Killer Couple: Cynthia Alvarez & Giovanni Gallardo

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, it's kJ back with another episode of Unspeakable, and y'all are gonna probably come at me. But it's okay. But this episode is coming to you after Halloween. But it's kind of got a Halloween vibe to it. But that's okay.

1:11 You're still gonna like it. And it's still pretty a pretty good episode. But before I can start it, I have to give some shout outs, and I'm gonna start in an organ Yes, that's where I'm going to Orgon. Specifically, I'm going to Portland, Oregon, and that is where Emily lives. How are you doing, Emily? You joined my Patreon. I don't have your last name on here, so I just have to say Emily, but this one's for you, babe. I'm waving. I'm saying hey and thank you so much for joining and supporting me, as well as Miss Andy Ivy right here in Denham Springs, Louisiana. What's going on? Andy? Do I know you? Are? We friends? Do we see each other at Walmart? I don't know, but we might as well be because you live right here by me.

1:53 So I'm saying hey to you. Andy. I hope that you are having a fantastic day as well as Miss Pamela Myers on. Let's see, she's in Greenwell Springs, Louisiana. Hey, Pam, you're right down the road as well. How's it going for you. I'm so thankful and proud that people support me and that y'all appreciate my content. There's only so many ways to vocalize that, but it's so genuine and it's so real. You are making my dreams come true. And I just from the bottom of my heart, I hope you know how thankful and blessed that I know I am, and it's all because of you. But last, and certainly not least, I'm going to go to Texas. Now, this is Cleveland, Texas and that is where Angela lives. Hey, Angela, I'm waving to you as well on the camera. Lah, I'm blowing kisses all the way to Texas and I am just stoked to have you here. Now, let's get started on this episode. And like I said, this is obviously going to have a little Halloween thing going on, but it's going to be a little after but that's okay.

2:50 We can stay in the holiday spirit, no worries. But we are going to have to go to Compton, California. Now, I got to tell you someone, I think of Compton. I don't know why, but I think of like high school and rap music. And it's like all these memories come back when we started talking about Compton. But back in twenty eleven, there were some very interesting shifts occurring in Compton. And while I'm not going to bore you because this is not an educational podcast necessarily, but I'm not going to bore you with the official sites and sources that I got this data from. I will tell you I did a little bit of research and at that time in twenty eleven, the demographics as well as the crime in Compton, they were evolving. Now, back in twenty eleven, there were some very interesting shifts going on in that area. And I'm not going to bore you because this is not a lecture, okay, But I'm not going to give you all the official sources and all the sites that I went to, but I did research some of the demographics and things of that nature. And not only were the demographics of the area changing, but also crime was evolving a bit in that area. And while the political control was mainly in the hands of black Democrats, the population had shifted to be a majority Latino.

4:09 So another thing that was kind of interesting to me was that the crime rate was down. According to officials, murders were on the decline, and at that time in twenty eleven, they were the lowest since the mid nineteen sixties. And this was according to an article I read from twenty eleven. And so I'm just trying to give you the vibe of the area and what was going on, because lowering crime rates are always a wonderful thing, There's no doubt about that. We all love when that happens. And hardworking Latinos are also a wonderful thing, which was fully embraced and evidenced by fifty one year old Jose Lava. Now, Jose was originally from Mexico. He was a first generation immigrant to the US. And this guy was an absolute solid dude when it came to work. His ethic was as solid as the construction jobs he was completing. He was a manual laborer, and the man flat out worked his ass off. He had moved to the US and settled in southern California. And like I said, it would be this Compton area to be specific, And let's talk Compton just for another second. And I know I told you that the crime rates were down, but I want to also point something else out that everything in life is relative, including stats and crime rates and all of that.

5:36 Because Compton is known to have one of the higher crime rates in the US. So when I say that there was a decline in crime, that doesn't necessarily mean that much, because you know, if you already have an exorbitan crime rate and it declines, does that really mean things are great? Or does that mean like, thank god, we're coming down just a bit, maybe more towards the national average. But that said, poverty is also an issue in Compton. And they have much higher rates than the national average and at that time as well. So when Jose settled in that area, he knew that one day he wanted to make it out of the area that he was living in. He had goals and he was doing everything in his power to achieve those goals. And did I mention his work ethic yet, of course I did, because he didn't have just that construction job that I mentioned.

6:29 He actually held more like three jobs to support his life. He would swing that hammer by day, but if it rained or if he was laid off, he would also complete side jobs for people to make some extra cash. And on top of that, if that weren't enough, he also worked as a delivery man on the weekends. He worked for this amusement type company, the ones that rent bounce houses and tables and chairs and things of that nature. He was always working, which he did feel bad about because he did have a wife and two kids at home. Now. His wife, her name was Gloria. She was actually as common law wife. I don't think that they were actually formally ever married, but totally devoted to one another. He was devoted to his Gloria, And look, shall we say cougar much because miss ma'hem was seven years his senior, but she still made his world go round as his senorita, all right, So there's a little bit of an age gap.

7:30 But he loved her dearly as well as her two children because guess what. The reason I'm saying her two children is because they weren't biologically his. They were someone else's children. But when he fell in love with Gloria, he also fell in love with her children. Now she had these two and both of them had different dads, but the same mom whom he loved. And so the girls their names were Diana and Cynthia. They both considered Joseh to be their dad. So Diana's a bio dad. I don't really have much information on him, but I do know that Cynthia's dad had been deported. I believe he was sent back to Honduras as where he went.

8:15 So jose really was the only man that would remain a constant figure in both of the girl's lives. And damn it, I'm gonna tell you something. I'm giving credit where credit is due because he looked at those girls as his own flesh and blood. It did not matter that he didn't create them. Those were his girls. If they needed it, he was going to get it for him. Come hell or high water, or long work hours, he was gonna do it. Gloria, meanwhile, she was a homemaker, and Jose he wanted to take care of her, and he wanted to allow her to stay home, but not just out of ease and because she was a woman, but also it was somewhat out of necessity because Glory.

9:00 Gloria's health it had some issues, and her health was rather failing. So she was a terrible diabetic and her body was kind of going to shambles as a result of that. Her feet had issues, so she walked with a cane. I don't know this specifically, but my mother is a bad diabetic, and I know that neuropathy also becomes an issue with that, so I kind of got that gist about things. So she would walk with a cane. And also her eyesight was horrible, so again that could be due to diabet diabetes as well, but I don't know that specifically. She was constantly though, at the doctor with her ailments, and it kind of seemed to be a never ending revolving door her having to go to the doctor, and it did put a lot of financial responsibility on the family, but Jose made it happen. It was his job. That was his lady, and he was going to take care of her. He loved his girls and he was devoted to making all of their lives good ones. Gloria, however, she was exactly what you expected in terms of being a mom. She liked to bake cookies, she kept a tidy home, she did the laundry, she kept her family well fed, she was cooking their favorite meals whenever they requested, and she just was a mom that did what she was supposed to do. Now, Diana, she was the eldest daughter, and there was actually a

10:31 ten year age gap between her and Cynthia, the younger sister, so the four of them had all lived together as a family unit originally, but by twenty ten, Diana had moved out and she was an adult and she went to go start her own family Cynthia, though Cynthia was still a teen. I'm gonna pause real quick in the story to tell you this. I really really want to always be completely accurate and factual, so I'm saying the name Diana as the sister's name but looking through some other documents, I saw a different name for one of the sisters. I don't want to give anything away at this point, but I'm not quite certain if Diana is a name that was just used in some other things I looked at, and if she actually had a different name, maybe it was Diana and there was another half sister somewhere.

11:29 I'm not one hundred percent sure it doesn't affect this story at all, but I just want to let you know that if you know these people, or if you were close to this case, I am aware that there was a different name used. I just was not able to one hundred percent solidify who exactly that other name was, So just take that as you will. Now, Diana and her mother were very close and they spoke daily, but it was more like an adult relationship. Because of the obvious age gap between Diana and her younger sister, the relationship was a little bit different, so they would speak on the phone more like adults. Whereas Cynthia, she was now the focus of the home because she was the only kid there and because she was younger, she was still a teen. So there you have it. A family living in a lower income area, but loving and hardworking people just like the rest of us. So Cynthia at the time I'm telling the story, she's now fifteen, and Jose realized and he took responsibility for the fact that he was away from her and her mother a lot because of how much he was working. But he made up for that by doing what Cynthia loved to do.

12:38 He would take her on shopping sprees. All teenage girls love this, and so he just loved to see her smile and he knew that he could get that smile by buying her these material things that teenagers wanted makeup, jewelry, clothing, all of that type of stuff. And while he would probably never admit this out loud, he compens through those shopping adventures as well for the poor living conditions that they had. But although they may have lived in a poorer area of town, there was no question that whenever Cynthia went to school, he made sure that she had all of the best things so she would not be judged from for where she came from in front of the other teenagers. And I really thought that a beautiful thing for a dad to recognize that, look, we may not live in the best area, but he recognized, and he had the foresight and the forethought to look at her and go, but baby, it doesn't matter where you're living, Okay, you can still look good. You can still present yourself in the way that we are. We're good people, we're hard working. And so she really did have the best of everything, y'all. Her friends, they admired her, and people would never know unless they went to her house. They would never know that she was living in a poorer area of town in a trailer. She had all of the best when I say this, she had the up to date of electronics that were popular. Her hair was always done, her makeup was always on point, at least

14:12 in teen terms. Okay, but she had it going on as far as a teenager was concerned. And also there was a huge event that had been held that June where Cynthia was really made to feel like the princess that jose and her mother Gloria felt and believed her to be. It was her coveted Kinsineia. The Hispanic culture's recognition of when a girl is turning into an adult and entering womanhood. This fifteenth birthday celebration is a cultural tradition where the birthday girl is going to wear a beautiful gown, this big, nice gown, and she is going to be the center of attention and celebrated. It's a very very special event. And while I've never personally been to one, and I'm not claiming to be an expert, I have had in the past many a student over the years show me photos from their own kingsinnarias and kinsinira.

15:10 I guess I should put the ruh in there, but they show me their photos and tell me all about their parties. And symbolism in these parties is huge. They have these traditional rituals, everything from changing for the first time from their flats flat shoes, they get to wear heels for the first time. They receive a tierra and they wear gloves, as well as having this religious side to things where everyone bows their head and they give thanks to God for the birthday girl and her beautiful life and this change that she's now turning into a woman. It's big and it matters, and Cynthia was to get all of this. Her parents worked so incredibly hard to provide the party of her dream, and I thought this one element was so sweet I had to tell it to you. They saved up their money for this party in an actual jar in their home. And in today's times of you know, electronic banking and you could swipe a card, you could write a check, whatever, this was just something so sweet and precious, and there is just a charm to this. It's just so authentic. They had a glass jar in the home and they would put their extra cash into it every week to save up for this party. The party went on, was amazing. Everyone

16:41 was in attendance of this party. Afterwards, she's now older. And the summer months followed, and then that came to an end with schools starting backup, football games and pep rallies, seeing your friends that you haven't seen in a while. All of that was now in full wing. And it was now Monday, October seventeenth of twenty eleven, and Jose hadn't called for his weekend delivery route and instructions the day's prior, when he normally would. That was the way that they had worked things out for his weekend deliveries. He would have to call and get the instructions and where to go, and he usually would do that about on like a Friday. So his boss, her name was Blanca.

17:29 She was really concerned about him because it was completely out of character. And we all know now, just by me telling you this little bit about him, that that wasn't like this man. He always called, he always showed up, and he never would just no show, no call. But not only did he not call the previous week for his route, he also never answered all weekend and now it's Monday, she still hasn't spoken to him. So Blanca became so worried that she decided that she was going to go by the house and she was going to check on him in person. In the back of her mind, she also knew that Gloria was known to be medically fragile.

18:13 Maybe they all went down and were sick and needed someone to come by and help him out. Maybe they were just all really, really ill. So she stopped by and she knocked on the door, but when she knocked, the door was slightly a jar. So Blanca called out for Jose, Jose, Hey, are you here, Hello, But there was no answer. And on top of that, the door when she knocked it opened slightly, but enough that she could actually see inside the home, and what she saw was a house that was completely trashed your gut. I don't care who you are listening to this right now.

18:58 Your gut knows when something isn't right. You have felt it before, that instinctual moment of Hm, this doesn't seem right, and Blanca knew immediately that there was an issue. For all of her ailments and all of her issues, Gloria still kept a tidy home, and this was just utter disarray. Quite frankly, it looked like filth. Okay, it wasn't just messy. I mean, there was trash on the ground, food discarded, and clothing all over the floor, and there was this random air up mattress right there in the doorway. It damn near looked like there had been a party or something at this trailer. There were Halloween decorations up and they were kind of like everywhere, right in the entryway.

19:49 But y'all, it wasn't yet Halloween. I just told you that this was mid October, and certainly this was too early for a party to have been held. Plus the home was ransacked. It was decorated, but ransacked. It just it wasn't right. So Blanca became very uneasy at the site. She backed out off the porch and then she decided to make a phone call to the sheriff's office, so, of course this then enacted a welfare check, and considering the condition of the home in conjunction with Jose's whereabouts being unclear in him not following his traditional patterns, this became an issue, and so police got there and they decided to go inside because they felt that they had these exigent circumstances that would warrant them entering the home.

20:40 So when they looked inside the doorway, they could immediately tell Blanca had not been exaggerating by the condition of this home. Normally, they would require a warrant to go inside, but again, exigent circumstances mean that the police thought, you know, we probably need to go inside and check on these people. Something looks very wrong. Well, this looked like a possible robbery, maybe even a home invasion the way that the home looked, and so their thoughts were held the family might be inside injured or heard or hell dead, We don't know, but this just looks horrific. They also didn't know who might still be inside. So they entered the home very slowly and very tactically, and they decided to clear the room or to clear the house room by room. The reality was that they didn't know if someone was hiding in the home, possibly or if they were holding the family hostage. Y'all, crazier things have happened. Live a little Okay, you've listened to this show probably for a while. If you've been here, you know that crazier shit has happened.

21:44 So they alerted, They vocalized out loud, Sheriff's office, anyone here, Hello, Hello, and all of this is happening while they're carefully making their way through the house, the house room by room and clearing it of any possible danger. As they walked through the kitchen area, it was very obvious that someone had been in the middle of cooking something because the soup was still on the stove. There was no burner going, but there were open cans on the counter and cooking items out, as if whoever was cooking had been stopped mid preparation. So police continued to the back of the house, and when they got back there they found that the bedrooms were also destroyed. They looked like they had been tossed and that someone was searching for something. Clearly, this looked like a robbery had taken place, the drawers were open, closet doors were open with items strown about. But when it was all said and done, no one was found in the home. It was empty. Police were able to confirm that some items were missing from the house, and this was some jewelry boxes that normally were in there and some other valuables that were in the home and obviously were missing. But what the hell was going on?

23:09 Because it was odd enough that the home was trashed, but then there was no obvious sign of a struggle, even though the house was a mess. And what I mean by this was there was no forced entry, No windows were broken, no doors kicked through and the doorft, doorframes shattered or anything like that. There was no broken sheet rock, There was no blood, There were no overturned tables, nothing of that nature. It just was a big ass mess. So once the home was cleared, investigators were called in. On top of the traditional just the officers that had arrived and cleared the home, they brought in investigators to kind of see what they thought may have happened. Well, robbery remained the lead assumption, that's what it looked like.

23:57 So police decided that they were going to do what we all know they're going to do, and that's to canvas the area, speak to neighbors and see, hey, have you heard anything? Did you see anything? Was anything out of the ordinary, But it was what neighbors didn't see that was the consistent. They may not have known this family personally, they may not have known their relative habits or or anything like that, but they did know from the outside what the habits were of this family. And this is common for all of us. Think about your neighborhood. What typical cars are there, what typical people do you see in and out of the house. That's stuff that neighbors do. Pick up one and that said, everyone in the area agreed that they had not seen the family in days. It had been a while since they had seen any of them. This is not good. I don't have to tell you that, you know that. So investigators had to go further and they started to try and reach out to family and friends. And when they did this, they learned that older sister Diana was also unable to reach anyone she was concerned. So that's when the investigators said, all right, well we need to go up to the school.

25:12 We've got to try and firm up the last day that Cynthia had been seen at school, so when they got up there, the school would also confirm we haven't seen her in a couple of days. This is just alarming on all levels. Who would want to hurt this family? That was the main question, because the belief that this family had just up and left their home in that condition, it just wasn't a reality. That's not anything what like what these people normally lived like, and for all three family members to be gone without a trace, no way, doesn't make a lick of sense. Eventually, though, more canvassing would pay off, because one neighbor spoke to them and said that he had seen Cynthia after the day that everyone else was saying that they had last seen the whole family. He was very specific too, and he had details about the encounter. He said he had passed her she was walking to the dumpster and he asked her, Hey, how's your mom doing? And Cynthia said she's doing okay.

26:18 She'd been at the hospital due to an eye surgery, but she was recovering well. So the lead seemed very valuable because police could now get dates from the hospital as to when Gloria was there and solidified that timeline even even more. That would really help them to determine the family's last known whereabouts. So the police called the nearby hospital to inquire about Gloria's surgery, When did she first get admitted, what was her discharge date? But the hospital was unable to find any record of Gloria having ever been there. This is weird, but let's of course realize that there's more than one hospital, you know, in the area, and so that would take time, and the investigators would have to look further into what medical center.

27:13 Was it inpatient, was it outpatient? They really didn't have a lot to go on except for what that neighbor had said. So with nothing else to go on, the police decided to return back to the family's home and sift through all of the trash and debris. Was there a possible lead that they could find there? And this was not going to be a small task either, because when you don't know what happened and you haven't been in the home before, even though you know that the home was typically well cared for and orderly, deciding what is evidence and what isn't evidence, it's still going to be very hard. I mean, do you keep the empty doctor pepperbox that has no drinks left in it? Maybe it has fingerprints on it? What about the office supplies that were found scattered about? Does this bottle of alcohol matter or not? What about the Halloween decorations, the costume pieces that were on the floor. Was the bedroom messy to start with or was the whole room tossed? I want you to really think about that for a second.

28:19 What matters? How do you pick what matters when there's mounds of trash and debris everywhere? And this is why photographs would really matter in this instance. So the plan is basically, when you go to a crime scene, you take a photo of everything as is, and then you start looking and moving and checking areas for clues. So, sifting through the mess after they had taken the photographs, a detective picked up a notebook that was on the couch and he starts just flipping through the pages of the notebook. You never know, you know, maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't. And while he's flipping through this wasn't like a formal notebook that someone had for like history class or a notebook where you know, my grandmother used to keep a notebook, and she would write all her bills and everything that she paid in her notebook so she could keep track of it. But it wasn't like that.

29:17 It was just very random. The notebook was. There were some messages written on a couple of different pages, but it was random, and it looked like they were rushed notes. They were short sentences written across the page too, not in the lines. Okay, so like a big note if you were going to leave a note like be back soon or something, if you were leaving a note for somebody. So another way I would describe it to you, because I want you to understand what it looked like. Is let's say that you were writing in a car and you wanted to tell the person in traffic next to you that their tire was going flat. But you're driving right, so you can't really wave them down. You might just grab a piece of paper and really largely across the page, put your tires flat, and hold it up against the window. Okay, does that make sense? I hope that gives you a picture of kind of what this looked like. Now, curiosity took over, and so the officer started reading the notes as he was flipping through the pages trying to find them, and the messages. I'm going to read for you word for word what they said. One of them said I am scared, Another one said what if she goes to sleep?

30:31 Another one said me what question mark? Another one said I cannot do it. Then he got to the last one and it said can you kill her? Question mark? So obviously that's concerning what the hell is this. So the notebook was taken as evidence, but as you can see right now, it didn't really point to in or anything specifically. It just was very alarming and what it said, what it looked like, though to the lead detective, were que cards, like if you were telling an audience to applaud at the right time holding up a cue card.

31:17 So believing that this may have been a piece of the puzzle, the detectives started to think, well, maybe there were two people involved in whatever is happening here and why this family has disappeared, and maybe they used this notebook to like communicate quietly across the room. Now, look, I know that's weird as shit, okay, but they didn't have really anything else to go on that was solid, and so that kind of just became an idea that they had and they just noted it as maybe that's what's going on, but we don't really know. So talking more with Diana, police learned more about the family, including that Cynthia had a little boyfriend that she had been waiting for about a year. And this kind of pequked the interest of the investigators because they hadn't been contacted, no police record of this boyfriend calling in about his missing girlfriend, so they thought, well, maybe we need to talk to him, because you know, I mean, if your girlfriend was missing for days and you didn't reach out, wouldn't you wonder where she where's she at? She's not answering the phone whatever. Police were able to identify her boyfriend as Giovanni Guaiardo, so he did go to school with Cynthia. That's where they had met. So they went back up to the school and they decided that they wanted to try to speak with him there and see what he knew. But he wasn't there, so they got his address of his home and they decided to go by his house and see if he was home. Now

32:48 that said, I will let you know that there were some mumblings that Cynthia's parents did not like her boyfriend, if if not hated him, okay, but he had been at her or Keinsignia party in June, so that seemed to have been cleared up since they had allowed him to come and be there on her big day. That said, he also was going to be throwing a Halloween party with Cynthia at her home soon, so obviously things had improved and they were all kind of, you know, coexisting together in a good way. That party, This was a real thing that was supposed to happen because there were really nice invitations. They were green and they had black glitter embellishments on them of bats and filigree. Cynthia had invited everyone in her class to come to this party and it was going to be held on Halloween night, starting at eight pm, so it kind of was given them. Okay. Well, they had plans to have a party before the family disappeared, so and Giovanni was going to be helping with that.

33:55 So they finally were able to get a little bit about a little bit of information about him. Giovanni. He was a heavier set kid. He struggled in school with complaints about kids being mean to him. I got the gist he wasn't necessarily a popular kid. He did dream of being a mechanic one day, and that was kind of what his mindset was. He didn't seem like he'd be a college bound kid or anything like that. He was going to be more blue collar, working with his hands, which I think is a great thing. We need more kids like that. And he and Cynthia had just really hit it off together, and this relationship was a strong one between the two of them. One commonality between Cynthia and Giovanni was that she wasn't necessarily the strongest of students either. And so I'm unclear, and I like to be very very upfront in this, but I'm unclear if her struggles if it was a language processing disorder as in she had trouble going from Spanish to English, or if it was a processing disord or that was a literacy issue, like she just didn't process information well. But either way, she was in special education classes in that she needed extra assistance. But she was not developmentally delayed or anything of that nature. She acted age appropriate and was a normal team other than she just was not a very strong student. So obviously they both had their struggles,

35:26 but they saw the best in one another. They dreamed of getting married one day and all that jazz. They were just in love, living their best life until now because Cynthia was missing. So when they got to the home, police learned that again Giovanni wasn't there. So they spoke to his mother and they said, look, when was the last time that you saw Cynthia? We really are trying to figure out when is the last time anyone has put eyes on this child. But her answer surprised them because she said, well, yesterday, yesterday, Yeah, she was with Giovanni.

36:06 I saw him both yesterday. Okay, well where are they now? Then? What do you mean? And the mom wasn't sure. Let me pause right there. I don't know what kind of mother he had. Okay, I don't know if she just didn't keep tabs on her kids. I don't know if they were frequently absent from school. So right then and there, I know, right now you're kind of squirreling up your face, going, well, how does she not know where a kid is? You know whatever, guys, we all live different lives. But police were like, okay, you saw them together yesterday for sure, and she said, yes, okay, Well if you see her again, we would really like to speak with her, and they left.

36:49 The police left, they could there was nothing else they could really do. They were just going to go back to trying to find this family. Now they kind of got the idea of maybe maybe she had her dates wrong because no one had seen Cynthia, so this was kind of weird. Well, the neighbor who had spoken to Cynthia prior to the family's disappearance, remember that guy that said, yeah, I saw her at the dumpster, Well, he had given additional details in that original conversation that now seemed uber important. Remember he had spoken to her and he had inquired about her mother and how was she doing while they were at that dumpster. Well, turns out if you went and you looked in the dumpster, the items that were being tossed out kind of stood out to him because she was throwing out it seemed like a lot of stuff, and so he's like, what's going on, Why are you throwing all this stuff away? And she said, oh, well, we're really trying to tidy up the house. We're really trying to clean up, and mom can't do it, and so I'm the one that's you know, taken I guess taken the lead and I'm going to help my mom.

38:00 She was tossing out some of the clothes and some old pictures and things of that nature, and it was just really sweet. You know that she's a good kid and she's helping her ailing mother like this because her mom was not doing well well. When those dates were really hammered out by police and they were looking at things step by step, it was realized that that discussion that the neighbor had with Cynthia took place after the last time that her parents were seen. But that made sense because they were at the hospital. So now the question was, well, when did Cynthia go missing exactly? Because Cynthia had to have gone missing after her parents went missing, and since they were tidying up the house and now the house is trashed, now they're trying to figure out that timeline of when could that have happened. Well, the very next morning, after police went to Giovanni's house, Giovanni's mom called back into the police and said, look both to my son and I let him know that y'all are looking for Cynthia's parents and that y'all wanted to talk to him. But she did the police a big solid because she not only told him that, but she put him in the car and she was now bringing him down to the station to talk. But not only that, she also said, oh, I have Cynthia in the car too. Yeah, for real, this mom was not crazy. She wasn't confused.

39:34 She had seen Cynthia alive and well the days prior, and now she had her in the car. Okay, she was calling because they were both in the car. She was going to bring them down to the station immediately so that police could talk to them. So they pull up and the investigators do exactly what investigators do when something doesn't seem right. They separated the two teams for questioning. Now Giovanni, just so you know, very calm. He's in blue jeans, a black pullover. He's got these kind of thicker, black framed glasses. Cynthia too, if you're watching the body language, Very calm. She's in jeans, a fitted yellow T shirt.

40:14 Typical high school kids, fifteen, sixteen years old. So they separated them and they started questioning them separately, but even separately, both kids gave the exact same chain of events of recent history. Cynthia's mom had been hospitalized for her eye surgery. The stepfather was visiting her at the hospital, but they were now kind of weirded out because neither one of them had seen the parents in days, and so they were starting to really worry because, you know, Cynthia had basically been on her own since her mother left for the eye surgery. This just was starting to stress her out.

41:00 But here's the immediate kicker. Detectives had already done their due diligence. They had verified all medical locations in the area. They had verified that Gloria was never at any of those locations, nor was she scheduled to be at any of those locations, nor was there a surgery, nor had she ever been hospitalized. Cynthia, when she was confronted with this, her response was total shock. What do you mean She's never been to the hospital at all. No, there's no surgery.

41:44 So she absorbs it a little bit and she says, Okay, well, now I'm starting to believe that maybe he never took my mom to the hospital at all. Is that a possibility? Do you think that maybe he never took her? And when pressed more about not seeing either of them, she then gave up even more information. She says, well, look, you know, all has not been well on the home front at our house for a while. She said, specifically, my stepdad's been acting pretty erratically, so in what ways we need to know? Like, what do you mean? And Cynthia explained that he had even pulled a gun on her and Giovanni recently, right before they went missing, I guess, And this was so out of left field, so out of character. He had never acted like this before, and it totally took both of the teens by surprise and fought out, just scared them, and it scared her in the moment, obviously because she'd never had a gun pulled on her before, but also because she said he had a heart condition and this was really stressful. This was out of character. It just wasn't It wasn't normal. Something was wrong. So they asked her, okay, well, tell us more about cleaning out the house. What was going on, and that's when Cynthia explained that she was throwing away her mother's clothes and some of the family photos. But what police didn't realize was that it was all of

43:17 her mother's clothes and the photos, all of them. So now this begs the obvious question, Why would you do that? Why would you throw away all of your mother's stuff? Your mom was just in the hospital, she's coming back. Why would you do that? But Cynthia explained the timeline, and this was when her stepfather had pulled the gun on her. He forced her to throw out all of her mother's belongings in the dumpster. She said she was directed by him to do it, and he told her that if you open your mouth, I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to kill Giovanni. So this was when she first suspected that something may not actually be right with her mom, and her mom having been gone so long, maybe he didn't actually bring her to the hospital. That's why he had me throwing away her things. But then Cynthia was shown the notebooks and the writings that were taken into evidence from the house, and she didn't hesitate either.

44:20 She admitted, that's absolutely yes, that's my handwriting. I wrote that. Well, this was an obvious issue. Why would you be writing things like can you kill her? Who is her? What's going on? Who are you asking? You need to explain this? What does it mean? And the silence at that moment was palpable. She just looked at them, and that is when the story completely shifted. Cynthia now explained that her boyfriend Giovanni wanted to kill her her parents, and she said no, she was scared. Why would Giovanni want to kill your parents? You need to fill us in here because we're not understanding. And she brought up that tension I mentioned before of her parents hating him, and this tension between the two of them. She said it had escalated, it had started to take a huge toll on Giovanni, and the fact was that her parents were talking really ugly about him. They had even called Giovanni's mother at one point and told his mother, we don't want them together, we don't want them seeing each other. And he took this very very personal. I mean, as did his mom.

45:40 His mom, you know, you love your kid and you don't ever think your kid should be treated that way. What's wrong with my son? He's not good enough for your daughter. It just brought about a lot of tension. Cynthia's main her parents main beef basically was that it's they can have a relationship, they're teenagers. Their issue was that they said it was going way too fast. It had become way too intense for their age and it needed to slow down. They needed to back off of how much they were together. And I think, reading between the lines, what I'm getting at is they didn't want her to get pregnant. All right, I'm just throwing it out there. It's my humble opinion, but that's what I think was going on here. Well, Cynthia said that set him off. He was not going to have that, and that's when he decided that he wanted to kill her parents.

46:32 He wanted to be able to be with her and they had to go. Well. The questioning continued until she laid out exactly what happened the night that both of her parents disappeared. Are you ready for this? It was the evening of October twelfth, when she was watching TV and Giovanni showed up unannounced and uninvited at their trailer, and he also had a backpack with him. Inside of that backpack was basically what you and I would call a kill kit. He had a baseball bat, a knife, gloves, a rag, and a bottle of alcohol. Why did he bring a bottle of alcohol? Hold on, just a moment, hold that thought for a sec because I'm going to get back to it in just a second. But when he got there, Miss Gloria was preparing dinner in the kitchen, making none other than chicken soup for Cynthia, because Cynthia had requested that for supper that night. When Giovanni came into the house, he had on a black skull mask on.

47:40 By the way, this black mask looks like the mask from the movie Scream, but it's completely black, blacked out. He had a mask on and that mask. As she was explaining this to detectives, they started thinking back, that was the very description of a Halloween mask that was found in the home while they were searching for evidence. The mask was on the floor in the kitchen. HM, So now he's in the house. Because of the layout of the home, Miss Gloria couldn't see him come in from the kitchen where she was. She couldn't have seen him come in. And this is where the alcohol came in, because Giovanni basically thought that if he doused the rag he brought in alcohol like rubbing alcohol, that would make someone pass out if he pressed it on their face. Now, this is rather laughable, but for entertainment purposes only and allegedly, and of course I would never ever ever suggest that this be done. I will say that if you mix alcohol rubbing alcohol with bleach, that would make primitive chloroform, and that could potentially make someone pass out. But either way, he didn't have both of those, he only had the alcohol. Well, when he came into the house, that's when Cynthia realized what he was going to do, and that's why she started writing those notes to him on the notepad. Now curiously, quietly,

49:14 might I add, she wrote those almost as if her mother. You know, she didn't want her mother to hear her writing these notes while she was cooking for her daughter. So, realizing in that moment while they're discussing back and forth that Giovanni was very serious, she said, she got very panicky and she ran outside while Giovanni attacked and ultimately killed her parents. At this point, she was an absolute sheer terror. She was now afraid of him too, so she went along with him from that day forward so that he wouldn't kill her as well. Basically, look, he's obsessed with me. You know, I'm scared out of my mind.

49:56 I don't know what to do. I think he killed my parents, this is a help me please. So now that they had a semi solid story of something they believed could have truly happened based on the evidence they saw, police went in to speak further with Giovanni in the other room. It was at this point though, that he totally agreed with everything that Cynthia said. However, he kept talking and he gave up a little bit more information. See. His explanation of things was that she was writing him queue cards and holding them up for him, but that some were telling him where her mother was what she was doing. See when she was holding up the que cards, he was hiding behind a wall where mom couldn't see him.

50:53 So there was more to the que cards than just those questions and those things that say I'm scared. There were ones that were like the counter walking down the hall ah, So she was giving up more information than just being scared that he walked into the home. When he explained the killings, even more came to light, like the fact that when he attacked her mother, Cynthia did go outside. He confirmed that she walked out the door because she knew what was about to happen to her mother, and she said nothing, no warning no last minute appeal to conscience, no effort to save her mother. Nothing. She walked outside and she shut the door behind her. But look, babe, not watching your mother be murdered doesn't mean you're not a part of it, does it. Now? That poor woman was cooking her selfish and ungrateful daughter's exit exact meal request when she was attacked by a person from behind wearing a fucking scream mask. How scary would that be to be attacked from behind with someone wearing the very mask from a horror movie where people are murdered. He covered her nose and her mouth with a rag soaked

52:25 in alcohol, and then took away her ability to breathe as she was struggling with him. She struggled with all that she had. But y'all, she was already weak. She couldn't walk well. The woman used a cane for crying out loud. She couldn't see well either. He just made the attack that much easier for him to do it. She was overpowered with ease, and once he slammed her down on the ground, he got on top of her and he strangled the life out of that woman while her daughter waited outside the front door. The betrayal in this, The betrayal in this is just beyond anything. I mean, biology alone shouldn't allow this. The instinct to protect your very own bloodline, it's like ingrained in us. You do anything for your family, especially your mother. But she just waited.

53:22 She walked outside, and she just waited. But that's not all because Cynthia's stepdad wasn't home yet. Detectives didn't realize that. No, he wasn't home yet and he wouldn't be for a few hours. So after he brutally and callously murdered her mother, Cynthia came back inside the house and then walked over and looked at her dead mother. Did she cry? Did she scream out? Did she say no and run to the phone and dial nine to one one? Of course she didn't. What she did do is kneel down and remove her mother's jewelry that was of value. And then the two of them went and plopped down on the couch watching TV until mister Jose pulled in the driveway about eight point thirty that evening. Cynthia forgot to mention those details, and at that point when they heard the car pull up and the door shut, Giovanni got up and he hid behind the door, and that's when mister Jose came inside. He put the keys in, he turned the door, and he walked in, completely unaware that he was about to walk in to a literal fight for his life. And when he stepped inside, he was immediately attacked the bat that Giovanni had brought. He swung it

54:54 down with full force and struck mister Jose in the head, which would have completely disorbed him. He was greatly injured, but instinct it proves a very powerful thing at this point, because Jose wanted to live, and although he had just been bashed in the skull with a baseball bat, he had a knife on his person, one that he always carried on him, and he pulled out that knife and began trying to defend himself, swinging the knife. But Giovanni already had the upper hand and he swung the bat again, cracking down on mister Jose's skull. This caused him to crumple to the ground, and as he fell and he hit the ground, the knife that he had, the only tool he had to defend himself, fell out of his hand, and luckily for mister Jose. His loving stepdaughter was there watching as she saw quote black stuff start coming out of his head end quote, Well, that black stuff is called a ton of blood in the dark. That's why it was black. That was bright red blood gushing from her stepfather's skull. That's what she was watching. And what did she do upon seeing this horrific injury to the man that she called dad. What did she do at that point? Well, the man that doated on her, that scrimped and saved everything he had, that put dollar bills

56:25 in a jar and saved up for her birthday party, the guy that bought her everything that she ever wanted. What did his loving stepdaughter do? She ran over and kicked the knife away from him, ensuring that he was out of his reach. And then she went in the kitchen and grabbed another knife and brought it to her boyfriend so that he could then jump on top of her stepdad and start stabbing him over and over and over again. So as mister Jose crumpled to the ground, Giovanni jumped on top of him. He's bleeding from his skull, and now he's being stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until the life faded from him. That is what that bitch did.

57:13 And by bitch, I mean both of them. So what did the couple do after this violent, bloody and vicious blitz style double murder of her mother. Well, they hung out, that's what they did. They hung out and they waited until after midnight before they took the wrapped bodies. The bodies they wrapped up in sheets. They took them and they loaded the bodies of her parents into the back of Miss Gloria's red jeep Cherokee, and that's when they went out driving. They were scoping out the best place to dig graves, because that's normal, because that's what teenagers do, said nobody ever. But they found a place in North Long Beach and that's where they decided to park, and under the moonlight, in the dark, they got shovels and dug the hole. But digging a hole is much harder than the movies make it, isn't it. You know why, because the movies aren't real. People shouldn't act like that it's a movie. They read a script. But this this was real life, and digging a grave is hard. So when they went to go dump both of the bodies into the grave, it was just two damn shallow to

58:46 fit both of the bodies. But they were spent. They were tired. It's hard work when you murder someone and then go dig a grave. So Jose was a smaller man. They rolled his body into the unmarked grave and buried him back up with the dirt. But before that, they picked Miss Gloria back up out of the grave and la her on the ground while they filled it back in. Then after he was covered up, they picked Miss Gloria back up and threw her back into the vehicle. Where did they go now they had a dead body still in the back of their car. Well, they went back home, They cleaned up, and they went to bed together. The next morning they got up and they went to school with Miss Gloria still in the back of the jeep.

59:50 I don't know what you believe, but I damn sure believe in honor thy mother and honor thy father. I believe it with every ounce of my And to think that they could go to school and go throughout the day like nothing was happening, after just murdering her own parents and leaving her mother still in the back of the car, that is a level of cold that I hope. No one I've ever encountered can understand. So they leave school after that day and now, guys, they're free to do whatever they want. They could do whatever they want.

1:00:39 There's no parents now, but first they're gonna need some cash. Why well, the parents are gone, and Cynthia now wants to throw a huge Halloween party, Yes, the ones that she sent out those awesome invitations for now. Looking back, friends did think it odd that Giovanni would be hosting the party with her since her parents hated him, But whatever, Teenagers don't think much past that. It was just cool that get this. No parents were gonna be at this party. The kids at school were stoked. This is gonna be sick. We're gonna go this house and party the night away.

1:01:19 Of course, no parents were gonna be there. They were dead. They couldn't be there. So the couple then sold off everything of value from the home. But guess what, teenagers are idiots. They don't know how to do anything like that. That's that's in the realm of reality. So they sold everything and they only made a whopping five hundred dollars. So what did they do? They were stoked with it. That was plenty enough for Cynthia to go buy invitations, buy the decorations for her Halloween blowout bash, with her mother still in the back of the jeep. She also went and bought herself a really cool, really sexy witch's costume, and she was gonna wear that to the party. She was gonna look so hot in it. This was gonna be awesome. Cynthia really sounds terrified, doesn't she, Just like she told the police, she was so scared terrified. Oh and why was the house trashed? I'm glad you asked well to start, Teens are slobs. And when you kill your mother, the one who took care of the home, well, when you murder her, she was now no longer there to pick up after everyone. So they just trashed the place.

1:02:39 When they ate, they threw the food down where they sat. When they drank, they threw the cans down where they sat. When they changed clothes, threw them down wherever they were. But also there was something else that caused that house to be trashed, and it was because Cynthia was really at her mother, because her mother had taken away her iPod for her misbehavior. Yeah, now, looking back through some records, it would be found that Cynthia had been acting up for a while now, stealing money from the house, stealing money from her parents, buying bus tickets, and riding off into the sunset with her boyfriend. No wonder they were pissed off. The teenagers were acting like morons together, not following the rules. She had even snuck him into their house one time and got caught. I'm sure she snuck him in more than once, but got caught. She was acting like an idiot, and so Miss Gloria took away her iPod as part of her punishment. But being the knight in shining armor that Giovanni was, he had literally destroyed that house, flipping it upside down, not to rob it, but looking for that iPod when he finally got his hands on it inside of Miss Gloria's closet, and Cynthia she was just tickled pink whenever her hero gave it back to her three days later. Three days later, that's

1:04:14 whenever they went driving again and they found an abandoned home in the area where they got out again and dug another grave and dumped her mother in it. So, if you're following what I'm saying here, they drove around with a decomposing woman in the heat for days and thought nothing of it. But why was Giovanni willing to kill? Was his hatred for them so great that he just snapped that He just lost control and he went and he killed them. Well, he did dislike them, But there had to be a nudge there, don't you think for a teenager to be willing to kill, something had to have prodded him, Something had to have nudged him. And Cynthia she just happened to provide that nudge. Yes, her parents hated him, but just before the murders took place, Cynthia disclosed to him that her stepdad had been raping her.

1:05:20 That is what threw him into a rage. She just provided the fuel to an already smoldering fire. So Giovanni is now, wait what, you're having sex with him? Oh so he wants you, but he won't let me have you. We'll see about that. So she can claim that he planned it all that she wanted to. She can put all of this on Giovanni until the day that she dies. But let me tell you something. She can claim she was afraid of Giovanni. She can claim any of that, but I ain't buying it. I'm not buying a lock of it, and neither were the police, and I bet neither are you. You know why, we live in the real world where we need evidence, where people's histories and behaviors, all of that should come into play. So to confirm this suspicion. Because police just didn't believe what anything she was saying at this point, they then decided, let's put the two teen lovers back together in a room alone, and that's what they did. All the detectives left, leaving those two together, and what they didn't know was that there was a camera in the room. So as soon as the police left. I want you to know this, whenever Cynthia's talking to the police, she's small. If you're watching me podcast right now, you can watch on Patreon.

1:06:43 She's small, she's timid, she's scared, she doesn't know what to do. Horrible. But the second that Giovanni is brought into that room, that meek and traumatized per personality totally shifted and you can see it plain as day. It's disgusting. The door shuts and then she waves Giovanni over and pats like, come sit by me. He does exactly what she says. She then starts smiling at him, this shit eating grin, earty ear, and leans in and is being flirty, and she gives him some kisses, and her tone at that point it changes, It becomes serious, and a cold bloodedness comes right out. You can't miss it. The fact is this guy's she ran that show. She ran it from top to bottom. She told him how to handle the interview from that point forward, she told him what to do. All of it caught on camera. Game over, bitch, because now you just played yourself. Those Halloween invitations were a total waste of money. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you that, because after all of their playing and everything that they had done, on October nineteenth, both teenagers were arrested and charged with the murders of Miss Gloria and mister Jose. Now, once they were arrested, Giovanni would go on and help the investigators locate mister Jose's body,

1:08:16 as well as the bat that he used to kill him. But when they went to go get miss Gloria, she was missing from her impromptu grave. Her body was gone. What the fuck? How could the body be gone? Well, this was quickly answered, because it turned out that a jogger in the area had discovered her body four days earlier. She was already laying badly decomposed yet frozen at the coroner's office, reduced to a Jane Doe until she could be identified. In twenty thirteen, both Cynthia and Giovanni went on trial, and both were charged as adults. So Cynthia went on trial first, and of course she goes all in with her sexual abuse claims against mister Jose and all she managed to do was piss off everyone that knew her. Everyone anyone that knew that man said no freaking way, no way, I'm sorry, no way, it didn't happen.

1:09:26 It just didn't happen. And for me, attacking a dead man's character has got to be one of the lowest things that a human being can do, because he can't defend himself, he couldn't show up to court, his brains were bashed in. There was also zero evidence of this. There were no messages, no contacts, no complaints. There was just no evidence of this, and the jury knew better. It didn't work, and she was convicted sentenced to serve fifty one years to life in prison. Now, Giovanni, he was also convicted in his trial, which was separate, and he was sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole. When it is all said and done, the facts will scream louder than any false claims. And Cynthia was a greedy, manipulative teen saying whatever she wanted to get the result that she wanted. Giovanni in the same breath, he didn't respect adult authority, he didn't respect her parents, and he wanted what he wanted, plain and simple. So maybe Cynthia was the brains of all of it, but I can assure you he was the muscle. Neither one more or less culpable than the other. Their Halloween party, well, that was supposed to be their fresh start, a fresh start as a couple to the public, without the parents there to interfere with their love story. They were going to be together forever, well at least for seven days

1:11:02 after the murders, when at that point they would turn on each other. But don't doubt their love. If anything, they may be the very couple that proves that love can survive anything. However, for their sake, let's just hope that they factored in the afterlife two, because eternal love and eternal damnation are a lot to ponder, especially in cases like this where one is going to lead right to the other. There is, though, some glimmer of hope for these teens. It's not all bad news. Their parents they wanted their kids to have it better than they did.

1:11:46 They came here to work and to improve and to give their kids a better life than they had, and their teens will have it better than their parents did. Because while this word old may be full of wolves in sheep's clothing, where those two are headed, there's no guesswork in identifying who the demons are.