48 Hours - Introducing: My Life of Crime | The Search for Christie Wilson: A Killer’s Gamble

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

“48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty returns for season 3 of her podcast “My Life of Crime”. Moriarty takes you inside true-crime investigations like no one else, facing killers and those accused of crimes. In the premiere episode, Moriarty takes you deeper into the 48 Hours episode, "The Search for Christie Wilson”.  Listen and follow My Life of Crime with Erin Moriarty wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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ConstantContact.ca It's Erin Moriarty, and we have a special episode for you today from my original podcast, My Life of Crime. I'm taking you inside true crime investigations like no one else, taking on killers and those accused of crimes. Here's an all-new episode of My Life of Crime that takes you deeper into the search for Christy Wilson. Follow along as I go beyond the scene of each crime, behind prison walls, and into the killer's inner thoughts. It's all on this season of My Life of Crime. Christy and I, we were young, we were happy, we were enjoying our lives. I never really thought anything like this would have happened to Christy.

Your best friend is missing? How could she be missing? How could she be missing? The last we know is we see her walking out of Thunder Valley Casino at 1.13 in the morning on October 5th with a man by the name of Mario Garcia, and then she was never seen or nor heard from again. Christy Wilson, blonde, bold California girl, would regularly gamble at a casino in Roseville, California until one October night in 2005 when she walked out the door of the casino and was never seen by her friends or family again. Now surveillance cameras have captured her leaving the casino with an older man.

Her family is understandably frantic, and her parents... I want my daughter back, and I want her back now. I may be 5'1 and blonde, but they've just met a barracuda, and the fight's on. That's Deb Boyd, Chrissy's mom. I met her just days after her youngest daughter went missing. I was part of a 48 Hours team that joined the search. I'm her mother forever, and I was not going to give up. Please help us. Deb's 27 year old daughter had never gone off

the radar screen like this, disappearing without a trace. And it was certainly not like Christy to go off with an older man like Mario Garcia. Where was Christy, and who the heck is Mario Garcia? I'm just going to ask you straight out. Did you kill Christy Wilson? No. I had nothing to do with her disappearance. What happened to her, Mario? How could she simply disappear after she was with you? I don't have answers for that. simply disappear after she was with you? I don't have answers for that. I'm Erin Moriarty, 48 Hours, and this is my life of crime. This is one of those cases that gets under your skin. And I'm going to warn you, there are parts of this story that are quite unnerving,

but it's an important story to tell. Was she in an ocean? Was she in a ditch for 15 years? I never went to bed without wondering, where is she? Where did Mario Garcia put her? The fact that the mystery was solved at all is due to that self-described barracuda of a mother and the dogged determination of a couple of cops, Nuno Tavares...

We needed to take the mystery out of this for Debbie and her family. ...and Don Murchison. We wanted to find her to show Mario, you're not going to win. You're not winning this. And we're going to find her and bring her home to the family. to find her and bring her home to the family. Let's start with Mario Garcia. He was the last known person to have seen Christy and a most unlikely suspect. He was 53 years old when

Christy disappeared, nearly twice her age, married with two teenage sons, and let's be blunt, portly and not particularly attractive. He was a project manager at a local hospital, and he lived well on a rolling five acres in rural Auburn, California, not too far from the casino. He told me that they just happened to be gambling at the same table. Christy Wilson came and sat on my left between me and another individual. We were at that table for a period of time until that table got hot. She asked me, you want to go with me to another table? And I said, sure. Garcia says the night ended a little after 1 a.m. when Christy walked

him to his car in the parking lot. If she disappeared after that, he says, she must have gone off with someone else. But wouldn't that be seen on camera? Well, they don't see that she got in my car, do they? They don't see where she went, correct? It's true, the surveillance cameras don't capture Garcia's parked car, and they don't reveal whether Christy got inside it. All we know is that some three minutes and 41 seconds later, Garcia's car does appear on the cameras, and it looks as though he's the only one inside. So what did happen to Christy? Her car is found in that same lot, so she didn't drive away.

Did she run into somebody else? Police have to consider that possibility, so they go to talk to her boyfriend, Danny Berlando. I loved her, and I know she loved me. We cared about each other very much. that possibility. So they go to talk to her boyfriend, Danny Berlando. I loved her, and I know she loved me. We cared about each other very much. When a woman disappears, the significant other,

the girlfriend, boyfriend, or the husband, is almost always a person of interest. We all know that. And this couple had been having some problems. When's the last time you actually talked to her? At 10.28 p.m. Tuesday, October 4th. We had a 55-second conversation. That conversation took place while Christy was at the casino. Surveillance cameras actually have her on video talking to Danny. Danny thought that she gambled a bit too much. I told her to come home, and she was like, okay, I'm finishing up. I'll be home soon.

I told her to come home, and she was like, okay, I'm finishing up. I'll be home soon. But Christy didn't come home. Danny went to the casino, saw her car still sitting there, and called police to report her missing. He also left dozens of messages on her cell phone. Dr. Ken on Wednesday. It's now been 24 hours since I talked to you last, and I'm worried sick about you. Please call me. If you're okay, call me. If you're not okay, call me. Let me know what's going on. Investigators did look hard at Danny, and then they moved on. There was nothing to connect Danny to Christy's disappearance.

Investigator Don Murchison says that Danny was cooperative and clearly concerned about his missing girlfriend. Anything that I wanted from him when I was at that residence, he allowed me to have. So investigators took a closer look at that happily married husband and doting father, Mario Garcia, and they found very strange things that made them wonder, And they found very strange things that made them wonder, really wonder. For one thing, there were scratches on his face and body seen by co-workers the day after Christy Wilson disappeared. Did you get the scratches from Christy Wilson? No, absolutely not. Garcia told me that he had gotten those scratches and an eye injury from working on his property.

Those are injuries that I received through poison oak and falling from a tree. But those injuries must have occurred after Christy disappeared. Here's emergency room doctor Robert Royer, who was gambling with Mario and Christy that night. How far is Mario Garcia from you? Two feet. Less than a meter. Did he seem to have any injuries on his face? I didn't see any injuries, no.

And I'm reasonably good at making those kind of observations because that's what I do for a living. Why wouldn't the emergency room doctor see those? I cannot answer what he saw or didn't see. And there was more, much more, that investigators uncovered when they began to dig into Garcia's past and found a woman by the name of Wendy Ward. You don't cross Mario. You don't cross him, especially if you're a woman and you're alone. him, especially if you're a woman and you're alone. You don't cross him. What a story Wendy had to tell. She once knew Mario Garcia well. She met him back in 1978 near Oakland when they were both young. She was 26 and he was 27, and they were dating. When I first met him, I found him to be very intelligent,

very articulate, very warm. But Garcia could have a temper, and Wendy felt the full force of it, she says, after she ended the relationship. He dropped by one evening, pulled her into his van, and drove off. She had never seen him like that, she says, and she was scared.

He was holding my neck or he was holding my head and he says, if you do anything, you do anything, I will take your head and I will smash it. I think he said to me, take off your clothes or something like that. And I said, no. I just was clawing, scratching, whatever I could do. Then he started to choke me. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe. Did you think you were going to die? I did. I really did. Wendy says he raped her,

and then before he took her back to her apartment... He pulled a gun out of his cabinet, and he held it to my head. Then he pulled the trigger. He says, well, it wasn't loaded this time, but basically I can come and get you anytime I want. And if that wasn't awful enough, after he raped her again,

he casually made himself a sandwich, ate it, and then drove her home. I'm surprised that I actually am alive. I'm very lucky. Wendy immediately went to the hospital and police arrested Garcia. He was charged, but the case stalled for two years before prosecutors offered him a deal. I figured it's better than nothing, and let's do this, and then let's move on.

Garcia agreed to plead guilty to one count of assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 18 months probation. Years later, Detective Murchison, who was looking into Garcia's background in the Christy Wilson case, found the record of that conviction. And that's when he tracked down Wendy Ward. And when you heard that Christy Wilson disappeared and the last person to see her alive was Mario Garcia, what was your reaction?

I felt sick to my stomach. There were other stories about Garcia's treatment of women. A suspicious death of another girlfriend. A former wife who went to a battered woman's shelter. Detective Murchison became convinced that Garcia was also behind the disappearance of Christy Wilson. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California.

Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert to a remote base

near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military and when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News,

this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us.

I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. We'll be right back. search those five beautiful rolling acres that surrounded Mario Garcia's home. They even brought dogs on the property. They found nothing. But when forensic criminalists searched Garcia's car, finally, tiny drops of blood were found on the back seat and on a car door.

Blood that belonged to Christy. There was also a hair consistent with Christy's in the trunk. Not a lot of evidence, but enough for Placer County DA Garen Horst to charge Garcia with the murder of Christy Wilson. It was a large case to put together. So what do you believe happened to Christy Wilson? She went out of the casino with the defendant. At some point in the vehicle at the casino, he incapacitated her. He was probably putting her in the back seat so that when he drove away, nobody would see. As far as what he did afterwards, that's anybody's guess.

That's anybody's guess. In September 2006, Mario Garcia went on trial. It was Placer County's first no-body prosecution. And Christy's mom told me at the time that she was worried there just wasn't enough evidence to convince a jury. The thought of him getting off on this case once again scares the living daylights out of me for every woman. I was worried too. No body prosecutions are troubling. Without a body, you don't know for sure if a person is actually dead, how that person died, and if the defendant killed her.

Mario Garcia was certainly a good suspect. He was the last one seen with her, and he has a history of hurting women. And there was some evidence, but not a lot. What if the lab made a mistake? What if? What if he didn't do it? Why is it that the DNA on the door claimed to be of Christy Wilson was the only thing that was found? Why is it that the DNA from my sons, my wife, and other people that were in the car were not found? Garcia accused investigators of planting the evidence, which, as you can imagine, didn't sit well with Don Murchison. It greatly angers me. They couldn't defend what was theirs, so they had to say it was planted.

Garcia was so confident, he took the stand at his trial. I wanted to tell the court that I am very sorry that Krista Wilson is missing. But I don't know where she's at. And what did the jurors think? All rise.

Would you please hand the verdicts to the bailiff, please? We, the jury, and the above entitled action, find the defendant, Mario Flavio Garcia, guilty of a violation... Guilty. Christy's stepdad watched Garcia as he absorbed the news. I think he thought he was going to beat the case the entire time. He figured, no body, less evidence, I can walk away from this.

He never thought he was going to be convicted. Absolutely justice has been served. It's about time. Now if he's any kind of a man, he'll tell us where he disposed of my daughter. But Garcia doesn't. At his sentencing in January 2007, he still claims he's innocent. I suppose that at this hearing, I'm supposed to ask for mercy, for forgiveness, and to show remorse. to ask for mercy, for forgiveness, and to show remorse.

However, I will not do such thing. I did not kill Christy Wilson. I am innocent. Garcia didn't ask for mercy, and he doesn't get it. What he gets is 59 years to life. At this point, I don't ever expect that he'll disclose what he did with Christy. And Garcia continues to be an ever-presence in her family's life

as he files one appeal after another. You can't move forward completely when you have all these appeals. You know, it's like you move forward five steps, and then you're back in it again. And the question in the back of her mind is, what if he wins one of those appeals? Because it's not like we had a tremendous amount of evidence. A small amount of evidence being lost, the case would have been lost. The concern is always there for the appeals, With a small amount of evidence being lost, the case would have been lost.

The concern is always there for the appeals, but it was not a distraction that it took us away from our tasks and our mission to try to find Christy. That's Nuno Tavares, the investigator for the Placer County District Attorney's Office. He and investigator Don Murchison became determined to find Christy Wilson. Why is it so important to the two of you to bring her home? Because the family needed her. They needed a place where they could go and to spend time with her. We wanted to give Debbie and her family back control. Up until this point, he controlled the location of Christy's remains. And that didn't sit well with me.

controlled the location of Christie's remains. And that didn't sit well with me. It was often a dirty job and continually disappointing. We actually pumped an entire septic tank out. We pumped out the entire 2,000 gallons of sewage and went through it by hand. That is determination. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark,

host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop.

Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy

about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party.

So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. In 2017, after more than 10 years in prison, Mario Garcia started writing to Deb Boyd and Placer County officials. He was telling people that he was sick and he was hoping for an early release from prison.

Deb Boyd wondered if there might be some way of getting him to reveal where he put her daughter. I wanted Christy back so bad that I thought, you know what, let's see how far this goes. She talked to Morgan Geyer, who was then Placer County DA. Deb had struggled with the idea that, you know, what do you negotiate with a man who has been convicted of the murder of your daughter? Who knows where she is? Could she make a deal with the man she believed killed her daughter? I was sitting there thinking, what on earth are you doing, Debbie? Get a grip.

This would be such a disgrace. He will not use my daughter's body as a bargaining chip. That's when Nuno Tavares and Don Murchison, the investigators who put Garcia behind bars, reached out to Garcia's now adult son, Chris. They asked him, what did Chris remember about those days after Christy Wilson disappeared? Did his father act odd, do anything out of the ordinary? We went through every day, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Then he got to Saturday, and that's where the story got a little bit interesting. Chris had an important soccer game.

He saw his dad working on a tractor, working kind of frantically and had kind of a crazed look in his eyes. He was working around the property and he told Chris, I'm not going. And it was a very firm, I'm not going. Chris found that out of character from Wario. In 2020, the investigators went back to the house where the family once lived and to the spot where Mario Garcia had been working on his tractor, just 100 yards from the Garcia home, the same place that cadaver dogs had searched back in 2005 and at that time found nothing.

Cadaver dogs are a tool like any other tool that we use. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. This time, they asked a company that specialized in ground penetrating radar, or GPR, to scan the area, all five acres. Technicians found eight spots where there were voids or pockets beneath the surface. Eight places for investigators to dig. The first two holes produced nothing. You've struck out twice.

We've been going for a long time. Three is now my favorite hole. It's my favorite hole because that's where Mario was working that day. And how far did you go? We started pulling back about 25 feet, pulling just a couple of inches at a time. Went about 18 feet wide and out of the corner on my peripheral, I see a bone popping up out of the ground. I was a little bit short of breath, I'll tell you that. The blood was rushing, and we stopped everything. We froze everything.

Had they finally found Christy Wilson? They stopped everything and asked archaeologist Cindy Harrington to look. She looks, and she has no doubt the bone is human. He's like, you're not close enough. I said, oh, yes, I am. And he said, get closer. So they had me get down in the trench

and really double check, triple check. Okay, yes, it's human. But is it Christy's? The investigators know more work has to be done. But now they need to talk to Christy's mom. They don't want her to hear this on the news. While scientists are testing the bone for DNA, the detectives flew to the Boyds' home in Arizona.

It was nearly midnight when they rang the doorbell. Pat Boyd opened the door. He opened up the door and he looked at us, and he got a big smile on his face and he said, Hi, guys, how's it going? And then you could see him pause and you could see things starting to click the gears in his head. And I got up and I just was in a fog. And I looked at them and I said, Debbie, it's Merch.

It's Nuno. And I said, what are you doing here? So that's when we told her that we had found human remains on Maro's property, that we believed her Christies, but we couldn't confirm that. I remember her that night saying, is it okay to be happy or joyful? She kept looking around going, is that okay? We didn't know whether we should open a bottle of champagne, what, there was just a lot of hugs, some quietness,

sometimes just sitting there, letting it sink in. Hours later, it was confirmed. Christy Wilson had been found almost 15 years after she disappeared, and there is now no question who killed her. She was found just yards from Mario Garcia's front door. Detectives say they found the remains last seen in 2005. Wilson's killer was already in custody serving more than 50 years for her murder. An autopsy revealed that Christy fought hard for her life.

Her hand and nose were broken. But it couldn't establish a cause of death. Do you believe he strangled her? I think that's very likely what occurred that day, but we just don't know. The 15-year mystery of Christy Wilson's disappearance had been solved. It wasn't what her parents wanted, but they would no longer have to wonder. Today is a day that absolutely reflects some of the greatest level of perseverance in police work

that a victim's family could ever ask for. They brought two people home. They brought my daughter home. They brought my daughter home. They brought my wife home. You feel that you got Deb back? Yep. Tell me about that. She can think of more than just, where is Christy?

To be perfectly honest, I was relieved as well. Mario Garcia, who put on such a great act of innocence, turned out to be just a good liar. He destroyed so many lives. Christy's, her family's, the lives of his own children. Chris, Andy, Gene, they didn't ask to have a dad and a husband who was a murderer, who buried his victim on their property where they lived and played.

They didn't ask for that. And then there were other victims, Danny Berlando, Chrissy's boyfriend at the time, and the person questioned by police. Didn't realize how much I'd really been bottled up for 15 years. I think I may have been judged, misjudged, misunderstood through the process, and that didn't really allow me to grieve and be a victim in this whole thing. The news was also a great relief to Wendy Ward, especially since the mystery was solved without having to make a deal with Garcia.

He didn't get that early release that he had hoped for. On Christmas Eve 2020, four months after Christy Wilson was found, Mario Garcia died alone in prison. In my 30-plus years of covering true crime, I've rarely run into anyone like Mario Garcia. Someone who seemed to catch so many breaks, was so smart that he was able to construct

such convincing narratives to account for every detail. I mean, I honestly worried, did he really kill Christy Wilson? In our next episode, I'm going to walk you through my interview with Garcia, his full story, and I will share what was running through my mind during the investigation and now looking back. Until then, I'm Erin Moriarty, 48 Hours, and this is my life of crime. This podcast series is developed by 48 Hours in partnership with CBS News Radio. Judy Teigart is 48 Hours' executive producer.

Jonathan Clark is CBS News Radio executive producer. Jonathan Clark is CBS News Radio executive producer. Production and editing for this season of My Life of Crime by Alan Pang. This episode was also produced by Paula Rosa of 48 Hours. Craig Swagler is vice president and general manager of CBS News Radio. And finally, a thank you to all of you, our listeners. We owe it all to you, the millions of 48 Hours fans. Don't forget to join me online. I'm at EF Moriarty on Twitter, and we're at 48 Hours on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. See you soon. plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too

scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder. I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts.