Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Teresa Flores & Martha Mezo

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

In 1979, the tiny town of San Miguel, California, was shaken when two kindergarten girls vanished in broad daylight from a main street. Despite a long list of local child predators and bizarre clues, the trail went cold in a matter of years. But now, nearly 5 decades later, the very detective who solved the Kristin Smart case has come out of retirement to take another look, and he’s closer than ever before to a solve.Terry’s family is currently trying to raise $10,000 for a billboard on Highway 101 and $25,000 to create a reward for information.  If you’d like to  help her out with that we’ve included the link here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-mezo-flores-murder-case Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit:  https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-teresa-flores-martha-mezo/Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is one of the San Luis Obispo Sheriff's Office most enduring mysteries. And it's not the one you're probably thinking of. I mean, for most crime junkies, when you hear San Luis Obispo, one case comes to mind. Yeah, Kristen Smart. Exactly. But her case now solved was never the most baffling one. Far from it. The strangest case the sheriff's office is tasked with solving is from six. 16 years before Kristen Smart went missing, when two little girls vanished off the street in broad daylight in the middle of San Miguel, a town with only 800-ish residents, everyone is a suspect and every theory is still on the table, even after their bodies were discovered and there were plenty of strange clues and physical evidence. Now, the only reason you don't know about this case is because it's never been told in full before, not until today. And this is one that you're going to want to pay attention to, because even though this case is 45 years old, big things are about to happen. The currently detective on this case literally came out of retirement just to solve it.

And he just so happens to be the same guy who solved Kristen Smart's case in 2022. And in this one, he has fresh leads and DNA evidence on his side. So this case is closer than ever before to being solved. But now it's a race against time to make sure justice comes while these girls. families are still alive to witness it. This is the story of Teresa Flores and Martha Mezzo. Saturday, May 17, 1980 would be the start to a mystery that has endured for the San Luis Obisbo Sheriff's office for 45 years. That is the day that four-year-old Martha Mezzo and five-year-old Teresa Flores, known to their families as Marty and Terry, just vanished off the face of the earth. And I know people say that a lot when it comes to Mississippi.

person cases, but this time it is not an exaggeration. It's really the only way to describe it. Over the course of the investigation, Sheriff's deputies put together a detailed timeline of Marty and Terry's movements that morning, basically a minute-by-minute record of what they did, where they were, who they were with, up until around 1130 a.m., when then all of a sudden, they're just gone. So here's what we know. According to Detective Clint Cole, the current detective on the case. The night before both girls had to sleep over at Terry's house, and then the next morning, at around 10.45 a.m., Terry's aunt, Virginia, took them into town to run some errands. Now, Marty and Terry had a birthday party to go to later that day, so they wanted to go to the market,

pick up some flowers, a card, a gift. And when I say, like, go into town, I really mean Mission Street, this one block in San Miguel where everything is. We're talking about kind of an unincorporated, not kind of, it is an unincorporated community with one main road, one school, one post office. Everything is pretty much within walking distance. So Virginia, Terry, and Marty walk to Mission Street. But before the market, Virginia has to stop at the post office, which, as you can imagine, the kindergartners were like not exactly thrilled about. Right. They have plans to do in the post office is boring a. F. So Marty and Terry ask if they can go ahead to the market by themselves. It's like just a few doors down. Virginia agrees, says she'll

meet them there. And by about 11-ish, she finishes up there and find out. the girls outside of the store, candy they bought in hand. They're, like, already done at the market and certainly did not want to stay while Virginia did her shopping for the day. Again, the boring things. Yes. So they asked if they can walk to Marty's house since her mom was going to take them to lunch at noon. And again, Virginia says yes.

And just to confirm, they're four and five? They are, which is like my daughter, well, almost my daughter's age. Yeah. But this is nearly half a century ago, remember. Like, I know that feels foreign to us now, especially for crime junkies who are on high alert for everything. But it was a way different time then. Our reporter Nicole Kagan spoke to Terry's older sister, Christina, and she said that it wasn't unusual at all. She said San Miguel was a small community. I said at the top of the episode, like 800 people small. And not like where everybody

knew everybody. Here, everybody did. No, everybody. The little kids would go places by themselves once in a while if there was somewhere they needed to be and no one available to take them there. So the last Virginia saw the girls, they were headed down Mission Street to Marties, which was also, by the way, on Mission Street, like just beyond the stores. But on the way there, Detective Cole says that they made a little pit stop and popped into the local bar called the Elkhorn, which Christina said was pretty normal too. I call it a bar, but the Elkhorn was really more of a hangout. People would regularly bring their kids in there.

Now, kids wouldn't have been able to sit at the bar, but they could go get a soda or chip, or in true 1980s vintage fashion, buy a pack of cigarettes for their parents. Now, the local hangout spot is where everyone in the community got to know each other. So the girls go in, they get a Coke, but according to witnesses,

they didn't have enough money. So one of the patrons offered to buy it for them, chatted with them for a little bit, and then the girls left. When they stepped outside, they ran into Terry's uncle on the sidewalk with some friends. They speak for a bit,

and then they set off telling him that they're going to go ahead to Marty's. That was the girl's last known interaction. As they walked off in the direction of Marty's house, somehow on this busy main road at 11.30 in the morning with witnesses everywhere, they just vanish. And the fact that it happened that way, so quietly and unnoticed, that resulted in a delay of them being reported missing.

Because when the girls didn't show up at Marty's, her mom, whose name is Sunday, she just assumed that they were still over at Terry's. But when she drove over there, Terry's family says they thought the girls were with her. Right. And even then, everyone's first thought is that Marty and Terry might have been lost. So both families begin trying to retrace their steps. They drove to Mission Street, to the store, to the Elkhorn. Everybody seemed to be saying the same thing.

Like, yes, we saw them earlier. Yes, we saw them. But they left. Yes, but. And the family is going to the school, the park, the old granary building, and vacant properties. They even drove to the nearby Salinas Riverbed because that's where the girl's older siblings

had gone to play earlier in the day. And they knew that Terry and Marty were apparently upset that they weren't allowed to join them. But they're not there either. They searched for hours before finally deciding to call the sheriff's office. Within a couple of hours, about 20 officers are in San Miguel.

The sheriff's office borrows agents from a neighboring police department and highway patrol. They set up a command post at the girls' school. And they get the whole town searching for Marty and Terry. Everyone knows them and anyone who is available is lending a hand. And I assume at their age, they weren't known for like running off before or anything. No, I mean, they're just your typical happy little kindergartners.

Like their families were two of the only three Hispanic families in San Miguel at the time. And so they sort of gravitated towards each other. They liked candy. They liked roller skating, playing. Life was simple for them. And Christina, who was eight at the time, said she wasn't even. worried because she was so sure that her sister Terry was going to come home. In fact, her main thought at the time was how much trouble Terry was going to be in with

their parents when she did come home. But when the sun goes down that first night, after police had been searching for hours, Terry still wasn't home. And that's when the fear began to creep in. And with no sign of the girls anywhere, detectives decide to double down. The next day, there are 150 people searching, including members of the now, Guard from a nearby Army base called Camp Roberts, plus multiple helicopters and people on horseback.

They're searching the riverbed across the freeway in surrounding towns. I mean, they turned San Miguel upside down. Detective Cole told our reporter that investigators were doing things that wouldn't even be allowed today, like searching people's homes without warrants. This was a huge operation, and they were basically like a bulldozer running through this town doing anything and everything they could to find these two girls. girls. And what's so interesting is that Terry's cousin, Angie Gomez, said that there was typically no police presence in San Miguel. She said the example she gave was like in less than 24

hours, a town where she said you could walk around with a shotgun in your hand and nobody would say anything became then the command center for a massive police operation. But even with this colossal effort, another day goes by without so much as a new sighting of the girls. And investigators begin to lose hope that they're going to find them or at least find them alive and they're pretty public about their concerns. On May 19th, Sergeant Joe Little tells the Santa Maria Times

that they've searched the whole town three times over and without any sign of either girl, everything is pointing to the assumption that their disappearance was not accidental. So while searching continues intermittently, now with cadaver dogs, the strategy essentially changes from looking for the girl,

to looking for suspects. Early on, investigators actually set their sights on Terry's dad, Michael. He'd been estranged from the Flores family. They actually moved to San Miguel to get away from him because he'd been abusive to Terry's mom, Yolanda. But the reason they suspect him is mainly just because they can't find him. He doesn't have any listed address or phone number, and no relatives seem to know where he is.

So investigators are thinking, okay, maybe this is a parental abduction. And I don't even know if they had the statistics for this back then, but, like, that would have been the most likely we know that now. However, they do eventually find him 10 days into the investigation, and he not only has a strong alibi in a different city at the time the girls went missing, but he passes multiple polygraphs. And if there was any doubt left for investigators about whether or not he had the girls, that was completely wiped out two days later on May 29th.

That's when deputies get a call from some men on the Camp Roberts Army base. They said they'd been taking their break, parked down by a bridge near the Salinas Riverbed. And when I say Riverbed, this is more of like a shallow sandy bank than like a full flowing river. Most of the people from San Miguel go there to just like hang out. They like take their breaks there all the time, whatever. But on this day, something was different. There was this unusual number of flies buzzing around and this weird smell coming from under the bridge. And when they follow it to try and see where this smell.

is coming from. They see what looks like a small hand sticking out of the sand. Now everyone in this town knows that Marty and Terry are missing, including these guys. So they say that once they saw the hand, they backed off and made the call to the sheriff's office right away.

And when investigators get to the scene and start brushing away the sand, they find the girl's two small bodies, surface buried, meaning like no hole had been dug. They were just sort of laid on top of each other and then sand was pushed over to cover them. They're unclothed, both have ligatures around their necks, and though investigators can't know the exact timing for sure,

the level of decomposition that they see makes them believe that these girls have been dead the entire time that they'd been looking for them. I thought the Salinas Riverbed had been covered during the massive search operation. It had. With cadaver dogs and people on foot and helicopters. So Detective Cole said that even an untrained dog

would have smelled surface. burial there after like four to five days, like with decomp, especially in that May weather, which is when the dogs would have been out there, like a couple of days later. So this tells investigators that whoever killed Terry and Marty likely killed them early on and then held on to their bodies for at least a couple of days before then taking them to the riverbed. Now, there isn't much else found near the girls except for an empty wine bottle, which is like slightly under one of the girls' necks and a rock about the size of someone's hand.

or maybe a little bit bigger. But they collect both because, according to the autopsy, both could be relevant. Detective Cole says it's determined that neither girl had any defensive wounds and both died from asphyxiation due to strangulation from those ligatures around their neck. And those were pieces of maroon-colored cloth,

though they don't know what from. Now, at least one of the girls also had severe head trauma and one was sexually assaulted. Out of respect for the victims and their families we're not going to attribute those particular injuries to either girl by name. So with the head trauma, they're thinking that rock they collected might be related to it? So that's what they thought at first because of the head trauma.

It was like something that was visible while they were there and collecting stuff. They were just wanted to make sure. But the rock didn't actually have any blood on it. And at the end of the day, like when all is said and done, they don't think that that was actually used. They collected it, but it ends up not being relevant. Now, the wine bottle becomes very interesting to investigators for a time after they get talks results back. Now, the coroner tried to do talk screens on both girls, but given the state of decomposition, only one was possible. But the one that came back had a blood alcohol content of 0.07, which for years investigators took to mean that the girls must have been given something when they were kidnapped.

Which, like I said, got them excited at first when they had this wine bottle. but they end up getting that bottle tested and they realize the bottle is totally unrelated to the crime. It was just trash that happened to be in the same area. And as it would turn out, the girls probably weren't given any alcohol at all because decades later when Detective Cole presented this case to an expert pathologist,

he learned that the BAC doesn't necessarily mean that the girl was drinking because in some cases during decomposition, natural chemical processes can actually produce alcohol. internally, which I know we've come across in other cases. Yeah, but does that rule out them being given alcohol completely, though? In this case, no. But one detail that Detective Cole told our reporter kind of sticks out to me, I guess the girl that they did the talk screen on still had a piece of chewing gum in her mouth during the autopsy,

which doesn't negate her drinking or anything, but I don't know, I think the, I just think decomp is probably more likely. And even if it was alcohol, it doesn't really change anything or give investigators any more to go on. Right, really, when all is said and done, pretty much all they have to work with are those ligatures. Until the next day. That's when one of the crime scene texts decides to head back out to the riverbed to do a perimeter grid search, hoping maybe they missed something the first time around. And about 50 yards away from the dump site, hidden in some bushes, he realizes they did.

The tech finds what looks like a green trash bag, and inside are the shoes and clothing that Marty and Terry were last seen in, plus some other weird things that definitely didn't belong to the two girls. Inside the bag, along with the girls' things, there is a potted plant, a paper grocery bag, a blue towel with hairs and a bloodstain on it, and a pair of black thread. song-like underwear from Fredericks of Hollywood with this like silver dragon emblem. And as you can imagine, it's the items that didn't belong to the girls that are most interesting to investigators. Yeah, there could be some connection to whoever owned these items and the person who killed the girls if they aren't just like one of the same. Right. Now, DNA testing obviously doesn't exist yet. And when they test the items for fingerprints, they don't get anything conclusive back. But that doesn't mean that the items don't tell them something. Firstly, they were found on a military base.

I mean, wouldn't that narrow down the list of suspects pretty quickly? Technically, no. I mean, this is like a public access area and people even live along the riverbed. So anyone could have gotten there. But still, I mean, it could be someone. So good place to start. Right. So naturally, investigators try to get a list of people who would have been on the base from May 17th to the 29th.

But Camp Roberts doesn't cooperate. Basically says this list doesn't. exist or they don't have any way to get it. Early on though, even without the Camp Roberts list, it's not a lack of suspects that plagues investigators. It's that there were way too many. Because here's the thing about San Miguel. It was a lower income neighborhood with a handful of residential parolees and according to Detective Cole, a quote, astonishing number of documented sex offenders who committed crimes against minors. Christina and Angie both told Nicole it felt like the town was infested.

They said that they used to get harassed all the time. And when they would walk home, they'd get harassed. Cars would, like, slow roll beside them. Guys would lean out of their windows, yelling things, sometimes like banging on their car doors. And they had a name for these guys. They called them the sidewalk commandos. And the ones who came and went from Camp Roberts,

they had a name for them too, Army dogs. So this 800-person town was just, what, like a magnet for sex offenders? Kind of, but I think out of proximity. See, just 20 minutes south of San Miguel is a city called Atascadero, which houses the Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum security facility for sex offenders with mental health conditions. And when those individuals get out, there are only so many places for them to go.

According to Detective Cole, not only were they known to frequent San Miguel, but specifically they were known to frequent Elkhorn Bar on Mission Street. Well, yeah, it sounds like it's kind of the only place around, like, too frequent. Right. So investigators have a big list, to say the least, and not just the sex offenders. They also get a list of all the people living in and around San Miguel who had a subscription to the Fredericks of Hollywood magazine, that brand of underwear that they found.

And then they have all the people who knew the girls, the people who interacted with them on Mission Street that day. So for time's sake, it is not even possible to touch on everyone's. they talk to and vet, but I am going to take you through the people who I think seem the most suspicious. First up is Greg Hickey. He's a 16-year-old who lives near Terry and sometimes babysat for both girls. Now, he's the one who took their older siblings to the riverbed the morning of the 17th.

And apparently, Greg is a very hot-tempered person. He's like known to fight. And actually, according to Detective Cole, the reason he's in San Miguel is because he'd gotten into some trouble in Washington, and he was supposed to either go to juvenile jail or a boarding school. But this deal was arranged for him to avoid both if he were to move in with his older sister, who I'm going to call Megan and her husband, who I'll call Isaac. And they live in San Miguel. Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by trouble? Yeah, nothing violent. But, I mean, he is known as a volatile guy.

He's actually known around San Miguel as crazy Greg. I mean, that's a quote. And even that morning at the riverbed, he apparently told the girl's siblings not to get wet or something. And then so when they, like, jumped in some puddles, he, like, is just sent off. And according to Detective Cole, he started screaming and cursing. And the girls ended up running home to tell their parents.

And when they go back to Terry's, her mom's new boyfriend, Frank, who, by the way, this is like a small town, but Frank also happens to be. Marty's half-brother and a close friend of Greg's. Oh, yeah. That's some small-down stuff. Yeah. So Frank ends up getting into an argument with Greg and even a brief fist fight before Greg finally takes back off to his house down the road. Can we pause for a second? Why is a 16-year-old kid friends with an adult man? So Frank is technically an adult. Like you're not wrong. But he is only four years older than Greg.

Okay. He's 20. Got it. But the most important part of the story is, Greg has connections to both girls and was already like short fuse running hot that morning. Right. And actually, even though Terry's dad was police's first suspect, Greg was who Marty's dad was looking squarely at, like pretty early on. Even when they were still just missing, Marty's dad was so certain that Greg was involved somehow that he actually went to Greg's sister's house, kicked the door down looking for him. So if Greg is such bad news, why did both families let him watch their kids? I think they just needed help. Marty was one of eight children, and Yolanda was a 24-year-old single mom raising Terry and her sister in a mobile home

after fleeing an abusive relationship. Greg lived in the area. He was free. He was willing. Plus, he was friends with Frank. But obviously things are different now. And for detectives, like you're suggesting, he is a pretty strong suspect. Now, when they interview Greg, he admits that he was drinking and using drugs the morning

that the girls went missing and that he definitely had a fight with Frank. But he denies having anything to do with Marty and Terry's disappearance or murder. And he says that he has an alibi for the time that they were taken. He says that after he left the riverbed that morning and then he got into the fight with Frank, he and his friend, Cow Owens, went up to the wrecking yard where Cowell works. And Cal vouches for Gregg. But like, side eye. Like your friend's word only goes so far.

And according to Detective Cole, They only grow more suspicious when a couple of weeks later, Cal Owens' car burns to the ground on the side of the freeway while he and Greg were supposedly together. Now, he says they're just driving along when, like, poof, car mysteriously catches fire out of nowhere. They pull over, they get out, and then the car is just like incinerated right there. And I assume police hadn't looked at Cal's car for evidence. Well, they did. So when they found out Greg was hanging out with Cal, they looked at Cal, they looked at Cal, car, but Cal had two cars and they only impounded one, which is obviously not the one that

ended up getting burned. Right. But the one that they had, they searched and didn't find anything. Okay, that makes the fire even more sus to me. Yeah. Like impounding the first car could have tipped them off that police were eventually going to get to the second one. Exactly.

And then, oh, darn, now it's gone. Yeah. And after that, Greg gets arrested on some unrelated charges. He ends up having to spend a couple of weeks in juvenile hall. during which time his sister actually tells the court that she wouldn't be surprised if Greg was involved in Marty and Terry's case. But even though there is all of this literal and figurative smoke around Greg, there is no fire and not enough to charge him with anything. I mean, do they ever search his house? Well, as it turns out, Greg's sister's house, where he lives is known to be this quote unquote party house, according to Detective Cole.

He said that there were always a lot of people coming and going from it. Substances are in the mix, possibly sex work and even sex trafficking, though there are never any official arrest or charges around that. And that's the house that was supposed to be keeping Greg out of trouble. I know. So the lead investigator at the time, that's Sergeant Larry Hobson. He does. He goes to that house. He asks Greg's sister Megan what color her linens were.

Because of the blue towels. Yes. So they're not searching the house, but he's like, hey, do you, like, what color are your linens? Just out of curiosity. Yeah, yeah. Hers are blue. And I feel like if I were the investigator and I got that answer, I would probably ask to see them or like then get a warrant to search this house

or maybe ask any follow-up questions at all. But if he does, there is nothing in the file to show that. And it seems like he just moves on. Why even bother asking the question if there's not going to be like a follow-up plan for when she said, Because, yeah, my towels are blue. Listen, today, Detective Cole is just as baffled by this as you are. But even though this thing should have prompted more of an investigation into Greg, it seems to have done quite the opposite. Greg's name just seems to slowly disappear from future reports as they focus on other people.

Other people like Mario Escalante. He is a frequent flyer at the Elkhorn with multiple arrests for public intoxication. And according to Detective Cole, Many people say he is the guy who bought the girls the Coca-Cola that they drank in the bar the morning of their disappearance. But, strangely enough, when interviewed by investigators back then, Mario adamantly denies even buying the girls the soda. And they actually interview him multiple times and every time he says that it never happened and that he had never seen Marty or Terry before. I mean, try to distance yourself much? It's strange not to want to admit that.

Yeah. And Detective Cole seems to believe he definitely did buy them the soda. He told us that he confirmed it with the bartender. Now, the only excuse that I could see, perhaps, is like, okay, this guy has arrest for public intoxication. Is he already drunk at 11 a.m.? Like, didn't remember? But is he saying he doesn't remember or he's saying he remembers that it didn't happen? Yeah, so the latter.

I can't even make excuses for the guy. Like, it's weird for sure. because he would be one of the last people that they interacted with, but that is the only thing that makes him stand out. He's not on their sex offender list or their Fredericks of Hollywood list. He has no history of violence. And it would be a pretty severe escalation to go from public intoxication to kidnapping, aggravated assault, and murder.

So they put him aside and they keep making their way through the lists. And they hit another regular at the L. named Eugene Capers, who is former military. And he apparently lived in the house just behind the mezzo's. Interesting. Now, he's not on lists either, but his name comes up because of what some considered strange behavior when the girls were found. Detective Cole says that Eugene was just like beside himself, like he was seen sobbing, crying,

and going to the mission by himself to pray. And people are kind of like, no, yeah, this is a terrible thing. But also, did you even know them? Like, why are you having this overly emotional response? What does he say when he's interviewed? Well, here's the thing. We really don't know. So Eugene gets interviewed by one of the sheriff's investigators who Detective Cole says was an army guy.

Like Eugene, he used to be in the military. And apparently, that guy ends up independently clearing Eugene. And so after that, the sheriff's detectives move on to a man named Roy Hash. Not move on. That's it. Like, who is this Army guy investigator? I have no idea. Detective Cole says that the interview of Eugene in the files isn't thorough at all.

Because in his opinion, that investigator sort of gave Eugene a, quote, little military pass, like kind of good old military boy thing, unquote. How is that allowed? It just was. Again, how is a lot of the stuff in this case happening? Right. I don't know. But anyways, Army Buddy clears him. That works for them.

On to Roy Hash. He is a San Miguel resident who lives near the Floress, owns a van, knew the girls, and was also known to have driven them from place to place on occasion. So they could have jumped in his car and no questions asked? Yes, probably. And he is on one of their lists. He is a known child predator with sexual assault. accusations from his own family members, according to Detective Cole.

So he becomes a strong person of interest. But he also seems to just be super elusive. Like Detective Cole says that if this guy came up today, he would be trying everything to get in front of him for an interview. But at the time, Detective Cole says they, quote, kept missing him. And when one detective finally does catch him, the interview is super brief. Like there is one paragraph in the files about talking to this guy. And Roy basically says he knew the girls, loved the girls, and would never have hurt the girls. And with that, as has become routine in this case, investigators drop it.

Are they just expecting the killer to be honest with them about it and confess to everything when they ask him the first time? Like, what is going on here? I don't know what they were expecting for the three years that this went on. But if a confession is what they were waiting for, then come 1983, that is exactly what they get. Let's play a little game. I'm going to set the stage. You guess who confessed. It's 1983. And the sheriff's office hears about a serial killer. Oh, Henry Lee Lucas. You are correct.

19803. Yeah. Do you want to set the stage for the newbies? For sure. Henry Lee Lucas is a murderer from Virginia who was convicted of killing 11 people, including his own mother. And then when he went to prison in Texas and was ultimately put on death row, that's when he basically started confessing to pretty much every unsolved murder in America is that right? Yeah, all of them. No joke.

Hundreds of cases. Men, women, kids. And at first, investigators from all over are like clamoring to get their case in front of this guy. And when they do, they start closing all these unsolved homicides, like left and right. But everyone was like a little too eager. Right. So let me jump back in here before you give away the end. So in 1983, Henry tells Texas authorities that he assaulted and killed a little girl just north of Pazzo Robles, which is where San Miguel is.

But just one girl. Yeah. So from the jump, things aren't adding up. But Sergeant Hobson schedules a time to go down to Texas and talk to Henry himself. And when I say schedules a time, I mean it literally, because like you kind of insinuated, Henry's schedule is packed to the gills with meetings. He's a busy dude. Yeah.

I mean, investigators from all over the country want to speak to this guy about their cold cases. So when it is finally Hobson's turn, he's briefed by Texas Rangers on how to approach this meeting. And according to the San Francisco examiner, there are like all these rules. Like they tell him, you know, don't approach the meeting like a cop. Like try not to argue it. Henry, you know, basically let Henry conduct the interview. And they tell him to start by showing Henry photos because, though he doesn't deliberately claim homicides that aren't his, like, he's just committed so many murders.

They all kind of blur together. Yeah, so they suggest keeping him supplied with cigarettes and coffee, and please do not call him a liar. So, Copson comes equipped with maps and photos and sketches. And cigarettes, evidently. Probably. And Henry is apparently unable to pick Terry or Marty out of Alina. But using the map, he does point out the area by the Salinas Riverbed as the crime scene.

Problem is, he says the girl he assaulted was 15. Now, when Hobson reminds him that the victims in his case are much younger, that's when Henry apparently ends the interview. Again, don't call him a liar, but also don't point out that he's wrong. Yeah. Yeah. So some months later, all of a sudden, Hobson gets a call from Henry, who basically says, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the case. And I do have the details figured out now. And that's when the decision is made to bring Henry out to San Miguel to walk Hobson through his crime. This visit, by the way, is just one stop on a tour of nearly three dozen other California crime scenes. Yeah, I mean, he was basically a celebrity at the time. He was getting flown like all. This was basically like a tour. tour for him.

When he was, like, going to be on death row. Yeah, he's getting flown all over the country to meet with different enforcement agencies, go on ride-alongs to, like, his crime scenes. Yeah, wonder why he was confessing. Yeah. But his story goes that while in San Miguel, all these memories start flooding back to Henry. And he ends up describing in vivid detail what he and his partner did to Marty and Terry and how they kidnapped them from Mission Street and took them to the riverbed.

I mean, he is giving details down to the length of the ligatures, which, on its face, like, oh, wow. But Marty and Terry's murders had been covered extensively in the news. And also, Detective Cole says that during Hobson's initial interview with Henry, he'd shown him all of these photos from the case file that would have given Henry loads of information. Right. Memory's question mark. Right. Now, our reporter Nicole spoke to Hobson, who retired in 2005. and he says that he doesn't recall ever giving Henry like that much credence,

but a report that he filed with the DA's office in 1984 makes me feel like that's not quite the case. I actually got a copy of it. In his report, he says, quote, after watching and listening to Henry Lucas's confession in San Miguel and at the bridge area, there is no doubt in my mind that he is responsible for the death of Terry Flores and Martha Mezzo.

I request that a criminal complaint be filed against Henry Lee Lucas and that a warrant be issued charging him with murder, kidnap, and child molest. End quote. The only problem is, at this point when he's like wanting this, there is a whole task force looking into Henry Lee Lucas, which I think is where I interrupted your story. Yeah. If you want to pick up there.

So basically all these different agencies start comparing notes. And it pretty quickly becomes clear that the timelines just don't add up. Henry had confessed to crimes that happen hundreds of miles away from each other on the same day. Right. The more they dig into his stories, the more it appears that he more than likely made everything up. So basically, he went from being one of potentially the most prolific serial killers in history to this complete fraudster that we now know as the confession killer. Right.

And how you know him in two seconds. say two things. Yeah, exactly. And really, so all of that, I mean, that was his undoing here. The timeline of his movements were based mostly on signed receipts from his scrap metal business, which brought him all over the country. And what they found for this case specifically is that Henry had signed a receipt in Jacksonville, Florida, on the 19th and 20th of May 1980. And the girls were abducted on May 17th. Right. And their bodies are disposed of, we know, after that, the drive from San Miguel to Jacksonville, like straight through without stopping on the roads available at the time in 1980, would have taken at least 3740 hours.

So it is physically impossible for Henry to have killed them, dumped them, and then made it to Jacksonville in time to sign that work receipt. There's also no information at all to support that Henry was ever in San Miguel at the time. And that is why the DA takes a look at everything and immediately rejects the request to file charges. What's so wild to me, though, is that Terry's family said, because of all this Henry Lee Lucas noise, loads of people in and around San Miguel believed for years that Marty and Terry's case had been solved. I mean, there were headlines like case closed in San Miguel slaying and SLO investigators say Lucas, their man. And looking back today, Detective Cole can't help but wonder about the headway investigators could have been making if it weren't for this nearly two-year-long distraction.

I'm sorry, they spent two years on this? Pretty much. But as is routine with this case, as soon as one suspect door closes, another one does open. And when the Henry Lee Lucas jig is up, investigators quickly move on to another man. Richard Benson. Richard is a serial child molester from Salinas, which is about 90 miles from San Miguel. And he had been arrested multiple times for his offenses. He'd get convicted.

go to prison, get released, offend again, then get sent right back. Why did they keep letting him out? That's the question. I mean, according to Detective Cole, at least once, he literally broke into someone's home, took their child, and left. He was caught later driving him around while drunk. And while out in 1986, he breaks into the home of a mother and her three young children. They are one, three, and four years old.

In a town just south of San Miguel, he holds them captive for several days and then kills all of them, setting the house on fire and fleeing on foot. Oh, my God. That was finally the end of the line for him. He ends up getting the death penalty for those crimes. But when these charges are announced, given the victimology and the proximity to San Miguel, that's when investigators go full steam ahead on Richard. There is a problem, though.

No matter how hard they try, detectives cannot place him in San Miguel. He is in and out of the surrounding towns, but never San Miguel itself. Right. According to retired Sergeant Larry Hobson, they first interviewed Benson right after the girls went missing on May 20th, and he gave an alibi. And though Hobson said it turned out to be a load of garbage, it looks like, guess what? Investigators kind of moved on. Wow. You're kidding me.

Until he came back on the radar in 1986, of course, when he commits those, like, that horrible, quadruple murder. According to Detective Cole, after that, investigators try to interview Benson again, but the DA won't let them because they don't want it to interfere with their investigation or somehow jeopardize the death penalty case that they're working on. And it's still being adjudicated at that point when, like, our investigators in San Miguel learn about him. And then by the time his other case is, like, all said and done, I don't know, nobody circles back around. And normally, like, in our story, this would be the point where I would say, you know,

like there's just so many dead ends, they were out of options. But you've been listening to the same story. It's, they aren't dead ends. They just stopped walking down streets. Right. There were things that I think could have been done. But two investigators then, they would say that there wasn't much more they could do. By that point, both the Flores and the mezzo families had left San Miguel.

The media is no longer covering the girls' cases and new tips weren't coming in. So by 1987, Terry and Marty's case officially goes cold. In 2005, we know Larry Hobson retires, and he retires firmly believing that Richard Benson was responsible for the crime, but that they just didn't have enough to charge him. And it would take nearly 20 years for new investigators to realize that this case had a whole lot more potential for being solved. Not by more interviews or door knocking, but through new science. and what they find changes everything. From 2006 to 2009, an investigator begins sending off evidence that they do have. The ligatures come back with minor DNA, but too little to work with.

They have slightly better luck with the sexual assault kit swabs. Those do contain a trace amount of DNA, but again, so little that it's not even suitable to create a profile for direct comparison, let alone enter into any database at the time. The blue towel that had been found near the scene did have enough blood on it that they could pull a working profile from it and the blood turned out to belong to one of the victims. But the hairs on the towel do not. The signs just wasn't available to do full DNA testing on them. All they can say for sure is that the hairs don't belong to either Marty or Terry.

But the black thong-like underwear, that is found to have traces of semen on it. And this time, investigators finally get the break they've been desperate for, a full DNA profile, one that is even suitable for CODIS. Now, off the bat, this sample clears a bunch of suspects who have criminal records because there are no hits of any existing profiles in CODIS. But a whole bunch of the people who were looked at back in the 80s were never swabbed, which means now investigators have to trace those men back down.

The Elkhorn regulars, the sex offender registrants, who aren't in CODIS, and all of the people who had been cleared for one reason or another, or at least that's what it should have meant. But at this time, this 2006 to 2009, because the case is technically still cold, there's no lead detective assigned to it. The investigator who decided to send off the evidence for testing was only looking at cases like in his spare time,

thinking like, okay, maybe evidence could lead to a quick, easy solve, someone's encodist or whatever. But this would neither be quick nor easy. So even though all the right, pieces were there. It is not until almost a decade later in 2018 that anyone goes back to the original suspect list. That is when Detective Cole gets assigned to the case. And when he does, Detective Cole is determined to leave no stone unturned. From 2018 to 2020, with the help of his partner, Jeff Robichotty, he swabs everybody he can that is mentioned in the case files. He swabs

some of Marty and Terry's family members, no matches. He goes to prison and swabs Richard Benson, the serial child molester on death row, not his DNA. Did he actually talk to him this time, too? He did, and this was the first time that Benson is spoken to since the girl's bodies were discovered in 1980. He tells Detective Cole that he doesn't know anything about the girls, and given that he could still not even be placed anywhere near San Miguel,

and it's not his DNA, Cole clears him. He also swabs Mario Escalante, the man who said that he didn't buy the girls the Coke, but probably did buy the girl, yeah. He swabs Greg Hickey, the teenager who got into a fight with Terry's mom's boyfriend, and a different serial child predator on death row. No matches to any of them. He even gets samples from San Miguel sex offender Roy Hash's sons because Roy Hash had died and had been cremated, not connected to them either. The only people, Detective Cole says that he doesn't get. DNA from are Eugene Capers, that former military man who was overly emotional, and Cal Owens, Greg Hickey's friend.

And he doesn't because both men had died by the time he goes looking, and there wasn't enough evidence to justify exhuming them to get their DNA. Detective Cole also tries again to get a list of names from the Camp Roberts military base, which is still there in San Miguel, by the way, because actually one of the things that he focuses on it. It wasn't like a big deal back in the day, but when he's looking at the case file, I told you that the girl's clothes were found in that green trash bag. They weren't just like shoved in a garbage bag. They were really neatly folded. And like one of the notes they make is like, oh, you know, it's the way like a woman is like very stereotypical in 1980. A woman would fold the clothes or somebody who was like in the military. With that like rigidity and like straight lines like very tidy. Yeah. So he's like, okay, should I be looking at the military as I'm taking a second look at this? And knowing all these DNA profiles are getting ruled out. But in trying to get this list, like, they just kind of give him the same go-around that they did in, like, 1980. Which, like, that's all interesting, but is you really leaning towards us being a military guy, or is he, like, looking at any other new angle, too?

He's keeping an open mind. I mean, like, military is a possibility. Also, because in addition to the clothes, the fact that they're found on a base. Right, the proximity. Right. He said the ligatures, the maroon cord that was around their neck, to him, it resembled. military ripcord. Oh.

So, again, a lot of reasons to look that way. But the truth is, he's not leaning away from anything else. He definitely thinks the crime involves somebody who knew the girls, or at least someone who was familiar enough with San Miguel to know about the Salinas Riverbed as a hangout spot. But all he's focused on now is just not getting tunnel vision. And is it technical getting any new information when he's tracking down all of these people? Well, most people's stories are the same as they were in the age.

80s. There is one interesting thing that happens after Greg Hickey gets interviewed in 2020. So Greg is living in Bakersfield with his girlfriend when detectives Cole and Robeshotti pay him a visit. Cole says that he'd aged quite a bit, couldn't really get around well, and he seemed generally a bit out of it. The first thing he says to them is, am I a suspect again? And Cole explains that he's just trying to cover all of their bases, and Greg volunteers his DNA. But when Cole asks him who he thinks is responsible for Marty and Terry's deaths, he points to his sister's husband, Isaac. Greg says that Isaac never treated his sister well, and he always hated him for it. So if it was going to be anyone that Greg knew, his guess is Isaac.

Was Isaac ever questioned back then? He was in the 80s and again by Detective Cole. And Cole says that he has a crummy alibi. And we know, right, Megan is asked about the color of her linen, but then like that's, That was the extent of it. And though Greg is cleared from the DNA on the underwear, Detective Cole says that he's not totally convinced that he wasn't involved in some way. See, in a bizarre turn of events, Greg ends up passing away from natural causes shortly after the interview with detectives.

And a couple of weeks after that, Detective Cole gets this really strange phone call from Greg's girlfriend. This woman tells Cole that she doesn't think Greg was being totally honest. honest with him, because after their 2020 interview, when the detectives left, Greg told her that back in 1980, someone asked him to get rid of some bloody carpet for them. So he and Cal Owens drove to an overpass and threw it over. Follow-up question for Greg's girlfriend. Who? Who told them to get rid of this bloody carpet? If Greg ever told her who, she doesn't remember or doesn't say? And they never found a bloody carpet back then. Cal's car is the one that mysteriously caught flame and burned up, right?

So even though there's not really any way to verify this whole bloody carpet story, this phone call really gets Detective Cole thinking that maybe Marty and Terry's disappearance and assault and murder involves multiple people. When he first started reading the case, given everything he knew about San Miguel, he thought that the girls had just happened to cross paths with a child molester that morning who took advantage of them being alone. But the more work that he's been doing, the more he's starting to believe that there's more to it than that. He comes up with this theory that somebody who knew the girls might have taken them as some kind of twisted way to scare the Flores and Meso families

and not like taken them with the intention to harm them. But then when this massive search operation came into town with helicopters and horses and search dogs, they freaked out. And that's when things went sideways. Okay. But how does an innocent prank is the wrong word, but how does that, as a prank at least, escalate to sexual assault and murder? I don't know. You'd have to ask the killer. But in this scenario, there's multiple people involved. Basically, when the person or persons who took Marty and Terry panic, they could have leaned on someone else to help them handle the situation.

And any number of people in this small town could have been called on to cover the tracks. Like getting rid of a bloody carpet. exactly. Okay, I feel like this is a jump. So what does Detective Cole know that he's not sharing? It's just a theory. Like he, over the years, has played out dozens of scenarios like this in his head. And right now, he's like, this is just the one that seems to connect the most dots. Right. But there's still dots that don't connect, right? Like, that's most the dots, not all of them. Yeah. And I mean, I think one of like the, this isn't like a dot you can connect. It just like kind of helps explain the unconnected ones. Like in his eyes, if there were multiple people involved, the DNA from the adult underwear might not even necessarily belong to the killer. But he does believe that whoever it belonged to could lead him to the killer. And this I can clearly see like how he got there. And honestly, the first time I heard from Detective Cole about where Greg was living and about the underwear, I was like, oh, you have possible sex work, you have possible trafficking. happening out of this house, like underwear with semen probably around, right? Like, it could be anyone's, but like, could it connect to that house? But again, because we're like... But because

of all those reasons... He's not ruling anyone off the list, even if their DNA didn't necessarily match, except for Henry Lee Lucas and Richard Benson, who he say that investigators never should have wasted a minute on in the first place. So with a full profile in CODIS, my mind just jumps to genealogy work. Can they do, like, more testing? So, Detective Cole's mind goes there too. The first thing he learns from genealogy work that he starts getting done is that the DNA belongs to a man who is 75% black. Does that match any of the men that we've talked about in this episode? There is one black suspect, Eugene Capers. And remember, his DNA was never collected before he died. Okay, did he have kids? I mean, how can we find out? What are we

doing? I feel like you need to do something. We're doing things. Or Detective Cole is doing things with genealogy. The person who needs to be doing things, right? I'm talking about. I'm telling you, like, the answers, like, you can feel it. They're within reach. But this is what I was saying at the top of the episode, like, things are going to happen soon. He's still working on it. The problem is he's been having a lot of difficulty getting people to give reference samples to build out a family tree from the underwear DNA profile. So, like, the point that he's at right now, he's hit a bit of a roadblock, but never count this man out. He solved the Kristen Smart case after over 25 years. And like I said, literally came out of retirement to see this thing through.

Are you ready for the curveball? Sure, I think. So Eugene, to answer your question, did have two kids. He had a son and a daughter. But all the IGG work that Cole has had done so far, none of it is pointing back at Eugene or anyone even close to him. What? So we're looking for someone who wasn't even on their radar. Could be.

Again, the underwound the DNA. We don't know how it's connected. It could just be a connection, not the person. Now, according to Angie, there were only two black families living in San Miguel at the time. But you have to remember, people were constantly coming and going from that military base and coming and going from Greg's house, for that matter, according to Detective Cole. But the good news is that underwear profile is not the only DNA that Detective Cole has to work with now. In 2020, he also retested the ligatures and Marty and Terry's clothing,

and he found unknown DNA on those items. Now, that unknown DNA wasn't suitable for CODIS, but it was suitable for direct comparison. And did it match the profile from the semen? It did not. And this DNA, obviously, to be, is like way more important. This is like a one-to-one tie to the crime. So it's suitable for one-on-one comparison.

It's not what was in the underwear. But through one-on-ones, he is able to rule out some of the same people again. Richard Benson, out. Mario Escalante, out, a handful of sex offenders and the girls' family members. Now, Greg's comparison came back saying it, quote, cannot be included or excluded, end quote. But that's not enough for Detective Cole to jump to any conclusions. And unfortunately, he couldn't compare Roy Hash's son's DNA because there wasn't enough in the unidentified sample to be suitable for a comparison with a relative. Okay.

So let's look at what else we have. Remember the unknown hairs from the blue towel found at the crime scene? So when they were tested in 2006, they were determined we know not to belong to the girls. But that was pretty much it. Yeah, at the time they couldn't tell anything else. So when Detective Cole takes on the case and he's reading through all of the lab reports from the Department of Justice, he's like, hmm, I wonder if we can send these hairs off again. Like if they could compare, like especially could we compare the semen sample or the DNA on the ligatures or even if it belonged to someone

else, but it's like someone else in Kodis, like they're one step closer. Yeah. But he and his partner turn their evidence room upside down looking for their hairs and they cannot find them. So they call the lab to ask them to check if they still have them and the lab basically swears up and down that they do not. They're like, we return those to you after the testing in 2006. But God bless Detective Robeshotti.

He refuses to accept that answer. He keeps going back to the lab and putting pressure on them until finally in April of 2025, they call him and they're like, you know what? Crazy thing happened. Guess what we just found? We actually do have those hairs and they've been sitting here for 19 years. How does that even happen? I feel like this happens way more often than it should with cold cases.

Yes, but I feel the same way every single time. I know. Detective Cole said that the evidence report clearly stated that the hairs were going to be sent to Virginia to be stored at the Richmond DOJ facility. So I guess the lamb just like made a mistake on their end or they didn't live. look thoroughly enough. Like, the police's paperwork was right. So this is my PSA to law enforcement. Push. Always push and keep pushing. I mean, Britt, you remember the James Reyes case, the evidence that got him exonerated. They said for years was lost, but it was there. You guys, it is busy humans who have bad days who are looking for this stuff. It is okay to

check, to recheck, to triple check, to push on people. So, They now have the hairs, and Detective Cole sent them off to be retested. And? And he is currently waiting on results as of this recording. But literally, he said it could be any day now. He also, I mean, again, this man does like not quit. He's like, okay, while I'm waiting for that, I'm also going to retest the black underwear to see if there's any additional non-sperm DNA. Because it's very possible the person who wore them isn't the person who left the sperm.

I feel like there is actually so much work with, like, this case started as a real downer, but everything went wrong. It felt like a terrible investigation. Yeah, it wasn't happening. But this, this doesn't happen often in the cases we cover. My faith is being restored. I know, Detective, listen, I'm going to wait until we get the solve, but Detective Cole might make the hero wall. Like, things are definitely moving. And he says this case is his highest priority, and there is very little he won't try.

He has presented it at Cold Case conferences across the country. He sent the entire file to the Sacramento DA's office. And actually, it was Detective Cole who reached out to us, which is not usually how this happens. No, I mean, you guys hear how often we say, like, we reached out and they didn't call us back. Yeah. He was at, basically, he was at this training for the International Homicide Investigators Association earlier this year. He just so happened to sit next to a detective named Lauren Gonzalez, whose name people might recognize if they listened to The Deck. And it was Detective Gonzalez who suggested partnering with us to get

Marty and Terry's story out there to all the crime junkies. Which is, by the way, a big deal because Marty and Terry's case has not gotten any real coverage since 1986. And Terry's sister Christina and Terry's cousin Angie said that they have been trying for years to get more attention. They have been reaching out to loads of true crime shows, even talk shows, but nobody ever followed up. And in 2021, Christina was able to get a billboard put up for the girls near the San Miguel Fire Department, but she wants to get word out even beyond San Miguel. So she is currently trying to raise $10,000 for a billboard on Highway 101 and $25,000 to create a reward for information. So if any of our listeners want to help her out, we're going to put a link in our

show notes to the GoFundMe that she's put together. Since the start, Detective Cole has worked on this case from every angle he could think of, and he is not planning on slowing down any time soon. But recently, this case has taken on a new sense of urgency, because Detective Cole found out that Christina was diagnosed with a terminal illness. When our reporter met with her, it was during Christina's visit back to San Miguel to make arrangements for her own burial at the San Miguel District Cemetery, right next to her little sister, Terry. She hates that her mother and both of Marty's parents died before they ever got answers about what happened. And so her hope is that no one will be able to say the same about her.

If you have any information about the 1980 murders of 5-year-old Teresa Terry Flores and 4-year-old Martha Marty Mezzo in San Miguel, California, please speak up. You can reach Detective Clint Cole directly at 805-781-44 or at his email C-Col at CO. Hello.ca.us. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crime junkie.com. And if you want to listen to more episodes like this one,

and all of our episodes completely ad-free, be sure to join our fan club. You'll also get early access to news. new episodes every week and bonus content every month. And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve.