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

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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 tell him a [Music] friend this week we are happy to be
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let's talk some true crime [Music] [Music] 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 bludgeon to death
some suffocated drowned burned or even dragged by a vehic 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 lowlife 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 rated 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 Topia was just 6 years old when she disappeared from her bedroom in the middle of of the night
back in August of 1995 Rosie lived with her family at the Heartland 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 who killed
rosie.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 new kids who did we
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 as 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 38525
3313 this number is answered by representatives of the family and not the police or you can email who killed Rosie
at 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 topia
case in detail and talk about some cases that share some commonalities with Rosie's case as we search for the man
that we called the Barbie doll killer this is a still unsolved homicide case of Rosie Topia and this is true crime
[Music] 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 or two on the their way to an apartment complex back in 1995 these apartments were called the
heartland Apartments located at 1616 West Snow Queen place this is a very large sprawling apartment complex
located in the Glendale neighborhood just 4 miles 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 Heartland Apartments
today if people want to look them up they are listed as Seasons at Pebble Creek Apartments these are very Nic
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 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 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 six-year-old Rosie Topia 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 the
inside of the bedroom there is a chest which is like a a dresser drawer when police arrive on the scene there is
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 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 is 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 Topia 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 moved from the water
at that time they very quickly identify the body to be that of Rosie Topia 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 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 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 Stones 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 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 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 change 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 in her 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 opened up the sister opened up
the window just to crack because it was hot so what law enforcement think is while 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 injury substained 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 beating 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 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 I you always say the
timeline matters but the devil is in the details as the captain said we have Roberto and Len who are the parents of
six-year-old Rosie Topia 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 four-year-old twins Robert and Angelica for the night
now around 700 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 which is a little surprising to me given that Rosy'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 has 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 and 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
six-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 learned 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
five six and seven-year-old children and I think anybody that had 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 kick Ked 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 or family members or 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 toia 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 verifi 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 Common Place 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 to 9:30
p.m. let's get back to the abduction in murder of Rosie Tapia after this quick beer
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freedom 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 Len topia and
her father Roberto toia went dancing at the LA frona 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 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 midlevel 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
in 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 TW bedroom apartment the basement level so if you are inside this bedroom inside of
Rosie's bedroom right you and I captain we're over 6 foot 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
uhhuh so if somebody came in there in the middle of the night like we all think happened this did not require a
ladder 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
Len and Roberto got home that night they get home around 2:30 a.m. Len 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 you know it's locked right this is those ones that you saw a lot in the 9s 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 effect now Len 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 mm 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 the screen is
removed and the Venetian blinds knocked to the floor from my understanding of this crime scene here Captain it is
exactly 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 the 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 meline McAn case where you have multiple kids in a room but only one of
them was abducted and that'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 nothing Burger 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 Pride 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
boyfriendboyfriend the 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 crowdsourcing 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 Len then calls 911
and phones family members and we have family members and and police both on the scene who arve 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 Abdu 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
yeah but you have to applaud them for that she has her brother or brother-in-law who's at Kinkos 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 not because a man by the name of Gustavo
abara was jogging with his dog and at 10:15 a.m. according to this report spots Rosy'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 f
ing 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 on this case list BL 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 Cy about the DNA and we'll get into that as we continue along but looking for physical evidence we know
that investigators publicly have stated that they looked 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 rain 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 their 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 upfront and Center
for a lot of the media attenion 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 good night when she
arrived at 2:30 in the morning right and there's 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 upfront 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 a on their way
out the door from the party because Len 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 3our time frame that they are concerned of and
they believe that that is the time frame in which Rosie Topia 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 Witnesses 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 four-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 Boogeyman right it has nothing to
do with the color of an individual well I think it' 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 Boogey Man 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 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 an 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
6 16 to 17 years of age with short dark hair and the eyewitness is a neighbor of
the topas yeah I believe at first uh they were stating okay he's wearing a white shirt he wear he's wearing
multicolored 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 drown 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 pie everything together because they need to know the
full story of what happened so they bring out blood hounds 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 blood hounds 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 blood hounds 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 perpetrator's 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 pants man 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 Topia 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 be good parents out there if your last name is good you should always name your son
related to Johnny beg good 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 five years locally in this case but this article itself is multiple Pages it's
pretty indepth it's pretty detailed and it's pretty thorough one thing I loved about this newspaper article and if 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 kids
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 mfbi and it's not just any agent we have
Kenneth Lanning there right and as said had I been reading this article in 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 parole leases 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 happen 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 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 Ro top so so we have a a a six-year-old that was abducted a sexually
assault possibly brutally beaten and drowned 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 uh for the
justice of her family and the Justice of the community but the safety of our community and the safety of our
children's 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 toia 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 what are we paying 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 an agent Lanning 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
rck he explained to us that it's very common to find serial rapists or abductors through these burglary reports
because often times they will get arrested for 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 as salent fleeing from the home and the individuals 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 then 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 passed 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 rck 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 followup [Music] 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 [Music]
[Applause] litter is it possible to predict the unpredictable can 3D printed life-size
organ models help to map out complex surgeries ahead of time is it possible it already is right here Mayo Clinic you
know where to go

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

Part 1 of 2

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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.

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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

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Brief Summary

The episode covers the unsolved murder of Rosie Tapia, discussing the investigation and ongoing search for justice.

Key points

The Disappearance of Rosie Tapia. Rosie, a 6-year-old girl, vanished from her bedroom in 1995, leading to a tragic discovery.
A Good Samaritan's Return. A mysterious man returns Rosie to her home after an incident at the playground.
A Disturbing Discovery. A jogger finds Rosy's body floating in a canal, leading to a homicide investigation.
Conflicting Evidence. The autopsy reveals trauma of a sexual nature, but conflicting reports complicate the case.
The Complicated Timeline of Rosie Tapia. Rosie Tapia's abduction case reveals a complex timeline filled with tension and uncertainty.
The Coco Man Misunderstanding. Robert's description of the 'Coco man' leads to misinterpretations by police.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Rosie was just 6 years old when she disappeared.

Introduction to the case of Rosie Tapia.

5:21WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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