48 Hours - The Search for Christie Wilson

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

She was last seen leaving a casino. Her killer was convicted without saying where he left her body. Could her mother and investigators team up to find her body 15 years later? "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. 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 ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. 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?

We were just gamblers at the casino having a good time with other people. 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. Do you remember the first time that you saw the video of Christy walking out with him? I absolutely remember that. She moved away. She moved away from me. Look at that.

Yeah, but I still remember her arm going like this and off me. Now surveillance cameras have captured her leaving the casino with an older man. Her family is understandably frantic, and her parents, Pat and Debbie... Debbie and Pat have been beacons of hope in this situation. They have endured the unimaginable of not knowing where your daughter is. Debbie turned that pain into passion. 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. I'm just going to ask you straight out. Did you kill Christy Wilson? No. I had nothing to do with her disappearance. All rise. 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. Guilty of a violation. And when he was convicted and went to prison, he still had a piece of information. And everyone wanted it. And he knew it.

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? You have some campgrounds here. You'll have campgrounds on the other side. What happened to her, Mario? How could she simply disappear after she was with you?

I don't have answers for that. The reality hurts our feet. How long have you been looking for Christy Wilson? Since October of 2005, we pretty much have been continuing to look for her. Even after they knew she wasn't coming back alive, they kept looking. Even after Mr. Garcia was convicted, they kept looking. It was important to finally close the case and work on remembering Christy for the beautiful person she was and not a case. We needed to take the mystery out of this for Debbie and her family. 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. It was 1989 in Titusville, Florida. Kim Halleck said she and her ex-boyfriend Chip Flynn were kidnapped and attacked at gunpoint. Kim fled the scene, but Chip didn't make it out alive. Did you kill Chip Flynn? No, ma'am. Crosley Green has lived more than half his life behind bars for a crime he says he didn't commit. I'm Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours, and of all the cases I've covered,

this is the one that troubles me most, involving an eyewitness account that doesn't quite make sense. A sister testifying against a brother. They always say lies, you can't remember lies. A lack of physical evidence. And questions about whether Crosley Green was accused, arrested and convicted because he's black. Just because a white female says a black man has committed a crime, we take that as gospel. Listen to Murder in the Orange Grove, the troubled case against Crosley Green, early and ad-free on Wondery Plus and the Wondery app. 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 Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Christy and I were definitely soul sisters, for sure. We grew up together in school and just loved pretty much doing everything together.

Tiffany DeVries says her best friend Christy Wilson just had a knack for making her laugh. I picture her in our front room just dancing and laughing and having so much fun. I could be having the worst day and she would always be there for me. We always knew that no matter what, we were there for each other. But Tiffany was not with Christy in the early morning hours of October 5, 2005. That's when a surveillance camera in a California casino captured Christy walking into a parking lot with a man she met that night. That was really scary because we didn't know where she was or if she could be alive. Christy was then only 27 years old. Her mother, Debbie Boy, can hardly believe how much time has passed. You know, I try not to think of it too much because it actually

kind of takes me to a very sad place. Since the moment Christy vanished, Debbie vowed not to rest until she knew what Christy's killer had done with her body. I'm her mother forever, and I was not gonna give up. Please help us. 48 Hours has been covering the Christy Wilson case since 2006. Christy and Mario come out here.

It began like so many of these stories do, with a concerned boyfriend telling authorities that his girlfriend had gone missing. I loved her and I know she loved me and we cared about each other very much. On the evening of October 4th, 2005, Christy's boyfriend, Danny Berlando, says she went to the Thunder Valley Casino to play blackjack. Did it surprise you to hear she had been at a casino that night? You know, it didn't, because recently she had been telling me she'd been, you know, playing some blackjack. Back in 2005, Tiffany DeVries was a young newlywed. She's thought about why Christy left the casino that night with a stranger, and she has a theory.

Sometimes I think, well, what if, you know, someone put something in her drink? Debbie was aware her daughter had begun gambling, partly because she was between jobs and low on money. Her boyfriend, Danny, felt Christy was gambling too much. When's the last time you actually talked to her? At 10.28 p.m. Tuesday, October 4th. We had a 55-second conversation. This is the actual casino video of Christy taking that call. I told her to come home and she was like, okay, I'm finishing up. I'll be home soon. But when Danny awoke, there was no sign of Christy. He began leaving dozens of desperate messages on Christy's cell phone. It's 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. Danny filed a missing persons report. Investigator Don Murchison interviewed Berlando back in 2005 and says Danny was very cooperative. Anything that I wanted from him when I was at that residence, he allowed me to have. Murchison says investigators soon found their prime suspect when that casino video surfaced.

They were able to track down a 53-year-old man named Mario Garcia by his player's casino card. Sheriff's deputies arrested and held him on a weapons charge. Christy Wilson came and sat on my left between me and another individual. In 2006, Mario Garcia told 48 Hours what he says happened in the hours before Christy disappeared. We were at that table for a period of time until that table got hot.

She asked me, hey, you want to go with me to another table? And I said, sure. Their night of gambling ended just past 1 a.m., Wednesday, October 5th. Garcia claimed that he and Christy walked to his car and then went their separate ways. And he suggested that Christy may have met someone in the parking lot. 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? Some three minutes and 41 seconds later Garcia's car reappears on the cameras and it looks as though he's the only one inside.

She hasn't called any family, any friends. All the way up here. Investigations commander George Malem helped coordinate a massive search for Christy through the rugged and varied terrain of Placer County. We utilized search and rescue people in their vehicles, and they drove every road that they could, every driveway, looked in every culvert, and still nothing was found. Among the searchers was Christy's heartbroken older sister,

Stacy. You want to hear details, but you don't. It's just I get this image in my head of, God, what she must have been going through. The physical searches turned up nothing. But then investigators began looking into Mario Garcia's past, and what they found was chilling. You don't cross Mario. You don't cross him.

Especially if you're a woman and you're alone. You don't cross him. 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

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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 Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Even though Mario Garcia was the last person seen with Christy Wilson,

to some, he appeared an unlikely murder suspect. He was a project manager for a local hospital, married with two teenage boys. I am and I have been happily married. Your husband is your destiny. And with him, I have that feeling. I just have that connection. Garcia's wife, Jean, defended him. He is a family man. If he's not working, we will take the kids for sports. And his son Chris, then 19, said he's a great dad. He was always there for us. He'd always come home, make sure we all sit at the table.

We're just a good family. The family lived in a house on five beautiful acres in Auburn, California, gold country. With Mario, I always feel good about him. But investigators were not about to take Jean's word for it. Four days after Chrissy disappeared, they went to Garcia's home to question him and ran a criminal background check. And that's how they found Wendy Ward, a woman from Garcia's past. When I first met him, I found him to be very intelligent, very articulate, very warm.

Wendy Ward met Garcia in 1978 near Oakland when she was 26 and he was 27 and they began dating. I would say a very supportive person. It felt like he cared a lot. But Wendy says he also had a temper and he reached a boiling point after she ended the relationship. He grabbed her one night and drove off with her in his van. 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. She says he raped her and then took her back to his 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. Wendy says he raped her again and then he casually made himself a sandwich, ate it,

and 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, but the court 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. Believe it or not, Garcia says he's the one who was railroaded. She made allegations that were not true.

There was a gun involved, wasn't there? There was no gun involved. You pled guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and there was no gun involved? You just offered to plead guilty? I possessed guns, but there was no... We had a stormy relationship. When you say stormy relationship, did you hit her? No, I did not. Wendy never forgot about Garcia, but she moved on.

Until October 2005, not long after Christy went missing, when she was tracked down by Detective Murchison. 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. Wendy told Murchison what happened with Garcia, and she said there was something else about Garcia they needed to know. I felt after my own incident with him that he could very easily do this again with someone else. It wasn't long before something terrible involving Mario Garcia happened again.

My younger sister and I were pals. We were friends. She was a lot of fun to be around. She was very outgoing. Tom Davis' sister Lynette dated Mario Garcia after Wendy in 1979. It too was a volatile relationship and Garcia was upset with Lynette because she ended a pregnancy with his child. But the couple still celebrated Christmas with Lynette's mother. After dinner, the three of them got into Lynette's car. The streets were dry. Weather was clear.

Retired officer John Cave was the chief accident investigator for the Oakland Police Department. That Christmas night, he got a call that a car had plunged into the water near the Oakland airport. The witnesses said the car pulled over to the right shoulder. They drove by, the car accelerated, and there was a ledge like the end of the pier. And the car shot off that ledge, out into the water, and that's where it sunk. Garcia was the only survivor. I panicked.

And eventually I took my seatbelt and I opened one of the windows. All this rush of water came into the car. I got out and everybody else I presume got out. He told police Lynette was driving but they couldn't confirm who was behind the wheel. If in fact Mario Garcia was the driver and he intended to kill Lynette and her mother I mean it's not a very efficient way to get rid of somebody, is it? It worked, didn't it? And if he was the driver, he got away with it. Cave wanted to question Garcia further, but Garcia got a lawyer the next day.

Why, if it was just a simple accident, would you not talk to the police and would you hire a criminal lawyer? It's the thing to do. It's the legal right of every citizen of the United States. And my attorney advised me not to talk to them. After the accident,

a heartbroken Tom reached out to an old friend from his hometown. Incredibly, it was Wendy Ward. As they talked, she asked how his sister was doing. I said, yeah, she was killed in a car accident and involved with this guy named Mario Garcia. Mario Garcia. It goes beyond disbelief.

She says, I used to date him. I was involved with him. I have rape charges against him. No charges were ever filed against Garcia for Lynette and her mother's deaths. But Debbie Boyd had heard all she needed to about Mario Garcia. You're not fooling anybody, and especially not me.

And I will continue to pursue you and pursue you and pursue you as a kid growing up in chicago there was one horror movie i was too scared to watch it was called candy man 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.

After three weeks of searching, Placer County authorities made a tough decision to charge Mario Garcia with Christie's murder, even though they hadn't found her body. Her mother, Debbie Boyd, worried there wasn't enough evidence. The thought of him getting off on this case once again scares the living daylights out of me for every woman. It was a large case to put together. Garen Horst, the Placer County Deputy District Attorney at the time, had the unenviable task of prosecuting the county's first no-body murder trial in September 2006. 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.

Was she in your car? No, she never was inside my car. At some point in time, she says that she left her cell phone in the casino, and we embraced, and that was the end of the conversation. Investigators did later find Christy's phone in the casino, but there's no footage of her returning to get it, and no footage of Christy getting into Mario's car.

But Horst says the evidence proves that Christy was inside the vehicle. One of Christy's pulled hairs was found in that trunk. Crime scene investigators also found tiny drops of her blood on the back seat and the door. 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? By your own admission, you cleaned the car. I've cleaned everybody else's DNA except Christy Wilson? That's the only thing they found.

So how did it get there? What's your reaction when the defense insinuates that was planted? It greatly angers me. They couldn't defend what was there, so they had to say it was planted. The prosecution says the evidence that incriminates Garcia is as plain as the scratches on his face and his body, left by Christy as she fought for her life. Did you get the scratches from Christy Wilson?

No, absolutely not. But the morning after that trip to the casino, several of Garcia's co-workers say they saw scratches on Garcia's face and he visited the eye doctor. Those are injuries that I received through poison oak and falling from a tree. Yet Robert Royer, an emergency room doctor who sat at the same table as Garcia at the casino, told investigators he could clearly see Garcia's face 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 no one can answer why Christy left the casino with Garcia. Those who knew her had wondered if he had put something in her drink. And the prosecution presents evidence to support that theory. A week after Christy disappeared, Garcia searched online for information about how authorities test for date rape drugs. But when Garcia takes the stand, he insists he's done nothing wrong. I wanted to tell the court that I am very sorry

that Christy Wilson is missing, but I don't know where she's at. The jury doesn't get to hear about Garcia's violent past, even though he comes face-to-face with a reminder. To show her support, Wendy Ward travels to Sacramento to meet Debbie and Christy's family for the first time. I couldn't stop hugging her. I just wanted to just hold her and hug her and all the family. They're just going through so much.

Wendy heads to court with the Boyds for closing arguments, where Garcia's lawyer suggests that no one even knows if Christy is dead. Are you saying that Christy Wilson may still be alive? Do we know if she's dead? All rise. The jury concluded. Would you please hand the verdicts to the bailiff, please? That it did know.

We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Mario Flavio Garcia, guilty of a violation. 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. At Garcia's sentencing in January 2007, the Boyd still held out hope that Garcia would disclose where he left Christie's body

in exchange for a lesser sentence. I suppose that at this hearing, I'm supposed 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's sentence, 25 years to life, is doubled because of his assault on Wendy. When other charges were added, his total sentence became 59 years to life. At this point, I don't ever expect that he'll disclose what he did with Christy.

The truth is out there. And Mario told me that we have to find Christy. and that's the only hope he has. Jean Garcia did not know that her own family would play a key role in the search for Christy. What do you think happened the night Christy Wilson disappeared? See the timeline of her disappearance on Facebook at 48 hours. Mario Garcia's murder conviction in 2006 was hardly the end of the case for Christy's mother. was hardly the end of the case for Christy's mother. Garcia was sent to prison, and the years dragged by. But he refused to say what he did with her body.

It's been the mystery at the center of this case, and it has gnawed at Deb's soul. Debbie's forever changed. Mario Garcia changed that. He changed me. The loss of her daughter was crushing, but Debbie knew she couldn't allow Garcia to control her life. We made a commitment. He is not going to take our marriage. He's not going to take the marriages of our children. He's not going to disrupt our jobs. We are not giving him any more.

That was not easy as Garcia filed 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. Pat Boyd, Christy's stepfather and a former San Jose detective, knew the stakes were high. 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, but it was not a distraction that it took us away from our tasks and our mission to try to find Christy. Nuno Tavares, an investigator for the Placer County District Attorney's Office and fellow investigator Don Murchison,

had been on the case from the beginning and never let go. 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. They are incredibly dedicated. They are very experienced. Their balance between

tough cop and teddy bear is the appropriate balance. Placer County District Attorney Morgan Geyer gave Nuno and Merge, as Debbie calls them, the green light to keep looking for Christy. And they ran with it, going to extraordinary lengths to find her, no matter how dirty the job. 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. an entire septic tank out. We pumped out the entire 2,000 gallons of sewage and went through it by hand. That is determination. First of all, good morning and thank you. All those searches over all those years turned up nothing. But the investigation entered a new phase in 2017, when Tony Lopez, an anchor for the CBS station in Sacramento, conducted an

interview with Debbie. She directed some carefully chosen words to Garcia. I now view him as a lost soul and that I just often wonder, I want him to know that I often wonder how he ever became the man that he did. If Mario were to pass away with me not having had the opportunity to sit and just talk to him, I know I would forever regret it. Debbie says Garcia spotted that interview and began writing letters to her and Placer County officials. writing letters to her and Placer County officials. Garcia apologized for what Debbie had gone through, but did not accept responsibility for Christy's murder. I wanted Christy back so bad that I thought, you know what?

Let's see how far this goes. 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? But ultimately, Debbie changed her mind. She could not bring herself to negotiate with Garcia. 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 and we certainly weren't going to agree to let him out in exchange for the location of her remains so really the only option was find her Nuno and merch reappch re-approached Garcia's family. Investigators knew Jean Garcia had divorced Mario after his conviction. She had reached a point where she no longer believed Garcia. She said she was very convinced that Mario had something to do with Chrissy's disappearance and murder. The investigators also reached out to Garcia's sons, Chris and Andy, and walked them through the four days in October 2005 after Christy went missing, but before police began questioning Garcia. What did they see? How did their father behave?

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 for Mario. The investigators asked Chris to accompany them back to his childhood home, which the family lost in 2007, to pinpoint the spot where he had seen his father working on the tractor. He said it was right next to our detached garage, right along the road. It was barely 100 yards from

the Garcia house. But if he had been digging in that very spot with a tractor just days before deputies searched the property, why hadn't anyone noticed? It wasn't just a small area where he had landscaped. And there was landscaping all over the property. You've got to remember, he has time. Mario has four or five days to really, really do this right. Mario did an extremely good job of making the train look like it just fit the area. And Nuno and Merch also knew that cadaver dogs had roamed the property back in 2005 and had found nothing.

Cadaver dogs are a tool like any other tool that we use. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. A year passed, and in August 2020, investigators decided they would take another look. This time they brought with them a company that specialized in ground penetrating radar, or GPR. Nearly the entire five acres were scanned, and technicians pinpointed eight spots where there were voids, or pockets, beneath the surface. The first two holes produce 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 of 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. It was the moment of truth. Had Nuno and Mch found Christy Wilson?

Buried on what was once Mario Garcia's property, Nuno and Merch had found what looked like a human bone, but they needed confirmation, so they called in archaeologist Cindy Arrington. She immediately told them the bone was human, but the detectives weren't convinced. 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 to really double check, triple check. triple check okay yes it's human human but was it Christie's more identification work needed to be done but finding any human bones on Garcia's property was big news and they immediately shared it with the sheriff and the DA they came to the conclusion that we need to get this news to Debbie quickly. And they knew how they needed to get it to her. For years, Debbie and Wendy Ward have helped the detectives teach a class for homicide investigators.

And just two months earlier, someone in the class asked Debbie a question no one had ever asked before. Mrs. Boyd, if your daughter was ever recovered, how would you want to be notified? And I just said, you know, please don't ever just call me on the phone. Nuno and Murch flew to Scottsdale, Arizona. It was nearly midnight when the Boyd's doorbell rang. Debbie was asleep on the couch. Pat answered the door. He opened up the door and he looked at us and he got a big smile on his face. 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 they were Christie's, but we couldn't confirm that. that we believed we were Christie's, 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. Debbie made plans to fly to California to tell her daughter, Stacy. And before she left for the airport the next morning, Nuno and Merge heard that their team had found nearly an entire skeleton. And it was definite. The bones were Christie's. And it was definite. The bones were Christie's. Detectives say they found the remains of the last scene in 2005. Wilson's killer was already in custody serving more than 50 years for her murder.

It was the first time. Days later, Debbie shared the news with the world and made sure to thank Nuno and Merge. 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? Chris and Jean didn't want to speak publicly, but they're grateful to have closure for Christy's family and their own. 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 the other victims of Mario Garcia who were hit hard by Christy's murder, like Danny Berlando, her boyfriend at the time. 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 in this whole thing wendy ward was also relieved she knows how lucky she is to have survived her own encounter with garcia and has used art to help transform the feelings that she's held on to for all these years it helped shift those feelings into something positive. What came up in me to create that and to survive and to say no more. Everyone involved takes pride that Christy was found without making a deal with Garcia. And the discovery lays to rest any doubts about Garcia's guilt. I mean, there's no greater proof.

The autopsy revealed that Christy's 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. I think that's very likely what occurred that day, but we just don't know. Those who loved Christy try to focus on the life she lived. Her best friend, Tiffany DeVries, says she's reminded of Christy by the little things she loved, a song on the radio or the way Christy danced.

For me, Christy's never been completely gone. I've been carrying her spirit with me every day. Debbie and Christy's father, Dennis, had Christy's remains cremated. In October 2020, to mark the anniversary of her death, Debbie visited the pier in Capitola, where the family put a plaque many years ago. This is a place that Christy just absolutely loved. It was what she called her happy place. Debbie says no longer having to wonder where Christy is changes everything.

We can grieve the way that we should have been able to grieve 15 years ago. There's a peace about that. I was so blessed to be her mom for 27 years, and that I will carry with me forever. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.