Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Diana Alvarez

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

In 2016 a young girl went missing from her home in the middle of the night. It would take four excruciatingly long years before her family would get solid answers about what happened to her.For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-diana-alvarez/ 

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And today, I want to tell you a story that was told to me by Delia D'Ambra, the host of our other show, Counter Clock. And she was a reporter in Florida for some time, and she told me about a case that has been rocking Southern Florida for four years, though the case didn't get much national attention. And listen, I have to give a special thanks to Michael Braun and Melissa Montoya, really, I mean, to news press in general, because they were the only ones who really kept this story alive in the press. Without their reporting,

much of this story would be unknown. A story of a young girl whose innocence was stolen by a predator. This is the story of Diana Alvarez. It was Sunday, May 29, 2016, when Rita Hernandez and her live-in boyfriend started what they thought was going to be a normal day. Rita at the time was very pregnant and moving slowly, so her boyfriend, Uribe, was helping get all five kids up and moving for the day. But there was a problem. Diana, Rita's oldest from her first marriage, was gone. The family lives in a small mobile home in Fort Myers, so it wasn't hard to search the entire place up and down. She was nowhere. They know this isn't right, so right away, sometime between

6 and 7 in the morning, the family calls the local sheriff's office to report Diana missing. A deputy is dispatched, and from the very beginning, there is a problem. The language barrier. Diana's family speaks Spanish, while most of the Lee County Sheriff's deputies speak English. Through pieced-together translations, three persons of interest immediately emerge for police. Both adults living in the home, that's Rita and Uribe, and a 20-something man named Jorge, who had lived with the family for some time in their trailer, but who had recently moved three hours north to Orlando. According to Michael Braun and Melissa Montoya's reporting, at 7.42 a.m., deputies ask Uribe to call Jorge. But Uribe says the deputy doesn't

have him ask anything really related to Diana. Just weird questions, like his date of birth, where he was right that second, which Jorge told him that he was in Orlando, where he lived, heading to Okeechobee, which is like an hour and a half south. Why would they be asking for his date of birth? Like, why not ask where Diana is? I found that strange as well, and I kind of think that this was maybe the language barrier thing coming into play. The deputy says that he wanted the family to ask if he was with Diana or knew where she was, but the family says that they were just asked to ask his date of birth. So maybe the deputy instructed them wrong, maybe there was something in the

middle there, that's the truth. I mean, and honestly, maybe that was one of the questions that they asked. It could have been that the police wanted to get some more information on this guy, so they could look into him before actually calling him a person of interest or a suspect, because, I mean, at this point, they don't know anything about Diana's whereabouts. And you know, I kind of lean towards that, because the detectives first focused hard on the two adults that were in the home, not necessarily Jorge, though Rita and Uribe insist they know nothing. And a couple of hours later, they even call Jorge again. And this time, he tells them that his car broke down somewhere in Orlando. So for a second, they think, oh,

like he's in Orlando with a busted car, maybe he's an unlikely suspect. While searches are conducted around Diana's trailer park, deputies question Rita and Uribe for 10 hours. Uribe is even given a polygraph, which he passes, but it takes 13 hours before they're cleared and released. During that time that they were being questioned at around 105 that afternoon, the sheriff's office requested information on a quote suspect named Jorge Guerrero Torres. That's the same Jorge who they just gotten the date of birth on that morning. Now, in addition to trying to find any relevant information on who this guy was and maybe what his record was, it seems like from email communications that police were

also trying to get a picture of him in case it was determined that this was their guy. Now, during all of this, there has still been no sign of Diana anywhere near her home and no helpful information from the people who lived with her by the time the sheriff's office presses again for pictures of Jorge at 524 p.m. That night, presumably because Rita and Uribe are cleared and there is still no Diana, the Lee County Sheriff's Office sends a request for an Amber Alert to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at 11.45 p.m. on the 29th. That's what like 17 or 18 hours after she went missing. That seems like an eternity in case like this. It does, but it would actually be even longer before the Amber

Alert goes out because it seems that either it wasn't approved or the request wasn't received. I mean, it's not entirely clear to me. All we know is that an Amber Alert doesn't go out for Diana on that night. Even 17 or 18 hours after she'd been missing from her home, it was going to take much longer. And for a while, there's just nothing, no sign of Diana in any searches, no Amber Alert to try and find her outside of the immediate area and no idea where she might be. Though police are hard at work behind the scenes trying to piece together her last movements and the movements of Jorge and they're getting close. Police scheduled a face-to-face interview with Jorge on the 31st, the third day that

Diana has been missing. From the time it took them to make that appointment, then getting a helicopter to see him. I mean, this is just like a 20 minute span according to Melissa Montoya's reporting. Jorge ran. That's never a good look. No, never. But police get lucky when they're in Orlando because though Jorge isn't there anymore, he left something else behind. Some of the behind the scenes work police were doing was trying to trace Jorge using his cell phone. And although he appeared to be on the run before they could meet up with him, his phone was still located in Orlando. But here's the thing. When they actually find it, it isn't in Jorge's possession anymore. A groundskeeper who was working about

a mile from Jorge's apartment found the phone and it looked like it had just been like tossed into this ditch kind of thing with this long grass. And this guy said he found the phone like pretty recently, like right after Diana went missing. And he said he didn't have the passcode so he couldn't open it. But a call had come in on it after he found it and he was able to answer that call. And he said it was from a man who said that he was the owner of the phone, but he told the guy, listen, I don't want it. You just keep it. And then the guy hangs up. So now police have the phone, but they can't unlock it without the security code. And they can't get the code unless they find Jorge. But just as Jorge is looking

like a prime suspect going on the run, ditching his phone, Rita goes to speak with police because she thinks there's someone else that police need to be seriously considering as a suspect. Rita tells police that it is totally possible that her ex-husband took Diana. Because she says he tried to kidnap their kids before. You see, in 2013, the couple was living together with their kids in Georgia. Now at the time, they weren't married anymore, but they were still living together until they could afford to live apart later that same year. Once they started living apart, things got kind of contentious. Dad wants more time with the kids. He starts showing up unannounced. And one day he drops in and says he wants to take Diana out. But

mom's like, no, she's in school. You can't just pull her out of school to go out to eat. So he took the younger kids leaving Diana in school. But then at the end of the day, he never returned with them. Rita ends up tracking him down to Okeechobee, Florida. And she ends up filing a handwritten motion with a judge that was recounted in the news press. And here, but I'm going to have you read this. The motion says Martin took my kids, said he was going to bring them back and he didn't. I was in Georgia. He took them to Ohio, then to Okeechobee. Martin told me he got passports for my kids while he was in Ohio. I think he's going to take them to Mexico. Ultimately, the judge denies the motion to have the kids

return to Rita. And he kind of basically says, listen, pretty much your only option is to take them back the way that he did. So she does. Rita ends up staying with her kids in Florida, living in Collier County at first, where she met Uribe, and then the two later moved together to Fort Myers. Now, after this, Rita admits that the relationship might have gotten a little bit better. Dad would come, he'd pick up the kids, he'd take them to Okeechobee for the weekend here and there, and he would always bring them back. So why would it change like just out of the blue? And why only take Diana? Well, you see, the year before Diana went missing, her dad had gotten deported. I guess his immigration status

wasn't up to date and law enforcement found a bunch of weapons in his car. So the thinking was, I believe, that he didn't have his weekends anymore to see the kids. So everyone's wondering, you know, maybe he was desperate. Now, as far as like why just Diana, no one knew, but maybe it was just easier to get one kid into another country rather than three. So police obviously have to look into this as a possibility, even if they think they have better leads like Jorge, because a big part of any investigation is not just finding the truth, but also closing all of the doors that lead to other possibilities. If you leave things open-ended, I mean, that's exactly the kind of thing that can come up in court and leave reasonable doubt for jurors.

The problem with closing this door, though, is that it's going to take a lot of time and effort. They can make phone calls and they do, but dad's saying like, hey, she's not here, doesn't do much. It was going to take months and months before they can actually get someone down to Mexico to check this out once and for all. I'm sorry, months? This is a missing child. We don't have months to spare. Well, you see, they take their time because in the very early days, as they start learning more about Jorge, it seemed more likely that he did have something to do with her disappearance. And dad was just a door that needed to be closed, not actually where they were going to find Diana. They had to

prioritize. And one of the big things that made them think Jorge was their guy was his cell phone records. Records show that the night before Diana was reported missing, Jorge's phone traveled from his home in Orlando to Diana's home in Fort Myers. And it was in the area of her home for about three hours between midnight and 3 a.m. Again, this is the morning that she was reported missing now. The phone then left the area and traveled to a specific part of Okeechobee County called Yeehaw Junction. Now, remember, Okeechobee is where Jorge told Ribe that he was going the morning Diana went missing. But obviously, he said that he was heading there from Orlando and not from her home in Fort Myers. Well,

interestingly, what the record shows is that his phone stayed in Yeehaw Junction for a couple of hours. Police are more and more sure that there is just something really wrong here and Jorge is their guy. So they flood the media with his picture and make a second request for an Amber Alert on June 2nd. And this one, this one four days later, does get approved. And when the alert goes out, it does exactly what it was intended to do. I mean, honestly, making it all the more frustrating that it wasn't done sooner, but they needed some kind of break because the search around Diana's place had been called off the day before without finding anything. But after this alert goes out, I mean, within hours, his car is located.

And then a woman comes forward who will be the key to capturing Jorge. This woman whose name is Antonia tells police that she was told to go pick a guy up. Now, there isn't a ton of information on this particular story, so I don't have a lot of detail, but it seems like it was kind of like a friend of a friend asking kind of thing like, Hey, I need a favor. Can you give this guy? I know a ride. But before she's supposed to give this stranger acquaintance, maybe someone she kind of knows a ride, her husband sees this guy's very face on the news. So they call police and they set up this little sting operation. She shows up and picks him up just as planned. But as soon as he closes the door and they

take off driving down the main road, police pull the car over and arrest Jorge. What did they arrest him for? Like, was Diana with them? Was it for kidnapping? No, to both. She wasn't with him and they weren't arresting him on anything related to Diana. He was undocumented, so they were able to hold him on charges related to his immigration status. But while they held him, it allowed them to ask him important questions related to Diana. You know, what are your whereabouts the previous two days? Let's get some information on your phone. Mostly questions about that phone. He willingly gives law enforcement the passcode and what they find on the phone shocks even some of the most seasoned investigators. In a password

protected folder, they find very graphic and sexually explicit images of a child images that date as far back as 2015. Were they Diana? Police weren't saying. According to an article from Michael Braun and Melissa Montoya from the time, police said the child in the images had not been identified. And honestly, I don't know if they even could identify the child right away. Some reports I read about this finding on his phone suggest that the pictures were very close up images of body parts. So it is possible, at least in some of the images that maybe a face wasn't seen, which would make it harder to link to a specific victim. But Diana or not, it was clear to authorities that these pictures were of someone under

age and therefore it gave them something very solid now to charge him with. So on June 6th, he's charged in court with possession of child pornography and he's held without bond. Okay, just give me a second. I'm trying to piece this timeline together. You mentioned that the images on his phone went back as far as 2015. Yeah. Did he even know Diana or her family then? Well, yes. In fact, he knew the family as far back as 2013. What police learn is that sometime back in 2013, Rita met Jorge while they were both migrant workers picking cabbage. From what I can tell, they weren't like exceptionally close or anything, but they knew each other well enough that after Rita moved her family to Fort Myers

in 2015, Jorge reached out to a mutual friend named Mario and was like, Hey, can you ask Rita if there's any work down where she lives? And Rita says, Yeah, there's plenty of work, whatever. So he ends up coming down there. He gets a construction job in Fort Myers and Jorge and his brother Pablo actually move in then with the family. And that's when they rent that room from them in the trailer. And then police get the bombshell that blows the case against Jorge wide open. Police learn that the reason Jorge moved out of the family's trailer is because basically he was kicked out of there by Diana's parents because of how he was acting with her and

how she acted with him. She was like a little puppy who followed him around and wanted to be near him all the time. And listen, we've all been nine and we've all been in love with our Sunday school teacher or you know, some adult male figure you get like heart emojis for those kind of like little crushes are natural. But something about the way he showed affection back to Diana didn't sit well with Rita and her boyfriend. So they asked him to leave. What Jorge revealed to police in custody was they were right to be uneasy. And this is where I cannot emphasize enough to parents. Trust your gut. Your job is not to be your kid's friend. It's to keep them safe. And if you feel like something is wrong,

there is a good chance it is because Jorge tells police and these are his words not mine that he had a relationship with Diana. And starting in June 2015, they began a sexual relationship and those photos on his phone were of her and were taken in December of that same year. Now she was just eight years old when he abused her eight and it wasn't just sexual abuse. He was grooming her. They had been exchanging communications. I believe from a cell phone in her family's house and then messages would get deleted to ensure that her parents never found out. Oh my God. So did the police think that Diana went with him willingly? Like he didn't just like snatch her out of her window or something. So they've

never said that explicitly. But I mean, it's an easy puzzle to kind of put together with confirmation of his sexual abuse and his phone being in the area the night she went missing. Police are more sure than ever that they're on the right track and they're convinced that the same way Jorge's digital trail led police to him, it will lead them to Diana. They renew their search efforts in June while Jorge sits in prison unwilling to cooperate in the search for Diana. This time their searches aren't focused as much on the home, but rather that area in Yeehaw Junction where Jorge's phone had stopped for so many hours that has to mean something. Officers keep thinking. So they search and they search but heavy rains

make the searches difficult. And day after day, they come up empty handed. By June 16th, the search is called off without finding anything. As the weeks pass, Rita becomes more desperate for answers. A small part of her still holds out hope that her daughter is alive. And if she's going to believe that part, she has to believe that time is of the essence. And so she does something that I don't know if I could do. On July 14th, she goes to the jail to meet with Jorge face to face, to beg him to tell her where her daughter is. Not only will he not tell Rita where her daughter is, he tries to deny all of it. He says the pictures aren't of Diana. I never did anything to her. But he already confessed that they

were of her. Well, so I'm pretty sure that at the time he'd only confessed to law enforcement and they hadn't told anyone yet. I mean, at least that's my understanding. So Rita wouldn't have known when he's like straight up lying to her face. He just tells Rita he loved her. He loved her family so much he would never have done anything to Diana. And he actually just points the finger back at Rita's ex husband and said it must have been him. He took her. They have the wrong guy. Ultimately, Rita left that day with nothing. She tried to come back and see him again to beg him again. But then he refuses to see her. Now around this time in July, police release a nugget of information to the press because

they need their help. They say that the day Diana went missing, Jorge's car broke down and they believe that people stopped to offer help. So on July 21st, the Orlando Sentinel, which is a newspaper released up where he lives closer to where the car would have broken down, they release a short piece saying that police are looking for a good Samaritan who's stopped and who would have helped Jorge sometime between maybe 6.30 and 8.30 in the morning. And they believe that this person may have given him a ride to a gas station. Now around this same time, news press publishes an article stating that police were looking for another good Samaritan, this time a woman who stopped to help him, but someone he wouldn't have

accepted help from. They're asking her to come forward because I assume they want to know if she saw anyone with Jorge. Specifically, probably did you see a young girl with him? After those call out for witnesses, we don't really hear much more about this story in the press for a few months. Not until October, with Jorge safely tucked away in prison waiting to stand trial for his child pornography charges, authorities finally make it down to Mexico to visit Diana's father and close that door once and for all. It feels a little bit like almost a formality because they do just this quick visit with him, verify that she isn't there with him in the home, but really without searching anywhere outside of the home and

then they kind of just like pack up and ship out. Things kind of go silent again for a while and then just before the one year anniversary of Diana's disappearance, things start heating up again. Jorge's trial is set for May of 2017 and there's this flurry of activities surrounding his case in the months right before. On April 3rd, paperwork is filed with the court that finally tells the public for the first time that the photos on Jorge's phone were in fact of Diana. At about the same time, searches are renewed in both the area where the car broke down and in Yeehaw Junction where his phone was stationary for so long. But again, in both places, they find nothing. Do you think that these searches kind of got

initiated because of the anniversary or was there like a tip? You know, I honestly don't think it was either of those. I mean, they're looking in the same places that they've already looked. So I definitely don't think it's a new tip. I don't think they're just doing it because the anniversary is approaching. I think they're doing it because the trial was approaching. You see, Jorge's attorney was fighting hard to suppress evidence in the child porn cases. Alex Cardona wrote a piece for news press that outlined the defense's strategy. They were actually trying to get all of the pictures on his phone thrown out as evidence because they said that they were obtained illegally. So I think they were like

desperate for anything else in case this went through. But how were the images obtained illegally? Didn't he give them the passcode for his phone? Oh, he did. I mean, they even had a warrant too. It's not like they just like went in there. But what his defense team said is that he had some kind of expected right to privacy for his phone and particularly for that password protected folder with the pictures in it. And the prosecution says like, uh-uh, bucko, you threw that phone away into a ditch. And even if you want to say that it was an accident, you called the guy who found it and told him

that he could keep it. So you gave up all right to privacy. Jorge tries to combat that by saying, well, I thought the phone was broken. I didn't toss it because you guys called me for an interview and spooked me, which by the way is totally what happened. He said, I thought it was broken. So when I threw it away, I wasn't giving up my right to privacy. But then he calls it and confirms it's not broken. Exactly. And I know this isn't acted out like an episode of Perry Mason, but in my mind, like I definitely imagine Perry being like, sir, I'd like to bring your attention back to the groundskeeper. And he like slowly gestures behind him. Like if you recall, this man said

you called him on your phone. Do you concede that this is true? And then he's like, yeah, I do. And then in doing so, do you admit that you knew the phone wasn't broken and you gave up your right to privacy? Boom. Lawyer. You know what? I'm sure that's exactly how it went. You're totally right. For all. Either way, they got him and the judge agrees that the pictures are in, but there's a catch. They can't bring up the fact that Diana is missing in his trial. They can have the pictures. They can even say that the pictures are of Diana, but they can't say that Diana's missing.

It took a long time to find a jury locally who wasn't already familiar with Diana's case and that she was a missing person. But after a couple of days, they settle on 12 people for a four day trial. In those four days, Rita had to sit through what no parent ever should, hearing detail after excruciating detail about the messages exchanged between her young daughter and this disturbed older man. When all is said and done, it took about 35 minutes for them to render a verdict. And on what would have been Diana's 10th birthday, May 16th, 2017, they found Jorge Guerrero Torres guilty. Later that summer in August, 2017, Jorge received his sentence, 40 years

in federal prison. Now, this is a victory for everyone involved, but it's not a total win. These are still just child porn charges. Diana is still missing and her mom won't feel vindicated until she knows where her daughter is and Jorge is held accountable for taking her away. But just then, when it seems like this is the best that they're going to get for justice, the case is flipped on its head. Just a day after his sentencing, the DA slaps Jorge with two new felony charges in relation to the disappearance of Diana. He's charged with lewd or lascivious molestation of a civilian less than 12 and battery of a child. Now, this isn't murder charges, but at least it's

something. Honestly, that's kind of a huge relief to me. I mean, we look at the Naja case that we did a couple weeks ago along with Angie's case from Indianapolis, and there was so much circumstantial evidence, and it's kind of refreshing to see law enforcement move on the case, especially when it's a lot of just circumstantial stuff. Right. I mean, circumstantial stuff, it seems so clear. And they do have a lot of circumstantial evidence. Not only do they have all the phone location records, the text messages, the pictures on his phone, the history with Diana, but they also got some new witnesses in the year

since Diana's disappearance, particularly a man that we've mentioned before, Mario. Who is Mario again? So from earlier in our story, Mario was the like mutual friend that actually reconnected Rita and Jorge when he was helping Jorge find work in Fort Myers. Okay. So everyone in the story is kind of connected. Mario is actually married to Rita's sister, though Rita's sister at the time was living in Mexico. So Mario is able to fill in some pieces for police. He says around the time Diana disappeared, he gets a call from Pablo,

who's Jorge's brother. Pablo asks Mario for a favor. Hey, my brother's car got in a crash and I need you to pick it up from the shop. He says, you know, my brother can't do it because he's traveling, blah, blah, blah. Could you just do me a solid? So he does. But he said there was something strange. When he went to go pick up the car and tow it back to Okeechobee, like Pablo asked, he didn't see any signs of a crash. No damage, like nothing messed up. The only thing he noticed was that the bottom of the car was just like coated in mud like it had been off-roading. Mario later told Melissa Montoya from news press that police interviewed him multiple times and even gave him a lie detector test.

He said that he thought that they did that because they were looking for some kind of accomplice that maybe helped Jorge either do what he did or to at least cover it up. Finally Mario says that he had no idea what was going on or that Jorge even was capable of doing what he'd been accused and convicted of at that point. Hold up. So he didn't get a call from Jorge. He got a call from his brother Pablo. Yes. And Pablo, who lived in the same trailer while Jorge was abusing Diana. Yes. Call me crazy, but could this be the accomplice the police are looking for? So your crime junkie brain is working a little bit like mine. Mario said that the two were always together. But I mean, there have been

zero formal allegations made against Pablo and he doesn't come up a lot in reports about this case. I mean, he really just gets like offhanded mentions here and there. So I don't know if anyone else has the same suspicions, but either way, Mario was on the DA's witness list and all of this could get brought into trial. But there's another witness that is even more damning to Jorge, a former jail cellmate named Juan. In an article from Wink News.com from back in December, 2017, they summarized documents released by the Lee County Sheriff's office. These documents said that while Jorge and Juan were together, Jorge asked Juan how much time he would face for quote, the murder charge. Now, keep in mind,

this is before he'd been charged with even the kidnapping stuff. He told his cellmate that he was probably going to get charged with rape, kidnapping, and murder. And he went on, Juan says, to detail what actually happened on the day Diana went missing. According to one story, Jorge picked up Diana and was going to take her into Mexico. But when he crashed his car, everything changed. And he thought he had to get rid of Diana before the police showed up on the scene. What? Yeah, no, listen, we know jailhouse informants aren't the end all be all, but it's a story that makes sense with everything we know, the broken down car, the mud at the bottom of it. But something about the story feels

off to me. Remember, Mario said it didn't look like there was a crash, just a bunch of mud on the bottom of the car. So if we're to speculate for a second and say that it was the off roading that actually stalled the car out, he would have only been going off road to do something to Diana and presumably to hide a body. And it's because of that that your car doesn't work. But one story is kind of the opposite. He's saying that there was a crash and then that's why he went off roading. But if there was a crash or the car broke down, then you don't go to where you should go to get the mud on the bottom of your car. Does that make sense? Right. Basically, it's the reverse order of how it should have happened.

Yeah. And I don't think I can fully piece it together because I have no real proof of what was wrong with the car. I mean, maybe something else happened. Maybe the mud had nothing to do with it. I just pointed out to say that we still don't have the full story. And as the second anniversary started to approach, Jorge was still not saying a word to officials. It was starting to feel like the truth might never be known, that the battery and the loot acts charges were the best that the family was going to get. But then on May 3, 2018, this happens. Good morning, everybody. We're here today to announce a couple of things. The first thing we want to announce is that a grand jury has returned

an indictment for first degree murder, kidnapping and lewd or lascivious molestation against Jorge Manuel Guerrero Torres for the death of nine year old Diana Alvarez. We're standing here with our law enforcement partners. We want to give a huge thanks to the Lee County Sheriff's Office, the FBI, FDLE and the Department of Homeland Security. In this case, the Lee County Sheriff's Office, the detective standing beside me and all the Sheriff's Office did a tremendous amount of hard work, a thorough and extremely complete investigation on this case culminating in this grand jury indictment for the charge of first degree murder and the two other life felonies. Our office made the decision to convene a grand jury in this

case with the help of law enforcement because we would not rest until we saw Torres held responsible for what he did to this little girl. Wow. So did they find her? No, they actually didn't. So the DA is moving forward with a no body case? Right. Well, they were. It was a case that was going to take a long time to build. Many of the witnesses and people involved in the case were all over the country, even in other countries. So they were given a long time to kind of track everyone down and get this to trial as a no body case. But in March of this year, 2020, after almost four years of Diana being missing, everything changed. According to Fox Four's digital team, surveyors found Diana's remains in a

wooded area of Yeehaw Junction, the same general place that police had been searching so many times before. She was there the whole time. Finding her there exactly where they presumed she would be only strengthened their case. And prosecutors are now seeking the death penalty. Jorge is pled not guilty. And proceedings for the case were actually supposed to start in March. But because of the COVID-19 outbreak, everything's getting pushed. And at the time of our recording, he's scheduled to be back in court the day that this episode is supposed to air April 27, 2020. But honestly, who knows if it won't get pushed farther back at this point. But at least the 27th or whatever date in the future, there is hope, hope for

justice. And maybe that will provide even the smallest amount of peace to Diana's family. It's so important to know the warning signs of grooming and child abuse and to know what to do if you see it. Darkness to Light is a wonderful organization that has a number of resources on this topic. And you can visit them at d2l.org. You can also find a direct link to them on our website along with pictures and source material for this episode. Just go to crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. And stick around for a CROPPET OF THE MONTH STORY. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

Okay Ashley, so today we have a very special prepet named Eva and she was submitted by her mom, Louisa. And Louisa had been wanting to adopt a dog her entire life, same. But for a bunch of different reasons, it just was never the right time. And I'd like to pause here and say, to be fair, I can vouch for them being very different. But I feel like dogs are kind of like having kids. Like there's never going to be a perfect time. So Louisa had just ended a super toxic relationship that was at times abusive a few years earlier and had been dating this really great guy, the first great guy she found after this terrible relationship she got out of, only to have this guy break up with her. She had moved

for what she thought was her dream job, but it turned out to be a complete nightmare. And she felt like nothing in her life was panning out. And she found herself getting increasingly depressed and she did what I think a lot of us do when we get to that point. Look at pictures of dogs on the internet. And she came across this beautiful pit mix at a local shelter and knew that this was her dog. She contacted the shelter and lined up a meeting for later that week. And Evel was about five or six years old at the time and had just been rescued from Tijuana and it was super clear that she'd been used for breeding and had already had like several letters of puppies. She had been living on the streets and when she was taken

to the vet by the rescue, it was discovered that all of her teeth were broken and a ton of them had to even be removed. What has to happen? All of them are broken? Right. So based on the damage, the vet speculated that she had broken her teeth while being caged and she had likely tried to bite her way out through the metal wires and it completely destroyed her teeth. Oh poor baby. And later they found out that not only did Eva have a BB lodged in her abdomen, she also suffered from and will continue to live with premature arthritis and a tick-borne

illness. Louisa was able to take Eva home that very evening they first met in the park. And despite having only known each other for a few hours, Eva immediately hopped up on the couch with Louisa and cuddled up right next to her. Of course she did. Pet her in the belly. And they've been inseparable ever since. And despite all of her health troubles, Eva is the sweetest, happiest dog, loves kids and babies, which I think is like a pit thing. Oh my gosh. They're obsessed.

They get such bad raps, but I have found that pits are the most cuddly, lovable, sweetest little babies. They are truly like the teddy bear of dogs and no one can tell me any differently. She greets every person she meets with a wagging tail and a request for pets. And even though it can still be really painful for her, she loves playing with other dogs. Louisa has done everything in her power to give Eva the best life possible, not only because of Eva's rough start in life, but because even though Louisa adopted her on paper, Eva is really the one who rescued her.

Of course she is. I feel like every one of my stories ends like that, but guys, it's true. It's so real. Oh my God, I love it. Oh my gosh. Do you want to see a picture of Eva that'll be on our website? I'd say. Ashley, can you describe me those ears? You could take flight with those ears. Oh my goodness. She's the cutest little black

dog with a little bit of white on her pity paws and her belly and just above her nose. And she has Yoda ears that just stick out, flop down and again, she's like the dog version of baby Yoda. To be honest, she's like going to take flight with them. They are the cutest things I've ever seen. Literally, I got these pictures from Louisa and I responded to the email OMG those ears and hit send before I even said thank you. I was like so focused on those adorable floppy ears. I still can't get over them. I am obsessed.

Oh, give her a kiss on the nose for us. I love her already. Oh, she needs all the boops. And then we'll just like flippy flop her little ears. And of course, we're going to feature an adoptable prepped today as well. And Ashley, our listener Joe actually contacted you directly and you were super kind to forward that information on to me for this segment. So today's adoptable prepped is Daisy. She is a four year old German Shepherd Husky mix. She's super calm, which seems unlikely, but she does look like the perfect lazy dog in all the pictures that I have. She's around 70 pounds, but could stand to lose a few pounds,

which Oh, beefy babies, beefy babies. She's super sweet, friendly, well behaved and is even completely house and crate trained. And our listener Joe is in or around Atlanta, Georgia and said that she would be able to help transport at least part of the way and even sends supplies with Daisy to her forever home. She's currently fostering Daisy and needs to find her home as soon as possible. Yeah, I really like touched my heart when she reached out. She was like, listen, I'm fostering these dogs and I can't keep them forever. They have to find their forever home. You guys have such a big reach like please just put that out there. So I hope that anyone

who like lives in that area or surrounding area will at least take a peek. I mean, it's a perfect time to bring a puppet into your home and take some walks together. Yeah. And actually, I'd actually mentioned you said dogs, there were two dogs, but one already got adopted. So I only have Daisy to feature today, which honestly, like I'm thrilled about. I'd love to have no dogs need to be adopted because they're all have loving homes, but Daisy is still out there. All of the information on her as well as how to contact our listener Joe for more information and pictures, of course, will be on our website. And go kiss your puppet for me.