Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Missing Siblings Found in Concrete and Suitcase in Gruesome Discovery

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Police in Pueblo, Colorado recently made two grim discoveries when they found Yesenia Dominguez dead in a container full of concrete and her older brother, Jesus Dominguez, in a suitcase in a car in a scrap yard. No one had seen Jesus or Yesenia since 2018 when they were five and three years old. Now the father of the children and his girlfriend are charged with murdering the children. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan about the horrifying case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that delves into the biggest stories in crime.HOST:Angenette Levy: twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. This sweet little boy is Jesus Dominguez. Police in Colorado say they found his body in a suitcase and his younger sister was found in a container of concrete. I'm Anjanette Levy and this is Crime Fix. This story is absolutely horrifying. No one had seen Jesus Dominguez since 2018. At that time, he was around five years old. His younger sister, Yesenia Dominguez, was three at that time. On January 20th, police in Pueblo, Colorado were called to a storage business after someone discovered a

container filled with concrete. Officers said Yesenia's body was inside, encased in that concrete. A search then began for Jesus. Earlier this month, police found his body in a car at a scrapyard. Jesus's body was in a suitcase in that car. Police say that car belonged to this woman, Karina Minhares, the girlfriend of Jesus and Yesenia's father. The father of the kids, Jesus Dominguez Sr., was later arrested. Dominguez and Minhares are charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of abuse of a corpse. Dominguez is also charged with theft of government benefits,

likely because the children were receiving those benefits and he was still collecting them, according to police. A spokesperson for Pueblo police told me that they had been asked to check on the children, but never located them. I asked when they were asked to check on the kids and a spokesperson said he couldn't say because of privacy laws. So we're still working to get more information on when exactly they were asked to go check on the children. Joseph Scott Morgan is a forensic death investigator. He's also the host of the Body Bags podcast.

Joseph, this case is so disturbing. Have you ever had a case where you found people encased in concrete? Yeah, generally they're adults. I've had a couple of them that involved adults. What kicks this up another notch in genetics is the fact, let's face it, they're babies. I mean, they are. They're just little kids.

And that takes it to a completely different level in this particular case. It is horrifying. As I just said, this all started last month when Yesenia's body was found in a container of concrete. She's a three-year-old little girl, and she was found in this container in a storage facility. So I can't even imagine, Joseph, as a death investigator, a police officer, kind of discovering that you may have a child, a defenseless child that somebody harmed and then put in concrete. And then it has to harden, obviously. They're trying to conceal a body in, in such a disgusting way. It makes me think of like old mobsters and you're talking about a little girl and a little boy.

Yeah. And when you think about this precious little angel's body, look, I have to, at this point in my life, I have to find the silver lining in every cloud. And in this particular case, there would be elements of her remains that might tell the tale. And that's the one redeeming bit, if there is anything here.

You know, we talk a lot when we're discussing trials and that sort of thing about preservation of evidence. You know, that kind of goes to the heart of what forensic scientists do. In this particular case, you have containment. I'm not saying, and forgive me, but I'm not saying that her body would not have decomposed. However, those elements that are surrounding her body are literally frozen in that moment in time. She'll never be older than she was the day that they, you know, just bathed her in that concrete and set her aside. But there might be some evidentiary value there that they can recover. The trick though, and this has always been the case anytime I've been involved in these cases, is freeing her body up from this. And that in and of itself is a Herculean task because, you know, it literally, it's

no different. It's not like it's necessarily a medical procedure. You have to call upon your ability to wield brute strength and, but yet be almost like, almost like a sculptor where you're trying to knock away these pieces so that you don't lose anything, but you know that therein lies the body. So it's a very painstaking task. Not to be so morbid, because we are talking about children here. So when they discover Yesenia's body, they have to take the container, obviously, to, I'm assuming, the morgue.

And they start chipping away, as you say. You said she could be possibly preserved in this concrete. So horrible. So tell me about that. But there is some decomposition as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is. Because just understand this, and this is just kind of basic science.

Anything that inhabited her little world at that moment in time is encased in there with her. And we're talking about, you know, at a microscopic level. So those little nasties that surround us every day that, you know, our bodies can kind of fend off, they're going to begin to break down her body contained in that environment. However, it's not going to be like a normal decompositional event. We're going to lose a lot. Say, for instance, where you have bits of tissue that may be subject to animals

that are around that area. You might have the process of normal decomposition where things will liquefy to the point. At that moment in time, she goes kind of into stasis. You'll still have the body decomposing, but it will be much more contained. That's why for every little chip that you take out of that environment that she's, you know, literally hardened in, you have to examine every little bit because you don't know what's contained in the original mix with her. So, you know, for all, and I have no idea what the cause of death is going to be, but let's just say in generalized terms, if there's any kind of trace evidence, if there's a cigarette butt that was thumped in there, we've actually had that happen before, shell casings, any of the usual suspects that we think about, that stuff is all contained there. And this is what I always return to. I always think these people slip up somewhere. There's some way that

we're going to be able to determine what happened to her. Let's talk about little Jesus now, Yesenia's brother. Her older brother, after she was found, the police start investigating and they start looking into records and they discover there's a vehicle at a scrapyard. So they get a search warrant and they discover a suitcase. And sadly, this is where they find little Jesus's body. So this is a different type of container, obviously, than a steel container. We're talking about a suitcase. So does that present new challenges or is it a similar set of circumstances when trying to figure out how he died and to get to his body? Yeah, to a certain degree it does. Remember, in contained within the car, we're talking about the car itself,

that car is going to be more subject to the changes in ambient environmental conditions. I'm thinking heating and cooling. So all of us can identify with what it's like to get into your car in the middle of the summer and you grab hold of your steering wheel um and very very hot environment and so that's going to rise and fall more so probably uh than his sister's remains or the environment that his sister's remains were found in within uh within that storage unit what's so sad about this is the fact that mixing concrete is not that's not an easy task. That's something that takes some energy. So there's some thought that went into this.

And, you know, another sad aspect of this, Joseph, to me, is the fact that these kids have not been seen since 2018. The police, I talked to the police yesterday, a spokesperson for the Pueblo Police Department, and he said they had been asked to do some welfare checks and they couldn't make contact. And it seems like things ended there. I asked him when they were they were asked to do these welfare checks. And he he said, well, he could tell me they did them. But, you know, for privacy reasons, he couldn't he could tell me they did them, but couldn't tell me when. So we're working to get more information about that. But it seems like some balls were dropped here.

But just the fact that Jesus Dominguez, senior and his girlfriend, who is not the mother of these children, went to this length to dispose of the bodies of these children. And this is a murder case that there's no make no, you know, there's no doubt about that. So I think there's just a lot here that is very sad. And it seems to me the police will probably say and the prosecutors will say that this is a guy that didn't want to be bothered with having children. Yeah. Kind of anchored down with these babies. What a shame. Because they have a mother somewhere. Yeah, and people want children and they can't have them. But yet these children are discarded like rubbish and that's very sad. But back to your point, I think that this is quite salient. You think about the effort that has to go into, let's say you go to a local box store and you buy a bag of concrete mix.

That goes to purpose, doesn't it? And you begin to understand how much you need in order to facilitate this horrific deed that you're undertaking. And it goes to the thought and also the obscuring of the bodies as well. I guess that many times people do this, they never think that someone is going to come around and find these remains or they'll be long gone afterwards. And of course, as always happens, someone stumbles across these remains or remains similar to this and it unlocks a mystery. And the saving grace with this, again, I go back to this idea that those kids are kind of frozen in time and that evidence is kind of frozen in time that could help the police out tremendously. Another sad part of this, there's an allegation that they continue to collect some type of benefits. There's some type of, you know, fraud here going on. So we've seen that in other

cases as well. The Daybell case, where they continued to collect benefits, social security benefits for the children in order to live. So that's the allegation here. Jesus Dominguez and Karina Minhares will be in court this week. They are in jail, of course. Joseph Scott Morgan, we really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for coming on to talk about this awful, awful, sad case. You bet, Anjanette, anytime. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Until then, have a great night. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each

weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki. Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Vine. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabee is our audio editor.