The Barbie Doll Killer /// Part 1 /// 653 | Forensic Files

Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
with me as always is a man that knows that when the XFL starts, our ratings go way up. Here is the captain.
It's because it's crap. It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.
This week we are happy to be featuring Pavement from Foam Brewers. Pavement is a double India Pale Ale smoothed out
with some juicy tropical fruit including citrus, mango, and passion fruit. ABV a
very deliciously dangerous 8.2% garage grade four and a quarter bottle caps out of five. And how about a couple
of cheers to some of our friends? we like your jib to Timmy from that Green Mountain State.
And we also have Jamie Gorton currently living at Fort Lee Army base in Virginia. Everyone we just mentioned,
they went to our website truecrimegarage.com and they helped us out with this week's
beer fund and for that, we thank you. Yeah, b e e r u n beer r u n beer run. For everything true crime, check out
truecrimegarage.com and Colonel, that's enough of the business. All right, everybody gather around, grab
a chair, grab a beer, let's talk some true crime. Murder. That is one of the most common cases
that we discuss here in the garage. Now, with over 650 episodes of True Crime Garage, we have seen just about
everything when it comes to the topic of murder. Murder means the manner of someone's
death is a homicide. The cause of that homicide can vary. We have discussed shootings, stabbings,
victims who were beaten or bludgeoned to death, some suffocated, drowned, burned,
or even dragged by a vehicle. The victims themselves are even more drastically different from one another
than the causes of a homicide. Every case is unique. Every victim is different. Be it an innocent victim or a low-life
drug dealer. In the end, they are all listed as homicide victims. Most annual crime statistics will
typically show that the majority of homicides stem from domestic disputes or they are drug-related deaths.
More than one law enforcement official has told me that often the silver lining is that it is mostly criminals killing
criminals. But, they will also tell you that no murder is justified. But, there is a phrase or a term
common amongst law enforcement officials. And that term is true victim. A true victim are the kids, moms, dads,
brothers, or sisters who either did not know their killers or did nothing to provoke them.
This week's true crime story would be much easier for us to tell if it were just another criminal killing
criminal story. But, it is not. This week's story is about one of those true victims.
Little Rosie Tapia was just 6 years old when she disappeared from her bedroom in
the middle of the night back in August of 1995. Rosie lived with her family at the
Hartland Apartments at 1616 Snow Queen Place in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. This was just one of 75 homicide cases
statewide for the year of 1995. Unfortunately, this was a year that saw a rise in the
state's homicide numbers. Rosie was taken from her bedroom and dumped into a nearby canal where her
body was discovered hours later. Her killer has never been arrested. Now, over 27 years later, her family still
seeks justice. They want an arrest. They want you not to just help, but to solve this horrendous crime.
From the website whokilledrosie.com, the family is asking for people to come forward with any information that might
help and be useful in any way. They want to hear from everyone who might have information, but particularly
if you lived in the Heartland Apartments in 1995, visited the apartments or were in the
area in the months surrounding the murder, were friends with Rosie or family members,
had kids who played on the playground there or knew kids who did, were familiar with anyone who lived in
the apartments, who might have seen someone on the playground or around the area.
Help us solve this crime. There is a reward of up to $100,000 in Rosie Tapia's case.
Someone, somewhere has information that can help solve this crime. You may not even know it.
No fact is insignificant. No detail is too small. If you have any information, please call
385-258-3313. This number is answered by representatives of the family and not the police.
Or you can email whokilledrosie@gmail.com. This is also monitored by family representatives.
This phone number and email address will be listed in our show notes. Join us as we discuss Rosie Tapia's case
in detail and talk about some cases that share some commonalities with Rosie's case
as we search for the man that we call the Barbie Doll Killer. This is the still unsolved homicide case of
Rosie Tapia and this is True Crime Garage. This was no accident, Captain, but that
is certainly what police thought that they were responding to when they arrived on the scene in the early
morning hours of August 13th, 1995. The police responded to a call about a missing little girl. The call came in
just before 6:00 a.m. So, we have a police car two on their way to an apartment complex.
Back in 1995, these apartments were called the Hartland Apartments, located at 1616
West Snow Queen Place. This is a very large, sprawling apartment complex located in the
Glendale neighborhood, just 4 mi southwest from downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. In the quaint neighborhood of Glendale,
we have what is currently named Seasons at Pebble Creek Apartments. Now, they say that they provide residents with the
ease and convenience of a central city with a peaceful environment of a residential community. So, back in 1995,
Captain, they were listed as the Hartland Apartments. Today, if people want to look them up, they are listed as
Seasons at Pebble Creek Apartments. These are very nice-looking apartments from what I can see. They have four
different types of layouts. We're talking one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, all the way up to four bedroom
apartments. But again, this is a large apartment complex. There's 15 buildings. And in some of these buildings,
they could vary from 12 units. I saw one unit that I suspect may have up to 30 units. So, a lot of people living in
this area. Police and law enforcement are going to get a call just before 6:00 a.m., and
they're going to be on the scene relatively quickly. They're on the scene, they're in the
apartment and what they are observing is a open window in a child's bedroom. The Venetian blinds have been knocked to
the floor. Mhm. The screen to the window has been removed and is sitting outside of the
apartment propped up against the apartment wall. And doesn't it almost have like a pry
mark on it? Correct. But there's a little bit of confusion when police first arrive on
the scene. So, the apartment itself is what's referred to as a basement level apartment.
And there is one window for this bedroom. In the bedroom, we have three children
sleeping there. We have 6-year-old Rosie Tapia and we have her two younger siblings. This is a brother and sister,
they're twins. They're about 3 4 years old at the time. Underneath the window from the inside
of the bedroom, there is a chest which is like a a dresser drawer. When police arrive on the scene, there's a
bit of a suspicion from the police angle. They're looking at this and they're wondering, could this child have climbed
up on the chest and then climbed out the window? Yeah, that's a possibility. And went wandering around in the middle
of the night. Right. Now, the parents are frantic, of course. They are already and have already been
searching the neighborhood for their little one to no avail. They are telling police,
"Look, she would not have taken off in the middle of the night." Now, keep in mind, the majority of the time when
police show up on scene and we have a missing kid, they're usually just not where they should be and kids do wander
off. Sadly, around 10:00 a.m. a body is discovered in a nearby canal. This is listed as one of those surplus
canals. So, this surplus canal would be feeding water into the Jordan River. The body that is found is quickly
identified to be that of little Rosie Tapia. And this is around approximately 10:00 a.m. this morning. So,
they start looking for her around 6:00, and around 10:00 a.m. the body is discovered, but not discovered by
police, discovered by a man who was walking or jogging with his dog. And he says that when he first spotted this
object floating in the canal, Right. he thought that maybe it was a large doll. And this would make some sense
because she was found floating face down, and she was fully clothed, but only a portion of the body was visible
from the shoreline. We know this because he alerts police, and it's not until police are over there, and we have other
people involved that the body is removed from the water. At that time, they very quickly identify
the body to be that of Rosie Tapia, and they send her off to be examined by the medical examiner. Now, this does not
change the police suspicions at the time. In fact, it kind of underlines what they had already suspected. And
they started to think, well, she probably climbed out the window, and for whatever reason, wandered down to this
canal. Well, and the canal wasn't that far from her apartment. No, we're talking this is approximately
about a football field to a football field and a half from not just the apartment complex, from their physical
actual apartment that they lived in. Right now, her body's going to be found further away, but it's very possible
that she could have climbed out the window, walked down, like you said, not that
far, had an accident, fell into the canal, and then floated down downstream. Yeah, so we should be clear here because
I don't know that we're giving a great description of this canal or where the body was found. So, the canal does in
fact run directly behind the apartment building that Rosie and her family lives in, okay? But, her body
is found about a football field and a half from that apartment building. So, the canal runs, so her body was found
south of their apartment complex. The canal does run directly behind it, and it would be a stone's throw, you
know, um one of us, Captain, could punt a football from her apartment building into this canal.
Now, if you go south south of South Street, nonetheless, you're going to find her body is about a
football field to a football field and a half away from her apartment building. So, this is all in very close proximity
to where she goes missing from. And I can tell you, unfortunately, with personal experience,
that this type of situation is not incredibly uncommon. In fact, I know of a situation that took place about a year
and a half ago that is so similar to this, it's haunting. But, in this situation that I'm talking about, the
girl snuck out in the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning, in fact, left the home,
and was known to feed the ducks, have a love for feeding the ducks and the fish at a nearby pond. And unfortunately,
they found her body in the pond later that day, and it was a complete accident. Now, with the removal of
Rosie's body, police have not changed their stance on it. They're still looking at this as a
possible accident that the girl willingly left her own apartment in the middle of the night.
Yeah, because what was going on that day was her parents, Rosie's parents, went out for a dinner and to go dancing and
she was being watched by her older sister. So, they go out dancing and going out to
eat and they open up the sister opened up the window just a crack because it was
hot. So, what law enforcement think is, well, the window was open up a crack, is it
possible that she decided to leave in the middle of the night and then went down to the canal and accidentally fell
in and then drowned. What's terrible here, Captain, is after the medical examiner, after they do the
autopsy, they contact the police and say, "Hang on a second. This is a homicide. The injuries
sustained by this young girl, we could fully know that one, she was sexually assaulted, and two, this is a
homicide." Now, the Well, she was also badly beaten. The cause of death is listed as
drowning, but due to the injuries and due to the sexual assault, the medical examiner could confidently say that this
is a homicide. So, now we have police shifting gears here. And you did say badly beaten.
You did say badly beaten and that is true. The difficult thing here, though, is I've seen this reported so many
different ways. And it's reported that there was some kind of blunt force trauma to the body.
And it's also been reported that when they pulled her from the canal, that it was not clear and would not have been
obvious to anyone to switch this from an accident to a homicide based off of what they were
seeing when they pulled her from the canal. It was only once the medical examiner did the autopsy that they had
to shift gears. Yeah, my my guess is that there was blunt force trauma to her skull and they
probably just weren't able to see that due to her hair and whatever. Well, we don't know for certain because
they've never released the official results of the autopsy. Again, it gets to be difficult because a
large amount of those injuries could have been covered up by her clothing. She was found fully clothed when they
pulled her from the canal. Let's go through this timeline before the murder and leading up to the body
being found in a little more detail. Well, like you always say, the timeline matters, but the devil is in the
details. As the captain said, we have Roberto and Lewin, who are the parents of 6-year-old
Rosie Tapia. They are going out on a date night on that night. They have their daughter They have their daughter
Amelia, who is 18. She will be babysitting Rosie and the 4-year-old twins Robert and Angelica for the night.
Now, around 7:00 p.m., Amelia drops Rosie off at the park. This park is it's referred to as a park
on some online websites. However, this is simply a small playground area that exist inside the apartment complex and
is relatively close to the building that Rosie lives in. And so, she takes Rosie
to the playground area and does leave her there, which is a little surprising to
me given that Rosie's only 6 years old. It's not so surprising giving the very close proximity to the apartment
building that they live in. And again, this could be part of some kind of routine.
She drops the girl off there, returns to the apartment where she has the two younger
kids. And then we have a person who would later be labeled as a good Samaritan because
they've not identified this individual who returns Rosie to the apartment. This takes place within about 15 minutes
of Amelia taking Rosie to the playground area. This good Samaritan is a male. And he arrives at the doorstep of
Rosie's apartment with Rosie in his arms. He tells 18-year-old Amelia that Rosie was kicked in the back while
on the slide, that she had slid down the slide and another kid comes down right behind her kicking her in the back. Very
likely an accident, yet Rosie is injured from this, and so this guy says, "I carried her home to return her to you."
Amelia thanks the man. She's a little surprised by the events, but thanks him and informs him that she
will look and make sure that there's no severe injuries to Rosie. The weird thing here, and this is always
been a strange part of this story, and I don't know what to make of it, Captain.
I'm I'm going to be perfectly upfront honest with everybody regarding this scenario. According to
Amelia the man who she did not know The good Samaritan. says, "Goodbye, Rosie." Right.
And what Amelia would later say is she does not know this man. She asked Rosie "Did you tell this man your name?"
And Rosie tells her no, she did not. Amelia is uncertain how this man would have known where Rosie lived. Again,
this is a large apartment complex. And this is not the only playground in this apartment complex.
Rosie could have lived in any of those apartments. Yeah, I think it's odd, obviously, that
he knows where Rosie lives, but not so odd that might he might have heard her name
being called to her on the playground or when he went to attend to her when she got injured. Did somebody say her name
at that point? To add further suspicion to this story, Amelia says a couple of things. One,
Rosie was not crying when the man brought her carried her to the door, which she thought was a little
surprising. Why wouldn't you just walk the 6-year-old? Two, she could find no sign of an injury
on Rosie and Rosie told her that she was not hurt. Now, the reason why I say I don't know what
to make of this is because I think we have two sides to the story. One, we have Amelia's story where she's
saying there's these parts of the story that raised my suspicion level. And especially, of course, after we later
learn that Rosie was abducted and murdered, of course, she's going to be suspicious
of these different items. I've had a lot of interaction with 5, 6, and 7-year-old children,
and I think anybody that has, talking to you parents out there, I think you'll back me up on this.
Children do not always tell the truth, especially when they're trying to get something they want. And we've all
experienced how much fun it is to take a child from the playground when they do not want to leave, when they're not
ready to leave yet. they will throw a fit, they will make up every excuse in the book why they should be able to stay
there. Maybe Rosie was in fact kicked in the back and this guy was just trying to
help out. Maybe she did say and tell this man where she lived. Maybe she did tell this
man her name. And when questioned by her older sister, thought that maybe I'll get in trouble if I Maybe
I've done something wrong. Yeah, because she could have been told multiple times by her parents, her
family members, her teachers, don't talk to strangers. And so then she was hurt and the
stranger comes up and maybe she gave the stranger information and now she feels bad about it.
One thing we do know for certain is Amelia does not know who this man is. So that's interesting and that's
insightful. But at the end of the day, you could have three different scenarios. You could have a scenario
where this man labeled as a good Samaritan could be responsible for her disappearing in the middle of
the night and was watching the girl and learned information about her. One investigator had something very
interesting to say about the scenario, saying that taking the girl to the apartment could
have been a bit of a surveillance gathering intel situation for this perpetrator if in fact this man was
involved in Right. the abduction of Rosie Tapia. Yeah. Maybe he was carrying her there to one
verify where she lived and to kind of see once the door opens up who all's in the apartment. What do we got going on?
Verify that it is her apartment. So that's an interesting angle. But you could also have the angle where this guy
was just trying to help and nothing nefarious was going on with the situation. The problem here, Captain,
remains with this individual being unidentified even all of these years later, well, it gets quite complicated. It gets
difficult to sort it out. And police move on from this good Samaritan man, and we'll discuss that in
a bit. Because at one point, they thought they had identified this man. So, in our timeline, before Rosie goes
missing, that brings us now to 7:30 or a little thereafter. This is when Amelia prepares dinner for Rosie
and her two younger siblings. It's bath time after that, and then we're going to
get everybody ready for bed. And again, this playground situation, Captain, sounds to me like it was
commonplace that she would go to the playground leading up to dinner, bath, and then bedtime. Bedtime
that night for Rosie and her two siblings is listed at 9:00 to 9:30 p.m. Let's get back to the abduction and
murder of Rosie Tapia after this quick beer break. All right, we are back. Cheers, mates.
Cheers to you, Captain. Let's go through a story that ran in the Salt Lake City Tribune, September 10th, 1995, because
this provides us with the most thorough breakdown of our timeline here. And we're going to go back and revisit some
things as we go through this timeline. So, before the murder, Rosie's mother, Luween Tapia, and her father, Roberto
Tapia, went dancing at the La Frontera Cafe and Bar the night of Saturday, August 12th,
1995. As we said earlier, their 18-year-old daughter, Amelia, would be babysitting
Rosie and the four-year-old twins, Robert and Angelica. Amelia says that she put the three children to bed
between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. that night. She left the window open because it was hot in their basement apartment.
I think we need to describe this basement apartment for those that have not experienced this because this was
something that was a little new to me. Right. So, I've reviewed photos and I've spoke
to people that have visited the crime scene. And what they were able to tell me and
what we are able to see from these photos is that the basement apartment is kind of what it says, where a portion of
the the apartment itself is below ground level. But a portion of it is above ground
level. So, in this particular building, Captain, you have apartments on three levels. So, they stack them three high,
basically. You have a basement level, you have a mid-level, and then you have a top level.
And in this apartment, they have two bedrooms in Rosie's apartment. It's one of the two-bedroom units.
Right. So, we have the parents sleeping in one bedroom, and the other bedroom we have
three of the children. We have Rosie and her two younger twin siblings. The 18-year-old daughter, Amelia,
was sleeping on the couch. So, Amelia lived there for a good period of time and then moved out and went and stayed
with another relative for an extended period of time. And came back to stay. And it sounds to
me, Captain, like this was scheduled to be somewhat of a brief stay. I don't know if brief stay meant weeks or
months, but it's always been reported as she was going to be living there briefly. So,
just sleeping on the couch now that she's back in their only two-bedroom apartment. The basement level. So, if
you are inside this bedroom, inside of Rosie's bedroom. Right. You and I, Captain, were over 6-ft tall,
you're taller than I am. If we were in there, We're giants. the window would start at about our chest level.
If you were standing outside of the apartment, the window to that bedroom is only like
6 to 8 in off of the ground. Uh-huh. So, if somebody came in there in the middle of the night, like we all think
happened, this did not require a bladder or any method of getting up to get into the
window. You're actually getting down and crawling in. Right. So, you don't need a ladder to
get up into the window, but when you're coming down from the window, that conveniently you have that chest
there. And so, you'd have to have something to step down on cuz it'd be quite a quite a
long drop. When Luween and Roberto got home that night, they get home around 2:30 a.m.
Luween says that she then went to the children's bedroom. She kisses them gently, and she pulled the window
closed. Remember, it's in the up position when she arrives. She pulls it closed, but this is not one
of those windows, Captain, that we see typically today where it has the latch on the top of the bottom pane,
where you close it and then you twist it or turn it and it seals it and it locks
it, and know it's locked. Right. This is those ones that you saw a lot in the '90s, where they had the locks on
the sides. Where you would push them in, open up the window, and then when you would pull
it closed, it you would hear it click, and it would lock, and it would latch. Great sound effects.
Now, Luween says that while she pulled it closed, she pulled it closed, and she did not pull it tight.
She was afraid that the clicking of that lock would wake up the children. Right.
So, as far as she's concerned, the window is closed, but not in the locked position. She also says
that she closed the curtains to that window at that time. Now, here is where she becomes
incredibly concerned. Because at 5:30 a.m., she wakes up. She's walking through the living room,
but to her surprise, she can see that the children's door to the bedroom is now shut.
Mhm. She left it open when she went to bed. She goes inside the bedroom. She immediately notices that Rosie is
gone, and the window is open, the screen is removed, and the Venetian blinds knocked to the floor.
From my understanding of this crime scene here, Captain, it is exactly what like what you said.
There was some kind of marking on this screen that was placed outside of the apartment
window, and now leaning up against the apartment wall. There was markings on this screen that indicated that somebody
used some kind of tool to pry the screen from the window. What's terrifying here, not only would
this intruder need to climb down and use this chest as a stepping stool into the children's
bedroom, but the positioning of the beds and where all the kids were sleeping, this individual would have had to crawl
over one of the other children to get to Rosie. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of the
Madeleine McCann case where you have multiple kids in a room, but only one of them was abducted. And it's probably
because if you if you have only one individual, you can only carry so many children.
But the the marking on the screen it could be a nothingburger in the sense of that
Rosie's sister would have her boyfriend sneak into that room, and he would use the same window. So, is it possible that
these pry marks are from earlier events of the boyfriend sneaking into that window?
Regardless of how they got the screen off, we know that the screen was removed. Intruder climbs into the
window, crawls over another child to get to Rosie. What's difficult here though, Captain, I
can see reasons why I would suspect maybe two persons were involved. I would like to know if they have any clue or
any evidence to suggest how the intruder left the apartment. Because just because
they gained access to the apartment through the child's bedroom, does not mean that they had to exit that way as
well. What we do have as far as evidence goes, there are fingerprints on this screen. As the captain pointed out,
these could be the offenders fingerprints. These could be maintenance workers fingerprints.
Could be the boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend. ex-boyfriend. The big piece of evidence here that we
have in her bedroom is on that chest. There was a towel. And there's a footprint in the towel.
That's a bit of a difficult thing. You're exactly right. They found a partial footprint in the room in that
bedroom. The difficult thing is how it's reported. It's been reported a couple different ways. One on the towel
on that chest leading up to the window. The other reports state that it was on the blinds,
that it was found on the blinds. Now, could we have two partial footprints in the apartment? Possibly.
Right. Or somebody's just got some information wrong. The problem too with this case,
Captain, that I don't love and I think that the Salt Lake City police have done a good job working this case that
they've at least spent a lot of time and resources on the case. I think that there's some crowd sourcing that they
could be doing that they are not participating in. There There's a There's information. There's meat on the
bone here in this case, but they don't want to release hardly anything on Rosie's case.
Well, the biggest problem right away is the size of the apartment complex and how many people you have living within
that small area. So, all those individuals become suspects. Upon discovering her daughter is
missing, Luween then calls 911 and phones family members. And we have family members and police
both on the scene who arrived to help to search. This is before dawn. We have police combing the banks of the Jordan
River and they drove through the neighborhood, of course. Family members posted flyers. They're already posting
flyers at nearby convenience stores with Rosie's pictures. So, we have two things
going on. The police, they're thinking maybe this girl had wandered off and immediately the parents are of the
idea that she might have been abducted. Now, just by posting flyers doesn't mean
that they believe 100% that she's abducted just straight up missing. But, what happens is they spring into
action very quickly. you have to applaud them for that. She has her brother or brother-in-law
who's at Kinko's nearby making flyers around 8:00 a.m. that morning. And he goes out with the sister-in-law
and immediately starts posting these flyers everywhere that they can. Unfortunately, this is all for naught
because a man by the name of Gustavo Abarca was jogging with his dog and at 10:15
a.m. according to this report, spots Rosie's body floating in a surplus canal at the 1900 block of West and 1200 block
of South. Let's get into this investigation or at least the information that's been released in this
investigation. The autopsy report was completed within a couple of days of finding the little
girl and officially listed the cause of death as drowning. But, the case was ruled a homicide as we said earlier
because trauma to Rosie's body would indicate that this is a homicide. Now, they state that trauma to Rosie's body
was limited to wounds of a sexual nature in this report. She was not stabbed nor
was she beaten according to this report which is a little weird because a lot of
the other reports do list blunt force trauma. Yeah, the majority of the reports that
you read on this case list blunt force trauma. So, why wouldn't we think that there's trauma there?
That that makes no sense to me. Again, we can't prove one way or another because the autopsy report has never
been revealed to the public. We can simply go off of what persons who have reviewed
those documents and what their statements are to the media. Well, then the other question becomes
because she's found in water and we know water is one of the it's a it's a horrible thing
to find a body in water because it washes away so much evidence. So with this sexual assault, you you
wonder if they have DNA of the murderer. They've always been cagey about the DNA
and we'll get into that as we continue along, but looking for physical evidence, we know the investigators
publicly have stated that they look for signs on Rosie's mouth to see if it was taped shut to silence her.
They found no signs of her mouth being taped closed. They wondered if the killer may have
used chloroform, a clear liquid that if inhaled can leave a victim unconscious. Unfortunately, the the river water would
have washed away traces of that chemical. This is per the pathologist who performed the autopsy.
And then as far as the family goes, this report, again, this is coming out less than a month after the homicide. And
this report states that the Tapia family members have been cooperating fully with
police. They have provided fingerprints to match against those lifted from Rosie's window and have even found clues
in Rosie's room that they provided to police. Yeah, if you're in law enforcement, you
have to look at this case from the inside out. So you want to start going through the timeline of her her father,
her mother, her older sister. And then you wonder were there visitors to the older sister
and is she is she telling the full story about what her events were that night? This gets difficult, too. Unfortunately,
the oldest sister, Amelia, has passed away. She passed away just a couple years ago.
So she was involved in this case and she was up front and center for a lot of the
media attention that was given to this case. Let's go through the reports first because there were reports that came out
years later that had some speculation in it that Amelia may have thrown a party or had a gathering
at the apartment that night before Rosie goes missing. The speculation was that maybe one of the attendees of that
gathering took the girl. There's a couple problems with that. Well, first off, we have the mother who
says that she physically saw and kissed the girl goodnight when she arrived at 2:30 in the morning.
Right, and there's no reason not to believe her. Also, we have police that went on the
record after this rumor starts going about and made its way to the paper. The police, they're not very up front and
center about a lot of things in this case, but one thing they were was regarding this this air quotes party
that did not happen. They said they they spoke to a lot of people. They could find no evidence that such a party took
place. Now, if somehow this party managed to happen and nobody was aware of it that
the police found no evidence and mom and dad does not believe that a party happened, if it managed to fly that far
under the radar, well, then that would mean that if one of the attendees is responsible, then they came back and
entered the apartment through the window. They didn't take the girl after on their way out the door from the
party. Because Leween tells us the girl was there. She was present at 2:30 in the
morning when I arrived home. Now, police have said emphatically that the time frame that they are concerned
about here in Rosie Tapia's case is that 2:30 a.m. window to 5:30 a.m. window. We
got a 3-hour time frame that they are concerned of and they believe that that is the time
frame in which Rosie Tapia was abducted. I wish that they were able to narrow it
down even more than that 3 hours, but that is what we are currently left with. Right.
Now, as far as eyewitnesses go, we have some and their stories are a little difficult because some of these people
come forward years later, but one potential witness statement that we have comes from
Robert, Rosie's little brother, who was asleep in the same bedroom as her that night.
Right. He gave a statement that he may have seen someone in their room that night.
Yeah, but this statement wasn't made right away. He tells this to the parents, who then
relay this to the police. Now, I'm a little hesitant to report on this because it's been reported so many
different ways that I have a bit of a a lot of question marks about this statement.
First off, it's coming from a 4-year-old child. We do not know exactly what he saw
because the reports vary. The other thing, too, could some of this be from his imagination after the fact because
now he's terrified and likely having nightmares because he slept in the same room where his sister was abducted from.
Well, the statement was something that there was a bearded man that told him to go back to sleep.
Bearded man that told him to go back to sleep. It makes sense that Robert would have a statement compared to his twin
sister because that was the bed. Robert's bed was the one that the perpetrator would have had to climb over
to get to Rosie. But just so we're clear, you're saying that this statement was made
immediately to police where I thought this was made years later. The way it's been the from my
understanding, I should I should say that. Because it's been reported different ways. My understanding is that
the child told mom and dad about this relatively quickly in the investigation. I believe it was within days of them
finding Rosie's body. And that the parents relayed this statement to the police.
Now, I spoke with somebody that's very close to the case and very close to the family. And they gave me a much
different story than what's been reported. Because I asked, I said, was there any witness statements? Was there
anything that the other two siblings may have seen that night? And I was told that Robert did say that
he saw a man in their room. I said, was there anything distinctive about the individual that he saw? Was there any
identifiers that the child was able to provide regarding the man that he may have seen in the room that night?
And this individual told me that the man Robert reported that the man had hair on
his arms. Nothing about a beard. So, while a beard might be helpful, I think hair on your arms would be much
less helpful as most people have hair on their arms. One thing that was a little
bit of a speed bump though was that Robert referred to this man as the coco man.
Which I think was misinterpreted by police. That we could be dealing with a person
of color, possibly an African-American man. Right. However, in Spanish culture, the coco
man is similar to the bogeyman. Right. It has nothing to do with the color of an individual.
Well, I think it would also be very difficult in the dark. This murderer is climbing over the bed, maybe his arms
are close to Robert at the time, so that's why he saw the hair, but maybe that's why he can't find couldn't see
other details because it's dark in that room. And I don't want to question a victim
here, and I believe this little boy is simply trying to help. But, it also could be simply put that
he's had some nightmares since the situation and tells parents, "I saw the boogeyman. I saw the
bad man that took my sister." Yeah, cuz the one of the reports I was reading stated that there was no
eyewitnesses or no credible eyewitnesses initially, and that the the twin siblings had nothing to report to
police. But again, you know, that's why we have to dive into multiple reports because
sometimes it's just bad reporting. The other thing to keep in mind though, too, is that we are dealing with the
situation where nobody knows 100% what happened for a couple of days. It wasn't until the conclusion of the
autopsy, which took a couple days after the body was recovered, to make this determination of homicide.
Well, then we also have a eyewitness that saw a a teenager by the canal. Yes, this person that was seen by the
canal is later referred to as wet pants man. Because the witness says that they saw
this person, the witness was up early that morning, was outside, and says that they saw a truck, a white
truck, Right. and the truck drives off, and then later sees a person who we're calling wet pants man,
and they describe this individual as a Hispanic male with slight build, possibly 16 to 17 years of age with
short dark hair. And the eyewitness is a neighbor of the Tapias. Yeah, I I I believe that first uh
they were stating, "Okay, he's wearing a white shirt. He wear He's wearing multi-colored pants." But as they got
closer, they're like, "Oh, that's not multiple colored pants. Just the bottom of his pants are wet."
Meaning that he probably was in the canal at some point. Which is interesting because that's one
of the few facts that comes out about the autopsy. The The investigators are stating that they
have evidence that she wasn't thrown from the shore into the Surplus Canal. That she was held down and drowned in
the water. So, this is going to make a lot of sense when we go through some other facts of that day. After they
recover the body, police and search teams are still doing the hard work. They're still trying to piece everything
together because they need to know the full story of what happened. So, they bring out
bloodhounds to try to discern where this girl entered the water. Right. Mind you, they're still under the
impression that there's a possibility that this is just simply an accident. That she wandered off and went into the
water. Now, the bloodhounds are unable to hit on anywhere providing them a location of
where the girl may have walked into the water. Interesting. So, this would go back to things that
we've reviewed in other cases. Right? Often times they say when when dogs follow a scent
and then they stop, especially when that scent leads them to the edge of a road, once they stop,
that's an indicator to police and investigators that the victim then got into a vehicle and the vehicle drove
off. Here, we have the bloodhounds unable to tell us where the girl went into the
water. And based off of what they're saying about the autopsy, that she was held down in the water,
that indicates that the perpetrators in the water with the victim. It also indicates to me, based off of the lack
of information from the scent dogs, that the perpetrator carried her into the water.
Yeah, which would make a lot of sense. And And but first of all, yeah, I hate that we call him what,
Pantsman? Cuz that was my nickname in kindergarten. And if peeing your pants is cool, then consider me Miles Davis.
But yeah, I I think if anybody wants to go online, there is a map of the apartment complex and this
canal. And the canal doesn't run, you know, parallel or perpendicular. It's coming at an angle.
So, where this eyewitness was seen, or roughly where he was seen, is the closest entrance point to the canal from
the apartment complex. Now, she's found a little bit further down, but you would
expect that once she's in that canal, that she would have moved around a little bit.
Captain, we keep citing this article here. And I want to point something out here.
There's some disappointing angles to this case and this investigation. I was a little shocked because if you
get online today and you hunt Rosie Tapia, there is Captain's favorite word, a plethora.
Would you say I have a plethora? I would say we have a a plethora of stories regarding Rosie's case today as
we sit in 2023. However, back in 1995, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000, I can't count above 2000, so we'll stop
there. Okay. There was not a plethora. In fact, there were very few local newspaper articles regarding this case.
There is one though that is key and paramount to our storytelling. And that is the one that we referenced already.
It's the September 10th, 1995 Salt Lake Tribune article. And guess what? It was written by your boy Joshua B. Good.
Parents out there, if your last name is good, you should always name your son Related to Johnny B. Goode.
Yeah. Middle name Benjamin. Fits every single time. Now, this article is interesting because there's not a
whole lot of information. There's not a whole lot of articles that come out. In fact, this is just simply one of a few
that ran for the first 5 years locally in this case. But this article itself is multiple pages.
It's pretty in-depth. It's pretty detailed. And it's pretty thorough. One thing I loved about this newspaper
article, and it had I been reading it in September of 1995 when the article came
out, I would have had high hopes to solve this case. Because they brought in a guy named
Kenneth Lanning from the FBI. And in the article, they state that the victim was
thrown into the river. Of course, later we would learn from future information that comes out that the victim was
actually held down. And we just went through the whole scenario of why we believe she would have been carried in
to the canal, going along with this witness statement of wet pants man. The article states that the FBI was
working on a psychological profile of the killer. That the FBI would be pouring over
recent burglary reports. They would be reviewing recent paroled child molesters that were paroled in the
state of Utah. The article goes on to state and remind us all that child abductions by
strangers are rare, only about 1% of kidnappings a year fall into that category.
And they also point out that entering a child's home to abduct the child through
a window is even more uncommon. Well, I know that there's been some criticism of this investigation, but I
always like it when they ask for help and we got the FBI, the MF FBI. And it's not just any agent.
We have Kenneth Lanning there. Right. And as said, had I been reading this article 1995, I would have had high
hopes that this thing would have been solved because Kenneth Lanning is extremely capable and experienced at
solving this type of crime. He's brought in to review the burglary reports, review the recent parolees in
the state of Utah. He's going to go through the crime scene, he's going to go through the police report.
In fact, we recommended one of his books before in a recommended segment on this
very show. His book is titled Love Bombs and Molesters. Bombs and molesters were
two of his uh areas of expertise during his time with the FBI. The [ __ ] FBI. Unfortunately, a couple things happened
here, Captain. We're told by law enforcement that there was a psychological profile, an offender
profile that was put together by the FBI, by the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI.
That profile's never been released to the public. It's not uncommon to not have that.
Which is great, think about it. Some of our tax dollars go to the FBI, right? Well, yes, and to the the law
enforcement agency investigating the top two. Right. So so we have a a 6-year-old that was abducted and
sexually assault possibly brutally beaten and drown. And for like you said, probably forcibly
drowned in this canal. So, we should have a community that's going, "Hey, we we we want this solved."
And and not just for the justice of her family and the justice of the community, but the safety
of our community and the safety of our children. And you guys did a profile and you guys don't even want to tell us
about it. Yeah, and to so to back up the FBI on this situation, they had very minor involvement in the
Rosie Tapia case. And we're being told that there was a profile that was provided to police from
the FBI. That statement comes from the police. The choosing to not release that profile
comes from the police, the investigating agency that's in charge you guys for? of the case. Now, I want I want to
defend everybody here. I think that it is a bit of a misstep to not release some of the information from
a profile. In fact, that's actually what the public sees most of the time. There's been profiles done on multiple
killers throughout the years and the profiles have never been released to the public. There's also been profiles done
on killers where they release a portion of the profile. I can see without going into great detail here, Captain, I can
see reasons why you would not want to release the profile in its entirety because of things that I suspect may be
in the profile. However, I think that there are things that you could release to the public that would help your
investigation. I think that there are things in that profile that once released to the public could hurt the
investigation. So, I get it, but I also think that you could release a portion of that profile.
One thing that caught my eye in that article in particular was that can that the FBI and agent Landing would be
reviewing and pouring over recent burglary reports. The reason why I thought that was
interesting was because given the nature of this crime. We know there was an intruder. We know somebody came into the
home and removed the victim from the home. And she's later found dead. When we spoke with retired FBI agent Jeffrey
Rineck, he explained to us that it's very common to find serial rapist or abductors
through these burglary reports. Because often times they will get arrested for what is misinterpreted
as a potential burglary. They break into the home and the homeowner is able to stop them
or police arrive on the scene and catch the assailant fleeing from the home and the individual's arrested and
charged with burglary. Yeah, or it's criminal escalation. You have peeping Toms that decide that they
want to then start entering homes and then once they're entering homes and they then
it's more likely once they get comfortable with entering the homes that they would then abduct a victim.
Correct, but you're looking for somebody that's already past that escalation. If
If that is the If If that's the route that this criminal behavior took. What I'm simply saying is what Jeffrey
Rineck was saying was that often times these individuals who have already escalated to that are picked up on
burglary charges because what do they have to do to carry out the rape or the abduction? They have to enter the home.
And when they are arrested, it's misinterpreted their intent for being in the home as burglary. So, very
interesting that they poured over this, but again, in this situation with the paroled child molesters from the state
of Utah, as well as these burglary reports, we don't get any follow-up information.
Want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage. If you're looking for the first 50 episodes, those are now
only available on our website store. So, check those out. Thanks for joining us. So much more
to get to in this case. Join us back here in the garage. Same bat time, same bat channel. And until then, be good, be
kind, and don't litter.

The Barbie Doll Killer /// Part 1 /// 653

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

In the middle of the night someone took little Rosie Tapia from her bedroom. Hours later her body was found nearby. Days after the funeral services someone left a Barbie Doll on the girl’s grave. Could this doll hold clues to finding her killer? Rosie’s case is still open and unsolved. The person(s) responsible needs to be held accountable so that this will not happen to another family. There is a substantial reward offered in this case. If you have any information please call 1-385-258-3313 or email whokilledrosie@gmail.com - This phone line and email address are answered and monitored by representatives of Rosie’s family, and not law enforcement. No detail is too small. No fact is insignificant. Someone, somewhere has information that can help solve this crime.

Beer of the Week - Pavement Double India Pale Ale from Foam Brewers

Garage Grade - 4 and a quarter bottle caps out of 5

Recommended Reading - Lou and Jonbenet; a legendary lawman’s quest to solve a child beauty queen’s murder by John Wesley Anderson

Join us @ BrewDog DogTap Columbus located in Canal Winchester, Ohio - Saturday, April 29th, 2023. Ticket information and sales available on our website www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

Brief Summary

The episode discusses the unsolved murder of 6-year-old Rosie Tapia in Salt Lake City, urging listeners to help gather information.

Key points

The Disappearance of Rosie Tapia. Rosie Tapia, just 6 years old, vanished from her bedroom in 1995. Her case remains unsolved.
A Gruesome Discovery. Rosie's body was found in a canal, leading to a shocking turn in the investigation.
The Good Samaritan. A mysterious man returns Rosie to her home after an alleged playground accident, raising suspicions.
The Abduction of Rosie Tapia. An investigator suggests the abduction could have been a surveillance situation.
The Discovery of Rosie's Body. Rosie's body was found floating in a canal, leading to a homicide investigation.
Conflicting Autopsy Reports. The autopsy report lists drowning as the cause of death but indicates trauma.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

No fact is insignificant. No detail is too small.

6:33WatchMar 8, 2023

Tension

75/ 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.