Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Shadows of Abuse - Behind the Murder of Martha Guzman

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

11-year-old Martha Guzman's life is brutally cut short within a mere 30-minute timeframe at the hands of her mother's ex-boyfriend. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack delve deep into the harrowing details of Martha's murder, highlighting the tumultuous relationship casting a shadow over Martha’s domestic life and the implications it had on her mother's choices. Joe Scott draws attention to poignant details, in particular Martha’s painted fingernails. He further educates listeners on the chilling realities of wrist injuries and the dreadful intimidation wielded by knives.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Time-codes: [00:00:20] - Joseph Scott Morgan introduces the idea of time's fleeting nature and introduces the case of an 11-year-old girl whose life was taken within a 30-minute window. [00:01:32] - The heart-wrenching reveal of Martha Guzman’s murder. [00:08:06] -Dave Mack discusses Martha Guzman's home life, filled with chaos, alcohol, and abuse caused by her mother's boyfriend, Miguel Ruiz Lobo. Despite being only 11 years old, Martha recognized the toxicity of the relationship and convinced her mother to make the difficult decision to ask Lobo to leave. [00:09:00] - The perils of an unstable household with an abusive partner and Martha's mother’s desperate attempt for a restraining order. [00:10:22] - The gruesome details of the crime scene, along with a discussion about the shocking amount of blood resulting from sharp force injuries and the size disparity between the perpetrator and victim. [00:13:00] - Dave Mack and Joe Scott discuss how Miguel Ruiz Lobo attempted to blame Martha for her own injuries, claiming self-harm to stage her death as a suicide. [00:16:18] - Joseph Scott Morgan describes the horrifying moment a mother discovers her child's lifeless body and her desperate attempts to save the child. He talks about the mother's actions in the moment and the grim reality of the situation. [00:17:23] - Morgan recalls haunting memories, noting Martha’s painted nails. [00:23:51] - Discussion about the use of a knife as a means of terrorizing someone and an explanation of how it can be pressed against the skin to create a slight abrasion. [00:24:48] - Morgan explains the critical function of wrist tendons. [00:26:17] - Joe Scott and Dave touch on the nine-year-long journey to obtain justice for the victim, Martha Guzman. Joe Scott Morgan informs the audience of the outcome, bringing closure to this tragic case. [00:26:40] - The episode ends with a strong message urging anyone dealing with domestic abuse to seek help. Joseph Scott Morgan provides the National Domestic Violence Hotline number (1-800-799-SAFE) as a resource for those in need of assistance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. It's been said that the most precious thing that any of us possess is time. You can't add it to your life. I suppose you can waste it, but it's something that you can never get back. We measure our lives by the clock. How long do I have to get to work? How long before, I don't know, my favorite program comes on? How much longer is this lecture going to last when it comes to my students at college?

But we take its measure. We look at the clock on the wall, perhaps. We look at our phones constantly. There's always kind of an awareness, isn't there? But I want to give you a specific time today. A specific time that involves the life of an 11-year-old little girl. That specific time is roughly 30 minutes. That's 1,800 seconds.

Think about that just for a moment. A life that has been lived from birth until the age of 11, and then within a 30-minute window, she is no more. Today, we're going to talk about one of the most gruesome murders that we've covered in some time. We're going to talk about the butchering of an 11-year-old girl in Miami, Martha Guzman. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, how frequently do you look at the clock? I mean, everything you do, I don't see how you do everything you do because you work with Nancy Grace and my Lord, the stuff that she has to do, it's so, the material is so dense, it moves so quickly. I'm not going to say I'm an afterthought, but, you know, compared to Nancy, I move at a glacial pace

and I can't. I know you spend a lot of time looking at the clock, don't you? Trying to do the next thing in your life. Everything. And it's one of the weirdest things about being married to somebody in the media is the spouse either has to understand that life is built on a clock or you can't be together. It really is that simple because the reality is I live on a clock. You live on a clock too with classes and schedules and you're booked on every show known to mankind. If there's a forensic, if there's a drop of blood somewhere, hey, call Joe Scott Morgan. It's pretty cool that it is that way, but you're right. Time is precious. Yeah. And I'm not complaining about

that, but you're right. Time is precious. And it is, I don't know if we can call it a commodity. I actually think it is. Look, I can tell you that from a life having been lived, spent with the dead as I have, it's right in my face. I use it relative to time since death. When was the last time someone took their medication? How long did this type of injury take in order for someone to die? When was the last time they were seen alive? But from a more philosophical standpoint, I look at a body that's laying there before me. And I think this is an example of a clock stopping and no one saw it coming. You don't think of an 11-year-old as dying a heinous way and then having the person that perpetrated the crime being so cowardly as

to try to blame it on the 11-year-old victim, which is exactly what happened with Martha Guzman. At 11 years old, the question was, is it suicide or murder? I'm not kidding. That was a real question. But Joe, as we take a look at some of these, not even all, just some of the injuries on Martha Guzman, the pain level alone would have prevented her from doing anything else. I'm wondering, what does it take to inflict this type of carnage on someone? I don't know if that's the right term or not.

Really a lot to examine in this case, Dave. But back to something you said, deflection in this particular case from an investigative standpoint. The little 11-year-old who is butchered in this case, I don't know any other way to really put it. How is it that you assign blame to an 11-year-old? What we have come to find out is that the perpetrator in this case, he claimed that this young girl had a history of self-inflicting cuts or self-harm. And for folks out there that are not really aware of what that means is that many times individuals get so involved, I think, in that space between their ears and they're grieving, I think, internally. They're dealing with emotional pain, sadness. They've got anger that's going on. Maybe they're stressed out. And sometimes they begin to inflict

non-suicidal injuries upon themselves. And I've seen these manifested in cases that wind up turning into suicides. And you'll see histories of these where you can actually begin to read old scars on the body. These kind of, you call them superficial, but many times they'll have these deep scratches, for instance, on their wrist, on the backs of their legs, where they're taking an item like the tip of a knife legs, where they're taking an item like the tip of a knife blade and they're just kind of dragging it along. And it's unknown what type of relief I think that they get from those stressors that are in their life. But there is a thread that runs through this behavior where the idea of inflicted self-pain, I think, numbs them to the

pain that they're feeling internally. And for an investigator, when you have this idea that's put forward that this young girl who's only 11 would begin to harm herself in this way, and then it's going to escalate to this kind of butchery. You look at what you're seeing at the scene, you're saying, wow, this goes way beyond anything that I could imagine that she's kind of superficially doing. You're taking like a leap. You've jumped over an intermediate step here. When you're talking about, say, for instance, maybe she would try an attempted suicide, now you've gone to this area where she's inflicted so much damage to her body that it can't be explained. I think one of the really important things here, Dave, is try to understand her home

life. What was going on with her? Well, this is one of those scenarios that plays itself out in homes across the United States of America. We have 11-year-old Martha Guzman, whose mother, Marial Varinga and Miguel Ruiz Lobo, they had been involved in a relationship for long enough time that they actually lived together for a while as a family unit. You had mom, the stepdad, and Martha right there in the mix. But home life was chaotic. Home life was filled with alcohol. It was filled with physical abuse, verbal abuse. It was not a happy, peaceful home life. And, you know, it's amazing, Joe, how children can see through to the truth in relationships a lot quicker than a lot of adults, because we sugarcoat things. We try to balance out the pros and the cons and what's good and bad.

And what her mother couldn't see, Martha could. Martha could see crystal clear that this man, Miguel Ruiz Lobo, was not good for them. He was not good to her mother. He wasn't good to her. And Martha made that known to her mother. Martha, at 11 years old, convinced her adult mother, this guy's bad news. So finally, Martha's mom said, get out, get out. And he fought getting out. He didn't want to leave. He had no place to go, first of all. But he did leave and he had been gone for a couple of months. That's what makes this so traumatic. On top of how bad it is, there's an additional level of bad, Joe. We've got an 11-year-old girl that her mom makes a great decision. I'm sure, you know what, I bet Amari felt so good. I bet mom felt so good about this decision. Our life is moving forward. There

was a lot of, there's still chaos, but it wasn't overwhelming to her family and her daughter wasn't upset about it like it had been. You get this one element out of the environment, the boyfriend. I'm never a fan of the boyfriend in this circumstance. When you've got a single mother, she's got this young girl she's raising. It creates a very unstable environment many times when there's no commitment on the part of the male, perhaps. And he's abusing them and emotionally abusing them from what could be surmised. You know, they lived in this little apartment in Little Havana in Miami, which Little Havana is a really cool place. If you've never been there, it's a neat place to go and see the

old guys playing dominoes and watching them hand roll cigars and those sorts of things. I love it down there. But, you know, they lived in this environment for this period of time. And what is really heartbreaking about this, I think at least, is that we know that there was evil that was lurking just around the corner in this case. And the mother of Martha actually went to the court and asked for restraining order. And of course, as in many cases, it was not granted. Writers throw around the term bloodbath with some frequency. It's been used as a literary device for years and years. I can tell you, as I have told my listeners before, sharp horse injuries are the single most bloody thing you can work as an investigator at a scene.

And blood tells a lot at the scene. The tough thing, Dave, is that many times blood can obscure things upon your initial viewing. Sometimes you're not going to get all of the information that you need to do an assessment because blood's kind of blocking the way. It'll tell a story, but sometimes it'll mask things. Joe, when we set the table here to understand what happened, and you mentioned all the blood, because a knife was used in this attack. But I don't know if you're aware, Joe, and I don't know that I pointed it out in looking at this, but Miguel Ruiz Lobo was not a small man. He was six feet, four inches tall and 220 pounds. When Martha, he knew Martha would be at home alone because he knew their schedule. He knew mom would be gone. Martha would be home alone. And so he shows up at the door. You mentioned a minute ago that mom had filed for restraining order, but it was denied. So kind of assuming there was a lot of negativity here.

But somehow he actually knows the location of a hidden key, Dave. He actually knew the location to a hidden key that he recovered. And you know what, Dave? This can be appreciated on a surveillance tape from outside the apartment. Yeah, they had to identify when did it take place. OK, just so you know that mom didn't get home till about 228 that afternoon. And we have on video, we have Miguel Ruiz Lobo at the door. Within the details as an investigator, many times that's where the answer lies.

And this is a good point here, I think, because you're trying to understand this. How do you get access to this? And one other point that you brought out a few moments ago, give me that number again for his size. 6'4", 220. That's like the size light, but with that kind of size, he could be a linebacker in the NFL. 6'4", 220 from the autopsy. Dave, this little 11-year-old girl, and when I say little, pay attention to that because, Dave, she was only 4'8", and and weighed at the time of her autopsy, 60 pounds, Dave, 60 pounds. So this guy has got access via key that he knew was hidden.

He comes in. And what's she going to say? Can you imagine having this raging bull come in at you at that age. You know, one of the things that was shown in court was the fact that a neighbor's video camera surveillance camera did seek Miguel Ruiz Lobo approaching the apartment at 1028 a.m. and he left the apartment at 11 a.m. Now, mom didn't get home until 22.28 and no one else enters between the time here. So we actually know. I don't know another way to explain how somebody else went in there and did this. Now, the idea of what mom walked into is still shocking to me. As mom walks in at 2.28 in the afternoon, she is met with a sight of destruction of her child, her daughter, her baby at 11 years old has been

so hurt, so damaged. He slashed her throat and tried to stage it to look like a suicide. I don't know if he really thought it would work to blame this on the child just boggles my mind. Yeah. The fact that he's going to blame this on self-harm is really astounding to me. And to back up just a moment, when the mother arrives back home, now remember, just let's set the table here just for a second. Peace is settled upon this apartment again. He's out of the picture, Dave. He's out of the picture. Now, granted, she couldn't get the restraining order, and this psychopath has shown back up, and she's not there to protect her daughter. Protect her daughter? Her daughter's 11 years old. I was staying at home, I think, by myself when I was eight. You can imagine that in today's times. But to think that your life is back on track, you're going to make a better life for you and your daughter and to walk in a fetal position on the floor was her baby girl.

And Dave, this knife that you had mentioned just a moment ago was buried in her neck, buried in her neck, sticking out, protruding, and there's blood everywhere. And you can imagine, I can imagine, at least because I've seen it happen, there's a thing within humans where we have to confirm things through touch. It's very basic, rudimentary need that we have. It's a tactile thing. And what you'll see many times with these events that are just the most horrific thing you can see, when you're interviewing the individual that has first made contact or found the individual,

particularly like a parent, they will be covered themselves in blood. They'll have it on their hands, all the contact surfaces. They'll embrace the child. They don't care. It's almost like they can't see the blood for that moment in time. All they see is this child that they have done their best with, that they've attempted to take care of all of these years. And they are just super saturated with blood. Can you imagine not being able to see that? What you're seeing is your lifeless baby and you're trying at every turn to breathe life

back into them. And she even went so far as to say that she flung the knife aside. So here we have this mother that is bearing witness to this. She wraps her hand around the handle of that knife that's buried to the knife aside. So here we have this mother that is bearing witness to this. She wraps her hand around the handle of that knife that's buried to the hilt in this baby's neck, and she throws it to the side because she knows that this is what's created the injury. And she's trying to revive her daughter. And she was able to call 911. But by this time, Dave, it's too late. I would imagine that considering these injuries, Dave, that the child had little or no blood left in her body. There are certain things that stay with you when you see the dead, because those elements beyond the trauma that maybe they sustained, it gives you an insight into their life, the life that

had previously been vital, that was being lived. And in Martha Guzman's case, life rests in her fingernails. And I know that sounds like an odd comment, but for those of you that are parents of young girls, they cross over this threshold where you know, where they're no longer babies. They're your baby. You don't want them to grow up, but they have this desire to paint their fingernails. I remember when my daughter was that age and the first time I saw her with painted fingernails, I was thinking, oh, Lord, help me. But, you know, with Martha, her fingernails were painted green. It was a color that she chose, perhaps. Maybe her mom

sat down with her and said, baby, I'm going to give you a manicure. And maybe she decided to paint her fingernails for the first time. Or maybe Martha got the green fingernail polish and said, when mom comes home, I'm going to show her what I did. But there they were. And the medical examiner actually examined those fingernails and made note of it in their autopsy report. When looking at this, I think about mom coming in shocked. She grabs the knife right out of her daughter's neck, throws it. Does that actually damage the injury when you're trying to figure out what happened and place it all together? Because I know you kind of have to put together a timeline of the injuries and removing it like that.

Does that cause problems later? It's an excellent question. Our preference would be a weapon stay in place, because what that does for us is that we, and I say us in the medical legal community, as horrific as this is, the body would come into the medical examiner's office, in this case, down in Dade County, and you would, ideally, you would like to take an x-ray. And we've talked about x-rays before, but just so people understand, again, you take what are called AP, which is straight on looking down on the body, and then you take lateral, which is self-explanatory. You take one from the side. And if you take those x-rays, you can get an idea of the position of the weapon in the neck and the angle of the weapon as well. And if you remove it, you can do damage.

If I were to pose that question to that mother at that moment, Tom, she would probably say, you and your evidentiary evidence can both go to hell. I don't care. And she was doing what she had to do. And there's no excuse many times when I've been on scenes where police have done this, they should know better. And it wasn't as an attempt to save somebody's life. And even in life, you leave it in. If the person is still living and breathing, they say, surgeons say, don't remove the item because you're going to do more damage. But in this particular case, you know, you've got to work with what you have.

From the standpoint of mom at 228, now we know this attack took place in a 30-minute window. The arrival of the murderer, we know the exit of the murderer. I'm praying, Joe, that this little girl, that she was knocked unconscious or something. I don't know if there's a way to find that out. But I hope in my heart of hearts that somehow this little girl didn't have to just put a, I hope he wasn't terrorizing her. Do we have any indication from the injuries sustained? I know we've got multiple injuries.

One, I know we had an injury to a wrist that he tried to stage to make it look like she was cutting a wrist, but it went all the way to the bone. But my question, is it possible to determine when death occurred or when a lack of consciousness began? That's really hard to determine because these hemorrhages, most of them had, with the exception of the wrist, these injuries had indwelling hemorrhage, which is an indication that she was alive for a period of time. And here's one more thing that's quite revealing as well. When he was arrested, he had scratches on his face. And those green fingernails I mentioned, they come into play in this particular case because it's great that you've got the CCTV footage, particularly from a timing standpoint. I don't know in recent memory if I recall a case where you have it this tight. We're talking about a 30-minute window.

And that's pretty significant in these cases. You know, all these cases we cover, sometimes that window is gigantic and it's hard to whittle it down. But in this particular case, you got a 30-minute window where this was all perpetrated. And you see him going in, you see him coming out. So, not only do you have that digital footprint, but also you've got a dynamic here where this precious little angel is fighting back for her life. And remember what we said, six foot four, Dave, six foot four, 220 pounds, and this baby's 60 pounds. She fought so much that she scratched him. And when they did the examination on her at the morgue, the ME did the nail clippings, which is what we do. We clip the nails and we scrape the nails.

And when they did that, they found skin cells beneath her nails. And I would imagine there were some RBCs or red blood cells as well. And from that, they were able to take a swab from him and compare the DNA that was beneath her fingernails and that that they have in that known sample. Because you have to have, if you have an unknown, you compare it to a known, and they required him to give a DNA sample, and it married up. So, there's a very difficult time that the defense would have in this particular case of marrying these two things or trying to dismiss them, okay, because the physical evidence is so very overwhelming in this case.

Well, there was one thing that was said, and they talked about her injuries included several stabbings to her throat. There was what is called a knife scrape that were found. Again, the little girl's four feet tall. Okay. What is a knife scrape? Well, a scrape is where it literally means this. It's where the knife is drug across the skin. And it can also,

you can find knife scrapes and tool marks like on the floor, and it'll marry up to this. Now, you can use this as a means of terrorizing somebody, okay? Whether you're applying it to the surface of their skin. I've seen people take knives that were so tightly pressed against the surface of the skin that it leaves a slight abrasion there because it's being pressed down so tightly. Then you can threaten and terrorize people by taking a knife and scraping it across the surface. Say if you have her pinned down in a particular position, remember, you've got this hulking form that's on top of her. But, you know, what's really kind of telling in this case, Dave, is that these postmortem injuries that came about on her body relative to her wrist. Most people equate the slicing of the wrist with a self-inflicted injury. And that's where we go back to this idea of self-harm and these sorts of things that she was alleged to have been engaging in in life by Lobos. Our wrist, if you just consider everybody, look at your wrist right now, and you can actually see your tendons move.

If you just, you're looking at the palmar aspect of your hands. If you flex them back and forth, you can see your tendons move just beneath the surface of the skin. They act as pulleys, and they actuate several movements within our hands. And one of the things that are actuated here is our ability to grip. So if you think about gripping a knife or a spoon or a fork or whatever, once those tendons are sliced, you don't have that ability to facilitate that any longer. The physical ability has left you. So, if you're trying to convince me, and I'm using the universal you, not you, Dave, but if you're using the universal, if you're a defendant and you're trying to convince

me that, yeah, she sliced her wrist and then, oh, by the way, she took the knife and stabbed herself several times and then buried it in her throat, You're going to have to go a long way to sell me that because that's not what the case was. And as it turned out, he inflicted those wounds on her wrist after he had killed her to give the impression, and I quote, impression that she had done this to herself. If things were not bad enough in this particular case, it took nine long years to get a conviction in this case with as much evidence as they had pointing to Miguel Ruiz Lobo. But finally, as of May 1st, 2023, he was convicted. and a week later, he was sentenced to life terms in prison. If you or anyone in your family, friends, whoever it might be, are dealing with domestic abuse, you need to reach out. You need to get help.

There's a phone number you can call. It's 1-800-799-SAFE. S-A-F-E. There are people there at the National Domestic Violence Hotline that can help you. Again, that number is 1-800-799-SAFE. 7233. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.