run and come and
get me right again her story just sounded crazy to Debra yeah but it's so crazy that it's like
it doesn't look we have a missing daughter and she's saying that I saw a guy take him
um and she's describing this individual the best she can but Magic Hat what does
that mean does it you know to me I think possibly like a wizard's hat yeah um so it's almost like a pointy top but
how does she do this or a top hat a lot of people uh reference you know that magicians will wear a top hat yeah pull
the rabbit out of the Hat we have a mother who is confused starting to become awfully scared frightened that
her her daughter is not where she's supposed to be she's asking the six-year-old daughter who's two years
older than the missing girl what could have happened the answer is not making any sense to her
again Becky would only repeat over and over again that she what she had said before about the man in the magic hat
came and took her sister and she said that she offers up a little more detail as the Panic sets in saying Jesse stayed
asleep when this man picked her up Becky said that she was too scared to do anything and she didn't remember falling
back asleep the way that I think this works Captain is from my understanding from Becky's statements
is at some point in the middle of the night that's the other crucial thing here we
don't really have any reference of time other than sometime after 11 30 when Deborah saw
her children sleeping and went to bed herself right and then 9 A.M when she woke up to greet her daughter Becky and
talk about breakfast and notice that all of this bizarre stuff is going on sometime in that time frame according to
Becky the man with a beard and a magic hat came into their bedroom and took her sister she says that she woke up and saw
this man enter the room he goes over to the side of the bed where where Jesse is and without even
waking the child picks her up and carries her out of the room with her with Jesse's head like up near his
shoulder she is terrified she doesn't know who this man is she doesn't know what's going on mine she's six years old
right and that's the other problem here is that she's six would have a hard time telling you what
time it was or being able to look at a clock for one but then also like just as an
adult you can look outside and sometimes there's there's lights on from other houses so it might look a little bit
earlier in the morning than it is or you might be able to tell that the sun is uh
slowly coming up and so that would give us more of a reference point was it closer to the 11 30 Mark or was it
closer to the eight o'clock Mark where everybody's waking up well in an often times there's no good reason to even put
a clock in it into the bedroom of small children so very likely there may not have been one and this poor girl is so
afraid of what she saw and what she probably likely doesn't even really understand or comprehend what just
really happened that out of fear she pulls the covers up over her head and she's just hoping nothing bad
happens to her she's just hoping whatever this is goes away or maybe it was just a bad dream right and it being
the middle of the night she very likely fell back asleep at some time but she she says even to this day she doesn't
remember doesn't recall falling back asleep right and so I think a question becomes if we want to try to narrow down
that time frame a little bit better is what do we have with inside our our means that we can even determine any
length of time obviously she's six years old so we can't really go too much we can't you
know simple questions like did you see the sun coming up might not matter in this case but what we do know is we have
a dog that is normally outside that's inside how often does this dog have to go out
before it actually uses the restroom how how potty trained is the dog uh did the
dog go to the bathroom on the floor anywhere well the dog could have went back outside the the door is open the
the dog from my understanding lives outside and made its way into the house all right so
okay my great detective work is already shut down here's where I would go with this if I
if I were trying to close the gap a little bit because what we have here Captain is a time frame of
nine and a half hours right from 11 30 to 9 A.M that's too big of a window that nobody's
going to be comfortable with if I were to try to narrow this down I would probably put the window of time at
six hours thinking about midnight as my my place marker there because here's the thing with the window open
the curtains off forcibly off of the window it doesn't sound to me like this is a cat
burglar like a super stealthy dude right it sounds to me like there was a little
bit of commotion we're talking about a trailer we're not talking about a mcmansion somewhere this would have been
close quarters I want enough of a buffer in time that we have Deborah the responsible mother
who has fallen asleep she you know this noise didn't didn't wake her from her her sleep and get her to run out of her
room so and we don't have any eyewitnesses that saw somebody coming or going from the trailer that night no we
don't and the other thing that I I would I would also kind of cap it at 6am because roughly that would be about uh
Sunrise that next morning and really all we have is the very vague description that is given provided to us by the
older sister Becky who again is just six and probably doesn't comprehend everything that's going on she is
reacting and observing out of fear so that's going to Cloud everything she's not thinking oh I should make note
of of about what time it is or if the sun was coming up or not right the other thing too it's just sad that she wasn't
able to run to her mother's room and and say hey somebody took her you know and that
would help out obviously but obviously when you're six years old what's that idea that you see the
Boogeyman in your room and if I just cover up and and he can't see me then then I'm going to be protected when all
of us sit and think about the dozens of things in our lives that we would have done differently none of them compare to
what this girl what the regret she has for that night of not notifying anybody not being able
to leave her bed now Deborah calls the police and the responding Authority was the
Lexington County Sheriff's Department this is run by Sheriff James Metz the deputies responded to the scene and
searched the trailer they searched the perimeter and all of the surrounding areas now it's worth noting here that
this mobile home was not located in a trailer park this doesn't help us for possible eyewitnesses Right This is this
hinders everything yeah this is not in a trailer park rather it is on a secluded
private lot near the town of Red Bank investigators branched out to look in abandoned buildings and other structures
in the area this would this is something that's necessary to do but also would lead me to believe that they
they might be working under the premise that this girl may have just wandered off
meanwhile Debra was interviewed at the Sheriff's Department she tells the deputies the same story
that Becky told her that morning and additional interviews with Sheriff Mets over the next few days she also
said that immediately she suspected her recent ex-boyfriend had taken Jesse she had no proof it was just really a
gut feeling the difficult thing about that though Captain is if Becky was able to see the face of the
man that took her sister clearly enough to identify that he has a beard again we don't have any description of
what type of beard is this is this a big one of those big ZZ Top deals right or is this a uh a captain and Colonel close
to the chin beard and if if it's a ZZ Top deal then you don't really need to be able to see this
guy's face much at all or or is it even a beard is it a type of mask or something that's true but what I'm
trying to point out here I think is that it's clear to me that while the mother may have a gut feeling that the
ex-boyfriend was involved Becky would have been able to identify this man as the ex-boyfriend ah maybe
not because maybe again well if he was wearing a disguise that's true he has a goofy hat on and and something on his
face it doesn't have to be a a fake beard or like I said it could just have been a mask and and she didn't
she wasn't able to get the details of it because it was a dark room it wasn't like the lights were all on but but the
other thing though too is clearly she does not recognize him to be anybody that she knows
yeah but hold on a second six year old right how many times do families have somebody in a family dress
up like Santa Claus at a family party and the kids sit on the Santa Claus's lap and say hi no no I
get what you're saying if if if if I drove up to your house in a different car and in Disguise you might not as an
adult might not recognize me right what I'm what I'm saying is Becky is not saying Joe Smith took my sister or Uncle
Johnny took my sister right the description she's providing is saying that she did not recognize the
person who took her sister regardless of why that may be right his appearance we're not we're not saying it could not
have been somebody she knew we're saying that that's not what the kid the only eyewitness that we have she's not
stating that right but what we also have going on here is that sheriff Mets is skeptical of Deborah's story about an
intruder wearing a strange hat who was heard by no one who had silently taken away this child
and he and his deputies were apparently suspicious enough that that Deborah herself had something to do with Jesse's
appearance we've seen this in other cases where something happened something went wrong
with the child and now we have somebody who was supposed to be responsible for the child they have to cover it up they
have to come up with some kind of story specifically when we covered Dewan Sims case right we have a mother who who
claims that she took her son to a shopping mall and then it says somebody took him while
we were in the mall and security and police review the security tapes and camera footage
they never see the boy with the mom so it's not out of bounds for law enforcement to be skeptical of a story
of a woman of a child taken in the night first of all that's a very rare abduction
taken from their home in the middle of the night right and then the fact that a kid is taken
in a room with other children right you know so then you have a scenario if if the mother is pointing
towards the ex-boyfriend and they're going well the kid didn't recognize this individuals so it could have been her
boyfriend dressed up or it could be her dressed up like like somebody else because of the sheriff's department
because of their suspicions that something else may have happened to the little girl and that Deborah was hiding
something they decided that what we're going to do here is we're going to tap Deborah's
phone this would be for two reasons and they've not publicly stated this I'm giving my opinion here
you're going to tap the phone for two reasons one so the authorities could hear if Deborah was colluding with
someone if there was something going on and she can fight it in somebody that something
actually happened to the little girl right this is also in endeavor's best interest in the fact
that should somebody call with either a threat or calling in with a ransom yeah now you've been able to
capture that audio [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] cheers everybody cheers to you Mr
captain eventually the sheriff's department seems to have rolled out been able to
rule out Deborah the state division of law enforcement or sled which is South Carolina's highest investigative agency
got involved in the case by that Saturday so very quickly in the early stages of the investigation
sled becomes involved their processing of the trailer uncovered a fresh fingerprint on the living room window
where they came to believe an abductor entered the trailer this was the window that had the screen
removed and the curtains torn down right the print was sent off to the FBI but no
match was made Captain Ford we got a now we got two captains in this story Captain Ford said
quote we are going under the premise that she was taken from the mobile home we don't believe she simply wandered off
and quote hold on do we have a on this print is it female or male do we know well there's no match to the fingerprint
so we don't know anything about it at this time in in our investigation what we do know is that nothing was stolen
from the house and there was no sign of a struggle at any place in the trailer itself yet Jessica had vanished and it
looked more and more like she had been taken right out the front door so you can kind of picture this this bearded
man with the magic hat figures his way into the living room via the window sneaks into the girl's bedroom takes the
youngest of the three daughters and then leaves out the front door and in his haste leaves the door open behind
him or maybe he was born in a barn yeah or he didn't want to put down the child and because she could have woke up
right if you put the child down so it's just leave your car door open or your truck
door open and once you get her out of the front door you just keep a hold of her put her into your car or your truck
and then take off who cares what happens behind you and this this type of abduction is really
one of the rarest of all child abductions a stranger abduction from within the child's own bedroom I was
trying to find some good numbers on this some good statistics that when I say good I mean reliable
and I don't know how reliable the information is that I found we do know and we can all agree that it
is a very rare thing for not only a child to be abducted by a stranger but then take it the step further and say a
child abducted in her own home or in his own home they put the numbers at at of the child abductions out there
that it's roughly about 15 16 percent actually occur in the home which was a lot higher than I thought
that that I would find but we've covered some cases here in the garage most recently we covered Heather
Dawn Church's case from 1991 she was abducted from her home that was episodes 339 and 340 available for free on the
free Stitcher app and then a couple cases that we've not covered but are very well-known cases or that of poly
class in 1993 and Elizabeth Smart in 2002 so it does happen and it's probably the
scariest of circumstances that I could think of now sled issued a national alert for
Jessica that described the missing little girl as white three foot tall 32 pounds with brown shoulder length hair
and brown eyes and pierced ears she has a scar on her upper forehead and a brown
birthmark on one of her buttocks she was last seen wearing a sleeveless pink and
white flower t-shirt and white underwear David Jessica's father was very quickly
ruled out as a potential suspect in his daughter's abduction we know that often when a child goes missing it it's
usually a custodial deal that we're dealing with now he could prove that he was in
California at the time that the abduction took place so he's very very far away from South Carolina when little
Jesse went missing as for the ex-boyfriend that's a bit of a different story though we have some
bickering going on between him and Deborah he says that he was not involved he didn't know that the child was
missing but Deborah would stick to her guns for years and years and say you know in in my gut of guts and in my
heart of hearts I know that somehow he was involved I just can't prove it well a couple tough things here is one they
could set up some kind of sting or ruse to get fingerprints from him but then you have the argument of well of course
my fingerprints in there or even on that windowsill because I lived there or I was there often
um well the search is for little Jesse really came to nothing a little while after she vanished Deborah told she she
decided to sell her trailer and move away from Lexington County for a Time but she returned after just a few months
because she was worried that someone might return the little girl and the child being so young
would not be able to find her mom now devastated by her young daughter's abduction
Deborah refused to allow her other children to celebrate Christmas saying that it just did not seem right to
really celebrate anything with the young girl being gone over the coming years Jesse's case was
featured on Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted I could not find the America's Most Wanted episodes
Captain but I looked up the Unsolved Mysteries yeah and it was actually featured with with three other missing
kids stories missing kids cases well that was a depressing episode very depressing and then I I looked into each
one of their cases and from what I could find right it looks like all four of them are still
unsolved yeah and they still they remain Unsolved Mysteries one of them got close
to having some action on it but the charges were dropped right before it could go to trial so hopefully that will
change in one or all of these cases in January of 1987 Deborah was flown to Kansas
so we're sitting here just about a half a year later six months later roughly in
1987 the mother of this missing little girl she's flown to Kansas to look at a young girl who had been found alive and
she matches Jessica's description down to the scars and some of the dental work now when you're when you're four you
don't have much dental work so well hopefully you know yeah yeah it was not Jesse and in fact it was the poor mother
she's walking up to you know like the two-way mirror because you don't want to traumatize the
child you find this kid the kid doesn't really know who or where she is supposed to go
off to you bring in Deborah to to identify is this your daughter or not as she's walking up to the two-way
mirror she says she could hear the girl talking and knew immediately it was not her daughter right can you imagine that
you want to talk about an emotional roller coaster ride I mean I I can't even begin to to Fathom
yeah I mean just think about this at some point please come to her and say we we think we might have found your
daughter we think we might have found Jessica all by the way we're gonna have to take you there so now you have this
whole preparation you're going and and before you even get a look at her because that's the moment you're
preparing for it in your head and she doesn't even have to get to that moment because she can tell audibly that oh
that is not my that is not my child and then I obviously probably is then double
confirmed by that by seeing the child well and also hey we think it's a possibility that this is your missing
little girl and she matches to the point of the scars you know up to the point of of
identifiers on the child as time went on it you know this case really just kind of drug on and it
didn't go really much in the way of finding Jessica or finding a potential suspect
but then we have in 2005 a report by a local TV channel this is w-i-s-tv 10 News which has continued to
cover Jesse's case they quote Sheriff Mets and and the quote says Lexington County Sheriff
James Metz says the investigation turned up a person of interest but never a suspect he still believes it's a
solvable case but with a sad ending I don't believe Jessica is alive I think Jessica was taken for a specific reason
and I think maybe what happened in this case is that things didn't work out the way the abductor thought it was going to
work out and got scared and then killed Jessica and then dumped her body here somewhere in Lexington County
then in 2007 there seemed to be some movement on the case WIS TV published a series of articles about Jesse Gutierrez
and said there seemed to be some hope but the first of these articles exposed a feud
that early on may have hampered the investigation if you recall we said that in the early
days of the investigation Sheriff Metz ordered Deborah's home phone to be tapped right the sheriff's department
clearly did not hear what they were expecting to hear on calls made on the phone that the family
was somehow involved in the toddler's disappearance but Sheriff Metz also seems to have
forgotten himself or perhaps he just assumed that the recordings of those phone taps would never be made public
because somehow that TV station got their hands on some of these recordings and one of them backed up what Deb was
saying all along that she had always alleged that the sheriff was initially not responsive to her and could possibly
have done more to find her child here's a transcript of of the call that they played that will show the feud
between the sheriff and the the victim here Sheriff Matt says what do you want me to
do someone's got to hold your hand or be out working and Deborah says listen here I don't
need you to hold my hand and I I don't need you to get smart with me either Sheriff Mets responds I'm not going to
get smart with you but you're not going to get smart with me either lady I've been up all night long working on your
case and I don't need your smart mouth Deborah replies oh really Matt says no Gutierrez then says when I ask you
questions I need answers the sheriff responds well we'll give you answers when we got answers to give now
you mess with me and I'll pull all my people off and we'll go home and go to bed and forget about your case
Deborah says you mean to tell me that if I mess with you you will pull all of your people off this case and go home
and forget about my child right that's it's not about her or the case it's about this little girl the sheriff
replies that's right Deborah then says what about the public that elected you to be in this office
and Mets replies they can elect me or not elect me because I don't really give a damn what they do
Deborah says I understand those detectives are child tired because so am I that's my youngin and then the sheriff
says I know that's your young and ma'am and we're trying to do everything to try
and help you um that's a shitty thing to say but sometimes look there's not much to go off of here
right it's not like we have a mountain of evidence and I know like especially in
missing person cases right uh the Tyler Davis case for example Brittany Davis is
frustrated with detectives they're frustrated with her you know I mean like they both want to
find um Tyler but there's no information that they can go off of every turn that they go down turn left turn
right there's nothing there and so she's frustrated they're frustrated and I'm sure there's things in that case that
the detectives have said to Brittany that they wish they could take back yeah and in this case here
I mean I'm not looking to go out of my way to defend Sheriff Mets but what I think we're we're getting a snippet of a
of a bigger conversation well it's a shitty thing to say I mean we both agree oh horrible you know horrible but a
piece of [ __ ] thing to say but I also want to point out here what we have going on from my observation is this we
have a a woman who who is tired she's scared she's afraid for her daughter she's probably been up for days by this
point but on the flip side of that we have a sheriff and his detectives who have very
likely been working around the clock they've been up for a very long time at this point as well and we have a mother
saying look I want some answers and he's saying we we don't have anything we don't have any information for you we
don't have anything we don't have any leads or nothing and she's saying well that's because you're not doing a good
enough job and we got this team of people working around the clock and and now you go and
the point person is going we've been working our asses off here it's not there's just nothing to go on and it's
not because we're not doing a good enough job we're trying our hearts out and when you have people that are tired
and they're frustrated they say things that they often don't mean and I think that that's probably what we
have here so I'm going to give the sheriff a little bit of a of the benefit of the doubt this is coming from someone
myself who look I've never been a sheriff and I understand that you're elected official you should carry
yourself and conduct yourself as such at all times regardless of the situation but I'm also a dude that's worked shifts
that you wouldn't believe I I mean one time I worked a shift that was 37 hours long and I was not a very pleasant
person to be around after about the 25 hour mark So I get I get it a little bit let's talk about how many hours did you
say several times in in my in my last job I worked shifts that were over 30 hours now
let's get to this suspect or this person of interest or whatever you want to call
them I'm going to call this guy a suspect even though in that one interview Mets didn't refer to him as
such a story in the 2007 series that was on that w-i-s-tv entitled 21 year old case could
move to court with solicitors approval before we move on just to clear up any confusion the solicitor in South
Carolina is basically your district attorney okay so if you hear me say solicitor think of district attorney I
might even call them district attorney just call them district attorney from now well that's going to be tough
because all of my notes say solicitor wow if you don't do this I'm going to make
you work a 36 hour shift apparently Deborah and Sheriff Mets had finally been able to agree on something and that
was that there was significant evidence to charge a suspect in this case this was someone who had been the prime
suspect ever since just a few days or a few weeks into this abduction but the sheriff's department had not been able
to convince the Lexington County district attorney or solicitor Donnie Myers that there was sufficient
evidence to make charges stick so who is this guy this is a West Columbia South Carolina man
he's been described only as a an acquaintance of the family or in some circles even maybe a family friend in in
some releases his name is not out there in the public domain and he's never been named by
either the sheriff or Deborah Gutierrez and I also want to point something else out too as we're moving along in this
case too the the ex-boyfriend's name has never been publicly stated either but what we have here Captain is ten
weeks after Jesse disappeared this man well he ended up behind bars according to The State newspaper he stole a van in
Lexington County there's a new shirt for you beware ban the stolen van and drove to North Carolina I think I've
created enough where he broke into a home and raped a woman oh God he was charged and later convicted and he was
sent to prison now here's where the story of this guy becomes relevant while in prison the now convicted rapist told
a cellmate that he had kidnapped a girl in Lexington County South Carolina and that he was wearing a tall cowboy hat
when he did it this could explain the magic hat that little Becky had seen in the dark
the convicted rapists claimed to have buried the girl in a landfill in Lexington County the cell mate relayed
this information to authorities and sent a letter to Deborah explaining what his
cell mate told him now the Clincher this convicted rapist his fingerprints were a match to the one
that was found on the window at the Gutierrez home a weeks-long search of the landfill
in Lexington County turned up nothing according to The State newspaper investigators questioned the rapist now
a suspect in the Abduction of Jesse multiple times about the child's abduction he offered to talk about the
case in exchange for immunity but prosecutors denied his offer as a result this guy shut down he's going to
talk about it no more so he wanted an immunity for the whole thing I'll tell you what
happened oh you have my fingerprint by the way but I'm going to tell you everything but
I want you to then tell me it's okay I'm not going to be charged with anything Sheriff Mets his office confirmed all of
these details to the public the suspect was released from prison after serving out his sentence I've seen
a few different numbers thrown out there but it looks like he served about 10 or
11 years at some point he fails to register as a sex offender in South Carolina as required
his last known address I'm not going to give the actual address was in Wake Forest but this was uh at least 10 years
ago Deborah Gutierrez has made a couple of other claims about this suspect that are a little harder to wrap one's head
around one was that she felt that this suspect and her ex-boyfriend the one she had the
gut feeling about knew each other this family acquaintance and the ex-boyfriend Gutierrez kicked out days
before Jesse's disappearance they denied knowing one another however Deborah says that she she knows
that the two actually met a a Waffle House several months before Jesse disappeared now there's no way to know
whether this is true or whether it even matters another strange thing Deborah has
repeatedly claimed that she located fibers this is an odd story here does she located fibers related to her missing
daughter in an abandoned car that belonged to the suspect I don't know how this comes about right that she
so now we have a fingerprint and we have possible fibers that this suspect owned
that vehicle and now we believe that this suspect also knew uh her ex that's Deborah's claims that that the
two knew one another and the Deborah found fibers that would be connected to her missing daughter in this suspect's
vehicle but to be quite Frank here there's nowhere that that says that these fibers
were reviewed and compared in a laboratory somewhere by people that are educated to do so
this is just a one poor grieving mother who has found what she believes might be possible
evidence it's it's tough too because if she sees these whatever they are and then she goes oh that's that's for
my daughter it's like you want to believe her but you also know that she's in extreme amount of pain and on top of
that you have a suspect that again oh that's not even called suspect we have his fingerprint there's no reason for
his fingerprint to be there right so well that's the problem why aren't they charging this guy with
abduction yeah and I think that that is Debra's that that I mean that is where I know
he's a piece of [ __ ] that's been her her second concern for almost the entirety
of her life her first concern is finding her daughter her second concern is why when we have this guy that that sheriff
Mets let's keep in mind Deborah and Sheriff Metz didn't get along they didn't see eye to eye on many things
right they both publicly have stated this is our guy we believe that we can solve this case we believe that we know
who did it we believe that we knew who did it fairly quickly into the investigation
however the solicitor slash the district attorney says we don't have enough evidence to
charge this individual so something we talked about a little bit on off the Record was okay this
fingerprint well is there a reasonable explanation for why there is this fingerprint there or can it be explained
away at least to a point where it confuses a jury enough that they don't get a conviction of this guy
I think what we have here Captain is I think that we have a guy that was sitting in prison and was going to be
there for quite some time 10 11 years what have you and I think that they thought that they
now that they had honed in on who it was or who they believed it was that they could build a case with significant
evidence against this guy in the time period where this guy is locked up he can't hurt anybody he's not going
anywhere the problem is past that fingerprint that's found by sled that that's a legit
investigative agency the fibers in the car don't mean anything if I found them or
if Deborah found them or if you found them we need somebody to tell us hey these are connected to this case and
it's connected to the victim and it's connected to the suspect but we don't have that yeah but law enforcement could
do those tests yes yes unless now they worried that the the scene the vehicle was contaminated
by right the victim's mother it gets very complicated very quickly and you can see how this is stacking up
really against Deborah and against the case for her daughter rather than against the guy that's sitting in prison
and by the time he gets released they've not collected any more evidence against
this guy I think the problem that we have here the major major problem is we know how
difficult it is to get a conviction in a no body case yeah but we don't have to get a conviction of murder
that's true we can get a conviction of the fact that we we know we have an eyewitness
that may not may not be able to put that person at the scene because she didn't know that person it was in the dark but
the fingerprint puts you there and we know that the child was abducted so what what do kidnap charges uh how many years
can he spend in jail over kidnap charges right and chances are if you go ahead and charge them with it and then you
offer them a deal you know maybe he spends half that time in jail but that's on top of the charges the rape charges
he's already in jail for I mean this is a scumbag piece of [ __ ] dude that needs
to be behind bars you know because all he's going to do okay we know that he's willing to kidnap
children I mean we know he's a rapist is he raping children is he killing children
I mean this this is a bad dude well and I thought about that because the the statement from the sheriff that
really stands out to me is we believe we know who did this we believe that Jesse was abducted for a
specific reason and when things didn't go the way that the abductor thought that they would
work out he got scared he killed her and he dumped her somewhere in Lexington County
that whole statement makes me it really made me wonder okay what would that specific reason be now that doesn't mean
that law enforcement knows what that specific reason was but when we look at it I thought
okay would it have been for a ransom well it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to
abduct a child from from a mobile home where we have only one parent who's trying to provide for four doesn't
seem to be much money to pay a ransom is what I'm pointing out there with the with the family situation and then I've
seen several cases where unfortunately kids are harmed whether it be abducted or murdered because there's some kind of
debt that was was unpaid or some kind of bad drug dealings going on between an adult male and the eventual offender
the problem with that is the boyfriend's been removed from the home it seems like
it seems like a really dumb idea to if you're going to take the child for some unpaid debt or for some kind of
Ransom against the boyfriend it seems like you've you've created a there's a whole degree of separation that doesn't
seem like it would play out the way that you wanted it to so with the with the rape charges if in fact this is our guy
and I have no problem saying that I believe that it is very much the guy because I
I put my faith in the evidence that was collected the fingerprint and there's no
reason for him to be there well not only that we have a mother who says look I I
cleaned the home inside and out regularly she says that that print would have been a new print that whoever
took her daughter came in through that window left their print and she says that with confidence because she says I
clean that same area just shortly before the abduction again it's a grieving mother and you go
Nick take it with a grain of salt however what we have here is sled took that evidence they sent it off to the
FBI it was labeled by one of the agencies or both as a fresh print a fresh print right the experts agree
that it was a relatively new print so not only do you have to explain away why your fingerprint was on that in that
area that was used to gain access to the home you have to explain why it was there in
a short time frame that's all centered around the Abduction of a child well what pisses me off and and you know
this because we've covered so many cases there's there's a lot of missing person
cases where there's this there's just nothing there you know and and this is abduction case
it's a little different but again you take away that uh fingerprint we have nothing there we don't even have a
time period of when this individual I mean a time period within an hour or two we
don't have we have from midnight till eight o'clock in the morning and we don't know
and we don't know what the motivation would be for this individual to take this girl and it's
but there's so many cases with the rape charge my fears that it that it's especially motivated crime
but uh dirt bag No but but the thing is is okay so here's a case that we have a fingerprint now we have a possible
connection between this individual and her ex we possibly have these fibers that need to be tested again could be
contaminated because she collected them but it's just so sad that we have so many things pointing us to having this
case be solved and they can't get it done yeah and I think what you have here too
is look there might have been some missteps very early on by the sheriff's department but we also stated that sled
was brought in by that Saturday this is that State's top investigative agency and we've also referenced the FBI a
couple times in this very short case right it's it's not short and time wise but it's short in our in our garage time
here today so you have I think very capable agencies looking into this case and to
the credit of the Sheriff's Office that's the same Sheriff's Office that took down
that took down Larry Gene Bell who we discussed on this show in our episode titled last will and testament episode
263. Larry Gene Bell was being this was a Manhunt well it was an investigation that led to a short man
hunt but it was the sheriff's department it was sled it was the FBI all working together against this guy this is one of
the most sadistic despicable he had he had a very bizarre way of mentally torturing his victims and that
was to have them write a goodbye letter to to their family before he killed them
so this is this is agencies that are used to high profile complicated cases so I don't think that that's the
situation here I think that what we have is unfortunately there just is not a lot of
evidence and as soon as this guy says oh you're taking immunity off of the table I'm no
longer willing to talk but now I that makes me wonder about the ex-boyfriend what did this suspect have to say
was it that I gave the girl off to the ex-boyfriend what if they did know each other that's
that's the tricky part in here too Captain where we have do we have two suspects
or do we have one well and again I I think there's a lot of things that you can't prove but if
there was a connection between these two individuals I think there would be a way
to do so even if it's just through um you know hearsay even people just going yeah I I've saw them hanging out
before well and I'll give the ex-boyfriend a little credit because remember both men claim they both men
deny ever knowing each other and here here's the thing unless the ex-boyfriend is involved somehow in this
Disappearance in this abduction he has no reason to deny knowing this other man if he in fact did know him
so I I I I don't know I can't I can't say that they didn't know one another but because one thing that I was really
trying to think about in this case and we we know this happens unfortunately in in the real world here where often bad
people will get a hold of some information they get a hold of some information that they
it doesn't matter that the in the grand scheme of things it does matter but it doesn't matter at the time that they
hear it because people don't know that they're bad people with bad intentions I thought is there a chance that these
two knew each other and it's as simple of a story as the ex-boyfriend goes yeah she kicked me out man
she kicked me out I've been out I've been Outdoors for days now right and now this this this pervert this rapist goes
oh we have a we have a house full of that's full of just a woman and children well
that's an easy target there's nobody there to fight me off in the middle of nowhere and it's yeah it's a trailer but
then again the problem with that is then why would the boyfriend deny knowing this man if if that's what in fact went
down I I don't think that that's likely because I think that if the ex-boyfriend
had did know the guy and did not have any involvement in the abduction he would want to be helpful to the
investigation into this poor family and I keep going back to the vague description of our suspect that was
given by that poor frightened girl so many years ago and Becky in recent years has said in interviews she's still
scared about that night and of course she has regrets that she didn't run to her mom or scream or cry out for help
and unfortunately that's something that she's going to have to live with that's a burden that she's going to have to
carry for the rest of her days but I keep going back to her vague description of the bearded man with the
magic hat and one thing she has said in recent interviews is that still to this day
she sees that face when she lies in bed at night she sees that face over and over and over again that leads me to
believe one of two things either because she was so scared that she created some version
of this face and some version of these events that may not be 100 spot on and real
or she does remember the face just as it is and just as she saw it that night and if
that would be the case I then say well why have we not heard all these years later from now an adult woman who can
articulate what she saw that night and give us a better description of that man and his face
and I think what we have here Captain is a situation where maybe the face that she remembers seeing that night matches
up with the suspect that they can't bring to trial in an interview with the state Deborah Gutierrez said the
following I've got a kid that's lost in the dark I'm not going to stop searching
for my kid my babies lost somewhere in the dark Gutierrez said her voice cracking and
I'm not going to stop until I find her [Music] all right make sure you get your pre-order in of the new t-shirt band the
tan sedan and thank you all for joining us here in the garage this week join us back here next week until then be good
be kind and don't litter [Music] thank you

Jessica Gutierrez ////// 408

Part 1 of 1 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

In the early morning hours of June 6th, 1986 and intruder entered the Gutierrez home. This man broke into the home with one thing in mind - abducting one of the Gutierrez children. One of the other children witnessed the whole thing. This week Nic and and The Captain discuss a case out of South Carolina. Beer of the Week - Magic Hat #9 Garage Grade - 3 and a quarter bottle caps

Many thanks to this week’s sponsors!!!www.Fitbod.me/Garage - Try Fitbod for FREE for one month when you sign up today!www.FabFitFun.com - use code GARAGE for $10 off your first box! The full archive of True Crime Garage is available on the Stitcher listening app - for FREE. Our show “Off the Record” is only on Stitcher Premium. For a FREE month of listening go to http://stitcherpremium.com/truecrimegarage and use promo code GARAGE

Beer Fund: https://truecrimegarage.com/home

Brief Summary

Jessica Gutierrez was abducted in 1986; her case remains unsolved despite various suspects and evidence.

Key points

A Mother's Panic. Deborah wakes to find her daughter missing and the front door wide open.
The Night of the Disappearance. A chilling account of a child taken in the night, leaving a family shattered.
The Magic Hat Mystery. A six-year-old's description of the abductor raises more questions than answers.
The Rare Abduction. A child abducted from her own home is one of the rarest cases.
Deborah's Emotional Roller Coaster. Deborah Gutierrez experiences a heart-wrenching moment when identifying a child.
A Convicted Rapist's Confession. A convict claims to have kidnapped a girl, leading to a chilling connection.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Sometimes evil slips into our home.

Setting the tone for the story's dark turn.

4:40WatchDec 12, 2022

Tension

70/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Garage TV

Solve the Crime

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