S. 17 Ep. 9 The Murder of Jake Merendino

https://www.patreon.com/c/rainbowcrimes

In 2015, Houston millionaire, Jake Merendino would fall in love with a male sex worker he met in San Diego. This male sex worker, David Meza, was living a double life as he was engaged to a girl of 19 years old. Torn between his sugar daddy and his future wife, David made a choice and in his eyes, someone had to die.

True Crime Quickie from Bulgaria.

Intro: Shire Girl by David Fesilyan
Outro: Beating Heart by David Renda

Resources:
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/02/this-cop-was-inspired-to-help-others-after-being-victim-of-hate-crime/
https://www.advocate.com/news/hate-crime-survivor-police-officer

https://people.com/crime/california-man-guilty-of-killing-wealthy-male-lover/
https://www.courthousenews.com/personal-lives-display-love-gone-bad-murder-trial/
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/san-diego-man-sentenced-for-bizarre-baja-killing-of-wealthy-texan/30080/
https://people.com/crime/david-meza-life-sentence-murder-wealthy-male-lover/
https://kfdm.com/news/local/beaumont-mans-killer-found-guilty-by-federal-jury
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/jake-clyde-merendino-stabbed-mexico-david-meza-taylor-langston-heir-fbi/103760/
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-mexico-murder-20170616-story.html

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beyond-the-rainbow-podcast--4398945/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, you're listening to dark Cast Network the Best of
Anie podcast. I'll find all of the great dark Cast
shows at darkcastnetwork dot com. I'm Jamie and you're listening
to Rainbow Crimes with hopefully some Unicorn justice.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hello and thank you for flying Rainbow Crimes Flight sixty
eight ninety one to Rosarito, Mexico. I'm your flight attendant, Fabulosa.
Please put your seats in an upright position. Make sure
your train in front of you is locked and fast.
Send your seat belts. Once we're settled in the air,
a snack and drink cart will make its way around

(01:06):
to you. As always. Thank you for flying Rainbow Cryans.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Hey, they're warriors.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's me CJ.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
You know how I was complaining last episode about my
shoulder pain. It's still there, but now I add a
toothache to my list. I swear to you getting a
timely dental appointment in this small city I live in
it has been the biggest pain in my ass. I've
had a chip front tooth going on three years now

(01:37):
that I plug up with Orthodonics wax, and then a
year ago a molar broke on my left side. One
of the two has been giving me some extreme pain
the past few days. The first dental place I was
with had excellent staff and a great hygienis, but they
only had a dentist half day once a week. The
day I had an appointment last summer to go see

(01:59):
him and get my friend tooth fixed, the dentist quit,
so I stayed for over a year without a dentist
until I realized, who the fuck knows how long it's
going to be until they get another dentist in, And
then I went and I arranged getting a new dentist
at a different office. This took a few months with
insurance switching over before I could even see the new dentist,

(02:22):
and then another month or two until I was able
to get an appointment. I saw the new dentist and
I liked her, but this place doesn't have a dental hygienist,
and the dentist has to do at all. At my appointment,
all they did was take X rays, poke around, measure
my gums, and come up with my treatment plan. And
they left my chip tooth and broken moller untouched. My

(02:46):
second appointment, it's been scheduled for the end of July,
eight months from my first appointment. In the meantime, if
I should have any dental pain, I was to take Ivyprofen.
That's my story, sticking to it. Before I get into
our main case, I would like to share a survivor's
story with you. In Atlanta, Georgia, in twenty twelve, Brandon

(03:11):
White was a gay, black teenager and he was leaving
a store. Upon departing the store, four men pounced on Brandon.
They were yelling anti gay slers, hitting and kicking Brandon.
Before they were caught. The assailants would flee the scene,
but not without filming the violence. The video was promptly

(03:32):
loaded up on social media, where the thugs would boast
about beating a gay kid, and while nobody reported the
crime to police, after the video upload, law enforcement became
interested and they started an investigation into the beating. First,
they asked for help identifying the victim, and when they

(03:52):
learned the victim's identity, they reached out to Brandon. Brandon
told detectives that he didn't know the men and at
first he had no clue what inspired the men to
assault him. After seeing the video online, he discovered it
was due to his sexuality, and those men most likely
didn't like LGBTQ people in their neighborhood. Brandon also claimed

(04:17):
he didn't report the crime because he didn't think the
police would do anything about it, and then he saw
that they were looking for the victim, and that's when
his entire feelings about the police Wavered law enforcements stepped
in on an unreported crime. They found the victim, they
found the attackers, and they helped see to it that

(04:37):
the attackers were arrested and had their day in court.
The attackers did have their day, and all four of
the violent men who beat Brandon were found guilty and
sentenced to incarceration. As Brandon maneuvered from his teenageers into
young adulthood, he would become a public speaker about hate crimes.

(05:00):
After one such speaking engagement, he was told by a
police chief he should apply to become a police officer.
One month after that encouragement, Brandon did apply, but due
to some blemishes on his driving record, he didn't get
into the police academy easily. Once his driving record cleared up,

(05:20):
Brandon tried again and he was accepted into the academy.
He graduated November of twenty twenty three and He's now
been a police officer in a small city outside of Atlanta.
That's definitely turning life's lemons into lemonade. Good job, Officer, Brandon.
Our main case comes to us from multiple areas in

(05:42):
the United States and Mexico. In two thousand and fifteen,
Jake Marindino was a wealthy man in his fifties living
in Houston, Texas. Jake enjoyed living large and indulging on
things because, thanks to his inheritance, he could afford to
do so. His parents had worked for an oil company,

(06:02):
and most likely they bought stocks in the company that
they worked for. After his parents passed, Jake would continue
to keep his money running rich by making real estate investments.
He'd buy a cheap home for cash, fix it up,
and resell it at a marked up price. The summer
of twenty fifteen, Jake planned a trip to San Diego, California.

(06:25):
While he was in San Diego, he met a twenty
four year old sex worker named David Mezza. Jake had
responded to an online ad that David had placed regarding
a hookup, so David went to Jake's hotel room and
stayed about an hour before leaving and I'm pretty sure
we know what was going on during that hour. A

(06:45):
few days later, Jake and David would meet for dinner out.
Then it was time for Jake's vacation to end and
for him to return home to Houston. Back home was
tough for Jake. He really liked David about him. Consistently,
he called David and he invited him to Houston, and
he even paid for David's trip out to Houston and

(07:07):
back for a visit, but he was always sad again
when he had to say farewell. Jake was feeling that
David liked him too. It was at this point Jake
believed that he and David should be more than fuck buddies.
He wanted a real relationship with David. That same summer,
Jake would fly back out to San Diego and he

(07:28):
asked David to be his boyfriend. David said he would,
and to celebrate, Jake bought David a carr. Then he
began to set up a regular monthly allowance for David.
And once again it was time for Jake to go
back to Houston, and he flew back home. As this
relationship was zooming, right along, another relationship was still percolating

(07:52):
on the back burner. You see, David was also in
a relationship with a nineteen year old girl. Her name
is Taylor Langston, and by September of twenty thirteen, David
had asked Taylor to marry him. Throughout twenty and fourteen,
Jake would come and visit David in the San Diego area.

(08:12):
He did this several times, and it was during one
of those visits that Jake would purchase another car and
a motorcycle for David. He also put David's name on
his bank account, which, by the way, I don't recommend
doing that, no matter how much in love you are.
Have a joint account where you each contribute and take from,

(08:33):
But for God's sakes, keep your own account too. That's
just life lessons I've learned along the way. By December
of twenty fourteen, Jake was so head over hills in
love with David he had made out a will with
David's name, making David the one to inherit his million
should something happen to him. It was only a handwritten note,

(08:57):
not anything official drafted up by an attorney, although the
letter was notarized. At the start of twenty fifteen, Jake
purchased the beach condo in Rosa, Rito Mexico, and that's
just across the border from San Diego. I believe it's
part of Baja California. When people in David's life, including

(09:18):
his girlfriend Taylor, began to question him on how he
was able to afford two cars, a motorcycle, and some
other elaborate possessions, David simply told them he was a
personal assistant to a man named George, and that George
was ill with not much time to live, and George
gifted him things. Now we're going to jump back just

(09:41):
a few months. Taylor became pregnant in October of twenty fourteen,
and this meant that David was not just going to
marry his girlfriend, but he was going to become a
dad too. The couple of David and Taylor would discuss
what they would do when George passed and they got
his car two. David was also able to explain his

(10:03):
time away from Taylor as working for George. Okay, back
to twenty fifteen again. Late April of twenty fifteen, actually, Jake,
who as I said, was very much in love with David,
decided he needed to be with David on a more
regular basis. So he packed up his belongings and he
was ready to commit to their relationship further. And to

(10:27):
do this, he was going to move closer to David.
He was going to move to the condo he purchased
in Rosarito, Mexico, and I think he believed David would
move into the condo with him. On May first, Jake
would sign the rest of the papers needed to own
the condo outright. He would take David with him and
have him sign the papers as well. This was so

(10:50):
David could be the co owner of the condo. So
now what was David going to do? He was leading
double lives. He was in the middle of the love triangle,
a love triangle with the other two participants. They had
no idea they were sharing him. The condo was going
through some renovations, so Jake got a hotel for him

(11:13):
and David to stay in while the renovations were taking place.
I'm fairly certain Jake thought this would be a romantic
time for him and his boy toy, and the two
men did spend some time together that evening until about
ten thirty pm. David then told Jake that he needed
to return to San Diego to collect some things. He

(11:34):
got on his motorcycle and he headed back to San Diego. Then,
almost as soon as he got back to San Diego,
he told Taylor what was happening. And then David turned
his motorcycle around, with Taylor following him in an suv
and both headed back to Rosarito, Mexico. Around two am,

(11:56):
just a couple of miles from the hotel Jake was in.
He had pulled his motorcycle off the road, I'm not
sure where. He told Taylor to wait. He called Jake
and he told him that his motorcycle was stalled, and
then he asked if Jake would come get him. Of course,
Jake jumped into his car and left to save David,

(12:17):
but Jake we never returned back to the hotel. Later
that day, which was now May second, twenty fourteen, Mexican
police would find Jake's body. It had been tossed into
a ravine between Rosa Rito and Ensenata. Jake had been
stabbed twenty four times, including two large slashes to his neck.

(12:41):
Missing from his hotel room were Jake's diamond studded Rolex watch,
his iPhone, his iPad and his laptop. Several days after
Jake was murdered, David would withdraw the remaining money out
of the joint account that Jake had set up for
the two of them, and not long after that, David
would send a copy of Jake's handwritten will naming him

(13:04):
as the beneficiary to Jake's one point three million dollar
estate to an attorney in Texas for probate. After reading
articles about Jake's murder, David talked to a friend about
establishing a believable false alibi if police came to talk
to the friend. The friend was just to say, yeah,

(13:25):
David and his girlfriend Taylor did come see me, and
they stayed for a while. They sat at my table
for a couple of hours. Several weeks went by and
David began to send texts to his girlfriend Taylor saying,
ever since I did what I did, I'm not the
same and you have no idea how hard it is
to try to pretend everything is fine, to pretend that

(13:47):
I'm a normal person and have a normal life, and
another text saying, I honestly feel like shit with myself.
Ever since I did that, I hated myself more every day,
every day, and I need to speak to someone. I
really do. I need help because I don't know how
to cope. I really don't know how to get past

(14:09):
this and move on. Every day of my life I
wake up feeling guilty. I wake up hating myself for
doing that. I had to. I had no choice. Well,
I had a choice, but I did it because I
wanted to for my family. But the price, ugh, the
price is high, more than I thought. Several months would

(14:31):
pass before law enforcement would learn of the handwritten will,
the joint bank account, and all the gifts Jake had
lavished upon David, with an upward total of over one
hundred thousand dollars. They then did a search on David's
GPS on his phone for the night Jake was murdered.
They also obtained video surveillance of the border for that

(14:53):
night when David crossed the border three times on his motorcycle,
once to leave Rosarito around PM, wants to go back
in around two am, and then again when he left
after Jake's murder around four AM. When brought in for questioning,
David claimed he was visiting his friend Joe across the

(15:14):
border at the time of Jake's murder. David didn't count
on his GPS and phone telling a different story, a
story that would place him at the sight of Jake's
murder and then at the location where Jake's body was found.
This was all very damning evidence, and to further that

(15:35):
the guy Joe he was actually a man named Jose
who told the police he hadn't seen David and Taylor
for at least a year and a half and that
David had called him and asked him to lie to
the police and say he was with him. This shot
the hell out of David's alibi. David was arrested and
charged with first degree murder. Taylor too would be arrested

(15:59):
due to having the knowledge that David had taken Jake's
life and for going along with the false alibi. David
claimed he was heterosexual and only gave for pay. He
said he did gay sex, work for fun and money
for fun. You aren't as heterosexual as you say you are, David.

(16:20):
During his court trial, where a now twenty seven year
old David pleaded not guilty, prosecution presented David's text messages
to Taylor and text messages to Jake, telling Jake how
much he loved him. They showed his GPS information, and
they called Jose to the stand as a witness against

(16:41):
David for trying to falsify an alibi. They felt when
David crossed the border from Mexico back into the US,
it was then that he made his plan to murder Jake,
making this a premeditated murder. The jury found David guilty
in a judge sentenced David to life. David appealed his case,

(17:04):
saying his Miranda rights were flawed when he was arrested,
but even so he was found guilty and his appeal
was denied. Taylor was charged with obstruction of justice in
lying to federal officers. She was released on bond as
she was having to nurse her baby. At her court trial,

(17:24):
she was found guilty of her infractions and she was
sentenced to a year in nine months for her part
of covering up Jake's murder. Rest and power Jake our
True Crime Quickie. This episode is from Sofia, Bulgaria in
two thousand and eight. Bulgaria is a country sitting just

(17:44):
north of Hungary and southeast Europe, and this will be
the first time we're visiting this country for a case
twenty six year old Mikhail Stoyanov was a medical student
just living his life in Sophia, which is the capital
of Bulgaria. Boris Nova Grandina is a large park in
Sofia that's considered a gay hookup spot during the nighttime hours.

(18:08):
On September thirtieth of two thousand and eight, Michel was
visiting this park under the cover of the moonlight. What
Michel didn't realize was there were two homophobic young men
also at the park. They were patrolling it to bash
queers and rid the park of any gay shenanigans that
might be occurring. This was something the two young men,

(18:30):
twenty year old Alexander Korgiv and nineteen year old Radislav Kurjev.
They would do this on a regular basis. They'd beat
the gays out of the park. The two young men
came across Mikel that night. They hit him and then
they stomped the shit out of them, and they left
him in the park to die. They also took a

(18:52):
cell phone. Michel's body was found the next morning by
a passerby. It took two months for the Bulgarian police
to find Alexander in Radislav to arrest them, and it
was all thanks to Michael's cell phone that they were
able to track the guys down, and when the police
brought the young man to the station for interrogation, they

(19:13):
said they were a part of a gang of five
who believed it their duty to clean the park from gays.
Wasn't long after their arrest that authorities learned of at
least ten other homophobic attacks at the park. Miquel's mother
told law enforcement that she wasn't even sure her son
was gay, but sadly, whether he was or wasn't, he

(19:35):
was a target for two hateful young men who presumed
any man in the park that was taking a walk
or doing whatever during non daylight hours, they assumed he
was gay and needed to be dealt with. Twenty year
old Alexander would be convicted of Michel's murder and sentenced
till only thirteen years of incarceration, while Radislav, who at

(19:58):
the time of the beating was a minus, he received
a mere four years and ten months rest and power.
Michel ooh did you fill that? Warriors? It's the sunshine
creeping up to warm us up. In September of twenty
twenty four, Dallas, Texas, the gighborhood of Oaklawn. It opened

(20:20):
up Oaklawn Place. This is a new apartment complex that
looks very nice. This complex is to give LGBTQ seniors
an affordable living option, with units renting from five hundred
and sixty dollars up to eleven hundred dollars a month.
It's super cheap, especially if I compare it to California living.

(20:44):
The thought behind the building is that as LGBTQ people age,
they were not necessarily given a good chance to have
children since same sex marriage hasn't been around that long
and many have had to be ashamed of who they are,
not able to live their truth out loud, maybe even
still stuck in the closet. So these seniors were not

(21:06):
able to have children in a legacy around to care
for them in their golden years. But with an LGBTQ
Senior Designer apartment complex, they can live their life there,
be thoroughly independent, possibly establish friendships relationships here and care
for each other too. I love this idea and I

(21:28):
hope other cities will take a page out of Dallas's
book and that more of them will be built. Well
that's it for this episode. Guys, I have to go
work on my Patreon exclusive episode for our end of
the month ride. Have a great rest of your week.
I love you, You matter, and remember it's not a

(21:49):
crime to be gay, less or a murderer

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Stopp