09x23 - Saving Face

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NARRATOR: A woman in Austin, Texas, mysteriously

disappeared without saying anything

to her friends or family.

And she wasn't the only one.

Two other women had also disappeared

under similar circumstances.

A tooth, a single hair, an anthropologist,

and a forensic artist implicated a man

who had k*lled before in another country.

[theme music]

In , -year-old Olivia Estrada

was going through a very difficult time.

She had recently been divorced and was unemployed.

The only bright spot in her life was her family.

-She was funny, a heart as big as Texas or even bigger.

She just had compassion for everyone.

NARRATOR: One night out of the blue, a woman who refused

to identify herself called Olivia's family with a warning.

-She said to go and check on your mother,

that something was wrong with her.

NARRATOR: So family members went to investigate.

-Her car's there, her keys are there.

Her house is locked.

Something happened that was against her will.

-The type of door it was, you had to lock it with a key

when you went out.

So whoever left last locked it with a key.

Her keys were inside.

-By the time I got here, my cousin who lives next door,

he had broken into the house to see if my mom was here,

and when I looked down, the carpet was soaking wet.

Like, why is the carpet wet?

NARRATOR: Detective Bob Merrill found traces of blood

in the water-soaked carpet, an obvious sign

of a hasty cleanup.

-So at that point, we're going to start investigating it

as a homicide until you know different.

NARRATOR: Outside in the carport next to Olivia's car,

investigators found evidence of a struggle.

-There was a ring by the tire, and he

says do you know who's ring that is?

And I said, yeah, that's my mom's ring.

So what's it doing out here?

NARRATOR: There were traces of blood on the ring

as well as on the inside of a Olivia's car,

but there were no foreign fingerprints.

-The few clues we did have there at the house

became very crucial.

The blood in the house, the blood in the car,

the blood on the carport.

The bloody ring that was found in the carport, those sort of

became the factors that determined whether or not

we would be able to turn this into a homicide case.

NARRATOR: Unfortunately, investigators were not

able to trace the anonymous call made to the Estrada family.

-It was strange that the woman was

never identified who called.

She must have been scared to come forward.

I don't know.

NARRATOR: The next day, investigators

took a second look around Olivia's home.

Tucked away in the bottom of a dresser drawer,

they found a photograph of Olivia

with an unidentified man.

And on the back of the photograph

was written the name, Martin.

-No one knew his last name.

No one knew where he was from.

No one knew anything about the man.

NARRATOR: But Olivia's daughter recalled speaking with Martin

on the telephone when she called to speak with her mother.

She said it was a bizarre conversation.

-The only thing I remember he me was

that he wanted to marry my mother.

I didn't even, I mean, she just met him.

And I said, my mom will never marry you.

I said I don't know who you are, or who you think you are,

but my mom will never marry you.

NARRATOR: Investigators released a photograph to the media

hoping that someone could identify him.

After Olivia Estrada's disappearance,

police released a photograph of the unidentified man

in the picture found in her home.

Several callers identified the man has -year-old Martin

Gonzalez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who

was working in Austin, Texas, as a laborer.

When questioned, Gonzalez said he didn't know anything

about Olivia's disappearance.

When he was searched, however, investigators

found the house key to Olivia Estrada's home.

-At the time that Mr. Gonzalez was picked up,

he had the only other key that anybody

knew existed in his pocket.

So that was a very strong indicator

that he was the last one leave that house, which would

indicate that he had something to do with her leaving.

NARRATOR: Gonzalez said he had dated Olivia casually.

But the last time, he was at her home, he said she was there

was another man, Manuel Barbosa.

-And they ended up getting into a fight.

Manuel pulled a g*n on him, and he left.

And Martin left.

Manuel stayed.

NARRATOR: But a check on Barbosa's whereabouts

showed this was impossible.

-We checked out Manuel, and he happened to be federal custody

for a long time, and was not anywhere near Austin, Texas,

during that particular incident.

NARRATOR: When investigators searched

their criminal database, they discovered that Gonzales had

spent time in a Mexican prison for m*rder.

-The first m*rder was a fake deal,

got a man to meet him out in a desolate area,

and beat him to death, and took his money.

When he got out of prison, he k*lled

another person in Mexico, and shortly

thereafter, came up here to Texas.

NARRATOR: And five months earlier, Gonzalez

reported another girlfriend missing, Maria Flores.

-So it was really starting to connect that we were looking

at more than one missing woman involved in his life.

NARRATOR: Investigators called what's known as the Missing

Persons Clearing House, an organization that tracks

missing persons' reports with unidentified bodies found

in Texas, and they found something.

Three years before Maria Flores and Olivia Estrada disappeared,

another woman's body was discovered in a field

just one block away from Martin Gonzalez's home.

-That was a huge break.

I don't know that that connection would

have been made without that call.

NARRATOR: So who was this person?

Forensic anthropologist, Dr. David Glassman,

examined the remains.

He noted blunt force trauma to the skull and most of the teeth

were missing.

The size of the skull indicated the victim was female,

and the cranial sutures revealed her approximate age.

-There were some of the sutures on top of the head

and the back of the head that were already

fused on the external surface.

So from that, I ascertained that she would have

had to have been at least years of age.

NARRATOR: Dr. Glassman also found

evidence of the women's race.

-She had a condition which is called Wormian bones, which

are extra bones found in the suture in the back

of the skull, which we see very often

in Asians and Native Americans.

NARRATOR: But without someone's DNA or dental records

for comparison, investigators had no way to identify her.

To put a face with the bones, investigators

turned to forensic artist, Karen Taylor.

Since the skull was so fragile, Taylor

decided against creating a forensic sculpture.

Instead, she used a technique she had developed called

two-dimensional facial reconstruction.

Taylor assumed the victim was Hispanic and over years old.

Using anthropologic data, Taylor used rubber markers

to show the appropriate tissue thickness,

which differs from race to race.

-That forms a basis of the contours of the face.

So once the tissue depth markers are glued onto the skull,

then we literally connect the dots

to develop the contours of the face.

NARRATOR: Taylor then photographed the skull,

and placed a piece of translucent vellum

on top of the picture.

Vellum is the finest type of parchment available,

usually made from calf skin.

Taylor then started to draw the facial features in life-size.

-The average human eye is about millimeters in diameter.

That happens to be about the same size

as the diameter of a US quarter.

So I'll often take a quarter and center in the bony orbit

of the skull and trace around it.

NARRATOR: But the nose caused the most difficulty

since it's made of cartilage that decomposes.

-I look at their pure form aperture,

this pear-shaped nasal opening.

Well, I add five millimeters on each side of the opening

of the nose, and that gives me a sense of the width.

NARRATOR: The angle can often be determined by analyzing

the bone called the interior nasal spine.

-We use that to measure and determine

the projection of the nose.

There's a formula of three times the length of the nasal spine

that is used for that projection.

NARRATOR: Since most of the teeth were missing,

Taylor relied on the principle known as the facial triangle.

-There is an equilateral triangle

created between the two corners of the eye

and the middle of the bottom of the lower lip.

And I thought, aha, that's going to help me to project how

the mouth might have been positioned

in that blank space on the skull.

NARRATOR: Taylor chose an appropriate hair color

and an approximate weight, then put

the finishing touches on her work.

-The incorporation of the proportional arrangement

of features in a face is very important to the recognition

factor taking place.

NARRATOR: Investigators released the forensic drawing

to the media hoping to learn her identity.

And in so doing, helped solve a mystery.

Just days after the forensic drawing

appeared in the Austin newspapers,

a family member called from Mexico

to say it looked like his mother,

-year-old Sylvia Garcia.

She was none other than Martin Gonzalez's wife.

-We got a call from Sylvia's family

saying that their mother had married him,

and had come up here, and they'd never seen him, or heard

from her again or seen her again.

NARRATOR: Court records indicated Sylvia Garcia had

filed for a divorce from Gonzalez

shortly before her disappearance.

When questioned Gonzalez denied having a wife

and denied even knowing Sylvia Garcia.

-He just professed ignorance, and it was unbelievable.

NARRATOR: But inside Gonzalez's home,

investigators found a photograph which

bore a striking resemblance to the forensic drawing.

-And that's when I really got excited,

because everything did seem to fit.

It was what I would expect to see.

The proportions were correct.

Things did seem to fit.

-Once we got pictures, we were convinced that that was Sylvia.

It was just proving it was the next problem.

NARRATOR: To find out scientifically

whether the skull was Sylvia Garcia's, investigators

discovered that Sylvia mailed letters to her relatives

in Mexico.

And those letters might have Sylvia's DNA profile.

-We've looked at the envelope and saw that, in fact, the flap

had either been licked or that the stamp had been licked.

So I attempted to extract DNA from the flap

and from the stamp.

And I was able to generate a DNA profile

from the flap of the envelope.

-I think it's very fascinating, and also,

that her family would have saved those envelopes.

I mean, how many people save letters

that somebody sent a couple of years ago?

And who would've thought that it would

help solve a police investigation?

It's just unbelievable.

NARRATOR: For comparison, criminalist, Jody Koehler,

used tooth pulp found in one of the few molars

still in the skull.

Tooth pulp can be a rich source of DNA.

A PCR DNA test revealed the skull match

the DNA extracted from Sylvia's letters.

-Man, that was good.

You just never expected that to happen.

You hear it can happen.

It just had never happened for me until then.

-I was very excited that we had actually identified

this person, because the skeletal remains were

fairly old.

And so it was really a shot in the dark to be able to do this.

It was great.

NARRATOR: When investigators re-examined the bedsheet that

covered Sylvia's body, they noticed a single strand of hair

in the knot.

Since there was no root material,

investigators decided to perform a mitochondrial DNA test.

-Now the unique difference with mitochondrial DNA

is only inherited from your mother.

And so men don't pass there's onto their children.

This means that siblings in the same family,

or all maternal relatives in the family, for example,

will share the same type.

NARRATOR: The hair was first cleaned in ultrasonic water

bath to make sure no cells from another source adhered to it.

-Once the hair is thoroughly cleaned,

then we grind it up in a small glass grinder that is almost

like a mortar and pestle apparatus.

This powders the hair into a liquid buffer, and to this

are added some chemicals that effectively purify the DNA away

from everything else in the hair.

NARRATOR: And this same procedure

was repeated on a hair sample from Martin Gonzalez.

The result, the hair found with Sylvia Garcia's body

belongs to Martin Gonzalez.

-If you find a type that's never been seen before,

as was the case in this case, you

would be able to eliminate at least .% of North Americans

as having that type.

-His hair being with the remains was

crucial to show that he was involved in her ending up

in that vacant field with trauma to the head.

NARRATOR: Martin Gonzalez was arrested and charged

with Sylvia Garcia's m*rder.

But the question remained.

Where were the other two missing women,

Olivia Estrada and Maria Flores?

When Martin Gonzalez was in prison awaiting trial

for the m*rder of his wife, Sylvia Garcia,

investigators received a telephone call.

-The informant, who actually is a retired detective,

was clearing some area for a fence,

and he stumbled onto some bones in Bastrop County.

NARRATOR: Dental records confirmed the remains were

those of Olivia Estrada, the -year-old divorcee who

was dating Martin Gonzalez around the time

of her disappearance.

The skull showed signs of blunt force trauma,

as well as a g*nsh*t wound.

-I mean, I still didn't really believe it.

And I said, Detective Merrill, is it her, is it really her?

And he says, yes.

And he had a tear in his eye.

NARRATOR: Less than a mile away in another deserted field,

investigators found the remains of the third missing woman,

Maria Flores.

She had also been dating Martin Gonzalez.

And it was he who reported her missing.

Her skull showed evidence of blunt force trauma to the head.

Martin Gonzalez was charged with all three murders.

-We had mitochondrial DNA, which had never

been used in Texas at that point.

We had other kinds of DNA, forensic anthropologists,

forensic dentists, a multitude of civilian and law enforcement

witnesses, many of which were Spanish speakers.

And the logistics of putting that case together

were astounding.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors learned that Gonzalez frequented bars

where he met vulnerable women some were illegal immigrants

with no family or connection to Austin.

Others like Olivia Estrada were emotionally vulnerable.

-She still loved my father.

I think she was just down on herself.

I really believe when she met him, she was at her lowest.

That is the only way I could see that she would never

let a person like Martin in her life.

-This man had a history of abusing

women and charming them.

Choosing isolated women, or most of them

isolated, and then lying to them, saying he owned land

and becoming jealous and possessive.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors presented evidence

that the motive in these murders was

anger after having been rejected.

Gonzalez refused to accept that these women no

longer wanted him in their lives.

Gonzalez's telephone conversation

with Olivia's daughter revealed he wanted to marry Olivia.

But Olivia told her daughter late,

she wanted no part of him.

-I said, mom, what is he talking about?

He says he going to marry you.

She said, he's crazy.

I said, I'm telling you what he just told me.

She says, no, he's crazy.

Don't pay attention to him.

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

I'm like, mom, what are you doing?

NARRATOR: It wasn't long after this incident

that Olivia disappeared.

In September, , Martin Gonzalez

was convicted of three counts of first degree m*rder

and sentenced to life in prison.

-You left her.

You threw her away like she was garbage.

She wasn't Martin.

She was not.

She was my mother.

His eyes are just void of any kind of human anything.

There's nothing there.

Nothing that's human anyway to me.

He's just a monster.

-He's just a truly evil person with no conscience.

I wish he was sitting on death row instead,

but he needs to be behind bars for the rest of his life.

NARRATOR: To this day, Texas authorities

remain convinced there are other victims linked to Martin

Gonzalez, victims they have yet to find.

Without the forensic drawing, investigators

wouldn't have identified the skull found in the field.

-I don't think he had any, any perception of forensic art

in his entire imagination, but I bet he wishes he did.

-It's just amazing that we can combine those types of science

where she can do the facial reconstruction,

and then we can confirm her facial reconstruction

using this type of DNA technology.

-An anthropologist friend of mine, Dr. William Maples,

responded saying, patient and silent while we live,

our skeletons shout to heaven and posterity after we die.

And I think that's a wonderful, quote.

It says the same thing.

The dead can speak through facial reconstruction,

through forensic art.