WTBL - Walking the Blue Line

WTBL Walking the Blue Line (00:12)
And we're back. Thanks for joining us one more day. Yeah. Hope that we have an episode that you might find a little intriguing this time. Yeah. Well, before that, let's do chit chat about the busy week we've had. You are working on so many different things. It's crazy. I don't think any of them are going to get done. Well, I mean, I did get a few things done. Dallace brought her horses over and I got the feet trimmed.

Got all the plants we planted on our front deck. We're still working on the back patio, but. I ended up redoing the entire motor on our lawn mower. Yeah, that is true. We were starting to look like a jungle in the country neighborhood. Yeah, the grass was getting a little long. And we've hung a million bird feeders. yeah, I love my Hummers.

They're back. I've got like eight feeders out there and everyone has a camera on it and I have like four fountains. I want to put a couple more out. And yeah, the new ones that you got, we had to set up on the network because they all have individual cameras. Well, they say they're smart. Sometimes I think they're dumb. But yeah, three of them are smart cameras. And out of all of that, the weirdest thing happened and no camera caught it at all.

So there's this blackbird sitting on our railing of the front deck and we have a bird feeder, a regular bird feeder out there. And so I'm sure it was getting ready to jump on there. Well, we have all these hummingbirds and Rufus is an orange one, a bright orange one. And so this blackbird sitting there on the ledge and all of a sudden it's like, whoosh, you know, this Rufus comes flying down and bashes into the blackbird.

And the blackbird, though, is so much bigger, it didn't move, and it hit it, and it just took off, and it was the weirdest thing. I Oh, do. It's like, this is my feeder, you stay away. It's pretty comical to watch them chase one another around, and they get a little bit aggressive. Oh, yeah, the other night, they were zipping all around. It was like just colors zipping through the sky. You couldn't even hardly see that they were hummingbirds, you just knew they were. Right. And you hear them, you hear them zzzz.

Yeah, well they sound about like a bumblebee or they're about something. Yeah. But it's pretty cool little hobby to watch and hopefully I'll get some cool pictures this year around with my new lens and some photography. Yeah, I love it. I get sad when they go south. Yeah. Well things are changing and it's getting closer to summertime. You know one of the things we were talking about

though as we're preparing for this episode is how much you notice change and how much do you notice about your environment around you? Well, maybe it's kind of like trees. I don't know about you, but we have all these trees I planted. When we first bought this place, there was like three trees. And I'm like, nope, I want trees. I've planted a ton of them. And you know, so I go out in the spring or, you know, right before spring and I'm looking around, they don't have their leaves. And then I swear,

I'll go out two or three days later and it just seems like overnight all the leaves are out, because I was noticing that today, all the trees now, they've bloomed and well the apple trees are still blooming and the lilacs are blooming, but the other trees have bloomed and all the leaves are out now. And it was like, whoa, just three days ago it seemed like they weren't quite there. Yeah, and with the ones that flower, their flowers come on so quickly and then they're gone.

and you don't even recognize it. Yeah, we had one windy day and our flowering pear tree out in the front went from fully bloomed tree to after the wind was done, there was nothing except for the leaves. Well, and those are kind of slow changes. You you think about that when you talk about your kids too, is that, you you see someone else's children and you see the main...

big changes in them because you don't see them that frequently, but with your own kids that you see every day, you don't notice it. But when you live somewhere, say like an apartment complex or something like that, do you notice the changes, the people that come and go and the cars that are around? Well, when we were managing apartment complexes, we noticed it a little bit more because I think it was our job to make sure no one left a weird car or dumped.

their garbage, we would have that happen quite a bit at the dumpster and stuff like that. But yeah, I've driven by places, like as we've been going by and I was like, hey, when was that there? And you're like, that's been there for like six months. like, no, it wasn't. Yeah, I think I tend to notice some of the construction and such. I mean, I'll notice it, but then I just don't pay that much of attention to it.

Well, obviously, I think it depends upon what you're interested in. If you're a guy and you're interested in cars, you probably notice that thing. You always do that. You're like, did you see that Ford whatever? I'm like, was it yellow? I don't know. But now, you you were a police officer, so you're always noticing the license plates or this, that about the car. And then I was talking to Dallace the other day and I was like, my gosh, you are your father's daughter. She's like, Mom, did you see that? I was like,

No, I didn't notice any of it. Well, but by the same token. That's their job. Yeah, by the same token, you'll say, hey, did you notice somebody's hair changed or the shirt they're wearing? You're like, no, I have no idea. Does have hair? Yeah, exactly. but well, today's story, though, takes us to

the first week of March in 2014. So it's a cold early morning and a blue Ford Probe pulls up to an apartment complex on the lower south hill of Spokane. Two people are in this car, they drive into the parking lot, they park in the visitor's parking area, and they get out and they hurry away from the car. And then the car sits there.

and no one comes back to it. And it sits there. you would think somebody would notice this. I think they might have, but no one said anything. Well, the car belonged to a lady by the name of Latonya

Latonya Chapin is a 51 year old mother of two daughters. Her older daughter, Rachel, is 29 years old and her younger daughter, Amber, is 12 years old. Amber is severely autistic

Latonya got this apartment for her and her younger daughter Amber. But then Rachel needed a place to stay and she had a boyfriend who was Juan... Cifuentes. Okay, thank you. And he was actually an MS-13 gang member and she needed a place to stay so she decided to come stay with her mom and her mom, for some reason, I don't know, didn't tell her, you can't stay here. So she stayed there with them.

Yeah, well Rachel I think kind of just pushes her way in the front door and says Juan and I are staying here. Well Juan has a moniker, a street name, and it's Trouble. And he is really nothing but trouble. He's this MS-13 gang member that came up from Texas and is trying to get a foothold in the Spokane area. So he starts dating Rachel and they stay at Latonya's house.

But when they start staying there, ⁓ his name totally is the thing. They start causing trouble, so much trouble that the landlord says, you guys gotta go. So he's in the process of

Latonya, Amber, Rachel, and Juan.

Juan attracts so much attention. He's hanging out with these guys that are stealing cars.

Latonya actually had messaged her ex, which would be Amber's father, Brett, and said that they brought a stolen car to her house and she's at her wit's end. She doesn't know what to do. She's scared of him. She locks herself in her bedroom. With her younger daughter and basically tries to stay away from them. Right, just to avoid them. Yeah, and so as she's talking to Brett, she's like,

I don't know what to do. And he's like, well, why don't you come stay with me? Because she's like, I'm getting evicted, so I gotta go somewhere. So she starts packing her clothes and is getting ready to leave. So this is now the latter part of February and she makes a plan around February 23rd or 24th that she's going to leave the Spokane area and move down to the Tri-Cities to stay with Brett and his wife, Kelly, they have

invited them to come down and stay because they don't want to see Amber out on the street and they are genuinely worried. So all of this is set into motion in terms of a plan. But also Latonya is talking to other people and telling them that she's scared. She speaks with her sister and tells her that she's scared and she's going to be moving down to Brett and his wife's house.

Right, and her sister's name is Juanita. She lives close by over in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. And they're fairly close. They talk frequently or text back and forth all the time. it's unusual for them to go a fairly lengthy time without talking to one another. But these plans are made...

and Juanita is expecting Latonya and Amber to leave. It's unknown what Rachel and Juan's plans were gonna be as to where they were gonna go, but it's safe to say that they weren't happy about having to leave the apart.

Latonya made these plans and did not include her daughter Rachel. So her and Amber were gonna go live with Amber's dad and his wife. And so that was gonna put Rachel and Juan out on the street. So Latonya had text messaged Brett and said, I will be there within the coming week. But Brett doesn't hear from her again.

So February 25th is the last time anyone hears from Latonya. But a few days after that, right around the first of March, Rachel contacts Juanita and says, my mom, Latonya, has decided to go on to Tri-Cities and she just left Amber here. I can't take care of her. Can you take her? So Amber...

is taken over to Coeur d'Alene and left with Juanita. And Juanita immediately thinks, this is really strange, this is unusual. She's like, I don't think my sister would leave her daughter. Right, would do this. So she's a little suspicious, but she doesn't really know what to do. She agrees to take Amber in and start taking care of her. And in the meantime, she tells Rachel, have Latonya call me when you hear from her. But.

the phone call never comes. Well, and so she doesn't just try once. Juanita calls over and over and each time Rachel answers Juanita is like, you need to tell her to call me because, I need to talk to her. And this goes on for nearly a month.

And eventually Juanita is to the point where she's like, there's something wrong here. Because ⁓ not only is she not returning her calls that she's calling and leaving messages with Rachel, but she's texting her sister and her sister isn't even texting her back. Right.

As well, she's reached out to Brett, who was expecting her down in the Tri-Cities, and Brett says, no, I haven't heard from her. She hasn't shown up down here. So she's just completely MIA. Right. So she gets worried enough to call the police and says, I need you guys to check into this. I guess she puts in a missing person. Right. So on April 7th of 2014, approximately six weeks after the last time anyone's talked to Latonya,

Juanita files the missing persons report with the Spokane County Sheriff's Office by calling crime check. But the problem there is that there the Sheriff's Office is in the process of getting a new program of computer program and so when this call comes in dispatch takes it and does make a note of it, but it gets flagged as not as high priority as it should have been.

And so therefore, it kind of gets pigeonholed or lost in the system for some time. And no one is actively working this case for about a week when on April 15th Juanita calls back and wants to know, hey, what's going on? No one's contacted me. What's going on with the missing persons report that I've filed? And so the lady that takes the call is very knowledgeable. She has a very good memory. She knows most of these cases.

right off the top of her head. So she goes, well, that name doesn't really strike a bell with me. So she decides I'm going to really look into this. So she tells her, you know, I will look in this and get back to you. And she does. She goes in on a fishing expedition and finds out that the call did come in. It got put in the wrong priority. And so then she sends you guys out. Right. So she actually gets the

call updated, make sure that it's in the right priority, that now a detective ends up getting assigned, which happened to be me. As well, she went the extra mile to reach out to Brett and a number of other people that knew Latonya to see if they had any side information. And so in the process, she discovers that Latonya's daughter, Rachel, had been living at the house and that Rachel had this boyfriend named Juan.

Most of that actually comes through social media because she finds Latonya's Facebook page, prints out a lot of it and updates the information so that we kind of know what's going on. So we're into, April. So the end of April. And these guys were supposed to have been evicted. Well, since Latonya went missing and Amber is with her aunt.

Rachel and Juan, they just stay there. Even though they're being evicted, they don't move out. Well finally, it's been, what, five, six weeks? He's like, the landlord comes and says, you gotta get out, you gotta get out now. Yes, so the landlord's first name is Eric and he ends up making them leave. So once they left, I had actually contacted Eric as well to find out what information he knew about where Latonya...

was basically he didn't know anything he said the house is a mess and i was more than welcome to come take a look through it to see if i could find anything but most everything had been moved out of the house and into a storage area that was just a couple blocks away so myself and another detective as well as a forensics person goes out to the duplex and we look around we don't really see anything of significance except for in

the garage is a pillowcase that has some staining on it that might be blood. And so we collect that, but pretty much leave the house empty handed at that time. Then a tip comes in from this group called the Washington State Patrol Stolen Vehicle Task Force. There had been so many stolen vehicles in Spokane,

Well, everywhere we've lived in Spokane, except for two places which were not really in the city limits, our cars had been broken into. Yeah, we were fortunate enough never to have had one actually stolen. But Spokane at the time made the national list as number four worst city in the US to live in for stolen vehicles. I totally believe that. How rampant it was. Yeah.

So they form this task force and they're working with all kinds of people, As most detective work goes, they try to develop some informants. Well, an informant came forward and says, hey, I might know something about a missing person out in the Spokane Valley. And this informant's name is Bobby DeCaney. Bobby DeCaney

He's a Serenio gang. Yeah, and he's got ⁓ facial tattoos. I mean, all over his eyes and it just he looks if you look at him, you look kind of like a scary dude. I mean, I wouldn't want to meet him in an alleyway or anything. But when he when he gets in trouble, he kind of turns into a bit of a crybaby. Sometimes he definitely does so.

Well, once the task force said that he might have some information, I went and looked up Bobby Dikeney and it just so happened he had a warrant for his arrest. So I notified our patrol section that we need to talk with this gentleman. And it wasn't long, was it just a couple of hours and they saw him, found him and pulled him over and arrested him. Right. So he's in custody and he's brought down to the Spokane County Sheriff's Office.

so that we can interview him about what information might you know about a missing person. you finally get a hold of this guy, you bring him in, you're questioning him. And in the middle of the night was one or two, something like that.

He's like, I want a lawyer. So you guys call in the middle of the night and get this lawyer to agree to come downtown. Yeah, it was ⁓ kind of unusual because most of the time when they say we want an attorney, ⁓ we pretty much just take them back to their jail cell. But given the special circumstances of this situation, we decided it was well worth it to contact an attorney in the middle of the night and have him come in.

and lo and behold, one did. A defense attorney came down to represent Bobby Dacaney.

WTBL Walking the Blue Line (18:22)
So once the attorney shows up, Bobby starts telling us about how he had met these two people out at Northern Quest Casino while he was gambling. And the people that he run into are Rachel and this guy named Trouble. Trouble has a bunch of facial tattoos just like Bobby does and they kind of hit off a fast friendship and to some degree start hanging out.

Rachel and trouble have this car and for some reason they get a hold of Bobby and say, hey, we need to leave this car somewhere for a couple of days. Is it okay if we bring it over to your place and drop it off? And he is like, okay. Yeah, no problem. I guess he had some other cars sitting around his place. He's got a small house and a little garage out back and he shares the place with some guy by the name of Nate, but Nate isn't even there at the house.

So they drive this car over to his house and they leave it and they don't say much else about it for a couple of days or a day or so well then they're talking again and they're like, By the way, there's a body in the in that car. Well, Bobby kind of freaks out about this He's like, well, I don't want anything to do with any body or murder or whatever. You guys got to get this car out of here

So they devise this plan, not Bobby, but Rachel and her boyfriend, where they're going to find a place to dump this car and they want Bobby to follow them. And once they drop the car off, then he'll pick them up and drive them back. And he tentatively agrees to do this. So he follows them up on the South Hill and on the early mornings of a March day at the beginning of the month.

these two people who turn out to be Trouble and Rachel park a 91 Ford Probe in the parking lot of an apartment complex and they walk away. But then as they're walking away, they're either calling or texting Bobby, they're like, hey, we're done, can you come pick us up? Well, he starts out following them up there. He's like, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. Well, he gets about halfway and he starts thinking all this stuff in his head and he's like,

I don't want anything to do with this. So he turns around and he takes off and he, and finally I think he does tell him, I'm not coming to get ya. Yeah, he kind of ditches them and leaves them high and dry. Well, the car's got a body in the back of it. They don't want to go back and get that. They needed to get rid of it. So they are off on foot, trying to make their way back to the Spokane Valley. And from there, they just kind of start couch surfing at different people's homes. But now...

Bobby is freaking out about this part that he's had to play in ditching a car. So when you guys are there questioning him, he tells you it's his blue probe.

And so you guys get that information and don't you put in a APB or something to look out for this car, go find this car? And it's somewhere on the South Hill? Yeah, Bobby, because he left them, he didn't know exactly where they parked it, but he had talked with them since then and he knew that it was parked in an apartment complex on the lower portion of the South Hill in Spokane. So like you said, we sent out an APB.

and we ask all of the Spokane City police officers to fan out along the South Hill and start checking parking lots to look for this Ford Probe. Well, it didn't take them very long to find it, wasn't it? Like within a couple of hours, the cops drive up on this car, which matches the description. The officer gets out, he's got his flashlight and he's looking around.

Well, before he even gets too close, he's like, Whoa, that's the smell. goes, this is bad. So he pretty much knows. So he does take his flashlight. He goes round to the back and he's, you know, looking in there with his flashlight. Well, there's in the back of these cars, it's not really a trunk. It's, know, like a hatch and it has that thing, the privacy thing that slides over, if you buy something. Yeah. Well, then that goes right up to the seat. But then there's always like this little

gap in between the privacy thing and the front seats. So he looks between that crack and he can see a flannel shirt and sticking out of the flannel shirt is a wrist and a hand and so he's like oh well with the smell and everything he's like we've got the body and the car. And if you're an experienced officer or maybe if you've ever been around

Rotting meat, you know that smell. It's pretty distinct. You don't even have to be a cop to know that smell. me. Exactly. So they call for a tow truck and they do minimal processing there at the crime scene where or the scene where the vehicle is found and they take the car to the processing station at the Spokane County Sheriff's Office to process it further.

So after the car is brought in and they start going through it, they have to take the body out in a certain way and they have to preserve as much stuff as they can, which includes bugs. And so there's an entomologist that does that. Right. Yeah, the entomologist actually lived in Indiana. And so our forensics team takes and collects.

a whole host of bugs in different stages of development and they package them all up and then they ship them off to the entomologist. And this guy does some incredible investigation into these bugs. mean, he goes like full blown. He gets the weather patterns of the past month. He get not just the pattern, he gets the temperatures.

in that area, not just in the Spokane area, but in that area, he gets the temperatures, the fluctuations, how, and then he starts, you know, looking into these bugs and how far they are into the pupae stage and stuff like this. And he comes up with pretty much the day that she was murdered. Yeah. Well, as you're saying, he does all of that with the weather, but he doesn't even

only take that into account, he looks at the glass on the car. And such, so he configured the greenhouse effect into how the... How warm it has to be for this bug to get into this stage. I mean, this is like CSI at its finest. And through his investigation, what he determines...

the body had spent the first day or two or three days inside the house or a garage perhaps, it would make sense as to the date that the death most likely took place.

So the entomologist though had actually been talking with the pathologist and the pathologist is the guy who does the actual autopsy and what he was able to tell from the autopsy was Latonya had been brutally murdered and it took a fair amount of time for her to die. Yeah there was three different things that they listed as her death. Blunt force, trauma,

strangulation and stabbing. Right. So we have this body that is recovered on April 25th, and they immediately take it into autopsy to determine what the cause of death. But now we know where Latonya is. She's been in the trunk of her car for almost

six to eight weeks. And obviously she was not put in there immediately. I think they were trying to figure out what to do after they killed her and she fought for her life very hard. Yeah, the way the body was kind of preserved tells you that they were a little bit confused as to what they should do, but they were kind of trying to think through how they don't leave any evidence because they wrapped her body in several sheets. have several sheets wrapped.

around her head and not only that, then they took a packing tape and they wrapped that around three or four times and then the rest of her body was in more like ⁓ sheets, two or three different sheets and then they tied that all up or wrapped it all up with a packing tape. and then placed it in the back and hid it. After they had left it in the house, left her in the house for a day or two. Well,

Once we have this deceased person, Bobby has told us that Rachel and Juan have admitted to him that they did this. So now the search is on to find Juan and Rachel. And it doesn't take very long. It's later that evening of the 25th when...

Juan is tracked down out in the Spokane Valley. Rachel didn't happen to be with him at the time, but he was taken into custody and transported to the Spokane County Sheriff's Office as well for an interview. So when you guys have them in the interview, obviously you always separate them. And it did not take these guys long, or guy, gal, to turn on each other. No, they both kind of have their own little version of what happened here. And each one of them...

places themselves in the better position. He says, well, she did it and she says, no, he did it. And then later on it changes again. Well, two seasoned detectives are doing this interview. I wasn't part of that particular interview, but one of them asks Juan or they place him in a position where they don't even ask him if he did it.

more of did you plan this out or did it just happen because things got out of control? And Juan goes into, well, it was really Rachel. Rachel got into this heated argument with her mom. Because her mom was moving out and gonna leave them without a place to stay or any money, because neither one of them worked. Yeah, Rachel is just They're freeloading off of her. Completely upset that Latonya is leaving.

And so she takes a knife and begins to stab Latonya. Now, Juan tells us that this started in the kitchen and moved into a little bitty storage room that was in the duplex where we had been. And the stabbing goes on in there and then some beating with a baseball bat before Latonya- She comes out and says, I can't kill her or she won't die.

So then Juan supposedly goes in there and he finishes her off by strangling her to death. And when questioned, Rachel says, well, I didn't know he really killed her. I was in the kitchen making popcorn. Like you just tried to kill your mom and you decide, ⁓ I want some popcorn. These

not good people. Well, when Rachel is questioned, again, she doesn't say anything about the initial stabbing. She tries to make it all about

Juan did this, beating her with a baseball bat and eventually strangling her mother. And Amber was in the bedroom, locked away from all of this during the entire time. And they did try to question her, but since her autism is so severe, they could not get any information. And they had specialists come in that are...

acquainted with this kind of situation and they said that they just couldn't get any information. She probably didn't know anything with her autism but then also being locked in a room which she's kind of used to and I can understand her not knowing anything. Rachel and Juan have both basically admitted that they have taken part in this

murder

mom and it's so disgusting but. Some weird things started going on like almost

immediately after Tanya disappears, Rachel and Juan decide to go gambling, which is probably where they met Bobby. their activity doesn't show any sign of remorse or- just the opposite. Exactly.

And I think that this is the part that as an investigator you start looking at, okay, motive. We understand that people get into heated arguments sometimes and such. Later on in their confessions, they both try to downplay this. Juan said, ⁓ he was approached by Latonya and Latonya had a knife and so he tried to turn it into a self-defense issue.

Rachel then goes back and basically tries to say she doesn't have anything to do with the murder, it was all Juan. But. But then even later that changes. Yeah, when you look at what they do following it, it's hard to believe anything these two have to say. Right, because shortly after they go gambling, they go shopping and they drain the EBT card and then they need more money, so.

Rachel calls the bank pretending to be her mother and pulls it off because she has all the information and her mom's cards and stuff. And she successfully changes the pin on the card so that they can start now spending that money. Yeah, I listened to the phone conversation between this Alaska USA credit union representative

during that eight minutes, Rachel repeatedly says that her name is Latonya Chapin and she gives all of her identifying information. But I've spoken with Rachel. I sat down and had conversations with her. I know from the date that is this conversation takes place on that Latonya was already deceased. So clearly wasn't Latonya. It was Rachel, but she's jovial and she's kidding.

And then so we start looking deeper and we start to find other things such as the Verizon phones that they ordered in Latonya's name. So they got the pin change so they can spend the money. So they go and they purchase two cell phones, but they don't really want the cell phones, have cell phones. What they do is they want the money. So they buy the cell phones, they get them delivered and then they take them

and they sell these phones to get actual cash. they wanted to spend that cash. then because Amber was special needs, she actually got her own EBT card for food stamps and such.

And then Latonya had one as well. And Rachel took those and- Drained them. So during this time, because this is like a month long process, of course, ⁓ Latonya's sister is calling and getting the run around. And so she finds out-

that these cards have been drained because she's like, need some help taking care of Amber. And her sister's not getting back to her and then so she somehow she finds out that there's no money for food or anything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Rachel has kept Amber's EBT card and Juanita realizes that there should be some money there to take care of Amber. of course it's all been drained. But.

Juanita being concerned about her sister's welfare and what's going on is looking for clues of her own. And so she's able to provide some financial information, which we follow up on through search warrants and find that Rachel's been doing all of this activity. And then even beyond that,

Like we said, they were getting evicted. So Rachel rents this storage unit that's only a couple blocks away from the duplex. That is only in her name and she's the only one that has a key to it. Right. And so not only does she take some stuff from the house, but she takes the murder weapon. At least one of them. At least one of them to the storage unit and locks it up. And they have video footage of her going and coming from this...

Storage unit. Yeah the Entry way where you have to stop and put in your key code to get into the unit has a camera there So they can keep track of who's coming and who's going not only do they see that she's coming and going She's like talking to people and just acting chill like it's just another day in the park She has the bat with her and she shows her putting it in the storage unit, right?

Yes, so she's very nonchalant about all of that.

WTBL Walking the Blue Line (35:21)
we execute a search warrant at the storage unit. We retrieve the baseball bat. We retrieve a knife from the duplex that fits the description of what we believe Latonya had been stabbed with.

But most disturbing was the first time that I visited this house, I didn't see it. But after talking with Juan and Rachel and getting their story, I realized that the murder has happened in the mechanical room of this house. And so when we go in there, what originally looked

something dirty splattered on the wall turns out to be blood residue. They had attempted to clean some of this up, but there's a lot of blood spatter and what we call cast off up on the walls and the ceiling. It is everywhere. But They had gone in and they had taken bleach and they had tried to wipe the walls down. Obviously they didn't do the best job, which is good.

But bleach can destroy DNA, but it doesn't destroy, the iron in blood? Right. And so we have multiple chemicals that we can spray on and it will show that there is blood present. And one of those is luminol. In this particular case, we use a chemical called leukocrystal violet and it makes

the area that has blood on it kind of turn a purplish blue color, a violet color. So once you guys sprayed this, it's all over. It's all over and it is on every single wall and the sink and everything in

WTBL Walking the Blue Line (36:59)
of this evidence is gathered and when we look at it, we have the murder itself, which is horrible. But then they actively both cover it up. They take the car together and they drop it off with Latonya's body in the back in this apartment complex and they leave it for six to eight weeks. They're spending all of this money and such.

But when it comes to trial, it's a different story. Yeah, the weirdest thing. All of a sudden, Rachel doesn't have anything to do with this. No Juan steps up and says, Nope, I did the whole thing. She didn't have nothing to do with it. Rachel Doesn't get convicted of the murder. whether he's being chivalrous or

I'm not sure what the reasoning is, but Juan steps up and basically just pleads guilty to first degree murder, takes a life sentence, and goes away to prison. And Rachel ends up going to prison, but not for that long, and she's actually out now. Right. Well, when Rachel got to trial, she was charged with the murder, but...

as a defense team, they were able to call Juan in on her behalf and he was able to testify and basically he said, I did this and I'm spending the rest of my life in prison. And that was apparently enough in itself to cause the jury to have a reasonable doubt that Rachel took part in this homicide.

But we do know that once they were both in custody, they were trying to continue their relationship. Yeah, if you've ever been in a jail or ⁓ visited one or whatever the case may be, prisoners have unique ways of communicating. I worked in the jail for a small time and it's weird the stuff that they do. through the piping, you know.

That's like their phone system. They are able to talk to one another from one cell or even floor down to another floor through the pipes. And then again, there's trustees. They usually will help send notes back and forth and such. So

Rachel and Juan continued to talk while they were in jail, leading up to their trial. And they were actually caught at it and issued what they call infractions. But what more can you do to... They're already in there. They're already in jail. There isn't a lot you can do. So who knows whether they were making their plan on how they were gonna do this. But Juan went to prison for the rest of his life. Rachel was...

charged, she was acquitted of the murder, but she was found guilty on some financial crimes for taking the money from her mom's account. Impersonating her, kind of a fraud situation. And she spent about three years in prison. And now she is out and has moved on. But the interesting part, I guess, for me is...

this car that sat there for six to eight weeks with a body in the back. way that it did, mean, I don't know, once you

that is a smell you can't get out of your mind or your nose sometimes. Right. It's bad and it's distinctive. don't, know.

think it's something else. Well, and the officer mentioned that when he walked up to the car, he could smell this from a few feet away. So how many people that live in that apartment complex walked by this, noticed this car, didn't bother to say it. It was in there. was not the best complex or the best part of town. Right. Every fairly good sized city has parts of that town that aren't. ⁓

the most desirable and for Spokane, this happens to be one of those areas. But it is interesting and so out of this, if someone you love went missing or someone you knew went missing, how long would it be before you contacted the Or realized something was going on? Because if there's someone who...

knows them is related to them, they might know certain things. If you text them and you get a text back, you may not pick up on it unless they use different language Well, you actually had a case, couple of cases where the people did that. They returned messages to the deceased and, but little minor things that they worded differently or used ⁓ a nickname or something that it wasn't, you know.

Right, yeah, it was distinctive because people work in patterns or they have their little pet names or such and when you look at someone trying to impersonate someone else, sometimes they You're gonna slip up eventually. it's really hard and then as we've talked about in other cases too is just.

location patterns and those kind of things can all tell a lot about it. Well there is a digital footprint and so I can see ⁓ somebody being able to get away with it for a bit of time depends on how much they really try. How little slips ups or not little slips ups they make. Well in this particular case

The fact that it went unreported ⁓ wasn't Juanita's fault or anyone's fault in the fact that they waited too long to contact law enforcement because the unfortunate part was...

Latonya knew she was in trouble. She was already avoiding. She was already fearful and telling people, I need to get out of here. And she was trying to do that. She was doing everything right and the people around her were supportive of her. so there's nothing that they could have done that wouldn't necessarily change this. And in the end.

we ended up catching the people that were responsible and they were tried in a court of law. We have to live with whatever the verdicts were. ⁓ Like we said, we have to live with the fact that ⁓ according to a jury of her peers, Rachel is not guilty. She is acquitted. In my mind, that doesn't mean she's necessarily innocent, either way. It is...

What it is, as they say.

pretty horrific, mean, a mother that truly fought for her life to save her youngest child while the oldest child ends her life. So, if you or someone you know is in that kind of a situation, definitely... There are some help lines out there. are some help lines out there, take advantage of those. Make sure that those people that you do ⁓ stay in contact with know that if you disappear for a

they should be contacting the authorities right away. Don't wait a month or more to call. So take every precaution to protect yourself, would be our advice. So we'll end this story with that and we'll put up some actual information that you guys, if someone's interested in where they can look, we'll put some phone numbers or some contact information out for that.

I hope that you will tune in next week. And until then, God bless, take care, and see you next time. See you next time, bye.