Cold Case Files - Innocence Stolen / Danger at the Door

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

A district attorney uses a clever technique--a "John Doe indictment"--to give law enforcement officials the time they need to track down the Schoolgirl Rapist from Rochester, N. Y. And prosecutors reluctantly decide not to prosecute their lead suspect in the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl because they have only circumstantial evidence. But 12 years later, the cold case squad reopens the case, hoping DNA evidence will prove the suspect's guilt.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpAudible - Join Audible on the Audible app or subscribe hereBetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/COLDCASE to get 10% off your first month.Hers: Start your free online visit at forhers.com/CCF for your personalized weight loss treatment options.Mint: To get the new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to Mintmobile.com/coldcaseQuince: Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to Quince.com/coldcase for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns!Rosetta Stone - Cold Case Files listeners can get for 20% off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when you go to RosettaStone.com/coldcaseShopify - Sign up for your free trial today at Shopify.com/coldcase and take your retail business to the next level today!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode contains stories involving violence against children. Listener discretion is advised. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. Sammy, somebody else got hit to? It's April 21st, 2006. At 8.30 on a Friday night in Rochester, New York,

Sergeant Mark Mariano is working a crime scene. There was a report of six shots fired. We're not sure yet who that came from. And then when the officers got here, they found three people down. You know his kid? You know his name? At this point, we don't know if it was a drive-by, if there were kids on bikes, so they ran by.

Very sketchy information and not getting a lot of cooperation from anybody in the neighborhood. Do you know if he had a shirt on? You don't know? It's not like we didn't ask you who did it. We asked if he had a shirt on. It's a never-ending cycle. You go into work one day with an idea what your priorities are on what you're going to do and what's on your plate,

and that plate, you get another serving or something else. Over to my left, that corner is where Crystal was waiting for her bus. In November of 1995, Mariano investigates the rape of a 13-year-old schoolgirl. A person came up from behind me, and he told me not to say anything and covered my mouth. Crystal Seeler is in the seventh grade when she finds herself alone, in the dark. waiting for the bus to school. He took me across the street to a, like, a boat that was in a yard that was diagonally from my bus stop. And from there, he made me take down my pants and he touched me,

told me not to say anything that he knew where I lived and he'd hurt me in my family. Crystal is sexually assaulted by a man she wasn't able to properly see, just 70 yards from her home. screamed down in pain because it hurt. And he told me to be quiet. I had opened my eyes one time, and I seen my bus driver, so it was just like that person was right there. I got to cry for help, but, you know, I was paralyzed.

She could only provide that it was a blackmail. She felt that he was probably about 5-6-57 medium build. She knew we had on puffy clothes and a dark jacket. Crystal is taken to the hospital and a rape kit is taken. While they wait, Mariano comforts the vulnerable 13-year-old. She asked me, she said, if you were a guy and you wanted to marry me, hypothetically, would you still marry me because I'm no longer a virgin? He took my childhood away.

I was only 13. I was innocent, just going to school. My answer to the best I could come up with was that she still was a virgin. That's the only way that she would not be a virgin if she had done. met someone, falling in love, and given herself to him in that way. And then anybody who didn't understand that was not worthy to be her husband. And then that was the first time ever saw her smile. Patrols are heightened in Crystal's neighborhood, but within 48 hours, another girl finds her journey to school cut short, just three miles away.

It was dark because I pretty much was up early, because my bus would come like around 6.45, 7 o'clock, and it was still dark around the time. Lamonda Beeman is 17 years old and on her way to the school bus stop when someone grabs her from behind he had a gun you know he demanded me to take my clothes off shut up

you know basically I followed what he said because at that point in time I did think and feel that you know he had a gun at that time I was going to die the only thing was going through my mind that morning I wanted to go to school I was going to school and here it is I have a gun to my head and I'm being forced to have intercourse with a person that I don't know.

Right now we're at the scene of the second attack that occurred on November 30th, 1995. Officer Dan Gleason responds to the call and quickly realizes this is an MO he's seen before. Based on attack we had 48 hours prior to this, that we might be dealing with the same offender who is now mobile because we are three miles away from the site of the first attack. But the description, the MO was the same. high-risk offense, a limited window of opportunity, and schoolgirl blitz from behind. Gleason and Mariano team up and saturate the neighborhoods with patrols during the early morning hours. But we would stop any and all people that were out at that time of the day who fit the general description in hopes of finding out why they might be passing through the neighborhood if they lived here, if they worked here,

if they're making deliveries. So we pretty much would stop anybody. The stops generate hundreds of leads, none of which pan out. I became very concerned and very alarmed and knew that we had a huge task ahead of us if this suspect couldn't be immediately caught. Three teenage high school girls were sexually assaulted during the early morning hours. The latest occurred right before Christmas when a 12-year-old was attacked on Maple Street. Two weeks later, on December 15th, a third schoolgirl attack brings out. out the local media in force.

Obviously, there was a great deal of concern. Once it came out, the police thought they had a serial rapist. Dave McKinley covers the case, which quickly pits parents against police. The outrage occurred because while the rapes started happening, and police quickly suspected that it might be the work of one person, and they might have a serial rapist on their hands, they kept it under wraps. They didn't say anything. And in the view of some parents in the city, they basically thought that the police were using their daughters as bait.

You got to be concerned about your child, you know, because I don't want nothing to happen to my daughter. We do have a duty to protect the public and to let them know when a crime like this violence has occurred. But on the other hand, there's a fine line to how much you reveal without tipping your hand. and we didn't want this guy to go underground on us. And there will continue to be concern and uneasy fear among parents and students until this stalker is caught. We saturate the areas with uniformed and non-uniform officers, and now the media is out there as well.

They are saturating the area. They are filming us. They are filming the kids going to school. If the guy wasn't going underground before, he was definitely going to not surface at this point. Gleason's prediction is right. Just as quickly as the attack started, they stop. And the schoolgirl rapist case goes cold.

Two years later, he struck again right in the heart of the target area. On October 15, 1997, another early morning rape is reported. Another schoolgirl is attacked. And investigators continue to search for the assailant. This composite was done from the Ambrose Street job. He, his face looks pretty thick. We both felt pretty strongly that absent definitive scientific proof that that was probably the same guy. It became a priority case.

And I think it was at the top of all the cases that I was working on. Rape kits from all four attacks are examined at the New York State Crime Lab by Allison Eastman. What I found was that it was the same DNA type development. from all the evidence. That is that the donor of the seminal fluid for each of these cases had the same DNA type. Eastman checks the profile against other DNA databases. It came back with no matches.

So no one else had seen this profile. That whole manhunt was kicked in the high gear all over again. We start going over old crime reports right and left. Do we miss something again and let's look? Major crime, Sergeant Mariana. Investigators find an attack on a 15-year-old in 1993 that bears the schoolgirl rapist's MO and provides a DNA match. This incident happened in October of 1993.

We don't discover it until 1999. The statute of limitations in New York State is five years. We had run out already. We knew we had to come up with a suspect before the statute of limitations runs out for the 1995 cases. So we're under a little bit of a gun here to try to find out who this guy is. Police have to make an arrest or figure out some way to freeze the statutes. In this situation, we argued that the identification came not from a name, but from a DNA profile.

Assistant District Attorney Mike Green issues what is called a John Doe indictment, with the suspect's DNA used in place of a name. Our argument was that that DNA profile identifies the person better than the person. any name could. You know, if you run Mike Green through a national database, you come up with, you know, hundreds or thousands of Mike Greens, you run my DNA profile, and, you know, you're not going to come up with anyone else with that same profile. The judge allows the indictment to issue. It freezes the clock. It freezes the statute of limitation.

It gave us a chance to take a deep breath and reinvestigate again everything we had done and review everything we had done and hope that, in a short time, and a short time, and a short time, you time that John Doe was going to come up as a name somewhere in the United States. I turned and looked this way and I see a figure standing my doorway to my bedroom. So I said, what the hell are you doing in my house? It's September 3rd, 2004 in Clayton, Alabama. Erica Penn is 22 years old, alone in her bedroom and about to fight for her life. He was choking me, and then he told me if I didn't shut up, he was going to kill me.

So the only thing I could do was be quiet and cooperate. But I was scared. At that point, when he said that, and I was choking that, I could not breathe. I was scared to death. I thought I was going to die. And he started pulling my clothes off. He asked me for a condom, and I told him I don't have any. I had a purse full of them.

They're all over my rule. But I just said, no, I didn't have one. Erica knows what her attacker may leave behind could be valuable evidence. situations like this and you can't fight the person off of you. The only thing you can do is cooperate and hopefully they'll slip up or something. I couldn't beat him with strength. I had to beat him with my brain. We're now at the Piquan Ridge apartment complex where the crime actually took place.

Clayton Police Investigator Richard Peterson responds to the call a little after 4 a.m. and finds that his victim recognized her attacker. She stated that the individual actually turned on the light before he left. So she got an opportunity to actually look at his face. My eyes were swollen because I had been crying the whole time. My eyes were so swollen. But they were not swollen enough to close. And I could, my day were about that low.

And I looked at it and then I got, I was like, okay, this is who I thought it was. was. Erica doesn't know her attacker's name, but claims he hangs out with locals in the nightclub circuit. The name that kept popping up was Keith Laster. Keith Laster is a small-time criminal living in Ufala, Alabama. Peterson pulls up a mugshot. Once I got the face to go along with the name, then everything started to fall in place.

I was able to put together a lineup for the victim to actually look at. I didn't think twice. I pointed them out right then. I was like, that's him. Peterson tracks Laster to Ufaula, Alabama, arrests him, and obtains a DNA sample. This is the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, Montgomery Regional Laboratory, and this is where all of the DNA analyses would begin. In February of 2005, Holly Spires begins examining evidence from Erica Penn's sexual assault case. It was a very cut and dry case. We looked at the kit.

It was positive for semen. So from there, after we made that determination, we would perform DNA analyses on that kit. And the results were that across the 16 areas of DNA that we look at, it matched Keith Lamar Laster. Laster's profile is then uploaded into CODIS, and the computer produces a result. The hit is made, as we call it.

Keith Laster's DNA matches that of the schoolgirl rapist. a man police believed to be responsible for a series of rapes in Rochester, New York, eight years earlier. We meet that afternoon? We met that afternoon and started to form a complaint about when we would go to Alabama. A warrant had been issued for the school girl rapist's DNA four years earlier. Now, New York investigators have a name to match to that profile and prepared to meet Keith Lamar Laster face to face.

In my heart, I believe that the moment I said who I was and where I was from, that he had to have, his world had to start crumbling down inside. On June 22nd, 2005, Rochester Sergeant Mark Mariano and investigator Dan Gleason sit down with Laster. We brought him into an interview room, which was the end of a little cell block. I told him we want to talk to him about some things that happened in Rochester while he was in Rochester. He was very agreeable to that, and we told him it had to do with sex and some women he might have had sex with up there. We showed him pictures of the girls, and he initially denied that he had recognized or ever seen or had any contact whatsoever with any of them. We have the Trump card, the DNA in our pocket. We know we're talking to the right guy.

Laster eventually recalls having sex with three of the five girls he is believed to have raped. Laster, however, remembers all. three encounters as consensual. He really believed these were sexual encounters that just were happenstance, that young girl saw him, and in spite of the fact it was snowing in some instances cold, they were virgins, they had never had sexual intercourse, they were young, that they saw him, they decided they were going to give themselves to him right then and there, and that in his mind, this is how this all went down.

Detectives eventually present Laster with the DNA evidence against him, but Laster doesn't budge from his accounts. Detectives, however, aren't worried. You know you're going to have several young women come before a jury and say they were all forcibly raped. In our opinion, nobody would buy that maybe one decided she wanted to in an odd world, but not three, four, or five. Laster is arrested for the schoolgirl rapes and awaits his day in court.

The fact that we're able to bring the case this far indicates the power of the DNA evidence. DNA brought Keelamar. Laster back to Rochester to answer to four counts of rape. At every column, it's an exact match with the defendant's profile. In November 2005, in the Monroe County Courthouse, DNA provides the evidence needed to convict Keith Laster. The four schoolgirls, now all grown up, provide the emotion.

It's kind of like I was 13 again, and I was there doing it all over again, reliving every word I said and everything that happened. And I want him to look me in my face through the whole time because I want him to know what I went through. And I wanted him to have my face burned in his mind because I went through 10 years of this of a nightmare. Keith Laster is found guilty on all counts and sentenced to more than 85 years. For investigators who watched their victims grow up, the conviction brings a long-awaited resolution. These girls don't have to look over their shoulders anymore. They know that the guy who raped them is in jail and he's not out there anymore.

And they know who he is and they can move on, hopefully. For Laster's victims, however, moving on is easier said than done. The only thing that I want personally, I want an explanation of why. I want to know why. Because I didn't deserve this. No one deserves this. And yeah, I'm mad as hell right about now. He can't give me back what he did to me.

He can't give any of the other females. There's not a big enough punishment, pretty much, but I'll have a lot of time to think. And most important, he won't be able to do it again, hopefully. I've always loved the idea of being able to speak another language with more confidence, especially while traveling. There's something so meaningful about being able to do more than point at a menu or rely on a translation app. I'd love to feel comfortable asking questions, making small talk, and connecting with people in the moment. That's why Rosetta Stone Sapphire sounds so exciting.

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And by the time the parent got to the door, the child was gone. The door apparently was still open. It's June 20, 1991. Don Hunter is a detective with the Chula Vista, California Police Department, when he is called out to the scene of a homicide. The first thing I noticed as I was walking up is the reactions of the officers. There were officers actually sitting on the curb, looking very upset. You don't see that very often.

It just was obvious that someone had brutally killed this little girl. Her fully clothed, barefoot body was found on a sidewalk at a light industrial and business park in Chola Vista. Apparently, she was beaten, possibly on this very spot. She was laying right in this area here. Her head was open to the point that you could see her skull. Whatever was used to penetrate her torso had gone all the way through her body with such force that it was able to chip the concrete below her. So you can still see the chips in the concrete?

If you look very carefully, you have one right there. Evidence Tech Rodrigo Vieska documents the scene, including injuries to the young victim's face. It was during that photograph that I had to basically stop and recompose myself. And part of the reason was at the time I had a nine-year-old daughter, and my mind superimposed her face in that picture. And it was like probably the one photograph in my career that tugged up my heart forever. The news of what police found in the office parkway travels quickly, eventually reaching the young girl's father, Luis Arroyo.

That's a mistake. It's somebody else. It's not my... That's for sure. It's not my little girl. Gonna be somebody else. She was everything for me. You know, my little girl.

I'll never forget it. It's not so much that it's more than we've seen before, but it was just so brutal. On June 21st, Dr. Mark Super is present for the autopsy of nine-year-old Laura Arroyo. She has several chop injuries of her head that have gone through her skull and into the brain. And then she has 10 of these penetrating spear-type injuries, several that have gone through her torso. They've gone through both lungs, went through the heart.

So all of these injuries are considered to be working as a group to cause her death. Laura was found fully clothed with no sign of sexual trauma, but a rape kit is taken as a matter of procedure. Each area that we swab, we usually take a packet of four. The swabs are taken in the off-chance sperm could be identified. As you can see on the screen here, this is what sperm would look like on such a slide. This is a control that is nothing but sperm. You can see how bright, fluorescent, red they are. When Laura's slides are examined, however, this is not what the medical examiner sees.

There were no sperm. No sperm were found on the smear. Detectives operate under the assumption that no sexual assault actually took place, and the swabs are not sent out for additional testing. Meanwhile, detectives begin their digging. We felt like it was probably somebody she knew, because there's no sounds, there's no screams, somebody, you know, lured her away from that door very easily. Detective Hunter and Detective Wayne Maxey take to the streets to talk with those who knew Laura

best, people from her own neighborhood. She was a very happy child, always jumping around, always playing. Elizabeth Alcarez is a friend of Laura's and had been outside with her earlier that same evening she went missing. Well, those were the steps towards Leonor's house. and she lived right in front. So we were just sitting there and we were just talking and playing.

What became significant in talking with her is that she told us that Jessica's dad had walked by. Jessica's dad is a man named Manuel Brocka Montes who is dating the mother of one of Laura's playmates. So he passed by and the first time he didn't say anything and then a little bit later he passed by again. And I believe that's when he pointed towards me

and he said, your parents are looking for you. I went and knocked out my door. And I asked my mom, I kind of opened the door. And I said, Mom, did you call me? You know, someone, a man said that you were looking for me. And she said, no. We thought that was significant. We felt that was probably his attempt

to separate Laura from the other two girls. This is somebody that we've got to get a hold of, talk to, find out what he saw. And there's always, when you have that type of information, a little bit of a thought in the back of your mind of, well, you know, could be the guy. This is the 8th Street trolley station in Chulovista,

and we came down here to interview Manuel Bracomante. On July 14th, detectives catch up with Manuel Bracomontes. We told him that there had been a crime that we thought he was aware of, and we were hoping that he could provide us with some information. I think one of the first things when we talked about, you know, that it was the murder of Laura Arroyo and that he knew her. He kind of said something like, I've kind of seen her around the neighborhood,

something like that. And we both kind of went, what? Because we knew that Laura played with his girlfriend's daughter, Jessica. We knew he had been around there and played with the kids and such. So, you know, he was minimizing, basically. That's what he was doing. And that kind of perked our interest. Detectives asked Brockamontas if he was in the neighborhood the night Laura went missing.

He either denied being there, what do we ask him about it, or came out and told us that he didn't know anything because he wasn't there. Brockamontas's story doesn't fit what detectives are hearing in the neighborhood. More than two weeks later, they sit down again with Brockamontas, this time in an interrogation room. We've got hundreds of hours of investigation on this case, and our investigation clearly indicates the charge. involved in the death of Laura Arroyo. Every so often there's a case that for some reason just seizes on you. I don't know what it is. Maybe it was the pictures of Laura, those snapping black eyes,

that fabulous little smile she had, all that long flowing black hair. Doug Curley is a television reporter in San Diego. In the summer of 1991, one story dominates the daily news, the murder of nine-year-old Laura Arroyo. Her fully clothed barefoot body was found on a sidewalk at a light industrial and business park in Chola Vista. This was the worst nightmare a parent has. The child goes to answer a ringing doorbell, somebody knocking on your front door to see who's there. And you turn around and the child was gone.

And you never see her alive again. Laura may be gone, but many begin seeing her image in an unexpected place. By night, some claim the billboard comes to lie. via spirits like that of Laura Arroyos. The board's become the talk of the town, many attributing the images to a supernatural power. A lot of people thought that that was a vision of Laura, that Laura was in heaven looking down on the people.

A lot of people thought it was Laura telling her friends and family not to worry, I'm safe in heaven. A lot of people thought this was Laura pleading with people, don't let him get away with it. I mean, I heard every day. conceivable permutation of those that you could imagine. To the Chula Vista Police Department, the vision serves as a reminder, find Laura's killer. At the top of the list is Manuel Brockomontes, a man with no hard criminal history,

and according to the suspect himself, a man with nothing to offer detectives. You did know what we're talking about? Yeah, you know what happened. Basically as alibi was, I was home with my mother. Detectives Don Hunter and Wayne Maxey, however, can prove otherwise. We did talk to two other men who lived in the area. As they described the timing, right at the time that Laura would have gone downstairs to answer the door and disappeared, they see his Black Jetta leaving the parking lot. Brockamontes is asked to come down to the police department for some questions.

Tell me why you think you down here talking to us today. I didn't that's why suspect something to me. The body posture of his arms crossed and, you know, his feet, he's ready to bolt out of the room at any time. So we knew we were probably on the right track with that. The body language may be telling, but Bracomantas himself remained silent. Who do you think did this to him? What I know? You know, something that.

Can you tell us who didn't do it? Myself. You're trying to tell me that. I'm not that stupid. Almost everyone had a very strong response to what they thought should happen to the person that did this. Many people said they should be killed, people made physical threats. You know, if I ever catch the guy who did this, I'll do some terrible thing to them. With Manuel when we ask him that question, shrugger the shoulders, look at the ground, I don't know.

You know, maybe go to jail forever. If you have any involvement in what happened to Laura Royal, now is the time to tell us. the time to tell us? No. Okay. We've talked to a lot of people down the neighborhood. Is there any possibility that anybody we talked to is going to tell us that you were down there in the neighborhood

at the time the bar disappeared? No. I can't tell you that. Detectives ask Brockamontes to sit for a polygraph. Brockamontes declines, and police increase the pressure. We've got hundreds of hours of investigation on this case, and our investigation clearly indicates

that you're involved on the death of Lord of Royal. Why do you say that actually? Because, we have people that put you there at that time and you haven't told us that. And you can see the lack of response from him.

Just nothing. And an innocent person, you accuse somebody of something as horrific as this. They're going to come out of that seed like a spring under their butt and deny it. I have to write to 100.

That's what I told you earlier. Bracomontas ends the talk, but not before detectives mention one more thing. This is a part where I told him we have the search warrant. What we have is a search warrant, and we're going to take hair samples and blood samples. Bracomontas gets a full workup. Hair, blood, even his home and car are searched. We believe that the instrument used to kill Laura was probably a pickaxe or pygmatic. that had a bladed surface on one end, a pick on the other end.

We were going to be looking for any kind of puncturing and bladed type objects that could have inflicted these kind of wounds. Detectives don't find a murder weapon, but fibers from one of Brockamontas's sweaters, however, provides a possible forensic link. The fiber from one of those sweaters matched the fiber, one of the fibers found on her clothing. The link to Brockamontas is tenuous at best.

and the DA decides to take a pass. I wish we could have found the weapon. That would have put us there. But that was never located. All right, let's go ahead and get started. As you know, Team 4 is already out there. It's June 19, 1992. A year has passed since Laura Arroyo was found murdered.

But Chula Vista police still have Manuel Bracamontes top of mind and decide to give their suspect another shot. Well, I told him I wanted to clarify some things in reference to the crime. Sergeant Bob Rutledge asks Brockamontes to come down to the station and hopes that his suspect might finally confess. I told him there's some statements that say that you were at the complex and you're telling us that you weren't there. and, you know, the people seem that they're genuine.

There's several people that said that they saw you there that night. Yeah. Somewhere between 8.30 and 9. No, it's not. That couldn't be. As we took off, it was like, still kind of daylight. Bracamontas still denies being at the apartment that evening, but he does remember seeing 9-year-old Laura that day.

When you were there earlier, did you see him to live girl, a little Laura? She still, a lot of kids, think? Yeah, she was up there. Bracomontes says there were lots of kids playing and he did see Laura. This contradicts his earlier statements about not seeing or really knowing Laura Arroyo. Where did you see him? I like the neighbor that ended up to me from her. She was running back and forth.

Rutledge is hoping a few more minutes with Bracamontes might lead to more admissions. But that doesn't happen. Actually the interview ended when his beeper was off. Rockamontes ends the interview and walks out of the police station, once again, a free man. Laura's case goes cold and remains that way for 11 years, until a second look at some old evidence takes everyone by surprise. These are sperm cells which were observed on the oral swabs from Laura. There were approximately 10,000 sperm cells. When we were kids, Summer felt like total freedom. No homework, no teachers, no school schedule. As adults, that feeling might look more

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This case was a monster. I mean, it really was. In 2003, the San Diego County District Attorney's Office starts a cold case squad, including investigators Bob Conrad, Garland Pied, and Patrick O'D One of the first cases on its list is the 1991 murder of Laura Arroyo. Anybody that was around here at the time remembers this case and the brutality of it. The original investigators had developed a suspect pretty early on in the investigation. That suspect is Manuel Brockamontes. What gets me though still is that you look at what he did to this little girl and you see how he grew up. doesn't explain it, you know?

I mean, it just doesn't explain it. He's a little lead player and, you know, a minor criminal. All sisters. How do you explain that? For answers, investigators turn to physical evidence in the case. We were talking about, number one, the hairs, because there were some 50 hairs. Is there anything we can do with the hairs? Investigator Bob Conrad suggests reaching out to the San Diego Crime Lab.

They had a grant, which was about to run out, and it had a grant. had to do with called sexual assault cases, including homicides. I get a call from Bob, and he says, you know, I have this great old homicide case. I said, you know what, let's have a discussion about the evidence. I'll come down. I really felt my role was kind of as a consultant. Evidence from the case is pulled out of storage. In 1991, the rape kit had been tested and turned up negative for semen. O'Donnell, however, wants to take a second look. I thought, well, you know, this has already been checked and there's nothing there.

And I didn't quite understand why he was doing it. And I realized that the sexual assault kid had been looked at, but that it had only been looked at the medical examiner's office. And it's been our experience that we provide a better evaluation of that sexual assault evidence than typically occurs through perhaps the medical examiner. This is the forensic biology unit of the sexual assault evidence. San Diego Police Department Crime Lab. And basically what we do here is DNA analysis.

On September 23rd, criminalist Ian Fitch receives the original swabs from Laura Arroyo's sexual assault kit. We have this method where we can treat the cell mixture with a chemical which breaks open only the skin cells or the blood cells, but leaves the sperm cells intact. After performing the test, Fitch prepares the slide and looks under the microscope.

I found sperm cells present on the oral swabs. What we're looking at here is the final microscopic examination of the purified sperm. These are sperm cells which were observed on the oral swabs from Laura. And from that oral swab, I estimated that there were approximately 10,000 sperm cells. Once the sperm cells were identified, I proceeded with DNA testing and I was able to generate a DNA profile from the sperm. from a single mile individual. I couldn't believe it.

I was, I just couldn't believe it. I was almost speechless. Not quite, but almost. Hair samples taken from Manuel Brockamontes in 1991 are sent into the lab for comparison. Only a few days after that was my phone call to you to indicate that in fact the DNA

from this semen was a perfect match to your suspect. I just couldn't believe it when you told me that. I was so happy and everybody was. Everybody was happy about that and then things really progressed quickly from there The cross street here is Joshua Place and the address that My partner and I were going to was 3982 Dave's way which is just right up the street On October 24th DA investigator Robert Marquez prepares to arrest Manuel Brockhamontes There's a light like a bluish-colored SUV Ford Explorer type vehicle comes around the the corner and proceeds eastbound and he stops right in the middle of the roadway in front of

the residence. And I tell my partner, that's our guy. Marquez approaches the car as it parks outside the home. And as I did so, I pulled my hand back like this to expose my weapon and my badge so that he could clearly see that I was a law enforcement officer because he didn't know me. As I approached, I saw him rolling down the window. As he turns to look at my partner. My partner, I could hear him say, you're under arrest. And I could hear, Brockhamontas said something, but the only word I could hear him say was, what for? My partner says, for murder.

The suspect takes off. Investigators fire two rounds at the vehicle, but miss. Brockamontes gets lost in traffic, and alerts are put out. The Mexican border crossing, only four miles away, is notified. Chula Vista Police Department, we're doing a search of different motels and hotels in the city of Chula Vista to see if maybe by chance he had returned to Chulovista, and they located his vehicle in a parking lot.

Bracamontes is nowhere to be found, and a tracking device is placed on the car. Investigators hope Bracomontas will return to the vehicle, and the following morning, he does. This is the I-5 freeway corridor as it runs through the city of Chula Vista. Sergeant Kelly Harris learns Bracomontas is on the move and picks up the chase. I think my speeds at that time were about 80 miles per hour. Monitoring the radio, I could hear that a collision had just occurred on the ramp. The officers were telling us that the suspect, Bracamantes,

had actually rammed one of our police cars and had completed a U-turn on the ramp and was now going to go southbound in the northbound lanes of the freeway. Harris spots the car. Bracomontas is heading straight at him. I was determined not to let him go free. I was not going to let him get away from us. Sergeant Harris steps on the gas, holds onto the wheel, and goes head to head with his suspect. At the last second, he decided that he didn't want to do that, so he turned hard right, and that's when his vehicle lost control and he rolled it over.

Racamantas has taken into custody unharmed and arrested for the murder of Laura Arroyo. This is the pink dancing reindeer top that Laura was wearing when she was murdered. Garland Pied is a deputy DA for San Diego County. As he prepares to try Manuel Bracomontas for murder in 2004, the prosecutor discovers that he has not one DNA link between Bracomontas and the victim, but several. It was re-examined by Shelley Webster at the San San Diego County Sheriff's Crime Lab in 2003, 2004.

She found actually sperm DNA three different places on this little pink top, and all three DNA profiles that were developed from these spots on this garment matched the defendant, Manuel Brockamontes. Additional testing finds trace amounts of Brockamontes's DNA under the nine-year-old's fingernails and on her neck. How could we go from no evidence in the case to suddenly an avalanche of DNA? Of course, the answer to that is the truth, which is things have changed. The screening processes.

We know a lot more about screening evidence for biological DNA than we did back then. The scientific evidence is convincing, but the trial packs an emotional punch. To go through the in-life pictures of her, when she was born, her baptism, her five-year-old birthday, with her dad on a swing, you know? That's the hard part of doing a case like this.

you know, to have the guy over there who killed my little girl, you have to stop everything, you know, nothing you can do, you know. When I see the guy, you know, I want to kill the guy, I want to, you know. On September 2nd, 2005, the jury hands down its verdict, guilty. Today, a stoic Manuel Bracamontes turned toward his family while the jury recommended the death penalty for the molestation and murder of 9-year-old Laura Arroyo. I always feel good that we're able to bring, I don't like the word closure, but we bring some closure to these, in these cases, for parents or another relatives.

Brockamontes now sits on California's death row, while a father suffers his own life sentence, life without his little girl. You know, my little girl, she was nine years old. She was a very happy little girl. It's very hard for me, you know, to remember everything about my little girl. but she was everything for me.