Cold Case Files - Justice for Eglena

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

In 1992, outside of a Seguin, TX carnival... officers discover the body of 15 year old, Eglena Diaz DeLeon. Their best lead: a bloody bandana found in a nearby storm drain. Fill in the gaps in your diet with RITUAL - the obsessively-researched vitamin for women. Get 10% off during your first three months! Visit www.ritual.com/COLDCASE to start your ritual today!

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production. Available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. known corners of the biggest events of our time. Subscribe to History This Week, wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Use your best judgment. Mexico celebrates its Independence Day on September 16th, a lot like Americans celebrate the Fourth of July. There are parades and parties and fireworks. The city of Sanguine, Texas, held an Independence Festival on September 16th, 1992. Eglena Diaz de Leon was 15, a high schooler. She wanted to go with her friends to the celebration.

Her mother was hesitant, but she let Eglena go on her own. She trusted her daughter. So, Eglena went to the festival with her friends. But she never made it home. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke, and here's the brilliant Bill Curtis with a classic case, Justice Freglina. Like moths to a flame, the people are drawn to the bright lights of a Texas carnival. They are young mostly, looking for a night out and a bit of fun. None realize they are being watched by a killer, and that one amongst them has already been marked for death. A little past

2 a.m., and the carnival is closed for the night. A solitary beat cop picks his way past the festival grounds and into the courtyard of a nearby church. In a dark corner, behind a statue of St. Andrew, he sees a figure outlined in black. It is the body of a young woman. Officer Maureen Watson and Detective Jimmy Limmer are called to the crime scene. It was shocking. It was sad.

And for me, a young patrolman, it was overwhelming. The body was totally disrobed. No shoes, no clothes, no jewelry, nothing. Detective Limmer sends Officer Watson back into the streets surrounding the church, looking for any scrap of evidence that might tie into the body. At the corner of Nolte and Milam, about a block from the church, Watson finds exactly that. The beam of my flashlight caught what looked to me like possibly an article of clothing that was stuck in the storm drain.

And as I got closer, I recognized it to be a bandana. Watson bags the bandana and forwards it to the crime lab, where forensics isolates smears of human blood. In 1992, however, the stains are insufficient for DNA testing. Meanwhile, the body is sent to the morgue, where it is eventually identified as Iglinna DeLeon, a Seguin girl who attended the festival the previous evening. The coroner believes DeLeon was first strangled,

then suffered a single stab wound, severing a major artery in the victim's neck. It was like everything done to her was for effect. There was no peripheral injury anywhere. Every injury that was done to her was for effect. Whoever killed Igleena DeLeon selected his victim carefully and was precise in his attack. Both signs of a serial killer. Detective Limmer needs to move fast. One of the first things he does, pay a visit to the victim's family.

I already had a feeling that something wasn't right. As a mother, we know. Atsi De La Garza is a mother with a premonition. When her daughter Eglina didn't come home from the Seguin Festival, the uncomfortable feeling first settled in her mind. Throughout the hours that followed, it only got worse. I quickly called my mom, and I said, Mom, I want you to say a prayer for Eglina because she didn't come home last night. And it wasn't like her not to notify me. By afternoon, Atzi is at work,

when her other daughter calls about a report heard on the radio. It was in the news already on the radio, and she says in the description, it's for Eglina. And when she told me that, I said, okay, baby, I'll be home. Detectives eventually find their way to Atsi's front door. With the news, her daughter is dead. And asking if Atsi has any idea who might have done it, she suggests a couple of Aglina's high school friends.

I can remember a couple of them that I didn't like. I said, Aglina, I don't like you associating, talking to these boys. Oh, Mom, they're just my friends. I said, yes, love, I know, but, you know, I just, as a mother. Detectives check out Aglina's classmates but can't spot a potential killer in the bunch.

Meanwhile, whispers about the murder circulate through Seguin, and fresh leads begin to filter in. Two women share the story of a stranger they saw near the church on the night Aglina was killed, and a gasp they heard emanating from inside the courtyard. It's commonly referred to as a death rattle that a person makes. It's a final gasp for breath or exhaling as the body goes limp. And I think he was concerned that, uh-oh, this person isn't done for. I believe that's when the stab wound to the side of her neck occurred.

The two women claim they got a look at the suspect, a male Hispanic in his 20s with a distinctive haircut. Actor Steven Seagal, his style, he used to wear his hair with the ponytail, you know, closely cut on the sides and pull back into a ponytail. Limmer provides a sketch for the press. The next day, several callers ID the man as a local named Guadalupe Sandoval. Oh, he was a dead ringer for the guy in the sketch. When we did finally get him to come down and talk with us, he had fresh hair clippings on his shirt, on his collar area.

One of the detectives brought up, well, what's with the clippings on your collar? Well, then he had to admit that he did cut it off just that day. Sandoval's makeover raises further suspicion among detectives who query their suspect about his activities on the night of the murder. Sandoval claims he attended the fiesta with his girlfriend and was home in bed an hour before Aglina De Leon disappeared. As soon as the interview is over, Limmer seeks to extract a statement from the suspect's girlfriend. Totally contradicting what he said.

She said he wasn't with her, that she didn't see him until small hours of the next morning and at that time he was all sweaty and nervous and had changed clothes from the clothes she knew he had had on earlier. My impression of her was she was as afraid of him as anybody could be. She pretty much indicated to us that she wouldn't doubt that it was him that did it

because the way the victim was assaulted, the choking down part, was he had done the same thing to her on several occasions when she resisted his advances sexually that he would get angry and would choke her down. Detectives search Sandoval's home and find a collection of martial arts swords. Forensic testing, however, fails to provide any link between Sandoval and the murder.

Limmer discusses the case with District Attorney Bud Kirkendall, who believes detectives are on the right track, but still have a few holes to fill. We had people who saw him in the courtyard at the church, but one of them had picked out the wrong person in the lineup, weren't able to identify him. They had seen him for seconds in the dark. We just didn't have enough to connect him to the crime. In the days and weeks that follow, detectives pick through the small town of Sagin, looking for some bit of evidence or another witness who might cinch their case against Sandoval.

In the end, they come up with nada, and the case gets dropped into the cold files. Thank you for being with us always, and we will never forget you, of course. Meanwhile, Eglina's family finds its comfort in a higher authority. I knew it would happen one day, because I never gave up that hope. Because of my faith also that we always have to, you know, have hope. Hope and faith are good things,

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Visit ritual.com slash coldcase to start your ritual today. That's 10% off during your first three months at ritual.com slash cold case. From A&E, the creators of Cold Case Files, comes your next true crime podcast obsession, PD Stories. Every week, law enforcement professionals join host Tom Morris Jr. from America's Most Wanted and Live PD to share their experiences, insights, and perspective on policing. You're not going to want to miss this show. Be sure to subscribe on Podcast One, Apple Podcasts, and many other podcast apps so you can get new episodes every week. We don't have murders like this in Seguin. I guess I can't say that because we had one. Antonio Leal is a Texas Ranger assigned to the town of Seguin, Texas. That's why this murder struck this community. You've

got a young girl who was a, what we call a true victim. Leal's true victim is 15-year-old Eglina De Leon, snatched from a community fiesta, her naked body found in a nearby church courtyard. On a Sunday, these people went to church. This happened on a weekend where there's police tape around your church. Those things burn into the memory. Ten years after the case goes cold, Lieutenant Leal meets with Seguin's district attorney, Bud Kirkendall, on the agenda justice for Eglina and answers for her family.

She suffered this horrible end, and that just stuck with me forever and always will. This is small-town America, and a girl or a young man should be able to go to a county fair or a fiesta without fear of being killed. The two men know they have at least one outstanding suspect. A local spotted near the church courtyard at the time of the murder. A wannabe black belt named Guadalupe Sandoval. We knew that something had compelled him to kill once. We didn't know if that would happen again. It was always the urgency to kill once. We didn't know if that would happen again.

It was always the urgency to do something, but when you do it, you've got to do it right. Doing it right means the use of DNA to develop a forensic link between Sandoval and the murder. It is something Leal, as head of the Rangers Cold Case Unit, knows a thing or two about. DNA is to the modern Texas Rangers what the Colt revolver was to their forebears. A bit of technology that gives the lawman a leg up. With this forensic edge in mind, Leal begins to review evidence in the DeLeon case. When you're reviewing a Colt case, something was missed the first time. So we don't, in investigating cold cases, ignore any piece of evidence.

We look at all of them. Leal is drawn to a blue bandana. In 1992, it was picked up by a rookie patrol officer who found it hooked on a storm drain about a block from the crime scene. Coupled with the bandana is an old lab report indicating the presence of blood of the same type as the victim. Leal is intrigued.

I thought maybe there's not blood anywhere else on this bandana, but maybe there's sweat, nasal mucus, something else on this bandana that might tell us either it is hers or it belongs to someone else. The bandana, along with a box of other case evidence, is packed up and sent to Austin. A long shot at best, but one the Texas Rangers are willing to take.

Chad Hainley is a DNA analyst with the Texas Department of Public Safety. He begins his work on the De Leon evidence with a visual once-over, looking for anything that stands out. There was a discolored area in the center of the bandana. It was a wide area, possibly something from nasal mucus or sweat. With Hanley's coaxing, the ambiguous stain yields a bit of human DNA. Hanley amplifies the sample and immediately notes the genetic profile is male. Obviously at that time you have no idea who it's consistent with until

the final profile is generated, but it does give you something to have some hope with. The profile is compared to blood taken from Sandoval and provides a genetic match. Hainley then pulls a DNA profile from the human blood found on the bandana and matches it to the victim, Igleena de Leon. This is a very damning piece of evidence, and it causes the opportunity for a lengthy explanation from the suspect as to why his DNA is on a piece of evidence

found at a crime scene, and the victim's DNA is on the same piece of evidence. Lieutenant Leal takes Hanley's work back into the field, into the streets of Sagin, where a theory of murder begins to take shape. We're at the corner of Milam and Nolte, which is the corner where the bandana that ultimately became a key piece of evidence was located.

It was located in a storm drain right here to my left. The church is behind me and to the right where the murder scene was located. Leal knows that the festival had shut down many of Seguin's streets on the night of the murder. The street where the bandana was found would be a logical route for Sandoval to walk to his car. The storm drain, a perfect place to dump a damning piece of evidence. So the most logical thing that would have happened was whoever committed the murder, if their vehicle was parked to the north,

would come east, and at the first street that wasn't barricaded, would then go north. This is that street. Leal believes the bandana and its location in relation to the crime scene provide a blueprint for exactly what happened on the night Eglina de Leon was killed. The Texas Ranger presents his case to Bud Kirkendall, and the DA likes what he hears. This is what we've been looking for. This took a circumstantial case that was a house of cards and made it into a brick wall.

On June 17, 2002, Guadalupe Sandoval is arrested for the first-degree murder of Aguilina de Leon. For Aguilina's family, it's a day they've been anticipating for almost 10 years. We were happy, you know. We said, finally, you know, we're going to go through this, you know, trial and see who did it and let him get his, you know, punishment. I mean, you're going to reap what you sow in life. At trial, the state's case opens with a simple premise. Defendant's mucus and the victim's blood, and no possible explanation for that other than that was the defendant's bandana that he'd

tried to get rid of after he killed her. If the defendant can explain how his DNA and the victim's blood got onto the same bandana, he walks. If not, according to the state, he is a murderer. Detective Maureen Watson was a rookie when she collected the bandana from the edge of a storm drain. She relives that moment for the jury. My memories of that night were vivid. I had no problem going back 10 years. I can remember that moment like it was frozen in time. Not all the prosecution witnesses are so easy.

The defendant's wife, who was estranged from Sandoval when she cooperated with police in 1992, has now reconciled. She was very reluctant to testify, and I had to drag it out of her. But for the statements that had been taken by the PD and the Rangers, we wouldn't have gotten it. Kreckendall reminds Mrs. Sandoval about her statements in 1992, how she described cutting the defendant's ponytail

after these sketches hit the press, and how she told police that Sandoval asked her to lie about his whereabouts on the night of the murder. One of the things he did sometimes was to choke women into submission for sex, and he had done that to her. Mrs. Sandoval's testimony closes the case. After three hours of deliberation, a Seguin jury finds Sandoval guilty of first-degree murder and sentences him to 75 years in prison. For some, justice delayed is indeed justice denied. The decade of freedom Sandoval enjoyed, inherently unfair.

Lieutenant Leal has another way of looking at things. At the time we arrested him, he had established himself with a job. He had two children. He had a modest but brick home that he owned, two vehicles that he owned. So my question to people is, he got away with this for 10 years, but would you rather him gone to prison when he was a loser and had nothing to lose, or is it more punishment to go to prison when you've gained all these things and know they're gone for the rest of your life

because of something you did in 1992? For the Rangers' new cold case unit, the Sandoval case is their first success, an important notch in the belt. For the family of Igleena de Leon, the investigation provides answers to a question that never should have been asked. On his whole hands. It's hard, you know. He won it, but then again, you know, you have to relive this thing. But we're doing it also for other victims, other families that have gone through this, and for them to have hope that it'll come to one day. Guadalupe Sandoval was denied parole on August 1st of 2017.

He won't have another parole hearing until August of 2022. He's 62 years old and serving a sentence in a Texas prison. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Dolomater. Our associate producer is Julie Magruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One.

The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me at Brooke Ginnings on Twitter and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group, Podcasts for Justice. Check out more Cold Case Files at aetv.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog

at aetv.com slash realcrime.