Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Danger At The Door

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

When a 9-year-old girl is abducted from her own home and brutally murdered, shock waves spread throughout the community. Detectives refuse to give up until her killer is behind bars.

In 1991, a nine-year-old girl was brutally murdered in Chula Vista, California. Her body was dumped in plain sight. Any child's death, any death for that matter, is a tragedy. When a child dies violently and the murder is so public, it affects the entire community. The impact hits hardest among the family and loved ones, of course, but it ripples outwards and becomes part of a shared memory. Trauma works in strange ways when it comes to memories. Sometimes it erases the difficult things from your mind that you can't bear to think about, but it can also cement them in your memory. Fear and trauma can make the memory that much clearer

and that much harder to let go of. I think that's what happened in Chula Vista back in 1991. When Laura Arroyo was kidnapped from her own home and murdered, the fear must have been unimaginable. And when her story was publicized even further, wild theories started to circulate. Theories about visions of Laura appearing at night, whether these visions were driven by traumatic memories or just a need to see her again,

one thing was for sure. Laura's murder was unforgettable. And detectives wouldn't rest until they found her killer. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke, and here's the dynamic Bill Curtis with a classic case, Danger at the Door. The person that kidnapped and killed 9-year-old Laura Arroyo made no effort to hide her body.

It didn't take investigators long to make the connection to a reported kidnapping last night. There was a knock on the door. The 9-year-old female answered the door. And by the time the parent got to the door, the child was gone. The door apparently was still open. Don Hunter is a detective with the Chula Vista PD 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 chula vista

apparently she was beaten possibly on this very spot she was laying right in this area here her head was 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 Viesca 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 at my heart forever.

The news of what police found in this office parkway travels quickly, eventually reaching the doorstep of a father who refuses to believe he will never see his little girl again. That's a mistake. It's somebody else. That's for sure it's not my little girl. a mistake. It's somebody else. That's for sure it's not my little girl. It's going to 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 9-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 done as a matter of procedure. Each area that we swab, we usually take a packet of four. The swabs are taken and 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. Meantime, 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 hit 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 playmate of Laura's and had been outside with her earlier the 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 Bracamontes,

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 on 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 H Street trolley station in Chula Vista, and we came down here to interview Manuel Bracamonte. On July 14th, detectives catch up with Manuel Bracamontes.

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 Bracamontes if he was in the neighborhood the night Laura went missing. He either denied being there, whether we asked him about it, or came out and told us that he didn't know anything

because he wasn't there. Bracamontes' story doesn't play with what detectives are hearing in the neighborhood. More than two weeks later, they sit down again with Bracamonte's, this time on their turf, and this time the gloves are off. We've done hundreds of hours of investigation on this case,

and our investigation clearly indicates that you're 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 Chula 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 is 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 life via spirits like that of Laura Arroyo's. The boards 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 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 Bracamontes, a man with no hard criminal history, and according to the

suspect himself, a man with nothing to offer detectives. 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. Racamontes is asked to come down to the police department for some hard questions.

Tell me why you think you're down here talking to us today. I think that's why he suspects something of 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 Brackamont his himself remains silent. Who do you think did this to him? How would I know? You know, something like that.

Can you tell us who didn't do it? Myself. You're trying to tell me I did something. 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, shrug of 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 Arroyo. Now's the time to tell us. No. Okay. We've talked to a lot of people down in the neighborhood. Is there any possibility that anybody we talk to is going to tell us that you were down there in the neighborhood at the time that Laura disappeared? No.

I can't tell you that. Detectives ask Bracamontes to sit for a polygraph. Bracamontes declines, and police turn up the heat. We've got hundreds of hours of investigation on this case, and our investigation clearly indicates that you're involved in the death of Laura Arroyo. What do you say after eight? 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. In an innocent person, you accuse somebody of something as horrific as this, they're going to come out of that seat like a spring under their butt and deny it. That's what I told you earlier. That's not cool, you know. Racamontes ends the talk, but not before detectives mention one more thing. This is the 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. Racamontes gets the 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 pickmatic 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. Fibers from one of Bracamonte'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 Brachymanthes 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. More after this. Maybe. Others don't, like having that conversation about money. The fact is, kids won't really know how to manage their money until they're actually in charge of it. That's where Greenlight can help. Greenlight is a debit card and money app made for families. Parents can send money to their kids and keep an eye on spending and saving, while kids and teens build money confidence and lifelong financial skills. The Greenlight app makes learning about money fun with games that teach essential financial concepts. Plus, it includes a chores feature where you can set up customized tasks and reward kids with allowance for a job well done. Usually, it's like pulling teeth to get my kids to put the dishes in the dishwasher. But with the incentive of money going into their account right afterward, I get a lot more help

around the house. It's a great way to teach the connection between hard work and financial independence. Millions of parents and kids are learning about money on Greenlight. It's the greenlight.com slash coldcase. It finances together. Sign up for Greenlight today and get your first month free when you go to greenlight.com slash coldcase. That's greenlight.com slash cold case to try Greenlight for free. Now, back to the case. Detectives have dedicated hundreds of hours to Laura's murder investigation. But despite having a likely suspect with a forensic link to the victim, police are no closer to solving the case. Laura knew Manuel Bracamontes as Jessica's dad.

They were close enough that Laura would have gone with them willingly. He was also seen in the neighborhood at the time that Laura disappeared, and his reactions during police interrogations were suspicious. But still, investigators had nothing but a single fiber linking Bracamontes to Laura, and she could have picked that up anywhere. She played at his house. Investigators presented their limited evidence to the DA, but they couldn't make a case strong enough to convict. So rather than risk taking a losing case to trial and missing their chance to put Laura's killer behind bars,

the investigators decided their best bet was to wait and hope for a breakthrough. All right, let's go and get started. As you know, team four is already out there. A year has passed since Laura Arroyo was found murdered, but Chula Vista police still have Manuel Bracamontes on the brain and decide to give their suspects another shot. Well, I told him I wanted to clarify some things in reference to the crime. Sergeant Bob Rutledge asks Brachamantes to come down to the station and hopes that his suspect might finally fess up. Can I talk to you a little bit? Where comes the case? Pretty quick, because I've got things to do.

Well, it won't take very long. 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, it was still kind of daylight. Brachimontes still denies being at the apartment that evening, but he does remember seeing the 9-year-old that day. When you were there earlier, did you see the little girl, little Laura? She was with a lot of kids, I think. Yeah, she was up there. This contradicts Brachimontes' earlier statements about not seeing or really knowing Laura Arroyo.

Where did you see her? By, um, like the neighbors that ended up crossing from her. She was, uh, she was running back and forth. Rutledge is hoping a few more minutes with the suspect might lead to more admissions. But that doesn't happen. Actually, the interview ended when his beeper went off. Racamontes 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. 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. One of the first cases on its list, 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 Bracamontes. What gets me, though, still is that you look at what he did to this little girl, and you see how he grew up. It doesn't explain it, you know? I mean, it just doesn't explain it.

He's a little league 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 to do with cold 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 kit had been looked at, but that it had only been looked at 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 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 a 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 male individual. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. I was almost speechless. Not quite, but almost. Hair samples taken from Manuel Bracamontes 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 Bracamontes. There's a light, like a bluish-colored SUV,

Ford Explorer-type vehicle comes around 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 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, Racamonte 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. Racamonte's gets lost in traffic and alerts are put out. The Mexican border crossing only four miles away is notified.

Chula Vista Police Department were doing a search of different motels and hotels in the city of Chula Vista to see if maybe by chance he had returned to Chula Vista and they located his vehicle in a parking lot. Racamontes is nowhere to be found and a tracking device is placed on the car.

Investigators hope Bracamontes will return to the vehicle. 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 Bracamontes 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, Bracamontes, 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. Bracamontes 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. Racamontes is 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 Peed is a deputy DA for San Diego County. As he prepares to try Manuel Bracamontes for murder, the prosecutor discovers that he has not one DNA link between Bracamontes and the victim, but several. It was re-examined by Shelley Webster at the San Diego County Sheriff's Crime Lab in 2003-2004. 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 Bracamontes. Additional testing finds trace amounts of Bracamontes' 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 also packs an emotional punch. This guy was as cold and calculated as they come. Maybe we weren't going to get it solved. It was like the epitome of innocence that had been preyed upon. This is a case that has no evidence. We didn't have DNA. We didn't have fingerprints.

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chilling cases and their conclusions in this new true crime series. You just have a pit in your stomach thinking, how many people are we going to find? New episodes of American Justice are available every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Nothing you can do. 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 Bracamonte has turned toward his family while the jury recommended the death penalty for the molestation and murder of nine-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 and other relatives. Bracamonte 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. Hopefully, the capture and sentencing of Manuel Bracamontes provides a little closure and a little peace to Luis Arroyo and his family. Maybe now their thoughts of Laura involve happy memories

instead of lingering questions and the desperate search for answers. Still, some questions about this case can never be answered. I can't explain why someone like Manuel Bracamontes, with no real criminal history to speak of

and no prior history of violence on record, would commit such a brutal, heinous murder. I don't think anyone will ever be able to explain that. And I can't say that the death penalty is a cut-and-dry solution in this case. It never is. But I do know that Manuel Bracamontes still sits on California's death row to this day. He won't ever be able to hurt another child again.

And hopefully, in a town that can't forget Laura Arroyo, that gives a little peace to everyone. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. 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. 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 real crime blog at aetv.com slash real crime.