Virtual Drive-By

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast. Or 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 and I'm back. Heck, I have a new episode for you now.

1:03 I also have really frizzy hair, but thank god I have a voice and a face for radio. But that's okay, Jim, Is it okay? Can you work in these conditions? All right? So this case is going to take place in Orange, California in twenty thirteen, and it caught my attention because of the people that are involved in this one. So before I start the case, I want to tell you a little story. I remember being at Angola and this was years ago, obviously a long time ago, and I was with an old warden who's no longer there and we were walking through Death Row and I was kind of being shown around. I was being shown the law library and all of that that they have on death Row. And as we were walking through, I was looking and they had the IDs of all of the inmates slid on this little wall inside of death Row, and so we were kind of looking at those, and I was looking at the faces and trying to see. I don't know if you're like me, but I always want to see does the person look like they did the crime?

1:57 You know, And you know, when you're walking down on a tear in death Row, it always has like a distinct, distinct smell to me whenever, or any tear for that matter, at angle at least, it always smells like pure x. So if you ever wondered what it smells like when you go to Walmart, take a smell of purex and then add in some nasty, humid air, and that's always what it smelled like. And so I just remember the smell and the and the you know, it was kind of it's not dark, but it's kind of like the colors were gray and dark back then, and it was just kind of a depressing sight. But she pulled up an id right there on the wall, and she showed it to me and the fella. When I was looking at him, I was super unimpressed with what he looked like. I'll never forget that, because he just didn't look scary. He didn't look like what we always imagined in our minds when she had told me the story. And then I compared his picture to what he looked like, and he was kind of like a tiny I believe he was an Asian man, but he was a tiny, little Asian man. And based on what I remember from the story she told me, I didn't look this one up, but he had killed his wife or his wife to be, and her family and all of the people that were at the house with a shotgun. And from what I remember, it was over an arranged marriage and she didn't like him, she wanted to be with someone else, and long story short, he blew them all away. And so why was that interesting to me? And it's because Asians are very very low on the crime charts. You do not see a lot of crime coming from Asian people as the perpetrators. And so matter of fact, I even looked it up to prove to you what I'm saying. Is true. And

3:29 this is based on the violent crime offender versus victim demographics from twenty twenty two on the Uniform Crime Report, and it sorts it by category. Whites led at the top, then blacks, then unknown, so I guess mixed heritage, then American Indians, and last but not least Asians. And so you know, out of the eight hundred and seventy five thousand cases that are on here, only eighty six hundred had Asians included in them. So to see that is always kind of interesting to me. I mean, think of all the true crime things that you watch on television, there's not a lot of Asian people that are on there. How many times I'm gonna say Asian in the next thirty seconds. But this is why this case really caught my attention and I was interested in it. So I'm gonna start differently on this one.

4:15 Okay, I was surprised to find this out, But did you know that there is an entire website and support group that is dedicated to roommate dysfunction Because I was very surprised when I found it. So we're going to start up this time. I want you to listen to this nine one one call and you may see why I was bringing that up. Hi, it's not an emergency, but I just is it recording? Is there? What is this conversation recording? Yes? Have the conversation is recorded? Why crying?

4:55 Because I was graide what you're romant? Well, he is like a three time belt. He's Korean, so he's an older gentleman. But we had a like discussion tonight and I honestly felt like and I'm not telling him that I'm not comfortable with him anymore. And apparently he's supposed to be living at the end of the month. But I had PTSD and I was in the military, and I did to tour the rack and I had to tell him that I had a gun in the house, which I do not, and I do not have a gun in the house, but I told him that I did. So he was just because he sounded like he would hurt me, like it was weird, and I was scared for my life. But honestly, I have I do have a Machetti and next to my I always have had a Matchetti. And I'm afraid that I'm like, like honestly hurt him and I'm no he he has. That's the problem. He has gained doings for me, and that's the reason why I hate moving because he has gotten like feelings for me and I don't have any feelings for him. And he's an older gentleman like he used to three. You know, I'm thirty five. And I told him, like I would never have like like his

6:27 full name is, I'm just like colleagues, but that you guys know that if something happens and that I like have some type of self defense or that I did it because I was trying to defend myself. I don't have any like automatic weapons or anything like that. But I told him that what you can do is like not even think about because I swear I will kill him. I swear I'm scared of him. Okay, So who was this woman calling nine one one and why was she in so much fear? Well, her name was Marabelle Marabell Manriquez Ramos. How do you like that? Rolling our ramos to be exact. And she was born in Mexico, but she moved to the US as a baby and now thirty six years old, and she seemed to be a woman of strength and determination, and she had this quest of right to win. And so I'm telling you I totally identify with the personality of miss marabel Now. She stood just five foot three, one hundred and twenty five pounds, so definitely not a large woman by any stretch of the imagination, but a force to be reckoned with, nonetheless, And I find that to be very common in a lot of great women. It's not about how big you are, right, you can walk softly, but you carry a big stick. So Marabelle was very close with her family, specifically her little sister, and her name was Lucero Gonzalez, and she also had a niece named Giselle, and Lusera and Giselle, they had a tight

8:03 bond with Marabelle, and she really, you know, was dedicated to fostering that relationship all throughout her life and then as an adult. You know, family is a bond that she held close, and her friends were also. She looked at them as extended family in her eyes. So people, and you know, I always post pictures and all of that, so you can look at my pictures, but you know, people were attracted to her not only physically because she is a beautiful woman, absolutely beautiful, but also because of her friendliness and the fact that you know, she was known to be so compassionate. She had compassion for people and when they were in a tough spot, she wanted to help them. She was kind, she was thoughtful, and she was a woman of determination. From a young age, she had her eyes set on becoming none other than a police officer. And I just I'm telling you, me and this chick would have been the best of friends. I just feel it in my soul. We would have gotten along so well. So she was also a tomboy though, and very competitive.

9:07 She wanted to win. Whenever there was a competition or anything like that, the old girl wanted to win. But she also had a really girly girl's side to her as well, and she would dress up and she wore makeup and she did her hair. Her favorite colors were pink and white. If that tells you anything about her. She had an elegance and a grace that she carried herself in and I just think so much of her. And she was also someone that they described as someone who would think outside of the box to make things happen, and if anything got in her way, she would find a way to improvise, adapt, and to ultimately overcome that obstacle. Even as a young woman right out of high school, she immediately got a job and she worked security at a kmart that was local. But her duty to security would extend even further because she decided to enlist in the United States Army in two thousand and one, and this was right around those events of nine to eleven. They happened shortly thereafter, and she was not shooketh she was not bothered. She signed up and she was on a mission to serve her country. And she was a hero in my eyes in that she didn't do just one, but two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. So if this hasn't built a picture of what this woman was about, then I don't know what will. She was an absolute asset to our society, an absolute asset.

10:26 So while she was overseas and serving her country, she and her niece would exchange your letters, and she was trying to help to keep her niece grounded and give her good advice. And these were just good people doing the right thing. She was not married, so she didn't have children or a husband, so she absolutely invested in her family. Now by two thousand and nine, her stint in the Army would come to an end and she was honorably discharged from the Army, but she looked forward to continuing her career in law enforcement. It just called to her, and anyone who's listening to this podcast that works in law enforcement or corrections or any type of service job, you know what I'm talking about. It just calls you. You don't even think about the pay. It's what you want to do with your life is to serve others, and so she would continue that. One of the perks of joining the army, though, was that her education would be paid for, and she took full advantage of this. She's a smart girl. So by the spring of twenty thirteen, Marabelle had moved to California. She was living with her mother, who was sick, so she was helping to take care of her mama, but she also was maintaining her grades and her schoolwork.

11:37 So she was scheduled to graduate from cal State Fullerton with a degree in criminal justice. And I'm just like ah, a woman after my own heart, right you go, girl. Initially she wanted her sister to move in with her, but that wasn't happening because her sister lucea Now she did call Lucero Lucy, which her friends did too, so I'll probably refer to her as Lucy from here on out. But her friend, her sister Lucy was settled in and had a life of her own. Her daughter was settled into school and had her friends, and so she didn't want to just uproot her daughter, Giselle. So this left her looking for a roommate. So Marrabel did what she knew to do at the time, and so she put out an ad on Craigslist looking for someone to help share the rent with her.

12:20 And this would be answered by a man named KC like the letters K and C. So he was fifty five years old, so he was roughly, you know, nineteen years Marrabel senior. He was an educated man. He did have a small dog, a little Yorkie that he loved and took care of. He was a very normal, low key man who was unmarried and had no family or anyone at least that he was tight with to speak of. So when he responded to the ad, he wrote, I'm a Korean single professional male and I have a ten pound dog, a Yorkie. I like to keep things clean. I'm easy going and I get along with most people. So sounded pretty promising as far as someone to having your home.

13:03 They're clean and orderly, and so he told Marabell, look, I'm going to be going on a job interview soon, so I'm gonna be in town. I'd like to swing by the apartment and take a look at it while I'm coming in on this job interview. And she said, no problem. They met, it seemed like a really good fit. He was quiet, he was kind of mild, and he wouldn't interfere with her studies. It wouldn't be this young person coming in partying or someone trying to bring in kids and all of that. It was just a quiet man. So he moved in and soon Marabell really took to that compassionate side I mentioned. And she noticed how Casey was lonely. He didn't have friends that came by and visited.

13:43 He just always seemed to be by himself with his dog. No visitors came, and so Marabel decided to open up her life a little bit to him and said, hey, would you like to come hang out with me? So they would go grocery shopping together. And eventually and rather quickly, that would be turned into a really good friendship, very platonic. He would go to you know, like I said, the store with her. They would shop, they would go to family functions together, and she would always invite Casey over if they were going to a birthday party or going to dinner. And the family really loved him too. They took him in under you know, under their wing, and they this friendship blossomed, and the roommate blossomed, and so, you know, eighteen months would go by of them having this pretty decent friendship and roommate status until that nine to one one call that you heard at the beginning of this episode came in. That call came in on April twenty first of twenty thirteen. So who was Kse? Okay, going a little bit deeper into him, his name was Kwang Chol Joy, but he was called Kse for short. And knowing what we know now about marybel to this point, it was kind of shocking that she would say that she feared him. He's not this big, strapping guy, and he's very mild and quiet, and he's you know older, so okay older.

15:03 I get that that's relative I'm not saying that, you know, in your fifties is old, but comparatively speaking, okay, he was older than you know, some young you know, punk frat boy or something. And she was tough. She knew how to handle herself while still remaining an absolute lady. So why had her roommate of just eighteen months put such fear in her? And how did he do this to her? So? Who was this KC that shared Marabel's home with her for the past year and a half? Great, I'm glad you asked me because I have the answers. Aside from the general information that I've already covered, there's a little bit more to him than what meets the eye. Because it turns out, and you probably could guess this before you even say it, but he was into Marabelle all right.

15:50 The more he got to know her, he started wanting to court her. He really wanted to date her. I mean he was already living with her. He wanted to date her, and so much so, oh that he even called Marabel's sister and they had a phone call a few months before this nine on one call came in and he was saying, how look, I know Marabel wants to get married, and I know that she wants to have kids, and I really want to be the guy to do that with her. I really think we're a good match, and I would love to be the father of her children and to be her husband. And it was strange, it was not well received by you know, her sister, because it was first of all, out of nowhere, and it was absolutely not on the radar for Marabelle and totally unexpected by her sister. So Lucy's kind of in a weird spot because she knows her sister and she knows that this is not going to be a well received you know sentiment, I guess, And so she gently explains to Casey, look, you know you're older than her. You're almost twenty years older than her. Y'all are in different phases of life life, and you're not what she's looking for in a partner.

17:03 You know, you're a friend and you're a good roommate, but you're definitely not what she's looking for to settle down with. And so while you have this crush and you're interested in her, I don't really think it's going to be a good fit. And I know my sister, so socially and romantically speaking, Marabelle had potential suitors, and she absolutely was not desperate to date anybody, nor was she interested in KC. So Lucy did what all of us sisters do is we call our sister immediately to tell her what we know, right, And so she makes the phone called to her sister and says, look, marabel I don't know if this is a good idea that you're living with this guy and that he's like fantasizing basically about fathering your children with you. He's just a roommate. I know you're not interested in him.

17:49 Maybe y'all shouldn't live together, you know, maybe it's going to be too weird. And so Marabelle being the strong and you know, since the sensical a word I don't even know, sensible, sensical things that make you go, hm, sensical, guys, is that real? If it's not, I'm making it up sensical. But she had a head on her shoulders, all right, So she decided to just be direct with Casey, and so she had a talk with him and he admitted, yes, I have a crush on you, and you know, I want to be with you. But Marabell kind of told him no, that we're not going to do that. But then Marabelle called Lucy back and said, we talked about it.

18:29 It's all going to work out. There's no worries. He understands that we're not going to be like that. It's it's in no way going to be romantic. It is a word. Be beep, breaking news. Jimithy has just come back to me and has let me know that sensical is a word, and I did not, in fact invent it, So now you know. All right, So Casey started, even though they had the talk, Casey started trying to painfully and I think cringe might be the right word here, but cringe fully acts younger. He tried to like look like he was hip and that he was young. Now, okay, midlife crisis. Sure wants to catch her attention. Maybe, but this is where shit starts to kind of slide south. He even went and got plastic surgery to look younger.

19:21 He tightened up his face, okay, to try to get Marabel's attention. He tried to look younger. He also after having this random conversation one day and Marabell was mentioning that she thought tattoos were cool. He actually then went and got a Bengal tiger tattooed on his arm, like this huge Bengal tiger to try to impress her. And I don't know, it's given me, you know, vibes, because poor fella apparently was not picking up that it doesn't matter if you get a face lift or a Bengal tattoo, you're not I'm not interested in you. And so this is kind of funny in the middle of this story. But I used to go get my nails done at a certain nail salon and I absolutely love the guy that would do my nails. He told me his name was Danny, but that was not his name. But me and Danny were friends and every time I would come in, even if he was working on someone's nails, he would stop and say, no, I'm taking care of Kelly. And so he had a tattoo on his arm, a big one, and it was a woman and I said, Danny, who is that on your arm? He said that's my ex wife and I said, dang, that sucks, she's your ex wife.

20:29 And he goes, you married, Kelly. I said, yes, I'm married, and he said do you want to be married? And I said, yes, I want to be married. He said, well, if he's ever mean to you, don't worry. Danny'll take care of you and I'll put your face on my other arm. I said, well, that is dually noted Danny. So Danny was cool, though there's no hate on Danny. Danny was my boy and he did good nails. So this one's for you, Danny, all right. So but poor KC. He was going the wrong way. He was getting stuff done that just wasn't helping out, and so on the outside it does sound a bit pitiful when you, you know, just look at it from a far, you're like to hang this poor guy was ate up with it. He wanted to be with her. But the more you know, and the more you hear that phone call, it rings just a little bit more sinister that a woman of that caliber would be afraid of him. Right, So, for example, he all of a sudden stopped paying rent to her. And I was dumbfounded that someone would think that this would even fly, right, that, oh, you're just not going to pay rent because you're mad, because I don't want to date you. And so this sparked an argument about the whole living situation.

21:40 And so my mind also went to, Okay, you can't afford to pay rent, but you can afford a facelift, Like what is that about? How did you manage that one? And then you know, Marrabelle was just wanting his portion of the rent or he had to leave. That's all it was. She wasn't trying to fight with him. She just wanted to pay his rent. And so you know, like for it's to change weren't working, and so now he was just stamping his feet and he was angry, you know that that she wouldn't date him. Now, remember how I mentioned a minute ago that there was actually a website about roommate abuse. There is, and so I was wondering about the situation. I'm like, how I wonder how often that really does happen? And so it's called roommate abuse dot org. It's a real thing, and you know, it's so common that the common things that center around roommates not getting along is when one tries to you know, be abusive, and it usually centers on power control and consent and so there's they break it down into you know, physical abuse, which this wasn't at that at point, but you know, trying to control access to the space, locking people out, throwing things, getting mad.

22:51 The other one was emotional, like refusing to talk to your roommate because you're angry, or you know, gaslighting them, saying that you know, you're being overly sensitive, or you're trivializing this and you're just being an idiot. But the other one was economic and financial abuse. And this really seemed to fit the bill for what KC was doing because their bullet points are that you're refusing to pay rent unless you do something or behave in a certain way. That's absolutely abuse of somebody. And you know, the other aspect was like making them pay more rent than they're supposed to pay, but in this instance, he's wanting to live there and not pay his portion of the rent. And then it turns into threats or insulting and name calling and all of that.

23:34 Well, it did get to that level. Matter of fact, before that nine to one one call was made, they had gotten into these arguments, and after the nine one one call was made, an officer had been dispatched out to the apartment, and that officer even spoke face to face with KC. And Casey said, look, I'm moving out at the end of April, Okay, I'll be gone. He seemed to calm down for the moment at least about this whole squabble. But about ten days after that nine to one one call was made, it was on May second, marabel texted a friend of hers. His name was Paul Lopez, and she texted him because she was in a very tense argument with KC over not paying the rent.

24:15 She had bills to pay and he needed to pay his half, and things got so heated that Paul called Marabelle and he's like, you know, she was overly frightened about this and it was just escalating and escalating, and so she did answer the phone, and he said, put me on speakerphone, and so she did, and he was kind of listening to the argument go back and forth. He was trying to kind of monitor the argument. But Paul wasn't playing games with KC. And he finally yelled out over the speakerphone, Look, you either leave or I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna put your ass out. You decide, man, demand you need me to come do it for you, or you can do it on your own. And I'm kind of like her like beating my chest. I'm like, yeah, boy, get it, Paul, right, don't let this fool treat your friend this way. Now, Casey never said anything back directly to him.

25:03 He just mumbled something kind of under his breath in the background, And so Marrabelle told Paul, all right, thank you. You know, I think he got the point. He's going to get out of here and I'll see you tomorrow at the softball game. That was a date that they had already set up and they were going to meet and have fun at this at this softball game. So they ended the call, and then later that evening, Paul texted her a few times, but Marabell never got back to him. She must have fallen asleep or whatever. She was caught up doing things. So Casey ended up calling Marabel's sister Lucy the next Friday, that following day that Friday, and says, look, we had a fight and now I'm worried though, because Marabell never came home. She left, but she never came back. Well, knowing what Lucy knew, she was like, whatever, dude, you know stop, you know you're just being aggravating.

25:56 You're obsessive and you're annoyed because she's not there and you just want to know where she is. But she ends up getting another phone call from another family member. It was a cousin, I believe that said, look, marabel never showed up to the softball game, and we all expected her to be here. So even Paul the friend, was like, no, she told me she was coming to this softball game, and she wouldn't have just blown us off like that. She wouldn't that type of woman. So they all rush over to Marrabelle's apartment, including Paul, for a welfare check. So Casey may have been a smaller man, but something that he always bragged about was the fact that he had a black belt in martial arts, and no one really knew what he was capable of. We never really do, y'all.

26:38 We never know what someone's actually capable of until you see it. I mean, hell, you see women lift cars off of their kids with these extreme bouts of adrenaline whenever they think their kids are going to die. People are capable of things, even if they don't come across as looking like they are. So they spent hours trying to locate a working key to gain entry to the apartment, but that never happened. I mean, they even called k C to be like, dude, come let us in, but he wasn't answering the phone. So finally they just breached the door. They kicked some bitch open to try to come figure out what was going on. And the lights were on and they go into Marrabelle's room. Her bed is not made and it's actually a mess, which is not typical of her. And you know, if you have any military about you, she was making the bed. There was order in her bedroom, and her bed was kind of in disarray, and inside those rooms of the apartment, police officers went through it. They went into her bedroom where the bed was even messed up, but they found no obvious signs of a struggle or that a fight had taken place other than the disrupted sheets on the bed. There wasn't blood or you know, broken items or anything like that. So they did a thorough search of her room and what they would find were some gray and white polka dot pajamas. But it wasn't like they were dirty on the floor. They were actually folded nicely folded, and they were placed in her closet. The reason

28:10 that these poked dott pajamas were important to detectives was because they discovered bloodstains on the pajamas, not huge ones, but some droplets on the pajamas. Also concerning was the fact that her car was parked at the complex. Her keys, her license, and her purse, along with her cell phone. Those were all missing, but the car was still there. Why would the keys be gone and the car still be there, right, That just doesn't make sense. And nobody had claimed that they had picked her up or come and got her, so that was strange. Also, you don't bleed on your pajamas and then fold them and put them in the closet. I just don't believe she would have done that either, based on the way that this woman lived her life. So police and family were trying to call Casey, wondering where he was, but there was no answer, so trying to figure things out. O. Police are and family are kind of going through the apartment and they're looking around when case randomly shows up and Lucy, the sister, sees him standing in a crowd outside of the apartment and police were like, you know, where have you been? Why why are you just now?

29:17 Why are you standing outside of the apartment. Why haven't you gotten in contact with us since you showed up and saw it all taped off for whatever and we're looking for Mara Belt And he says, oh, well, I've just been in my car. I have some binoculars in the car, and so I've just been sitting there and I was just watching the whole time, and I just decided to get out and come check things out. Because that's normal, right, That's normal police and family show up to your house. You just happen to be parked outside looking through binoculars and watching them struggle to get in the house for a long time when you have keys to the apartment, but you just sit and you watch. Okay. Well, police were irritated right that he had watched them the whole time and did not nothing. Instead, he actually had done something. What he had done was he had called the police, like called nine one one, called the police dispatcher to say he didn't want to go up to the apartment because police were there and he was just really freaked out. So he was waiting outside with his binoculars to see, you know, what they were doing. So you didn't get out, You didn't have any questions. You weren't like, oh my god, what's going on really, because that's like how to get away with murder?

30:27 One oh one? At least at least it sounds like that, right, Oh I was just was scared. Whatever, dude, that's weird. It sounds like you're trying to distance yourself from from the crime scene. So, while Casey's standing there, he then randomly mentions to one of Marabella's cousins, Oh, yeah, I saw her leave with a male, this guy. So then they're like, well, who was it? You know, when was it? When did you see all this? But he kind of just ignored the further questions and didn't really address them whenever people were asking him, we'll tell us about it. So an officer finally approached him and was like, look, why did you fail to provide any assistance whatsoever? And all he said was that, oh, well, I just thought that something might be seriously wrong. Well, no, shit, Sherlock, something seriously wrong with you too, dude, Like what are you doing? What are you talking about? So he admitted that he had been sitting there watching her apartment with or their apartment with the binoculars, and that he had ducked into the back seat his exact words, whenever the police had arrived, so they wouldn't see him. So police brought him down to the station, and they wanted to ask him some questions about where have you been, what have you been doing? La ti da. So when he gets to the station and they start questioning him, all of a sudden, he's acting like, you're super confused, almost like he didn't understand very well what they were saying. And you know, by his name, I'm sure you've picked up on the fact that he's Korean and his English was very broken, and he had this very thick, broken English accent. And I want you to know right now, I'm not hating Okay, so slow your role if you think I am.

31:59 I'm not hating it all. What I'm hating on is the fact that people who knew him, who heard him speaking like that, were weirded the hell out because, y'all, he had lived in the US since he was a child. He did not have that thick broken English accent, and he spoke good English, but now all of a sudden, he was super foreign sounding, and it was like, Okay, what is that about? Why does he sound like this, that's not the case we're used to speaking with. So during the interview, you know, and they're asking all these questions, a detective looks and notices that he's got a scratch on his face. So he's obviously got some questions. And as they start looking at him, there are scratches all over his body and they're fresh scratches. So the one that was of special interest was this large, obviously recently inflicted scratch, and it was from his hairline down to his eyebrow, so it was up here.

32:55 And according to KC that wasn't actually a scratch, that was a resulted injury from the twelve thousand dollars cosmetic facelift that he had undergone to appear younger because Marabel wanted him to look younger. Right, you're that into your roommate that you want him to look younger. Okay, sure, I wouldn't care what my roommate looked like. You pay the rent as long as the benjamin's right or on the bills. That's the face I'm worried about, not your face. But he said he was doing it for Marabel. Now, further looking, they found that his left arm had a bunch of scratches on it and puncture wounds. There were scratches on the inside of his right wrist, there was a scratch on the left side of his neck, and there were four parallel scratches on his right trisap. So when specifically asked about the cause of those four on his trisap, he said, oh, yeah, I got those scratches while I was pulling fishing lines from these bushes in the park.

34:00 So the police are like, okay, whatever, But so they go out there obviously to check on it, and sure shooting, did they not find these huge thorns in these bushes when they went and checked And it actually was plausible. Now I know me and you talking right now that this stinks of lies, but the thorn's excuse was plausible. And you have to remember always when you're thinking about cases like this, plausible deniability is what people use. And it could be argued in court that he did that, so they had to keep digging. Now, I want you to do something for me real quick. You've got your hands right, hopefully they're on the steering wheel if you're driving, but if you're at home, grab your hand real quick or look to flip your hand over, palm up, and then binge your four fingers in, not your thumb, just your other four fingers. And wouldn't you know that that is exactly the positioning of these four scratches that are down the bicep. When you look at them, it is perfect for four fingers.

34:59 And I am. And if you were grabbing someone trying to protect yourself, and you put your hands out and you grabbed their arms, right, that is how your hands would scratch down the bicep, straight down into the bicep. So sure the thorns could have done it, but they sure do also look exactly like I would imagine if you were trying to defend yourself against someone attacking you. So Casey then also adds this information in that look, I buy our groceries together, and I pay some of her expenses. And so the police are like, oh, okay, so you kind of take care of her, he says, yeah, But then he admitted that his only source of income was an unemployment check. It just doesn't ring true if you only gather unemployment and you're getting facelifts and doing all this other stuff.

35:43 I don't think you're taking care of this woman who has a job and takes care of herself right. So they say, when was the last time that you saw her? And he says, well, I saw her in the evening of May second, because he had He says, I overstayed as long as I was suppose and I was supposed to move out, but I hadn't quite gotten out yet. He said he wanted to stay two more weeks, but he was refusing to pay that amount in advance, so he did say. Yes, we got an argument about it, and she put her friend Paul on speakerphone, and then whenever he started getting mad, I just went to my bedroom. I just went away and went to my bedroom, which aligned with what Paul kind of had said too. So what was she wearing the last time you saw her, casey? And he said, well, the last time I saw her, she was wearing her gray polka dot pajamas.

36:30 Okay, well then what so he says, well, then I left for an hour to go, you know, do something, and then when I came back, she was gone. And then I left again, and they said, well, why did you leave again? And he says, well, I went for a drive because I was frustrated the whole situation frustrated me. I wanted to get out and go clear my head and go drive around. And he said when he returned that her bedroom light was on and one of her larger purses was there, but not her smaller purse, not her keys, or her cell phone. So he knows that all of that stuff is missing, even though he was too afraid to go up and acknowledge that there might be a problem at the apartment when the police got there.

37:12 So what do you think, you know, what do you think could have happened to her case? If she's not here and you don't know where she is, what do you think could have happened? And I'll tell you this real quick. If I had no idea, if Jimithy went missing, okay, and then all of a sudden I got brought to a police station I was being questioned about it. If I had no clue, I'd be like, I don't know where the hell he is. Check his phone, call his wife, go check his business. I don't know where he is. Why would I know where he is? But that's because I would be innocent. Jim, I'm not going to kill you, Just so you know. For the record, I'm putting it on tape. You have it right here. I'm not going to kill you. But that's not what Case said. Case's response was that while she dates frequently and she's always got dates lined up. Okay, so what about that, he says, Well, I don't know, maybe she was out with another guy or something. He says, I called the police the next morning when she didn't return home because I care about her. But I mean, I don't know what happened to her.

38:05 And so obviously this story is sketchy as hell. And Casey remained a suspect in her disappearance, but the police had to release him. I mean, just because she's missing doesn't mean that she's gone. And we've talked about this a million times. You're allowed to disappear as an adult, You're allowed to do that. So unless she returned or a body was found, I mean, they were pretty much had nothing to do but watch and wait. So friends weren't gonna wait. They wanted people to know, Look, she's missing. This is not someone who would obsconde like this. Help us find her, and so they decided to hold a vigil for her, and wouldn't you know, Casey did show up. He attended but he was kind of weird and when family would ask him questions, he'd say, look, I'm just so sad I miss my friend, you know, and he kind of sat off by himself and was just very sad about it. So, yeah, you know, he was acting kind of strange about the same time these online posts were being and Casey was actively speaking in these posts, right, They're like where could she be? What could have happened to her? And people are saying, oh, well, I saw we're here or there or maybe this, maybe that. And the thing was he was still doing that broke you know, that broken English thing when he was talking to the police, But strangely, whenever he was you know, writing and speaking online, his English was much improved, and he even correctly spoke about Marabelle, except for the fact that he always was speaking to her in past tense. Even people in the threads that were commenting were like, why are you talking about her in the past. She's not gone. We just we need to find her.

39:38 And people really started pointing it out, going, this is weird, bro, Like you're saying like she's gone forever. You're talking about her like she's no more. Well, the thing is the police may not be have been in his face, but they were always watching. And when something like this happens, if you're gonna go acting weird and your roommate's gonna go missing, keep brouh, keep your head on a swibbles, I can tell you because the police are watching. And so they interviewed everyone in Marabelle's circle, and every single person that they interviewed had a rock solid alibi. I mean not even a question about where these people would have been. It was rock solid. Casey was the only one that didn't have something that they could see him on camera or a phone call or something like that to verify it.

40:22 So police wanted to look a little bit more into him and see, Okay, what is this guy really about? What do we not know? What are we missing? And they found out that he was originally from Tennessee, that he had lost his job, that's why he had come and done the interview. His parents had died, And when his parents died, he got into a huge argument with his sister over what he wanted out of the inheritance. Now it wasn't just to squabble either. It got so bad that his own sister had to take out a restraining order against him. She was so afraid of him because she said he had a monster temper. That's the first time anyone had heard this other than that mild mannered, quiet, kind, jovial, you know, simple guy. But the sister was like, you don't know him, like I know him. I had to protect myself with a restraining order. I am so afraid of him. That became a red flag. And previously, whenever police were going through the apartment, they had found an external hard drive that they had seized. Now, what was interesting about that external hard drive was that Casey contacted them and said he wanted it back. So the police are like, bro, you know you don't have a computer, So why do you need this hard drive? Why would you need one if you don't have a computer. And that's when he was like, oh, well, I just go to the public library and I use their computers. Oh bingo. Police said to themselvesselves, we need to be

41:57 at that library. I think there's something there shown uf they put a twenty four hour surveillance team on ol KC to see what he was doing. He goes to the library, shocker, right, he walks in, he checks out a laptop but little did he know that the warrant had already been signed by a judge to monitor his online activities, so the police were one step ahead of him. So this is so cool, Like to me, this was like something out of a movie. So cool. So they had a surveillance team that was surveilling literally what he was doing live time, and so they would radio back to the other team and say, Okay, he's now you know, doing this, He's gone on this search engine. He's doing this, And I was like, bro, that is sick. I loved it. I thought that was really cool. So they had remote intel that was gathered from inside the library and they monitored every move that he made, and then, like I said, they would radio it back in so the search is right like they'd say, like right now, Okay, he's looking at a Facebook dedicated to finding Marabel because the family had made one find Marabel and so he went to it. Then, because people are so fucking stupid, Not that I want you to get away with anything, but the next search, I mean, like, don't be a dummy one to oh one.

43:15 He then searched how long for a body to decay? That was his next search. I swear to you, I cannot even understand people, but how long for a body to decay? But that actually wasn't even the worst part, right, because I mean he could have been doing that to say, Okay, she's been gone this many days, like what's the chances of finding her? But the next thing he did was he cleared his browser history. Why would you clear your browser history? Right? So that's kind of stupid anyway, because he doesn't even have administrator rights to fully delete it anyway. I mean, he's borrowing a computer. So but again, she's been missing twelve days, no calls, no pictures, no text, no posts, no nothing. So what had happened was the family had planned what they called an awareness walk, and so a forensic examination that continued on what Casey was doing on the computer then showed that he directed his browser to a mapping website where he searched, specifically for Peters Canyon in Orange County. Once he searched that, he then switched to the map where the map was he switched it from the map to a satellite view, and they're like, what is he doing? Is what's going on here? And guess what he did?

44:34 He zoomed in closer and closer and closer, and he zoomed in on a particular area and then even closer to a very particular tree Santiago Canyon Road and Jackson Ranch Road. It was approximately seven and a half miles away from where the upcoming awareness walk was. So after he zoomed in on the map and he looked at the tree, he then went back and forth between the walk location like where they would be walking, and that tree area, and then he promptly cleared his search from his internet browsing history again. And that's what we call a freaking clue, a red flag at that. So police didn't stop, they didn't pass go, they didn't collect two hundred dollars. They immediately got in their car and they said, we're going to that tree.

45:24 So they headed straight out there, and wouldn't you know, they walked it off and in less than forty five minutes they found a body. I know, shocking, aren't you shocked? That he would zoom in on a tree and then look at the walk and the police would go to the tree and there's the body, like, what are you doing, bro? What are you doing? What are the chances? Well, the chances are one hundred percent. Marabelle's upper body was still covered and she was partially buried by rocks and debris. But when they found her, her leg bones were protruding from the ground and her feet were missing. So this was odd, Right where did her feet go? But a pathologist determined that her feet were there when she was buried, but animals had eaten her feet and part of her body, but they could not ascertain her cause of death. She was dead before you know, she was put in the ground and they ate her too long, had gone by too much decaying. She was an active decay at that point. And so I did a little research about the wildlife area, the wildlife in that area at least, and it says that they have bobcats and coyotes and possums and raccoons and mountain lions and all of that. So I think you get the picture of what happened to her as far as after she was buried and once she was uncovered, this was important. Investigators found that clumps of her hair were pulled out from the scalp. So something police officers

47:04 know and my female you know, people in the military and female specifically, is that our hair should be pulled back at all times. The reason we pull our hair back is because if someone controls your hair, they control your head at least in policing, right, you don't want to have this big, you know, down hair that someone can grab a hold of and then they control your head. So with this finding, police wanted to go talk to Casey about it. So they go straight to the house. Well what happened. What happened was they figured that he was watching the coverage on television and kind of realized that things were happening. Because when the police got there and they knocked on the door, he jumped out of the window and he took off running. You know what innocent people do. But the joke was on him because they had drones overhead. They could see everything that he was doing. And they caught him and they put him in handcuffs. And what did he say when they put him in cuffs? What do you think he said? Did he say, I am innocent, I didn't do it.

48:00 No, fam, that's not what he said. He said, you better have some good evidence. That sounds innocent too, right, you better have some good evidence. Well maybe they just did, because not only had they found Marabel's body, exactly by the tree that the dumb ass zoomed in on. But they found Marabel's military dog tags, you know, her personal dog tags in his clothing. That didn't help him much. You literally, you you literally have what evidence do you have to find me guilty of murder on literally her id on you? You know what I'm saying. Ridiculous. So he was arrested and he was charged with the murder of Marabell. So what de detectives feel like happened? They feel like she was smothered because there was no evidence of a fight back at the crime scene. And she was fit, y'all. She was a badass. Marabelle was a badass. She would have fought unless he got to jump on her, like I don't know.

48:57 Maybe she was sleeping and she was smothered with a pillow in that messy bed where she was, you know, fighting back, trying to breathe. She would have never left that bed that way. Why was the bed messed up? Because she was smothered. And you remember those folded pjs in her closet. You don't fold dirty pjs and put them in your closet, not if you're Marabelle and I'm standing on that never met her a day of my life. I'm standing on that she would not have done that, and you also wouldn't, like I say, I wouldn't have left your bed messy. Oh and what about the drops of blood on them? Well, guess what. You can research this on your own. But I even called a detective homicide detective friend of mine as well as a doctor that's in my family, and I consulted with them and they told me that absolutely that a nosebleed scenario would make physiological and anatomical sense because of the pressure in her upper airway as being smothered. You wouldn't necessarily have found the petikia in the eyes because of all the decomp right in the extreme heat. But that blood that was on her pajamas makes sense that it could drip when after being sm And something else I'd like to point out or add is that I researched Peters Canyon and on the sign, you know what it says, and this is not mentioned anywhere, but I, you know, I want to go find out. The Peters Canyon Regional Park closes at sunset and then it says the trails may be closed for up to three days following rain. So I don't know what the weather conditions were, but that would have been pretty convenient, right if they won't let people walk the trails for three days? You know how he made two

50:28 trips. He said, he left, he came back, she was gone, Then he left because he was frustrated, and he drove again for a little while. What if he went and scouted out the area, he saw the sign they closed at sunset, That's the perfect time to come back and bring the body, and then nobody's going to be on the trail because he knows what time nobody's going to be there. That's when he went back and got her body. And that's whenever he brought her and he buried or under the tree. It just makes sense that he that he could do that and not be seen. But why did he do it? Well? In the words of District Attorney Scott Simmons, this is a quote, Marabell was his life and the opportunity for him to be with the love of his life was coming to an end. And I agree, and so did the jury.

51:09 Casey Joy was convicted of second degree murder and the trial court sentenced him to fifteen years to life in prison. Now today, Casey Joy is in his late sixties and he's jailed at the Correctional Training Facility in Solidad, California. And for those of you that are interested, this seems to be a trend lately. Casey is writing a book called Suspect Guilty Until Proven Innocent, but it's yet to be published. If you're wondering, so Casey did it. He did it because he was obsessed. And I guess maybe he thought that Marabell was playing hard to get, but in reality, he was just kind of playing hard to want.