August 26, 2025 • 40 mins
August 12, 2025, Los Angeles Investigators take a missing person report for 33-year-old wife and mother, Sheylla Cabrera. The next day Detectives locate security footage showing Sheylla's husband, Jossimar Cabrera, dragging a "large object" wrapped in material from their apartment complex. Sheylla's body is found the day after she is reported missing wrapped in a sheet/blanket and tossed down an embankment in the Angeles National Forest. When police try to meet with Jossimar Cabrera to notify him they found his wife, deceased, they discover he has packed up their three children and headed for Peru. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case and what type of evidence investigators will find inside the wrapping around the deceased mother of three, their now empty apartment and what type of digital forensic evidence might come into play.
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.00 Introduction - Sheylla Cabrera
03:33.49 Los Angeles County is huge
05:16.89 TMZ: Thirty Mile Zone
09:30.53 Suspect possibly caught dragging wife in a bag
10:37.54 Dave Talks about Movie he was in where he drug a body
14:31.19 Dead body is really "dead weight"
19:05.83 Body of Sheylla found one day after being reported missing
23:40.11 Cabrera flees before body found
28:50.65 Sheylla filed dv charge in Peru
34:10.07 Sheet will have evidence
38:17.06 Isolated in LA
39:57.35 Conclusion
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Backs with Joseph's gotten More. One of the things
that I absolutely love about Body Backs is that we
are not a regional show. We do cases. Dave and
I do cases from not just across America we do
(00:23):
we cover cases from all over the world. Okay. And
the reason I love that is not necessarily because we're covering,
you know, horrible death. It's the idea that that part
of my brain gets stimulated because I learn about new places.
And you know, just like offices that work death cases,
(00:48):
they vary from region to region. Okay, And I don't know.
Dave and I have covered cases out of India, Ireland,
Great Britain, Australia. We've had a bunch of those. We've
on several out of various Southeastern Asian countries, South America,
and of course all over North America, including Canada and Mexico.
(01:09):
And but you know, you learn, you pick up a
little bit, you know, and it's almost like, what's the
word you live vicariously, I think to a certain degree
because I love to travel. I love to travel and
kind of learn new things. And some people say I
don't want to go to Europe, I don't want to
go anywhere else with the US, and look, I understand that.
(01:31):
And here's why there are so many places in America
that I have yet to go. Some places on my
bucket list, like anything north of Boston, I've never been there.
I can't wait till Keimmy and I get to go
up there. But I've been to California quite a bit,
primarily La a little bit San Francisco. But there's always
(01:55):
something else to find and explore. Today, we're going to
talk about a case in actually Los Angeles County, and
I've never visited this location. And when talking with brother
Dave before this taping started, I expressed to him that
I had never really placed this particular town on my radar,
(02:21):
but boy does it prominently play in the case we're
going to discuss today. The case is involving a mama,
a mama with three babies and a husband. She's dead
(02:41):
and they've all vanished into thin air. Coming to you
from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks Dave. I was just
talking and I know I sound foolish, particularly coming from
(03:03):
someone that has spent a goodly portion of their life
in California. I never knew where Lancaster was. And even
beyond that, I always forget how big Los Angeles County
actually is. It's massive, I mean absolutely massive. It's got everything.
And people always say that, you know, you can you
(03:24):
can be skiing in the morning and surfing in the afternoon.
I don't buy that because I've been in the middle
of traffic in La so I don't Maybe, I don't know.
Maybe that was true in the early sixties. I don't know.
I don't think that that still applies. What say you,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It does apply during holidays. During holidays, Yeah, and when
you're talking about Big Bear, which is really when people
talk about going you know, you can go to the
mountains in the beach on the same day. They're really
talking about getting up in the morning and driving up
to Big if you're in Los Angeles or Orange County. Okay,
those are the two areas. But you mentioned how big
(04:04):
Los Angeles County is. It incorporates the Angelus National Forest
for the most part, and it really does stretch out.
So you know what one of the most popular pop
culture celebrity websites is TMZ. Yeah, all right, TMZ actually
stands for something thirty mile zone. It's the thirty miles zone.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
You do that, really? I do have that.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, they call that area the TMZ because that there's
a thirty mile zone where everything in Hollywood, in movies,
takes place, in TV. It's this area, and when you
think about it, you can you know, you've got this
thirty mile long and wide area that is Los Angeles
and Orange County mostly, and that's where all of your
(04:49):
stuff comes from that you watch on TV in theaters.
You know, that's where Germany anyway. But that's what TMZ
stands for in that So when we talk about this area,
you talk about Lancaster, it's just like any other place
you would talk about Pasadena, Pacuoeima, Ventura, you know, name
it at Placentia or York. Vilina in Orange County is
another city that melts into all the other cities unless
(05:13):
head out of town towards Big Bear. You know, you
can find comfort in knowing that there are places that
are not just cement and housing or buildings for business.
Lancaster is on that it's to the west, north and west,
I mean north and east rather of Los Angeles, so
that gives you an idea of what we're talking about.
(05:36):
But this is a case of it's domestic violence, Joe
and the reason it exploded onto the national spotlight. Sheila
Cabrera was reported missing and her They took the report
on August the twelfth. August thirteenth, the very next day,
(05:59):
investigators are able to locate a digital well today, we
know that everything is on camera. They actually found digital
footage surveillance of the apartment complex where Sheila Cabrera lived
with her husband and their three children. And on this
surveillance video they see her husband, Hoosamar Cabrera, dragging a
(06:26):
large job day, a large object that is wrapped in material. Okay, now,
if your wife is if you've reported your wife missing
and detectives see you on security footage dragging something in
the shape of a body wrapped in something else as
a disguise, yeah, they're going to put the highlight beams
(06:47):
on you. And they, being detectives, were able to take
it to the next level and that's where this whole
case exploded. You know, you and I have talked about
having b row footage for different cases like John Bana Ramsey.
When you've got video, you can run in the background
of a news report, it gains a lot more of
attention of the public. Brother, And that's what happens here.
(07:10):
As soon as that goes public. Joe, a guy dragging
something that looks like his missing wife's body out of
their apartment complex. Yeah, that's going to get your news coverage.
And that's why it exploded the way it did.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, it's it's quite amazing. I got to tell you,
it's one. It's one of the more disturbing video images
that I've seen. And it's not necessarily for the faint
of heart, all right, but it's out there. Everyone can
see it, and I urge you just to kind of
(07:47):
understand put this in context if you have not been
following following this case. Look at the struggle that this
grown man is having, and you can't look at that
and not at least at least think there might be
(08:08):
human remains in Some people have called it a sheet,
some people have called it a back. It looks like
a sheet. To me, it almost looks like a fitted sheet.
And yeah, and look, you know, because the elasticity in
there along the edges, it'll kind of pop together anyway.
(08:30):
The one thing about it though, that I didn't. Granted,
we only have this in profile, and it's there for
a few seconds and he I hate to say this, man,
it's so disrespectful. He's literally dragging this object across a
concrete surface, all right. You can tell that it's poured concrete.
(08:50):
And if this is in fact the remains of his
wife that are being drug how incredibly disrespectful. You know,
you and I we spend a lot of time, and
I know because I know your heart and you know mine.
We're advocates for the dead, all right, because nobody else
(09:11):
really talks up for them, you know. I mean, I've
always viewed myself that way, and I think some of
that's translated to you, because you know, you have this
awareness that people will do any and everything to dead.
You and I have proven that over and we've got
an entire catalog now of over four hundred episodes and
body Bags. How many of those episodes would you say
(09:35):
the dead are horribly disrespected? And I'm not just talking
about the homicides that we've covered. I'm talking about the
treatment of remains afterwards. And this is a glaring example.
This almost looks like this almost looks like a guy
that is that stands stands the potential being evicted out
(09:56):
of his apartment. He's trying to load everything up in
there and drag it out, putting this truck so that
he can save and it's not going to be put
out by the curb or he's hauling tobree out again.
You measure that against against the idea that this is
the mama of his children, yep, you know, And that's
that's you know, the police have not definitely said that.
(10:18):
They've not said because they can't necessarily, but just just
that premise, you know, thinking about that, that this is
the way he's treating these remains, I think that it goes.
It factors in quite a bit to if you're doing
the calculus on maybe how he viewed viewed her in
(10:39):
life and how he viewed himself perhaps if he if
he did harm to her, and if he's treating her
remains like this, My Lord Dave, what was life like
inside that apartment, buddy? It must have been. And you've
got three babies in there with him too.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And this one really hit me square in the eyes
when I saw it, Joe, And let me tell you why.
In twenty twelve, I started a movie called River of Life.
That's the other part of the Dave macworld is acting.
I've done a number of films and TV shows, and
I was starring in this independent film called River of Life,
(11:17):
and in it, I actually killed my wife and I
drag her body wrapped in a blanket, out in the
back and I'm caught on security film doing this in
the movie. And when we were shooting that scene, it
was very difficult for you know, we didn't want to
have me dragging a body. We wanted to have me
(11:38):
dragging something else. You know, you don't want to drag
a human being out like that. I mean, especially on
a low budget independent film, you know. And so we
actually went through this process of trying to find the
right amount of weight to use, and it ended up
being Okay, you're going to have to lay down here
for a minute and let me see what it's like
to pull you so that I can act this out properly.
(12:00):
It ain't easy, MANA.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Thank you for saying that term, because I don't think
that most people understand when they hear the term dead weight.
They do not fully appreciate that what's being inferred there.
And if I can just briefly explain that when well,
when in life, and just think about it. If you've
got kids, grandkids, I don't know, maybe your spouse. I
(12:26):
still my back won't allow me to, you know, lift
my wife up and twirl around the house like I
used to maybe a decade ago. But I try, I
really do. We'll go walzing around every now and then
in the living room. But you know, there's there's a
thing when someone is alive, Okay, someone is alive, people
(12:48):
don't realize that the living person is helping you. They
don't realize that because you know, your body goes tense,
and believe it or not, it's almost like you've got
a built in gyroscope in your brain and it kind
of adjust It adjusts your center of balance so that
if one person is swaying one way, you can counterbalance it.
(13:09):
And it's something with the equilibrium that happens in your brain. Dude,
when you have a dead body and you're trying to
do this, they're not going to cooperate. And it's not
even like it's it's not let's say you've got one
hundred pound person, okay, one hundred pound person that's deceased.
(13:32):
It's not like picking up one hundred pound log. The
log is static. Okay, now it's going to be heavy obviously,
given that if you're capable of lifting one hundred pounds,
which I don't know if I am anymore, I might
be maybe I've got to go put that to the
desk this afternoon. But when you pick up a log
that's static and you tote it, put it in terms
(13:54):
of the south we're toting it somewhere. It's a big difference.
Then if you've got a body where the weight of
the head is distributed in one area and you've got
the feet down at the other area, and then you've
got the mid torso and it's always shifting, you know, bodies.
(14:15):
Bodies are even if they're stiff relative to you know,
like riger that sort of thing, they're not going to
help you at all, and it makes it very difficult.
And so the default position, I think, with somebody that's
trying to move a body and try to get it
to a conveyance where they can take it out where
they think that no one is going to find it,
(14:37):
the default is maybe to throw it in the most
convenient thing like a sheet, and drag it to they
get it to the vehicle. Dave, let me throw a
(15:03):
name out to you and automatically, I think you're going
to recognize it. Okay, you're in van der Schlut. Who
is that? Hate that guy?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
You know, I don't hate many, but he's right up
there at the top of the most scummy, horrible evil
people on the planet of the year. You know, Natalie
Holloway was not his only murder victim. He actually might
not have been his first, but first one that he
got caught. But it was the second one, almost on
the anniversary of Natalie's death, that he killed after she
(15:40):
realized who he was. And he killed her in such
a way in a hotel room that it goes beyond
what human being can do in terms of violence. It
was animalistic, Yeah, it really was.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
And plus plus you know, I'll try to stay off
my moral high horse here, but it's really hard hard.
Children turn out many ways the way they're raised. Right,
it's you know, when you give them a lot of
latitude and yeah, honey, just go do whatever you want
to do. And that's what happened. Well, guess where he's
cooling his heels now, he's done Peru and it's a
(16:19):
god awful situation to be in, because if you think
American jails are bad, American prisons are bad. I don't
think that people can even begin to fathom what Peru
would be like. All right, there's tough and then there's
Peru tough. All right, ain't the same thing. It's horrible
(16:39):
and he's in that world. But interestingly enough, I think
that vander Salute, if he had it to do over again,
he would you know. Nancy, Me, Nancy and Mac were
actually at the Federal courthouse in Birmingham when he was
in rained that day and then they flew him, you know,
flew him out. That was part of the agreement. Flew
(17:00):
him out and he went back to Peru. The case
that we're talking about today out of California, this individual
apparently that perpetrated this crime has decided that it would
be better in Peru than to be here in the US,
(17:23):
and not only better for him, but better for his kids.
So after we've got this view and all points, bulletins
sent out for this missing mother, they recover a ren
cam video. Suddenly they're looking for mom and dad and
(17:44):
kids are nowhere to be found. Next thing they know,
Peru pops up Peru pops up and they've located these
three kids. He's still he's still out and about, maybe
in Peru, wandering about who. Who knows. I don't know
how hard disks cross borders and that sort of thing
down there. But as he just vanished into the wind,
(18:05):
I don't know, but I know that the US government's
actively looking to have him extra dieted if they get
their hands on him.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
You know, it was interesting that we mentioned how investigators
found the video surveillance video showing hosts of market. By
the way, he has been charged with murder, so we
can say murder suspect Hosmar Cabrera was seen on this
video dragging the what is assumed to be his wife
(18:33):
and when the investigators were searching. Now, in this day
and age, Joe, we have seen a number of cases
where investigators were able to use surveillance video to track
a person as they went about their crime. They use
cell phone data, they use security film, and when they
know a direction a car is headed and think where
they might be going, they're able to anticipate and find
(18:56):
digital evidence of their trip and they can almost map
it out digitally, which is what led them into the
Los Angeles National Forest and our Angelus National Forest. I
always say that wrong. Just FYI, No, it is the
Angelus National Forest, not lost. But anyway, that's where The
very next day after she's reported missing, they're able to
(19:16):
find her. The Montrose Mountain Search and Rescue Team discover
this object similar to the one Cabrera was seen dragging,
and it's down the side of an embankment. You mentioned
the disrespect he showed, and it's like he drug it
and just he treated it worse than you could treat
a piece of furniture. Joe, just throwing it down an
(19:39):
embankment and then loads up the kids, takes them to Peru,
getting them out of this country as quick as he could.
They were able to locate the children, and the children
there are three of them. They are safe. They were
removed from that custody. They're now being taken care of
by somebody who has the total responsibility of not harming them.
But still looking for Cabrera at this point, Joe, But
(20:00):
what do we know about what kind of life they
were living? Do we know? Was their abuse in this family?
Was she the victim of domestic violence?
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's it's they haven't had a big reveal at this
point in time, and we were kind of thin on
facts at this moment in time. But something, something apparently
triggered this behavior to the point and again you refer
to him, Dave as a murder suspect at this point
in time, he's no longer, you know, just a person
(20:32):
of interest, all right, because they've hung charges on him.
Ellie County District Attorney has, and so they have some
kind of information. And I would imagine that one of
the things that would happen because their apartment was actually
located in Lancaster, which just so folks understand Lancaster. They're
(20:52):
saying that the Angelo's National Forest and it's kind of
co mingled with some other federal prop in there. And
I found it kind of interesting geographically, how would you
get from Lancaster to I think it's Arcadia, which is
the address that the National Forest actually carries. And of
(21:13):
course it can carry an address, it doesn't necessarily mean
she was found in that little town, but that's the
address of the Angelus National Forest right there. So you
have to really do some serious skill driving to get
from Lancaster over to that point. If it's on the
(21:35):
further southern location adjacent to this little town, which I
would assume is where the main gate is to get
in to the National Forest, or approximating that area. And
it's about an hour and fifteen minute drive from Lancaster.
So I'm envisioning my mind. If he has a conveyance
(21:57):
that he places her body in, does he go out
gather the children and their belongings and just follow me
here and he throws belongings like luggage. You know, everybody
pack a bag or I'm gonna pack a bag for you.
Throw that in there into the conveyance and they hop
(22:19):
in the car and you know, daddy, where are we going?
We got to make one stop. Well, the one stop
is along this isolated area because man, you talk about wilderness,
I mean it is. It's impressive. It's because it's so vast,
incredibly vast. So do you have your kids in the
(22:42):
car with you when you're doing this? Because the next
stop is going to be the airport. Now I don't
know where he at this point time. I don't know
where he bounced out of. At this point in time,
the obvious obvious would be, you know, I would think lax,
But there are other airports around them. You know, did
he head down to Orange County and that John Wayne
(23:02):
Airport down there. I don't know if they have the
ability to get you to Peru. You might have multiple
stopovers in various locations. I guess there are direct flights
out of Los Angeles to Peru. I'm assuming that there
probably are. But logistically this is an absolute nightmare in
order to facilitate, or you could look at it from
(23:23):
the perspective that it's kind of simple for him. Yeah,
kind of simple because I'm gonna just take her dumper,
take the kids, and we're heading out.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, you know, Okay reported missing on the twelfth, Joe. Yeah,
when they go looking for him, you know, they find
the digital video of him dragging what they believe is
her body. Well, when they go back to talk to him,
he's gone.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
He bolted.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You know, the missing person thing is filed before they
find the body, he's already gone. So yeah, I mean,
going from Lancaster to lax and getting out of town,
that's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I wouldn't Yeah, I wouldn't think so. And you know,
his vehicle too. I think my thought is that once
the vehicle's got to be somewhere adjacent to that. For
those of you that have never been to Lax, it's
kind of a nightmare. Of course, I measure everything by Atlanta,
(24:20):
which is a perpetual nightmare that I fly out of.
But Lax is in and of itself, you know, a
horror show most of the time. But you have to
have that vehicle somewhere unless you dump it somewhere else
catch an uber. But again, that's going to put you
on on the radar, you know, because now you've got
an uber driver that sees you with three kids and
(24:43):
he drops you off at a specific criminal at Lax.
But I don't know how much this got cared because
you know, I was thinking about what you said just
a second ago about you know, the movie that you
were shooting, and that was all the way back in
twenty twelve. Day. Yeah, think about the world how much
it's changed since twelve that we're in now where there
(25:06):
is videography everywhere you go. I mean, you know, ring
cams are on everything. Do you remember when the coburger
thing dropped, they were looking for camera footage. And this
is something I was not aware of because I'm not
in that atmosphere to have a tesla, But I didn't
realize that tesla's have. You know, they have the ability
(25:28):
to like catch images and that sort of thing the
people that are passing by. I guess it initiates somehow.
I'm not really sure how that works. They're everywhere day,
I mean, just everywhere you can be snapped doing anything,
and in this particular instance, we've got a pretty substantial
bit of video evidence of him moving moving this item
(25:50):
across the ground and where she is deposited out here
in this location. I'm wondering what state her remains were in.
I'm wondering about accessibility because when I hear that a
body has been found in an isolated location like this,
(26:11):
and it has been how'd you frame it to kind
of dump down the side of the hill? Yes, down
in an embankment. This is not showing due care to
human remains. This is speed. This is speed. This is
like you're just kind of rolling the body off. One
thing that came into play here, though. One thing that
(26:34):
came in to play here is the fact that the
police did in fact mention that item that maybe cocooned
her body. It appears to be perhaps a green colored
cheek from their home, Dave, I wanted to return back
(27:10):
to a theme that kind of inhabits a lot of
our discussions on body backs. And you know, I've always
held that, you know, I think that the most, probably
the vast majority of homicides that are committed in our
(27:31):
country are as a result of some kind of domestic violence.
You know, because contrary to what people think, it's not
the stranger in the dark alley. It's just not. I mean,
it does happen. Obviously, it happens. Okay, nobody you know,
lose your mind. It does happen. But you're generally going
to get into a beef with somebody you're inhabiting the
(27:52):
same space with, all right, and it turns very violent.
We talked about the degree of violence here with domestic violence.
You had mentioned history of domestic violence.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
What have you got his mother, her mother, Sheila's mom
said that her daughter, you know, they lived in Peru
before coming to Southern California, and while in Peru, according
to Sheila's mother, she had reported him for domestic violence
(28:27):
in Peru and the last time that they spoke. You know,
you got that whole control thing, right. A lot of
men who abuse their spouse controlled them, and one of
the control mechanisms is to a remove all their support.
And what did he do? She reports him for domestic
violence in Peru. He loads up the family and moves
(28:49):
to La where she knows nobody. And that came out
at the vigil. Friends and neighbors, coworkers, they actually got
together and did a vigil for Shela. You know, remember
the murder victim, not another one. That kind of domestic
violence rallied to a degree, and one of them was
talking about how that she didn't have any family in
(29:12):
the United States, and this friend said, we have to
be her voice. She has no he she had been
totally separated from any kind of a support. So she
reports him for abuse in Peru. He loads up her
and his kids and brings them here. So and then
you know, obviously, well, no, he has been charged with
her murder. He hasn't been convicted. He is charged with murder.
(29:33):
And then the first thing he does reports are missing
heads to Peru with the kids. The children are being
taken care of it by her mother.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
By the way, well, I know that I can almost
bet that at this point in time, they've already looked
into how many calls were made at their residence, uh,
both with you know, and they would they would look
at it from the perspective of Lancaster PD that would
work that area. And also Los Angeles can't share his office.
(30:04):
If anything else that happened, you know, that might you know,
maybe they got into a fight in a store, or
he was seen hurting her or abusing her in any
number of ways.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
And John, I got a question for you about the body.
And okay, we saw him dragging what we believed to
be her body. And okay, if he reports you're missing
on the twelfth, so let's we're going to have to
assume that was the a day after or the day
that she died. Yeah, and so they find her body
the next day, wrapped in this blanket or sheet. What
(30:38):
kind of information? What kind of forensic evidence are we
going to find wrapped in this sheet? Is it going
to be a good thing for him or a bad
thing for him?
Speaker 1 (30:48):
That it's going to be a bad thing, because if
you married that up, what did I tell you? What
did I say just a second ago? What kind of
surface were they on? They weren't a concrete surface. And
that's all we can see, all right, So anybody that
is hearing my voice right now, the next time you
go outside, if you've got a sidewalk, if you've got
a sidewalk outside of your house, or maybe a walkway
(31:08):
that leads to you know, your garage or whatever it is,
look down just for a second, take your hand and
place it on that surface. Okay, place it on the surface,
and just gently rub your hand across the top of it.
It's any irregular surface, all right. And even if you've
got like newly poured concrete, it's still it is very abrasive.
(31:30):
So that sheet, to me, which I think it's a
sheet Dave, is not going to provide very much protection.
When we were little boys and mom had us dressed
in our tough skin jeans, you know, even if you
fell in your tough skin jeans, you know which would
stand up by themselves. Look those up. If you're not
familiar with what Dave and I are referring to. Even
(31:52):
if you're wearing tough skin jeans and you pound it
on your knees when you hit the ground, you're still
gonna have abrasions on there. Well. The dead can actually
have pattern abrasions as well. Now they're they're not really
abrasions in the sense that we think about in dwelling hemorrhage,
because the dead don't hemorrhage. But what you can see
(32:12):
there are you think about drag marks in the dirt day, Well,
you can have these impressions on the body as it's
being drug there. Most of the time, they're going to
have kind of a linear appearance, and they'll be clustered
almost like concurrently with a surface that you're dragging them
over the top of, and it will the abrasiveness is
(32:35):
so substantial that it will penetrate through that sheet. It's
a very tiny membrane. It's not like you have them.
I don't know, it's not like you you you have
them in a multi multi layered uh. You know, even
a body bag. A body bag is not going you
won't see those kind of a braided areas on their
(32:57):
post mortal abrasions. If you will, so there'll be evidence.
And look, man, if you take that, if you take
that video and you analyze it compared to the way
you think, and they can do this with computer analyzation
day where they can they can actually get an idea
(33:18):
the position of her body. I'm thinking she's laying like
in what we would call a right recumbent position, where's
her right side is making contact with the ground, her
left side is up and she's almost in a fetal
position or the body is and it's being drug So
I would look on like the right contacting side of
the body, maybe points of the shoulder, the hips, that
(33:41):
sort of thing, and you can actually see those kind
of striations that would appear on the body. That's a
big piece of evidence, man, I mean a huge piece
of evidence. And then if you find those fibers, which
I think you probably could embedded, and those insults all
along there, that's going to be a telltale thing too.
(34:02):
Here's another piece of evidence. You know. I don't know
where you get your sheets from, but most of the time,
if you buy a package of sheets, all right, you're
gonna get a fitted sheet. You can get a standard sheet,
you know, and you get pillow cases. Right Well, are
there other sheets and pillowcases that match that lot that
(34:24):
this covering came from, all right, still remaining in the house,
And that again is another point where you can marry
up evidence. You know, we've got something that originated from
the same original pack. Here Okay, so you've got that.
I'm very curious because I didn't. And again we're kind
of at a disadvantage of looking at the CCTV. But
(34:48):
I didn't see any kind of like big stains on
the outside of the sheet that would indicate that sheets
profusely or the body is profusely bled. Sometimes you'll see
those kind of super saturated areas. I'm not seeing that here.
That doesn't mean that she's not bleeding. But what I'm
interested in is going back into the house and searching
the bedroom. You know, mom and dad want to have
(35:11):
a discussion. They go in the bedroom, shut the door
to the kids, or somewhere else. I guess he could
have chased her through the house, you know, whatever may
have happened. But I'm going to go through that house
room by room, inch by inch, and I'm going to
look for any kind of bloody deposition and there anything
whatsoever that types out to her. You know, you can
say it's amazing. It's one thing to say, well, we
(35:35):
found her DNA at a scene, all right, because the
standard line now it's almost wrote everybody knows that, well,
you expect to find her DNA there because she lives there.
You don't expect to find copious amounts of blood that
married back to her. Okay, that cannot as easily be
explained away because blood always denotes injury. So if I've
(35:56):
got blood deposition a scene, I'm thinking, okay, somebody was in,
you know, prior to this. This isn't just like passively
touching a surface and you're leaving you know, dead skin
cells behind, but touch DnaA as something completely different. I
want to look there. I want to know about the car.
The car is huge here, because if the car is
(36:17):
being used to transport her body, I can tell you
they didn't put the body into the back of an
uber and drive through the Angelus National Forest and say, hey, driver,
can you stop here and let me take care of
this that I have in the back of your car.
Here it's his vehicle or vehicle he has access to.
So what was going on inside of that vehicle was
(36:38):
and my god, this is terrifying to think about. I
can't help myself though. I got to say this. Chris Watts, Yep,
she was in that back seat, she was in the floorboard,
and those babies were in the back seat with her.
You remember that, ye, And he was transporting, transporting them
out there with those babies in there with their mama,
you know, like in the cab of the vehicle. I
(37:01):
don't know. I mean, that's that's one of the things,
you know, that comes to mind for me. What what
can these children communicate about that fateful moment, you know,
when they're being driven around and the next thing you know,
they're sitting. They're sitting in a terminal in lax and
it's wheels up, baby, They're heading south. And then I think,
(37:23):
finally I'm going to be really interested in the scene
itself because we believe if we think that her body
is cocooned in this material and kind of pressed down
slope or pushed down slope, is there anything else that
he took and kind of tossed out, you know, that
(37:43):
approximates the body, or was there anything else in that cocooning,
like you know, because I've had cases where I had
one case I remember specifically where shower curtain was involved
to transport the body in the person who been stabbed,
and they took the knife they'd used and wrapped it
up in the shower curtain too. Thank you very much.
(38:03):
We really appreciate your efforts here because that helped us,
you know, because you've got literally the murder weapon there
that's been gifted to you by the perpetrator. So you
have those three points contact here where you're wondering what
else is there that's going to tell this poor woman's
story because she can't I mean, her light's been snuffed
(38:25):
out now and she can't convey to us the horror
that she probably endured, and not just in the moment
of her death, but Lord only knows months leading up
to it. You know, he's going to drag her away
from her family in Peru because he's been reported for
DV and he's going to land in Los Angeles, where
she's isolated, doesn't know anybody. I wonder how much access
(38:47):
he gave her to a phone, you know, how much
was she allowed to work outside the home? Was she
allowed to even answer a phone? Did he have her
trapped in the house? I don't know. It's certainly horrible.
And of course these kids are Dave, They're just they're
left and the way can you, okay, can you imagine
this can't find your daddy? Your mom is dead and
(39:10):
now and granted you said that they're with her Grandma,
which is great Grandma's are the best creatures God ever
put on the face of the planet as far as
I'm concerned. They're with her, but there's only so much
solace you can take in that in this old world, Dave,
and that's where these three kids are right now. They're
down there and their mom and dad are completely gone. Man.
(39:33):
We're going to keep our eye on this case because
I can tell you there is going to be much
much more to be revealed about this, particularly from an
evidentiary standpoint. We still have yet to answer what method
was employed to take this poor mother's life. We're going
(39:54):
to keep our eye on it for you. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this his bodybags
Body Backs with Joseph's gotten More. One of the things
that I absolutely love about Body Backs is that we
are not a regional show. We do cases. Dave and
I do cases from not just across America we do
(00:23):
we cover cases from all over the world. Okay. And
the reason I love that is not necessarily because we're covering,
you know, horrible death. It's the idea that that part
of my brain gets stimulated because I learn about new places.
And you know, just like offices that work death cases,
(00:48):
they vary from region to region. Okay, And I don't know.
Dave and I have covered cases out of India, Ireland,
Great Britain, Australia. We've had a bunch of those. We've
on several out of various Southeastern Asian countries, South America,
and of course all over North America, including Canada and Mexico.
(01:09):
And but you know, you learn, you pick up a
little bit, you know, and it's almost like, what's the
word you live vicariously, I think to a certain degree
because I love to travel. I love to travel and
kind of learn new things. And some people say I
don't want to go to Europe, I don't want to
go anywhere else with the US, and look, I understand that.
(01:31):
And here's why there are so many places in America
that I have yet to go. Some places on my
bucket list, like anything north of Boston, I've never been there.
I can't wait till Keimmy and I get to go
up there. But I've been to California quite a bit,
primarily La a little bit San Francisco. But there's always
(01:55):
something else to find and explore. Today, we're going to
talk about a case in actually Los Angeles County, and
I've never visited this location. And when talking with brother
Dave before this taping started, I expressed to him that
I had never really placed this particular town on my radar,
(02:21):
but boy does it prominently play in the case we're
going to discuss today. The case is involving a mama,
a mama with three babies and a husband. She's dead
(02:41):
and they've all vanished into thin air. Coming to you
from the beautiful campus of Jacksonville State University. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks Dave. I was just
talking and I know I sound foolish, particularly coming from
(03:03):
someone that has spent a goodly portion of their life
in California. I never knew where Lancaster was. And even
beyond that, I always forget how big Los Angeles County
actually is. It's massive, I mean absolutely massive. It's got everything.
And people always say that, you know, you can you
(03:24):
can be skiing in the morning and surfing in the afternoon.
I don't buy that because I've been in the middle
of traffic in La so I don't Maybe, I don't know.
Maybe that was true in the early sixties. I don't know.
I don't think that that still applies. What say you,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It does apply during holidays. During holidays, Yeah, and when
you're talking about Big Bear, which is really when people
talk about going you know, you can go to the
mountains in the beach on the same day. They're really
talking about getting up in the morning and driving up
to Big if you're in Los Angeles or Orange County. Okay,
those are the two areas. But you mentioned how big
(04:04):
Los Angeles County is. It incorporates the Angelus National Forest
for the most part, and it really does stretch out.
So you know what one of the most popular pop
culture celebrity websites is TMZ. Yeah, all right, TMZ actually
stands for something thirty mile zone. It's the thirty miles zone.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
You do that, really? I do have that.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, they call that area the TMZ because that there's
a thirty mile zone where everything in Hollywood, in movies,
takes place, in TV. It's this area, and when you
think about it, you can you know, you've got this
thirty mile long and wide area that is Los Angeles
and Orange County mostly, and that's where all of your
(04:49):
stuff comes from that you watch on TV in theaters.
You know, that's where Germany anyway. But that's what TMZ
stands for in that So when we talk about this area,
you talk about Lancaster, it's just like any other place
you would talk about Pasadena, Pacuoeima, Ventura, you know, name
it at Placentia or York. Vilina in Orange County is
another city that melts into all the other cities unless
(05:13):
head out of town towards Big Bear. You know, you
can find comfort in knowing that there are places that
are not just cement and housing or buildings for business.
Lancaster is on that it's to the west, north and west,
I mean north and east rather of Los Angeles, so
that gives you an idea of what we're talking about.
(05:36):
But this is a case of it's domestic violence, Joe
and the reason it exploded onto the national spotlight. Sheila
Cabrera was reported missing and her They took the report
on August the twelfth. August thirteenth, the very next day,
(05:59):
investigators are able to locate a digital well today, we
know that everything is on camera. They actually found digital
footage surveillance of the apartment complex where Sheila Cabrera lived
with her husband and their three children. And on this
surveillance video they see her husband, Hoosamar Cabrera, dragging a
(06:26):
large job day, a large object that is wrapped in material. Okay, now,
if your wife is if you've reported your wife missing
and detectives see you on security footage dragging something in
the shape of a body wrapped in something else as
a disguise, yeah, they're going to put the highlight beams
(06:47):
on you. And they, being detectives, were able to take
it to the next level and that's where this whole
case exploded. You know, you and I have talked about
having b row footage for different cases like John Bana Ramsey.
When you've got video, you can run in the background
of a news report, it gains a lot more of
attention of the public. Brother, And that's what happens here.
(07:10):
As soon as that goes public. Joe, a guy dragging
something that looks like his missing wife's body out of
their apartment complex. Yeah, that's going to get your news coverage.
And that's why it exploded the way it did.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, it's it's quite amazing. I got to tell you,
it's one. It's one of the more disturbing video images
that I've seen. And it's not necessarily for the faint
of heart, all right, but it's out there. Everyone can
see it, and I urge you just to kind of
(07:47):
understand put this in context if you have not been
following following this case. Look at the struggle that this
grown man is having, and you can't look at that
and not at least at least think there might be
(08:08):
human remains in Some people have called it a sheet,
some people have called it a back. It looks like
a sheet. To me, it almost looks like a fitted sheet.
And yeah, and look, you know, because the elasticity in
there along the edges, it'll kind of pop together anyway.
(08:30):
The one thing about it though, that I didn't. Granted,
we only have this in profile, and it's there for
a few seconds and he I hate to say this, man,
it's so disrespectful. He's literally dragging this object across a
concrete surface, all right. You can tell that it's poured concrete.
(08:50):
And if this is in fact the remains of his
wife that are being drug how incredibly disrespectful. You know,
you and I we spend a lot of time, and
I know because I know your heart and you know mine.
We're advocates for the dead, all right, because nobody else
(09:11):
really talks up for them, you know. I mean, I've
always viewed myself that way, and I think some of
that's translated to you, because you know, you have this
awareness that people will do any and everything to dead.
You and I have proven that over and we've got
an entire catalog now of over four hundred episodes and
body Bags. How many of those episodes would you say
(09:35):
the dead are horribly disrespected? And I'm not just talking
about the homicides that we've covered. I'm talking about the
treatment of remains afterwards. And this is a glaring example.
This almost looks like this almost looks like a guy
that is that stands stands the potential being evicted out
(09:56):
of his apartment. He's trying to load everything up in
there and drag it out, putting this truck so that
he can save and it's not going to be put
out by the curb or he's hauling tobree out again.
You measure that against against the idea that this is
the mama of his children, yep, you know, And that's
that's you know, the police have not definitely said that.
(10:18):
They've not said because they can't necessarily, but just just
that premise, you know, thinking about that, that this is
the way he's treating these remains, I think that it goes.
It factors in quite a bit to if you're doing
the calculus on maybe how he viewed viewed her in
(10:39):
life and how he viewed himself perhaps if he if
he did harm to her, and if he's treating her
remains like this, My Lord Dave, what was life like
inside that apartment, buddy? It must have been. And you've
got three babies in there with him too.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And this one really hit me square in the eyes
when I saw it, Joe, And let me tell you why.
In twenty twelve, I started a movie called River of Life.
That's the other part of the Dave macworld is acting.
I've done a number of films and TV shows, and
I was starring in this independent film called River of Life,
(11:17):
and in it, I actually killed my wife and I
drag her body wrapped in a blanket, out in the
back and I'm caught on security film doing this in
the movie. And when we were shooting that scene, it
was very difficult for you know, we didn't want to
have me dragging a body. We wanted to have me
(11:38):
dragging something else. You know, you don't want to drag
a human being out like that. I mean, especially on
a low budget independent film, you know. And so we
actually went through this process of trying to find the
right amount of weight to use, and it ended up
being Okay, you're going to have to lay down here
for a minute and let me see what it's like
to pull you so that I can act this out properly.
(12:00):
It ain't easy, MANA.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Thank you for saying that term, because I don't think
that most people understand when they hear the term dead weight.
They do not fully appreciate that what's being inferred there.
And if I can just briefly explain that when well,
when in life, and just think about it. If you've
got kids, grandkids, I don't know, maybe your spouse. I
(12:26):
still my back won't allow me to, you know, lift
my wife up and twirl around the house like I
used to maybe a decade ago. But I try, I
really do. We'll go walzing around every now and then
in the living room. But you know, there's there's a
thing when someone is alive, Okay, someone is alive, people
(12:48):
don't realize that the living person is helping you. They
don't realize that because you know, your body goes tense,
and believe it or not, it's almost like you've got
a built in gyroscope in your brain and it kind
of adjust It adjusts your center of balance so that
if one person is swaying one way, you can counterbalance it.
(13:09):
And it's something with the equilibrium that happens in your brain. Dude,
when you have a dead body and you're trying to
do this, they're not going to cooperate. And it's not
even like it's it's not let's say you've got one
hundred pound person, okay, one hundred pound person that's deceased.
(13:32):
It's not like picking up one hundred pound log. The
log is static. Okay, now it's going to be heavy obviously,
given that if you're capable of lifting one hundred pounds,
which I don't know if I am anymore, I might
be maybe I've got to go put that to the
desk this afternoon. But when you pick up a log
that's static and you tote it, put it in terms
(13:54):
of the south we're toting it somewhere. It's a big difference.
Then if you've got a body where the weight of
the head is distributed in one area and you've got
the feet down at the other area, and then you've
got the mid torso and it's always shifting, you know, bodies.
(14:15):
Bodies are even if they're stiff relative to you know,
like riger that sort of thing, they're not going to
help you at all, and it makes it very difficult.
And so the default position, I think, with somebody that's
trying to move a body and try to get it
to a conveyance where they can take it out where
they think that no one is going to find it,
(14:37):
the default is maybe to throw it in the most
convenient thing like a sheet, and drag it to they
get it to the vehicle. Dave, let me throw a
(15:03):
name out to you and automatically, I think you're going
to recognize it. Okay, you're in van der Schlut. Who
is that? Hate that guy?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
You know, I don't hate many, but he's right up
there at the top of the most scummy, horrible evil
people on the planet of the year. You know, Natalie
Holloway was not his only murder victim. He actually might
not have been his first, but first one that he
got caught. But it was the second one, almost on
the anniversary of Natalie's death, that he killed after she
(15:40):
realized who he was. And he killed her in such
a way in a hotel room that it goes beyond
what human being can do in terms of violence. It
was animalistic, Yeah, it really was.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
And plus plus you know, I'll try to stay off
my moral high horse here, but it's really hard hard.
Children turn out many ways the way they're raised. Right,
it's you know, when you give them a lot of
latitude and yeah, honey, just go do whatever you want
to do. And that's what happened. Well, guess where he's
cooling his heels now, he's done Peru and it's a
(16:19):
god awful situation to be in, because if you think
American jails are bad, American prisons are bad. I don't
think that people can even begin to fathom what Peru
would be like. All right, there's tough and then there's
Peru tough. All right, ain't the same thing. It's horrible
(16:39):
and he's in that world. But interestingly enough, I think
that vander Salute, if he had it to do over again,
he would you know. Nancy, Me, Nancy and Mac were
actually at the Federal courthouse in Birmingham when he was
in rained that day and then they flew him, you know,
flew him out. That was part of the agreement. Flew
(17:00):
him out and he went back to Peru. The case
that we're talking about today out of California, this individual
apparently that perpetrated this crime has decided that it would
be better in Peru than to be here in the US,
(17:23):
and not only better for him, but better for his kids.
So after we've got this view and all points, bulletins
sent out for this missing mother, they recover a ren
cam video. Suddenly they're looking for mom and dad and
(17:44):
kids are nowhere to be found. Next thing they know,
Peru pops up Peru pops up and they've located these
three kids. He's still he's still out and about, maybe
in Peru, wandering about who. Who knows. I don't know
how hard disks cross borders and that sort of thing
down there. But as he just vanished into the wind,
(18:05):
I don't know, but I know that the US government's
actively looking to have him extra dieted if they get
their hands on him.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
You know, it was interesting that we mentioned how investigators
found the video surveillance video showing hosts of market. By
the way, he has been charged with murder, so we
can say murder suspect Hosmar Cabrera was seen on this
video dragging the what is assumed to be his wife
(18:33):
and when the investigators were searching. Now, in this day
and age, Joe, we have seen a number of cases
where investigators were able to use surveillance video to track
a person as they went about their crime. They use
cell phone data, they use security film, and when they
know a direction a car is headed and think where
they might be going, they're able to anticipate and find
(18:56):
digital evidence of their trip and they can almost map
it out digitally, which is what led them into the
Los Angeles National Forest and our Angelus National Forest. I
always say that wrong. Just FYI, No, it is the
Angelus National Forest, not lost. But anyway, that's where The
very next day after she's reported missing, they're able to
(19:16):
find her. The Montrose Mountain Search and Rescue Team discover
this object similar to the one Cabrera was seen dragging,
and it's down the side of an embankment. You mentioned
the disrespect he showed, and it's like he drug it
and just he treated it worse than you could treat
a piece of furniture. Joe, just throwing it down an
(19:39):
embankment and then loads up the kids, takes them to Peru,
getting them out of this country as quick as he could.
They were able to locate the children, and the children
there are three of them. They are safe. They were
removed from that custody. They're now being taken care of
by somebody who has the total responsibility of not harming them.
But still looking for Cabrera at this point, Joe, But
(20:00):
what do we know about what kind of life they
were living? Do we know? Was their abuse in this family?
Was she the victim of domestic violence?
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's it's they haven't had a big reveal at this
point in time, and we were kind of thin on
facts at this moment in time. But something, something apparently
triggered this behavior to the point and again you refer
to him, Dave as a murder suspect at this point
in time, he's no longer, you know, just a person
(20:32):
of interest, all right, because they've hung charges on him.
Ellie County District Attorney has, and so they have some
kind of information. And I would imagine that one of
the things that would happen because their apartment was actually
located in Lancaster, which just so folks understand Lancaster. They're
(20:52):
saying that the Angelo's National Forest and it's kind of
co mingled with some other federal prop in there. And
I found it kind of interesting geographically, how would you
get from Lancaster to I think it's Arcadia, which is
the address that the National Forest actually carries. And of
(21:13):
course it can carry an address, it doesn't necessarily mean
she was found in that little town, but that's the
address of the Angelus National Forest right there. So you
have to really do some serious skill driving to get
from Lancaster over to that point. If it's on the
(21:35):
further southern location adjacent to this little town, which I
would assume is where the main gate is to get
in to the National Forest, or approximating that area. And
it's about an hour and fifteen minute drive from Lancaster.
So I'm envisioning my mind. If he has a conveyance
(21:57):
that he places her body in, does he go out
gather the children and their belongings and just follow me
here and he throws belongings like luggage. You know, everybody
pack a bag or I'm gonna pack a bag for you.
Throw that in there into the conveyance and they hop
(22:19):
in the car and you know, daddy, where are we going?
We got to make one stop. Well, the one stop
is along this isolated area because man, you talk about wilderness,
I mean it is. It's impressive. It's because it's so vast,
incredibly vast. So do you have your kids in the
(22:42):
car with you when you're doing this? Because the next
stop is going to be the airport. Now I don't
know where he at this point time. I don't know
where he bounced out of. At this point in time,
the obvious obvious would be, you know, I would think lax,
But there are other airports around them. You know, did
he head down to Orange County and that John Wayne
(23:02):
Airport down there. I don't know if they have the
ability to get you to Peru. You might have multiple
stopovers in various locations. I guess there are direct flights
out of Los Angeles to Peru. I'm assuming that there
probably are. But logistically this is an absolute nightmare in
order to facilitate, or you could look at it from
(23:23):
the perspective that it's kind of simple for him. Yeah,
kind of simple because I'm gonna just take her dumper,
take the kids, and we're heading out.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, you know, Okay reported missing on the twelfth, Joe. Yeah,
when they go looking for him, you know, they find
the digital video of him dragging what they believe is
her body. Well, when they go back to talk to him,
he's gone.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
He bolted.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You know, the missing person thing is filed before they
find the body, he's already gone. So yeah, I mean,
going from Lancaster to lax and getting out of town,
that's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I wouldn't Yeah, I wouldn't think so. And you know,
his vehicle too. I think my thought is that once
the vehicle's got to be somewhere adjacent to that. For
those of you that have never been to Lax, it's
kind of a nightmare. Of course, I measure everything by Atlanta,
(24:20):
which is a perpetual nightmare that I fly out of.
But Lax is in and of itself, you know, a
horror show most of the time. But you have to
have that vehicle somewhere unless you dump it somewhere else
catch an uber. But again, that's going to put you
on on the radar, you know, because now you've got
an uber driver that sees you with three kids and
(24:43):
he drops you off at a specific criminal at Lax.
But I don't know how much this got cared because
you know, I was thinking about what you said just
a second ago about you know, the movie that you
were shooting, and that was all the way back in
twenty twelve. Day. Yeah, think about the world how much
it's changed since twelve that we're in now where there
(25:06):
is videography everywhere you go. I mean, you know, ring
cams are on everything. Do you remember when the coburger
thing dropped, they were looking for camera footage. And this
is something I was not aware of because I'm not
in that atmosphere to have a tesla, But I didn't
realize that tesla's have. You know, they have the ability
(25:28):
to like catch images and that sort of thing the
people that are passing by. I guess it initiates somehow.
I'm not really sure how that works. They're everywhere day,
I mean, just everywhere you can be snapped doing anything,
and in this particular instance, we've got a pretty substantial
bit of video evidence of him moving moving this item
(25:50):
across the ground and where she is deposited out here
in this location. I'm wondering what state her remains were in.
I'm wondering about accessibility because when I hear that a
body has been found in an isolated location like this,
(26:11):
and it has been how'd you frame it to kind
of dump down the side of the hill? Yes, down
in an embankment. This is not showing due care to
human remains. This is speed. This is speed. This is
like you're just kind of rolling the body off. One
thing that came into play here, though. One thing that
(26:34):
came in to play here is the fact that the
police did in fact mention that item that maybe cocooned
her body. It appears to be perhaps a green colored
cheek from their home, Dave, I wanted to return back
(27:10):
to a theme that kind of inhabits a lot of
our discussions on body backs. And you know, I've always
held that, you know, I think that the most, probably
the vast majority of homicides that are committed in our
(27:31):
country are as a result of some kind of domestic violence.
You know, because contrary to what people think, it's not
the stranger in the dark alley. It's just not. I mean,
it does happen. Obviously, it happens. Okay, nobody you know,
lose your mind. It does happen. But you're generally going
to get into a beef with somebody you're inhabiting the
(27:52):
same space with, all right, and it turns very violent.
We talked about the degree of violence here with domestic violence.
You had mentioned history of domestic violence.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
What have you got his mother, her mother, Sheila's mom
said that her daughter, you know, they lived in Peru
before coming to Southern California, and while in Peru, according
to Sheila's mother, she had reported him for domestic violence
(28:27):
in Peru and the last time that they spoke. You know,
you got that whole control thing, right. A lot of
men who abuse their spouse controlled them, and one of
the control mechanisms is to a remove all their support.
And what did he do? She reports him for domestic
violence in Peru. He loads up the family and moves
(28:49):
to La where she knows nobody. And that came out
at the vigil. Friends and neighbors, coworkers, they actually got
together and did a vigil for Shela. You know, remember
the murder victim, not another one. That kind of domestic
violence rallied to a degree, and one of them was
talking about how that she didn't have any family in
(29:12):
the United States, and this friend said, we have to
be her voice. She has no he she had been
totally separated from any kind of a support. So she
reports him for abuse in Peru. He loads up her
and his kids and brings them here. So and then
you know, obviously, well, no, he has been charged with
her murder. He hasn't been convicted. He is charged with murder.
(29:33):
And then the first thing he does reports are missing
heads to Peru with the kids. The children are being
taken care of it by her mother.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
By the way, well, I know that I can almost
bet that at this point in time, they've already looked
into how many calls were made at their residence, uh,
both with you know, and they would they would look
at it from the perspective of Lancaster PD that would
work that area. And also Los Angeles can't share his office.
(30:04):
If anything else that happened, you know, that might you know,
maybe they got into a fight in a store, or
he was seen hurting her or abusing her in any
number of ways.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
And John, I got a question for you about the body.
And okay, we saw him dragging what we believed to
be her body. And okay, if he reports you're missing
on the twelfth, so let's we're going to have to
assume that was the a day after or the day
that she died. Yeah, and so they find her body
the next day, wrapped in this blanket or sheet. What
(30:38):
kind of information? What kind of forensic evidence are we
going to find wrapped in this sheet? Is it going
to be a good thing for him or a bad
thing for him?
Speaker 1 (30:48):
That it's going to be a bad thing, because if
you married that up, what did I tell you? What
did I say just a second ago? What kind of
surface were they on? They weren't a concrete surface. And
that's all we can see, all right, So anybody that
is hearing my voice right now, the next time you
go outside, if you've got a sidewalk, if you've got
a sidewalk outside of your house, or maybe a walkway
(31:08):
that leads to you know, your garage or whatever it is,
look down just for a second, take your hand and
place it on that surface. Okay, place it on the surface,
and just gently rub your hand across the top of it.
It's any irregular surface, all right. And even if you've
got like newly poured concrete, it's still it is very abrasive.
(31:30):
So that sheet, to me, which I think it's a
sheet Dave, is not going to provide very much protection.
When we were little boys and mom had us dressed
in our tough skin jeans, you know, even if you
fell in your tough skin jeans, you know which would
stand up by themselves. Look those up. If you're not
familiar with what Dave and I are referring to. Even
(31:52):
if you're wearing tough skin jeans and you pound it
on your knees when you hit the ground, you're still
gonna have abrasions on there. Well. The dead can actually
have pattern abrasions as well. Now they're they're not really
abrasions in the sense that we think about in dwelling hemorrhage,
because the dead don't hemorrhage. But what you can see
(32:12):
there are you think about drag marks in the dirt day, Well,
you can have these impressions on the body as it's
being drug there. Most of the time, they're going to
have kind of a linear appearance, and they'll be clustered
almost like concurrently with a surface that you're dragging them
over the top of, and it will the abrasiveness is
(32:35):
so substantial that it will penetrate through that sheet. It's
a very tiny membrane. It's not like you have them.
I don't know, it's not like you you you have
them in a multi multi layered uh. You know, even
a body bag. A body bag is not going you
won't see those kind of a braided areas on their
(32:57):
post mortal abrasions. If you will, so there'll be evidence.
And look, man, if you take that, if you take
that video and you analyze it compared to the way
you think, and they can do this with computer analyzation
day where they can they can actually get an idea
(33:18):
the position of her body. I'm thinking she's laying like
in what we would call a right recumbent position, where's
her right side is making contact with the ground, her
left side is up and she's almost in a fetal
position or the body is and it's being drug So
I would look on like the right contacting side of
the body, maybe points of the shoulder, the hips, that
(33:41):
sort of thing, and you can actually see those kind
of striations that would appear on the body. That's a
big piece of evidence, man, I mean a huge piece
of evidence. And then if you find those fibers, which
I think you probably could embedded, and those insults all
along there, that's going to be a telltale thing too.
(34:02):
Here's another piece of evidence. You know. I don't know
where you get your sheets from, but most of the time,
if you buy a package of sheets, all right, you're
gonna get a fitted sheet. You can get a standard sheet,
you know, and you get pillow cases. Right Well, are
there other sheets and pillowcases that match that lot that
(34:24):
this covering came from, all right, still remaining in the house,
And that again is another point where you can marry
up evidence. You know, we've got something that originated from
the same original pack. Here Okay, so you've got that.
I'm very curious because I didn't. And again we're kind
of at a disadvantage of looking at the CCTV. But
(34:48):
I didn't see any kind of like big stains on
the outside of the sheet that would indicate that sheets
profusely or the body is profusely bled. Sometimes you'll see
those kind of super saturated areas. I'm not seeing that here.
That doesn't mean that she's not bleeding. But what I'm
interested in is going back into the house and searching
the bedroom. You know, mom and dad want to have
(35:11):
a discussion. They go in the bedroom, shut the door
to the kids, or somewhere else. I guess he could
have chased her through the house, you know, whatever may
have happened. But I'm going to go through that house
room by room, inch by inch, and I'm going to
look for any kind of bloody deposition and there anything
whatsoever that types out to her. You know, you can
say it's amazing. It's one thing to say, well, we
(35:35):
found her DNA at a scene, all right, because the
standard line now it's almost wrote everybody knows that, well,
you expect to find her DNA there because she lives there.
You don't expect to find copious amounts of blood that
married back to her. Okay, that cannot as easily be
explained away because blood always denotes injury. So if I've
(35:56):
got blood deposition a scene, I'm thinking, okay, somebody was in,
you know, prior to this. This isn't just like passively
touching a surface and you're leaving you know, dead skin
cells behind, but touch DnaA as something completely different. I
want to look there. I want to know about the car.
The car is huge here, because if the car is
(36:17):
being used to transport her body, I can tell you
they didn't put the body into the back of an
uber and drive through the Angelus National Forest and say, hey, driver,
can you stop here and let me take care of
this that I have in the back of your car.
Here it's his vehicle or vehicle he has access to.
So what was going on inside of that vehicle was
(36:38):
and my god, this is terrifying to think about. I
can't help myself though. I got to say this. Chris Watts, Yep,
she was in that back seat, she was in the floorboard,
and those babies were in the back seat with her.
You remember that, ye, And he was transporting, transporting them
out there with those babies in there with their mama,
you know, like in the cab of the vehicle. I
(37:01):
don't know. I mean, that's that's one of the things,
you know, that comes to mind for me. What what
can these children communicate about that fateful moment, you know,
when they're being driven around and the next thing you know,
they're sitting. They're sitting in a terminal in lax and
it's wheels up, baby, They're heading south. And then I think,
(37:23):
finally I'm going to be really interested in the scene
itself because we believe if we think that her body
is cocooned in this material and kind of pressed down
slope or pushed down slope, is there anything else that
he took and kind of tossed out, you know, that
(37:43):
approximates the body, or was there anything else in that cocooning,
like you know, because I've had cases where I had
one case I remember specifically where shower curtain was involved
to transport the body in the person who been stabbed,
and they took the knife they'd used and wrapped it
up in the shower curtain too. Thank you very much.
(38:03):
We really appreciate your efforts here because that helped us,
you know, because you've got literally the murder weapon there
that's been gifted to you by the perpetrator. So you
have those three points contact here where you're wondering what
else is there that's going to tell this poor woman's
story because she can't I mean, her light's been snuffed
(38:25):
out now and she can't convey to us the horror
that she probably endured, and not just in the moment
of her death, but Lord only knows months leading up
to it. You know, he's going to drag her away
from her family in Peru because he's been reported for
DV and he's going to land in Los Angeles, where
she's isolated, doesn't know anybody. I wonder how much access
(38:47):
he gave her to a phone, you know, how much
was she allowed to work outside the home? Was she
allowed to even answer a phone? Did he have her
trapped in the house? I don't know. It's certainly horrible.
And of course these kids are Dave, They're just they're
left and the way can you, okay, can you imagine
this can't find your daddy? Your mom is dead and
(39:10):
now and granted you said that they're with her Grandma,
which is great Grandma's are the best creatures God ever
put on the face of the planet as far as
I'm concerned. They're with her, but there's only so much
solace you can take in that in this old world, Dave,
and that's where these three kids are right now. They're
down there and their mom and dad are completely gone. Man.
(39:33):
We're going to keep our eye on this case because
I can tell you there is going to be much
much more to be revealed about this, particularly from an
evidentiary standpoint. We still have yet to answer what method
was employed to take this poor mother's life. We're going
(39:54):
to keep our eye on it for you. I'm Joseph
Scott Morgan and this his bodybags
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com