Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Florida Woman Charged in Roommate's Bloody Murder

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A woman arrested and charged with murdering her missing roommate whose body has never been found. I have the disturbing case out of Florida and why police say Giselle Victoria Gonzalez is a killer. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Gisele Victoria Gonzalez is in jail in Orlando, Florida, and she's charged with murdering her roommate more than two years ago. Two days after Christmas in 2022, Gisele actually reported her roommate, Rooney Medina Pacheco, missing to Orlando police. Rooney, who was 42, was from

Starting point is 00:00:44 the Dominican Republic, but staying with Giselle while she was in the U.S. They were actually both from the Dominican Republic. Rooney's family was also concerned because they hadn't heard from her and they said that was unusual. They became very concerned. Police said Giselle told detectives a week before Rooney disappeared, they actually got into a disagreement about money. Rooney allegedly had $3,000 in cash that went missing. At first, she thought it was misplaced, possibly in boxes to be shipped to the Dominican Republic. But then on Christmas Eve, Rooney wanted to talk with Giselle about whether she took the money. Police believe Rooney disappeared the next

Starting point is 00:01:23 day. During the investigation, detectives said they determined the movement of Rooney's phone matched Giselle's location and movements following Rooney's disappearance. Detectives said evidence showed Giselle left the apartment on December 26, 2022, and went straight to Lowe's. Police reviewed surveillance footage, which recorded Giselle entering the store alone, and she bought a chainsaw. Detectives then determined through bank records that Giselle went to Walmart and bought trash bags, dishwashing gloves, and Dawn dish soap. Based on statements Giselle made to investigators and other evidence, they seized her phone and searched her apartment. According to an affidavit, highly incriminating

Starting point is 00:02:06 searches were discovered on Giselle's phone. On Christmas Day, police said Giselle searched which side of the body the aorta is on, followed by Home Depot and Walmart, then hours for Home Depot. There was also a search for Amazon, search for a mini electric saw, prices for an electric saw. Then the day after Christmas, police said Giselle searched for Home Depot, Semeron Boulevard. What do they do with the trash in the U.S.? What do they do with the trash in Orlando? In an affidavit for an arrest warrant, police said they found dried blood in several areas of the apartment the two shared, and testing confirmed the blood was Rooney's. At this point, the evidence is just stacked against Giselle, but Giselle took advantage of this and moved out of her Florida apartment. Fast forward to last

Starting point is 00:02:56 November. Orlando police determined that Giselle Victoria Gonzalez had moved to Hartford, Connecticut, and they go there to get a DNA sample from her. Gonzalez was taken into custody and questioned. According to court documents, Giselle's story changes significantly from what she originally told police. According to the document, Giselle said she admitted to being involved in a physical fight with Rooney rather than an altercation through her bedroom door, she had previously stated. She said Rooney slapped her, at which time they both began punching each other and pulling each other's hair. Rooney was also hitting her with her purse. The fight started in the hallway by the bathroom and then moved all over the apartment. At some point, the fight ended and

Starting point is 00:03:41 Giselle went into her bedroom. She exited her bedroom approximately 10 minutes later and Rooney was gone, but her cell phone was on the dining room table. Now, this is a big difference from Giselle saying there was a disagreement a week earlier and that she didn't see Rooney on Christmas Day. Officers decided they had enough probable cause to charge Giselle Victoria Gonzalez with the murder of Rooney Medina Pacheco. She is charged with second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and grand theft. I need more Spanish fluent speaking here. A Spanish speaking officer arrives to translate and help with the booking process. What's your last name?

Starting point is 00:04:39 Victoria. Victoria what? Gonzales. And your second last name is? Gonzales. Okay. Victoria Gonzales is my last name. And where did you come And the second name is? Gonzalez. Okay. Victoria Gonzalez is my name. And where does G-Cell come from?

Starting point is 00:04:49 My name. Is that your name too? My name is G-Cell, my first name. Okay. My second name is Victoria Gonzalez. Okay. I want to tell you about Upside. It's a free app that gets you cash back on things like gas, groceries, and restaurants. This is real cash back. It's money that appears in your Upside app

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Starting point is 00:05:51 nor has there been any activity in her bank account. But since her disappearance, there has been activity on her Facebook. On January 7th, approximately 13 days after Rooney went missing, her profile and cover photo were updated. At first glance, this may not seem like a big deal, but her friends and family definitely noticed. To discuss all of this, I want to bring in David Sarney. He's a retired NYPD detective. So David, one of my big questions here is the fact that Rooney's blood, they say it's all over the apartment. I mean, it just sounds like a horrific scene.

Starting point is 00:06:28 There were efforts to clean up the scene, according to the blood spatter expert. Yet it took almost two years to make an arrest in this case. Why do you think that was? Well, again, thank you for having me. When this case started originally, you're dealing with primarily just a missing persons report. And you have the roommate reporting her roommate, in a sense, her friend missing. They had nothing to go on at that time. As they're going through the progression of this investigation, they're noticing inconsistencies in her story, inconsistencies on to why she went missing. And again, people can go missing all the time.

Starting point is 00:07:04 It's about the circumstances in which that person goes missing. Apparently, she's never done this before. So they put a missing person, an NCIC out there, a kind of an alert. As they do this investigation, they're noticing her story is changing as she goes along. And we've also seen in the past that many times these missing persons who are reported to the police, the person who reports them are usually ones responsible for that. So you kind of put her on the radar automatically, but the story becomes more and more inconsistent as this investigation goes forward. She puts herself as the only one in communication with her at the last moment. She says she doesn't see her, but she's there.

Starting point is 00:07:45 She's present with her. So now you have to deal with, if she's the only one who saw her, how do we go further on this investigation? And as they talk to her, they talk to the missing's family, they're seeing a pattern develop that maybe this isn't just a missing, there's something else to it. So Rooney's son said that he talked to her in a video call on December 25th. So we have these kind of timestamps.

Starting point is 00:08:11 We have these pretty concrete things that tell us when Rooney was last heard from or seen alive. One thing that was pretty concerning to me was the fact that a neighbor heard what they thought was screaming between 10 and 11 a.m. This is what they thought. And it sounded muffled almost as if somebody's mouth was being covered. But it didn't sound like it was coming from a TV. You know, maybe this person thought, oh, it's domestic violence. I'm not getting involved in this or something like that. But you have all of these, all of this circumstantial evidence. Then you have her phone, Rooney's phone, moving with Giselle's phone. And then the phone just shuts off. It's very, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence here.

Starting point is 00:09:01 But then they don't have a body. But they have her purchasing a chainsaw and trash bags. I mean, it's very gruesome. It sounds like she probably maybe tried to dismember Rooney and disposed of her in the trash. Yeah. But with the research that they were doing on the phone and on the missing person's friend, the reporter's phone, they're starting to see a couple of things. And that's a timestamp. The benefit of talking to the reporter in this case, Giselle, they're getting detailed

Starting point is 00:09:36 information. They're able to lock her into a story as to where she was from A to B to C to D. They get that into play. So now you have, you know, you can't, you have to disprove the lie with facts. They're finding facts out in this case, which was beneficial. And they do a search on her phone. They look at her phone and they see things about purchasing items. They see, you know, about talking about an A-order, how do you deal with an A-order injury? So it looks like with the blood spat, and this gives you an idea, if you're seeing that work on the phone, the workup on the phone, you now start looking at the fact that this person might've been killed at home at the

Starting point is 00:10:14 residence compound with the fact you have witnesses or ear witnesses in the case that there was a screaming match or something that went on. So you can lend to the point of probable cause of the incident took place in the house, thereby getting the search warrant and thereby doing the analysis to find the blood. Even though she tried to clean it up and you could see that she tried to, even based on the work that she did, it was about cleaning up locations and things like that, how you dispose of a body, it lends more to that probable cause warrant. So it takes time to deal with this blood.

Starting point is 00:10:46 And you're talking about an apartment. So you're going from top, from the front door of the apartment, all the way to where the bedrooms are, bathrooms and everything. So it takes some time. And they're fortunate enough to find that she did not, was not able to clean up the scene as she thought she did. Yeah. I mean, the, the blood spatter expert, Stuart James, and he's been around a long time. He just, I mean, the blood spatter expert, Stuart James, and he's been around a long time.

Starting point is 00:11:06 I mean, his description of what he believes happened is very disturbing. I mean, anytime somebody is killed, it's disturbing. But he describes kind of an upward, up and down, kind of downward movement. It almost sounds like somebody was stabbed potentially um that's what he paints a very gruesome picture and he describes you know an effort to clean up um the scene was damaged at least the forensics and that there's dried blood um all over the place i mean it it's a blood by the entertainment center and all kinds of things. I mean, it's a very gruesome scene that he describes. Yeah. The blood, one thing about people, I don't think people realize,

Starting point is 00:11:53 there's a lot of blood in you. And as much as you try to clean up that in the situation, it looks like it was possibly a stabbing, given the fact that she's probably trying to stab her in the chest. So it kind of lends credence to the circumstantial evidence of the plunging and the screaming and the fighting. And not only that, the irritated voice that apparently answers the phone later on that evening. So you're seeing a lot of things come into play. Like I said, blood is hard to get rid of. It really is. I mean, people think you could do a cleaning of it.

Starting point is 00:12:25 The only way you might have gotten away with it is probably burning the house down in a sense. But that didn't happen because she was residing there. And she thought about the murder. She thought about how to rid the body. But like most people and most first-time type of murderers in a sense, they're not as smart as they think they are. The cleaning up is a lot harder than they think it is. I'm glad you brought up that phone call. Rooney's mom said she called her phone later Christmas day and a woman

Starting point is 00:12:56 answered who wasn't Rooney and the voice sounded agitated and hung up. So I think investigators, you know, the inference there is that it was Giselle answering the phone. Yeah, that's what apparently is because they did the geolocation on the phone on her, on the missing cell phone, which shows the tracking of that phone going pretty much wherever Rooney, you know, wherever that, you know, Giselle went went. Rooney's phone was with her the whole time, it seems, and then eventually dies out.

Starting point is 00:13:28 So the work the detectives did in the beginning made it very important near the end, developed a circumstantial evidentiary case. And you don't have a body. That's the one thing people are concerned about. But there's so much evidence that was obtained by the cell phone searches, by the analysis on the phone, the apartment itself, the canvas of the area, the speaking to the family members, to possible witnesses, ear witnesses, or eye witnesses, in this case, ear witnesses. So you've seen something beneficial in this case.

Starting point is 00:14:02 It really is a very thorough investigation. And that's what we have to understand is detectives have to be very thorough with these cases. They're not slipshot. One of my bosses said, you can't broad brush things. It's no longer a paintbrush. It's a scalpel. And that's what this took place. Very detailed work in this.

Starting point is 00:14:17 Because now once they realize that this person doesn't normally disappear, it became we always always look at it as possible homicide case. Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of detail. I mean, there's the affidavit is very detailed and Giselle totally changes her story later on and talks about how they had this physical altercation and she admits to stealing the money that Rooney thought she stole from her. So, I mean, it's just an incredibly,

Starting point is 00:14:46 really gruesome, sad case. Do you think, I mean, is there any hope that they can recover her body? We don't know if she was indeed disposed of in the trash, but that was the research that was done on Giselle's phone. Do you think there's any hope that they are able to recover anything? The only thing you maybe be able to get is maybe an allocution as to from the defendant in this case, where the body was disposed of, because you're dealing with two years now. And when it happened, they didn't know she was missing. And, you know, could you look back and do a search of the garbages? I don't know how the garbage works in that community, because sometimes that's a way of doing it. But they had no reason to look at it at that time,

Starting point is 00:15:33 because she was just reported missing. They didn't automatically, let's go in the garbage, because there was nothing to detail that she would be murdered, she would have been murdered, or disappeared in a very suspicious way. It was a suspicious missing, but nothing led to that type of investigation. So two years down the road, unless maybe the defendant will say something as to what she did with the body because they weren't able to recover the saw or the possible weapons she utilized to kill Rooney, this is going to be maybe part of the trial process and maybe the conviction. It's a really horrific, sad case. Thank you so much, David Sarney, for coming on

Starting point is 00:16:14 to talk about it. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. Take care. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Florida Woman Charged in Roommate's Bloody Murder

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Florida Woman Charged in Roommate's Bloody Murder

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