Anatomy of Murder - Knock, Knock

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

A teenager comes home from school to find his mother brutally murdered. A car and another young man might be the only things that can lead to her killers.For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/. Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

911, what's your emergency? My mom was in the floor with a lot of blood. Yes, what happened? I don't know, I just saw her. She had a tape on her mouth. She had one on her mouth and legs? Tape. Tape?

Yes. Okay. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. Today's case takes us about four hours north of New York City to Utica, New York, where I spoke to Chief Assistant District Attorney Mike Calusa. The day was December 19th, 2006, the weeks leading right up into the holidays. It was a snowy day in Utica, and on that day, a 14-year-old, Juan Magana Jr., had just gotten off his school bus and was heading home.

The one thing that was a little unusual to Juanito was the front door was unlocked. And he went in, first room he encounters is the living room. Things seemed normal there. As he got deeper into the apartment, it was apparent to him that rooms had been ransacked, like someone had gone through drawers and closets looking for something. He started to call out his mother's name, and he didn't get any response, although he fully expected that she was somewhere in the house. After not hearing a response from his mother, he then went next to his mother's bedroom, where he found that a great deal of ransacking,

a number of items he immediately noticed were not there. And then, when he went into the kitchen... 911, what's your emergency? My mom was in the floor with a lot of blood. She asked what happened. I don't know. I didn't tell her. His mom wasn't moving. She was covered in blood. Now, in and of itself, that is sad and shocking. But he also noticed something else that just didn't make sense. She had tape on her mouth, her legs. I don't know what the hell's happening. She had what on her mouth and legs? Tape. Tape? You know, Anastasia, I see this as an incredibly horrible image for anyone at any age.

Just this 14-year-old finding his mother. You know, it's not just finding a person, but this is his mom, the woman who he's hoping is going to care for him the rest of his life. His very first instinct was to run to his mother, kneel down, roll her over, and using a kitchen knife that was nearby to cut the duct tape from around her head in the hopes that it could clear her airway so that she could breathe. The woman on the ground, the victim, was Maria De Jesus Magana. She and her family were Mexican immigrants who had just recently moved to the Utica area.

They had migrated to the U.S. and the parents still were primarily Spanish-speaking. It was Maria and her husband Juan, or Juan Sr., and they moved there with their son Juan Jr., who they called and referred to as Juanito, Little Juan. They had, in fact, been running a local Mexican restaurant. They lived in a two-family home. The family had recently moved from an upstairs apartment to a downstairs apartment,

so there wasn't a whole lot of furniture in the main living quarters, but the bedrooms were full of life from the things they had brought from upstairs to down. And on that day, there were even some of Christmas decorations that had started to go up. They lived in an area which has a fair amount of crime. It is still primarily a residential area, but it is on the edge of a higher crime area within the city of Utica. Juan Jr. decided to reach out to his dad, who was at the family restaurant, which was very close to where the family lived. And Juan Sr. was able to get there before police arrived.

Juan Sr. ran into the home. He saw his son. He saw his son with blood on him, and his son had told him, you know, mom's gone, mom's dead. And the image to me of what the police walked into, the obvious, you know, is Maria Magana and the state she was in. Police officers responded to the scene rapidly, and they found by that time both Juanito and Juan Sr., both with blood on them, both crying and directing them to the kitchen of the Magana residence where they found, quite frankly, a horror scene. She had multiple injuries and there were copious amounts of blood on the kitchen floor. Also, they found that there had been duct tape that had been wrapped around her mouth and head and also around her hands and around her feet. The amount of violence used here to take her life was clearly overkill,

most likely inflicted after she was bound and gagged with tape. And they found a key lanyard that was around her neck as well. A key lanyard around her neck, potentially used to strangle the victim, seems to me to be a very personal crime in nature. It was obvious that she had been dead for some time. It was clear that she was the victim of a homicide. The hope here is that the killer or killers left some solid forensic evidence. There was quite a bit of fingerprint processing that went on. You also had a crime scene that was extremely bloody.

And you had bloody sneaker prints in the area immediately surrounding where Maria Magana was found. But when police analyze those, it's not going to come as a surprise to any of you that the blood belonged to Maria Magana. The fingerprints, well, this was a family that lived there, so nothing came back that was of any evidentiary value in the case. And those bloody sneaker prints, well, they belonged to Juan Jr. when he was circling around his mom trying to help her as he found her on the ground. No other truly useful forensic evidence was developed at the scene. We had hoped that, for example, the tape that was used to bind Maria Magana would have yielded some useful fingerprints.

There were partial prints, nothing that resulted in the identification of any particular suspect. Most random crimes do not happen in someone's home. These are attacks that are usually pre-planned. And it doesn't mean the killers are sophisticated, but when they bring tools like tape, it feels like it's a planned attack to me. Perhaps they also brought along some gloves so they would not leave any fingerprints. The forensics yielded a great deal as to how Maria Magana was killed, certainly. First of all, there was blunt force trauma about her head and shoulders at least five times. There were deep

cuts, essentially, that would indicate a knife blade had been drawn. She had deep puncture wounds, stab wounds to the right side of her neck. And she also had wound tracks that ultimately punctured her jugular vein, which is what brought about her death. In the midst of all of that, she was also strangled. To me, the autopsy says a lot. The fact the blood was pooling just around the body leads me to believe that she was stabbed after she was bound and gagged with that duct tape. And some of the wounds may have been superficial, meaning that the potential was there that they

were inflicted as a form of torture. You add the ransacking to the home, as Juan Jr. had pointed out, the killer or killers were looking for something. The son spoke English. There was not a language barrier with the son. However, he was deeply traumatized. They literally walked into this father and son and just listening to Juan Jr. repeating over and over, mom's gone, mom's dead, mom's gone, mom's dead. It took some time to calm him and to try to get him to provide information about anything. Juanito described getting a knock at the door of the home the prior evening. An individual who he didn't know, didn't recognize, asking if Beth Saida was there and him saying she's not here. She was a woman who had actually used to live in that same apartment before the Maganas.

After Juanito sent the man away who had come to the door, a short time later, there's another knock on the door. And this time there's three men standing at the door, three men that he didn't recognize at all. Forget a 14-year-old. I think as an adult, like if someone comes to my door at night and I don't know them, already I'm on a little bit of a higher alert. At this point, he becomes kind of frightened, worried, and he just simply doesn't answer the door. And ultimately, those three men go away. This is the night before the murder. As an investigator, I'm obviously interested to gain any insight

whether this is related. And without any obvious leads, for me, this rises to the top. Who were these four men, and can they be identified? So the police really didn't have enough at that point to try to put together a photo lineup or photographic array to show to Juanito. However, as you know, in a police investigation, very often information is coming from various different sources. A woman approached one of the officers at the scene, and she had a specific request that she wanted to speak to another officer, a woman by the name of Arlene Hernandez. She wanted to speak very specifically with an officer, Arlene Hernandez, who was known to her personally, and she would only talk to Arlene Hernandez directly. Ultimately, she had related that her son, a young man by the name of Joel Mateo. Joel Mateo is a young man who lives in

the same neighborhood. Her son was in a state of extreme fear about coming forward, that she had had a discussion with him and they had determined it was the right thing to do. But Joel had certain conditions. He would not meet with the police within the city of Utica. They had to bring an unmarked car or a personal vehicle and that he would meet with them in their car at a remote location. It sounds like a pretty clandestine operation here, but I can tell you it is actually par for the course so often in these cases.

And you can get why, right? People worry about being seen, giving information to the police, particularly when it comes to violent crime. If someone has gone so far as to hurt someone else, let alone murder them,

well, what are they going to do to someone they believe is potentially giving them up? The police were very agreeable to doing that, and ultimately a meeting was set up. You know, hats off to Arlene Hernandez to having that relationship with the community to be trusted, because this information turned out to be extremely critical. At that point, Joel Mateo was still extremely frightened. He actually crouched down near the floor of the car that the police had driven in so that nobody passing by could see that he was even in the car.

And that initial interview, that initial account of what had happened was told to the police at that time by Mr. Mateo. And what he told police would blow this case wide open. You know, Joel Mateo knew his information was important and clearly felt his life could be in danger. And investigators also recognized that and agreed to create some safe space that Joel could walk them through what he knew of the night of the murder of Maria Magana. So what Joel Mateo told the police really began the night before of this brutal homicide, December 18th.

And it had to do with three guys that were actually feared in the community. And on top of that, he knew them. He describes on December 18th going to the house of a person that he knows by the name of Daisha. While he was there visiting with Daisha, Daisha's nephew had come in. Daisha's nephew is a person by the name of Yeshua Manuel Camacho Figueroa. He's acquainted with, we'll call him Camacho, from the streets. And in talking to Mr. Camacho, Mr. Camacho confides in him that he and two other people are planning to do a robbery in the neighborhood. The couple who own that Mexican restaurant that live up on the corner

because he believes they have thousands and thousands of dollars in the house. You may be shaking your head saying, wait a second, he heard them saying they were going to do a robbery and he didn't talk to the police then? Well, not knowing where each of you lives or what neighborhood you're in, you know, kids, first of all, are kids. And when I say kids, I mean teenagers, young people, people in their 20s. And this was a tough area they were in. And often certain people will say things that they don't actually do. Often people on the street brag about their intention to either commit a crime or a crime

they've already, in fact, carried out. But it's really hard to second guess. And I think that's a perfect way to put it. To second guess is just too tough. And just hearing that they're going to do something, even if something as violent as a robbery, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do it. Or it's not so uncommon to hear that, that just hearing that alone, he's certainly not looking to go and get involved with police.

He notices when Camacho leaves that he gets into a car, a small red car, and that there are two other people in that car. Those two other people are Tommy Escuardo and Danny Hernandez. And the three of them, Camacho, Escuardo, and Hernandez, all then drive away from Deja's house on the evening of December 18th. Joel, thereafter, goes home, not really thinking much of the incident and not realizing what's going to happen in the next 24 hours. And these were three guys who had been in that area for the last couple of years. They didn't have any major arrests to put them on the police radar.

And whether that was because they were leading up to this or they hadn't been in town for too long, we don't know. On the day after Camacho told Joel his plans, along with two other men, to commit a robbery, Joel was headed out for the day with friends, but wanted to make a quick stop first. The next day, Joel gets up and his intention is to go to an outdoor goods store. And he's going to go there with a couple of friends of his. Joel Mateo goes over to his grandmother's house. It should be noted that his grandmother's house and his uncle's house are on the same block as the Magana family home. And Joel notices the same three men. He doesn't really think much about it despite what Camacho said to him the night before because

it's a pretty busy common area. He goes with his friends shopping and when he returns, he sees the same three men again. Those same three men approach his vehicle and Tommy Esquerdo asks Joel Mateo if he'll give them a ride. Joel really doesn't want to give them a ride. He's kind of leery of these three people. But ultimately, he says, yes, sure, OK. Joel Mateo puts himself as, again, he's driving the car, leaving his grandmother's house. He has Esquerdo getting into the front passenger seat. Behind Esquerdo, in the back seat, passenger seat right side would be Camacho. And right behind him, Joel Mateo, behind the driver, would be Hernandez.

They were known to him predominantly by reputation as people to be feared, tough, ruthless people. Clearly, Joel knew he was in the thick of things, knew that police and prosecutors were counting on him, on his information and potential testimony in bringing the alleged killers of Maria Magana to justice. He was still questioning whether cooperating would put his entire family in grave danger. While we are so fortunate that he went to the police, and I clearly believe it was the right thing to do, we need to acknowledge that it isn't always an easy thing to do. And I am always that much more proud

and appreciative of the witnesses that ultimately come forward to us like Joel Mateo did in this case. We have to understand as members of law enforcement and prosecutors that witnesses like Joel Mateo are so important to make a system work. But we also have to be extremely understanding of how dangerous it could be. And while, you know, you want to get the best evidence for a case, you have to look at all the circumstances in total and why someone would come forward. Maybe the reason that this all came together and maybe the only reason that Joel Mateo ever spoke to the police was because of one officer, Arlene Hernandez. I think we need to give her that hand clap shout out because clearly her role in the community, the type of officer she was, that is the reason his mother knew her, trusted her, and ultimately got her son to trust her too and go speak with her. With a complete lack of physical evidence at the scene of the murder, so much is riding on the firsthand testimony of Joelle Mateo.

But there was more work to be done. We wanted some corroborative evidence. We were in a situation where we had, at this point, no admissions, no statements, and no forensics. We had a brave young man who was willing to say, I saw these three people in the vicinity of the house that morning, and I gave them a ride that afternoon. But we were really short on forensics.

And the most important word there is cooperation. Here, you really need that. While Joel Mateo very well may be the innocent that just got caught up with giving these guys a ride, that he was actually giving guys a way out from the scene of their crime, that under the law, that could even be looked at as potentially an accomplice after the fact, you know, or an accomplice as a fact if for some reason a jury decided he was part of it all along. So the police really need to corroborate what he is saying to make sure that he is not now trying to just put his best foot forward to try to pull himself out of what has

clearly gone down an incredibly brutal road. Witness testimony is fantastic evidence, but in this case, science will take this investigation on its next big step. Breaking news. The answer they've been looking for finally came. And that big break in the case had been lurking beneath their feet. Police and prosecutors have a strong witness in Joel Mateo, who has given critical information in the murder of Maria Magana. But would his testimony alone be enough? Police decided to search Joel Mateo's car.

Why? Because, as he'd said, he'd given a ride to these men. The police had asked Joel to bring the Camry to the police garage. This was about six weeks after the homicide. And the thinking here was that the crime scene was so bloody, even though we didn't have their footprints in the blood in the kitchen or any tracks of their blood leading out of the house, that maybe somehow there might be some of the victim's blood that somehow got into Joelle Mateo's car. So we've talked about this in other cases,

how in stabbings, when the scene is especially bloody, the killer or killers can track or leave with the evidence on them, whether it's on their shoes or their clothing. So this test could put the occupants in that car at the scene of the murder, which in this case became critical. Joel was very cooperative. He brought the Camry to the police garage. The officer in the crime scene unit processed the car.

So when they examined Joel Mateo's car, you know what they found? He came up with nothing. Until he got to the floor behind the driver's seat. And there he found a very small area that fluoresced positive for the presence of blood. Now you know that police are off to the races because based on everything that they had been told by Joel Mateo, the timing of when he had picked up these three guys, you can only imagine how anxious police are

to get results to whose blood that was. The result of that was, not surprisingly, a mixture. It was a 16-year-old car. That carpet had been subjected to all manner of DNA that had been traipsed in and out of that car over the years. Because Joel Mateo didn't know Maria Magana. He had never met Maria Magana. And within that DNA mixture was Maria Magana's DNA profile in its entirety. And according to Joel, the person that had ridden behind him on the 19th, when he gave the three suspects a ride away from the crime scene was Danny Hernandez. You know, Joel Mateo is corroborated, but now what, right? Really, Mike Calusa and investigators need to look deeper to make sure that the three that were involved are really the three that Joel Mateo is saying.

And so one thing, based on the information he gave that they were able to do now at this point, is they were able to put together photo arrays. And when Juan Magana Jr. looked at those arrays, he was able to make identifications of the three people that Joel Mateo said. Not only did this break in the case strengthen the evidence against all three suspects,

it confirms Joel's statements and gave Mike Calusa a solid and believable witness to present to a jury. Now, the cooperation of events was just about to get stronger. It came in a new witness, and his name was Aki Diaz. Aki Diaz was what you might call a shade tree mechanic or a backyard mechanic. He worked out of his own place, his own residence, and two of his customers were Danny Hernandez and Tommy Esquerdo. We get to April of 2007, and Tommy Esquerdo is getting very nervous. Tommy Esquerdo wants to get out of town, And ultimately, Tommy Esquiredo goes to Aki Diaz with an automobile and makes some admissions to Aki Diaz about a house robbery they did. He shows Aki Diaz a 13-inch

flat-screen TV set. He shows Mr. Diaz a book bag. He shows Mr. Diaz a portable DVD player. He also shows Mr. Diaz some jewelry. And one of the pieces of jewelry he shows Mr. Diaz, a portable DVD player. He also shows Mr. Diaz some jewelry. And one of the pieces of jewelry he shows Mr. Diaz has the words Magana, M-A-G-A-N-A spelled out. It's a bracelet that we think originally belonged to Maria Magana. So he makes a witness out of Aki Diaz. What's more, ultimately, he winds up stealing a Honda vehicle from Aki Diaz. You know, one of the questions when I hear this is, well, the property that's left there, is it being given to this guy, Aki Diaz? The interesting thing about that is that

after Tommy Esquerdo visits Aki Diaz and leaves with him some of the proceeds of the robbery, the very next day, Danny Hernandez shows up and wants to take that property. Danny Hernandez has a conversation with Aki Diaz and leaves a couple of the items behind and takes with him the jewelry and the 13-inch flat screen TV. I mean, you can picture Aki Diaz's type of business, right?

He's one of these people who operates out of his home. He's got a garage there and a driveway full of cars. And people go there and they buy parts. They have their cars fixed. And it's not out of the realm of realism that in order to pay for a repair or to do something, people, you know, exchange goods. And potentially one of the things that is exchanged is property like TVs, VCRs, and things of that nature. But now that Danny Hernandez has come and pick up some of the most valuable of those items, I look at it a different way. I look at it as they are kind of passing

those goods from Escuerto back over to Hernandez, but they're using a go-between. So in a way, they're trying to be savvy in the way that they pass these goods back and forth. So putting together some of the main pieces that police have, police are able to move forward and move towards arrests. We had three extraordinarily dangerous men who were at large and were still on the street, and that was a daily pressure. We had a number of meetings to go over what we had in order to feel confident that we had a case that was trial ready, because we were also certain that this was going to be a trial. Police began to hunt for the two highly dangerous suspects, Esquerdo and Hernandez, but quickly discovered a big issue. The pair had vanished Now investigators and prosecutors believe they have enough to indict the three men.

And by late April, they have the first one in custody. We reported out an indictment against Yeshua Camacho Figueroa. He gave a confession to the police, admitting to going to the house with the other two, with Danny Hernandez and Tommy Esquerdo, but claiming that he stayed outside, that he essentially acted as a lookout, and the other two went in and did all of the things to Maria Magana that happened to her inside of the house. But that's just one of the three men. The other two were nowhere to be found. The Utica Police Department turned to the U.S. Marshals Service to track down and arrest

Esquerdo and Hernandez. And I could tell you from my time working alongside these agents in several fugitive cases, they are the best in the business. Ultimately, Tommy Esquerdo was arrested by the marshal service in Buffalo, New York. He was then brought into an interview room. He was interviewed about his role, and he admitted his participation, that he was going there for a robbery. He blamed, but he blamed the other two for the large amount of violence that was done to Mrs. Magana. And he confirmed also for us that they were trying to extract information about the location of the money in the apartment. Looking at what these guys now said, each one of them is like, it wasn't me, it was the other one

starting to point the finger. Again, if I was to sit here and go through the cases that I'd had this in, we would be here for much longer than any of you have time or the patience to listen through. Because it is such a often heard story once you sit someone down in the chair and ask them if they want to speak to you and put them under arrest for a case like this. It's, you know, OK, you got me, but it wasn't me. I was there, but it's the other guy. I mean, when you have multiple defendants in a case like this, each one is really trying to figure out, is the other one saying anything? And at this point, there's two of them in custody.

So Hernandez is still on the lam and he sees an article in a local paper which details the arrest of both Camacho and Esquerdo, and the story mentions that the pair had named Hernandez as an accomplice. And so seeing that he'd now been named, he loads his family into a rented U-Haul and takes off. He rents the U-Haul at a Utica location, never intending to return the U-Haul, and moves down to Beacon, New York, and just basically abandons the U-Haul in the street. The police ultimately are able to track him down in Beacon, New York, and he is arrested on June 20th of 2007. So now all three are ultimately in custody. All three are being prosecuted by the Oneida County DA's office,

and Mike Calusa is handling the case. And first, before we even get to the trial, let me just tell you something about Mike Calusa, because I know him for a long time. I know him because he was one of the people that would train all of us younger prosecutors at a statewide level at various conferences that we'd go to. And he is an artful speaker, but more importantly, he is a artful, well-thought-out, organized prosecutor. And this takes just that because he had three defendants here, each one making different statements. And in this case where you have that, the only choice is to try them separately, which would be three different trials, or to combine them in what we call multiple jury trials. The trials in this case were split up.

So there was a separate trial for Yeshua Camacho Figueroa, and that took place in early October of 2007. Tommy Esquerdo and Danny Hernandez, their trial took place two months later, and we did what's known as a dual jury trial. And the reason why we did a dual jury trial was because Tommy Esguerdo had made a confession and he had blamed Danny Hernandez. And therefore, the law requires that either there be two separate trials or that we proceed with a dual jury trial. So each man had his own jury. And what that really means is that a lot of the evidence is in common. So you have two

juries, two full groups of jurors, that's 12 people on each jury, plus some alternates in case someone gets sick or something. And they're listening to a lot of the same testimony. When it came to Tommy Esquerdo's confession, we excused the Hernandez jury and only the Esquerdo jury heard the Esquerdo confession because Danny Hernandez's jury couldn't consider that as evidence against Danny Hernandez. It could only be considered as evidence against Tommy Esquerdo. And, you know, I can say, having done many multiple juries, the reason you do them is judicial economy. Just think about if you had to bring all those witnesses in three separate times. And even more than that, to me, the

Mongonia family would have to go through this three separate times. And so they tried to alleviate that burden for judicial economy and yet to be fair to the defendants by having these multiple juries in place. Let's break down the evidence that Mike Calusa had walking into the courtroom. Number one, he has an eyewitness in Joel Mateo, has statements backed up by solid forensic science. Number two, another witness, Aki Diaz, Esquerdo and Hernandez both told Aki about a house robbery, showing him the proceeds from that robbery and even more damning for the defendants. One of the pieces of jewelry was a bracelet that was inscribed with the victim's name, Magana.

And number three, the victim Maria Magana's blood inside the car the three suspects traveled in moments after the murder. Super compelling, yes, but would a jury agree? Motive is never something that a prosecutor has to prove because so often you can't get inside someone's head to really know why they committed these crimes. But here you have some of the obvious factors. They were under the impression, the three suspects, that because the Magana family were not from here and because they had a restaurant, that they had copious amounts of money in the house and that they would make an easy target for a robbery. In the end, the evidence confirmed what was likely the motive, as thousands of dollars were present in the house,

but the suspects never located the money. But so often in cases like this, where they've already made statements to the police, which you had in the case of both Camacho and Esquerdo, they're not going to testify, right? Because you could now use those statements to cross-examine them. It's not going to get better. It's only going to get worse. But Hernandez, in a way, he had a wide open plate in

front of him. He hadn't said anything yet. He made the decision to take the stand and at least try to give a story that he would hope the jury would believe. Danny Hernandez told the story and he employed the principle of KISS, K-A-S-S, keep it simple, stupid. And his story was a very simple one. His story was, wasn't there, didn't do it, don't know what you're talking about. His story was, that particular day was helping his sister move. The problem is that he started with the principle of K-I-S-S, keep it simple, stupid. And then he strayed away from his own principle because he started stirring in facts that didn't make any sense. For example, he claimed he didn't find out about Maria Magana's death until about a month later when he read something about it in the paper.

And yet he pursued an alibi of sorts that on the day that Maria Magana died he was helping his sister move so the question then comes if you didn't learn about it until a month later how do you come to know precisely where you were on the date and at the time that happened and he had no good answer to that he also started stirring in additional facts into his testimony that were suspect. He claimed that on the 19th of December, his car wasn't running. And that was belied by Joel, who had seen the car the night before. Ultimately, he positioned himself such that either Danny was telling the truth, either the defendant was telling the truth,

and all of these witnesses are lying, or the reverse was true. You know, to me, that defense doesn't fly at all. You know, it's easy to say everyone else is lying but me. But when science, specifically DNA, gets involved, science usually wins in my book. But, you know, he took his best shot. And so now it's going to be up to the jury to make their determination of what they found the truth to be. Three trials, three opportunities for the defense to present their case for each of their clients, and also three trials that Mike Calusa needed to go through that, as well as the family.

I recall it being an incredibly emotional summation, and I had to give three of them. And by the time I got to the final summation, which I believe was Danny Hernandez's, I said to my co-counsel, Doug DiMarche, I'm spent. I got nothing left in the tank. I can't do that again. Because it really is draining, especially when you consider what's been endured by this poor family. You know, and Mike Caluzza's message got through to all three juries. In the end, their verdict?

Camacho guilty, 25 years to life. Hernandez guilty, 25 years to life. And Escurto guilty, 25 years to life. In such a horrific case, what they did to this poor woman, Maria Magana, it's easy to look at that and shake your head with disgust and just utter incredulousness at how easily a human being can trade in their humanity for so little. What I prefer to do is think of the Magana family and think about their own quiet dignity throughout this. Maria and Juan Sr. came here looking for the American dream.

Maria was targeted and murdered for accomplishing it. Juan Jr., this young man who this life has dealt him such cruelty already at such a young age, I think my greatest hope is for him and his father that the world treats them with kindness, at least from here on out. When you handle homicide cases and you deal with victims' families,

you deal with all different types. And sometimes you deal with folks who are very difficult or traumatized. The thing I think that impressed me so much about the Magana family is that they had endured so much and yet they asked for so little. One of the real heroes in this story, besides Joel Mateo for coming forward, is the police officer he confided in, Arlene Hernandez. She spent her entire career at the Utica Police Department building trust and respect with the people that she served. And for Maria Magana and her family, that dedication was a blessing. Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder.

Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production. Sumit David is executive producer.