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

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[Music] % [Music] welcome to True Crime 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 [Music] friend today we are drinking Magic Hat number nine not quite pale ale this is a
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this one's my favorite make sure you check it out at true Crim garage.com is that enough of the business Captain well
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
and he went oh I thought you guys were like serious I'm like no it's just a joke it's 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] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] each evening as the day slips away and
the sun slides down the West Sky we lock our doors and 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 the 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 remained 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 [Music] her Jessica Suzanne Gutierrez was born on December 3rd 1981 to Mother Deborah
Gutierrez and her father David Deborah and David divorced in 1983 and David moved away now according
to Deborah David had a green card so he could reside in the US 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 workers 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 6 years old the
two shared a bedroom and a bed in the family's trailer home there are four kids as we said so J Jessica also had
another sister named Kim who was 10 years old and then an 8-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 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 gutierre 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 Jesse to bed with her sister as said Jesse and Becky shared a
bed in the kids 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
9:00 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 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 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 was frightening to me yeah the answer you want to get is I don't know and that's normally the
answer You' get right but 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 uh 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 Deborah 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 mhm but Magic Hat what does that mean do it you know to me I'd think
possibly like a wizard's hat yeah um so almost like a pointy top but how does she describe 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 2 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
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 and then 9:00 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 M she's six years
old right and that 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 uh the 8:00 Mark where
everybody's waking up well and often times there's no good reason to even put a clock in 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 prob
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 oping 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 9 and 1 half hours right from 11:30 to 9:00 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 6 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 come in 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 6: a.m. 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
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 and say hey somebody took her you know and that would help out obviously but
obviously when you're six years old well is that idea that you see the Boogeyman
in your room and if I just cover up and 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 Mets 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 this
hinders everything yeah this is not in a trailer park rather it is on a secluded
private lot near the town of Redbank 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
Deborah was interviewed at the sheriff's department she tells the deputies the same story that Becky told her that
morning an additional interview 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 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 MH and I if if it's a ezy 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 uh 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 it like I
said it could just 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 the other thing though too is clearly she does not recognize him to be
anybody that she knows yeah but hold on a second sixy 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 I want no I get what you're saying if if if if I drove up to your house in a different
car and in a disguise you might not as an adult might not recognize me 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 uh 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 says
somebody took him while we were in the mall and security and police review the 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 a child taken in the night first of all that's a very rare abduction a child
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 mhm 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 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 confided in somebody that something actually happened to the
little girl right this is also in Deborah'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 [Music]
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cheers to you Mr capton eventually the sheriff's department seems to have ruled out been
able to rule out Deborah mhm 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 M 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 the 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 do we have a 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 mhm 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 cuz she could have W 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 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 % 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
Don 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 mhm and then a couple cases that we've not covered but are very well-known cases
are that of paully 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 3ft tall 32 lb 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
window sill because I lived there or I was there often mhm mhm well the searches 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
lexingon 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 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 6 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 don't 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 cuz you don't want to traumatize the child you find this kid
kid doesn't really know who 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 going to
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 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 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 wv10 news which has continued to cover Jesse's case they quote Sheriff Mets and
in the quote says Lexington County Sheriff James Mets 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 WV published a series of 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 Mets 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 Mets 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 MH 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 met 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 Mets
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 ti tired because so am I that's my young and then the sheriff says I know that's you're 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 in missing person cases right M uh the Tyler Davis case for example Britney Davis is frustrated
with detectives they're frustrated with her you know what 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 mhm and so she's frustrated they're frustrated and I'm sure there's things in that case that
the detectives have said to Britney that they wish they could take back yeah and
in this case here I mean I'm I'm not looking to go out of my way to defend Sheriff Mets but what I think we're
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 horrible 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 cuz 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 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 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 him 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 wiv 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 him district attorney yeah just call him district attorney from now well that's going to be tough
because all of my notes say solicitor well well 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 uh
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 Meyers 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 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 10 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 banned 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 rapist claimed to have buried the girl in a landfill in
Lexington County the cellmate relay this information to authorities and sent a letter to Deborah explaining what his
cmate told him now the clencher 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 AB 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 immunity for the whole thing I'll tell you what it looks like 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 and 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 U 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 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 uh another strange thing Deborah
has repeatedly claimed that she located fibers this is an odd story here that 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
the two knew one another and that 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 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 she goes oh that's that's from
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 let's not even call suspect we have his fingerprint there's no reason for his
fingerprint to be there right so well that's the problem why aren aren't they charging this guy with abduction
yeah and I think that that is Deborah's that that I mean that is her already 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 Mets didn't get along they didn't see eye to eye on many
things 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 SL
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 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 nobody 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 a
eyewitness um 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 finger print 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 him with it and then you offer him 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 cuz all he's going to do okay we know that he's willing to kidnap children and 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 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 MH it seems like you've you've created
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 there's
a 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 that 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 cuz we covered so many cases there's there's a lot of missing
person cases where there's just 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 mhm
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 8:00 in the morning 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 with the rape charge my fear is that it that
it's sexually motivated crime what a dirt bag no but the 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 invest instigative agency and we've also referenced the FBI
a couple times in this very short case right it's it's not short in TimeWise 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 Jean Bell who
we discussed on this show in our episode titled last will and testament episode 263 Larry Jean 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 taking immunity off of the table I'm no longer willing to talk MH 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 AB uction 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 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 and 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 and to 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
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 baby's lost somewhere in the dark gutier said her voice cracking and I'm
not going to stop until I find [Music] her all right make sure you get your pre-order in of the new t-shirt ban 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 [Music] litter [Music] you can start your day off right when you find a professional on Angie to get
your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well
visit angie.com you can do this when you Angie that

Jessica Gutierrez ////// 408

Part 1 of 1

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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

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Brief Summary

Jessica Gutierrez was abducted in 1986; her sister witnessed a man take her, leading to a complex investigation with no resolution.

Key points

The Night of June 6, 1986. A sleeping child wakes to a shadowy figure taking her sister. What happened next?
A Mother's Panic. Deborah wakes to find her daughter missing and her other daughter in shock.
Suspicion Falls on the Ex. Deborah suspects her ex-boyfriend may be involved in her daughter's disappearance.
Rarity of Child Abductions. The investigation reveals that stranger abductions from a child's home are extremely rare, raising the stakes in Jessica's case.
The Emotional Roller Coaster. Deborah Gutierrez experiences a heart-wrenching moment when she is called to identify a girl who matches her daughter's description, only to realize it isn't her.
Sheriff's Dark Conclusion. Sheriff Mets expresses his belief that Jessica is likely deceased, suggesting a tragic outcome for the case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's frightening when I first heard it.

The hosts' reaction to the story of the missing girl.

12:54WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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