Every Town - Unsolved Murder Of Monika Rizzo - San Antonio, TX

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Monika Rizzo disappeared out of the blue in May of 1997. The mystery then escalated when it was discovered that the Rizzo' house had a backyard full of buried bone fragments - many of which were later identified as Monika’s. Yet, her cold case remains unsolved and is still a mystery to this day. Welcome to Every Town - here is the story of Monika Rizzo Unsolved Murder. 🥇 Watch This Episode on Youtube! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLEeV77ZrSU&ab_channel=ScaryMysteries🎉 Patreon (videos too hot for youtube) -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJVtrLuIxoI🎧 More Podcasts, we got you - https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579 Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Every town has a dark side. Today, we head to San Antonio, Texas, where we learn about Monica Rizzo's unsolved murder. Pecan Valley, located in San Antonio, Texas, is a residential area on the city's southeast side. Pecan Valley offers its dwellers a dense suburban feel while enjoying their own homes and the many recreational park. However, one particular residence perturbed the neighborhood's charm when its owner, Monica Rizzo, disappeared out of the blue in May of 1997. The mystery escalated when it was discovered that the Rizzo House had a backyard of buried bone fragments, many of which were later identified as Monikas.

Yet, her case remains unsolved this day, and the only suspect, her own house. husband, as alluded punishment all these years. Hi, I'm Andrew Fitzgerald, and welcome to another interesting episode of Everytown. This week, I'm taking you back 23 years to San Antonio, Texas, with the most bizarre, publicized case of disappearance and murder from the south side, shocked and otherwise safe community. Government employee, Monica Rizzo's case of sudden disappearance on the onset of the onset of summer in 1997 baffled many people. It was through her uncovered bone fragments in her own backyard that her death was finally

confirmed, but who killed her? It's a question in which the absolute answer Monica brought along with her to her grave. The Rizzo House, on the 4,400 block of Forest Green Street in Peacan Valley, San Antonio, Texas, was the nest of Leonard and Monica Rizzo for 26 years ever since they got married back in 1971. It was a witness to a happy family the couple built together with their sons, Leonardo, Antony, and Vincent. A few decades into their marriage,

Leonard continued to claim that their union was as strong as ever, but Monica's co-workers at the San Antonio Department of Human Resources had observed that she was deteriorating physically and found her apparent weight loss as substantial and dangerous. But Leonard claimed, and he and his wife wanted to keep her figure slim at 93 pounds. However, aside from her abrupt weight loss, Monica's bruises didn't escape the keen eyes of her colleagues, who felt alarmed and suspicious.

Thus, they requested authorities to conduct a wellness check on her, When an officer arrived at the Rizzo family home, he immediately noticed the bruises on Monica's neck and face. The mother of two said she sustained them from an accidental fall, while her husband denied ever abusing his wife, and that their relationship was sturdy and stable. Leonard kept claiming, There was no domestic abuse. There was no domestic violence. My wife and I were deeply in love. We are deeply in love. But in the weeks that followed, an incident belied the poetic lip service of Leonard and gave credence to the suspicion of Monica's colleagues at work. Monday, May 5th, 1997 was like any regular first day of the work week at the San Antonio Department of Human Resources.

44-year-old Monica reported for her scheduled shift that morning. But halfway through it, she suddenly left the office, leaving her purse behind. and without telling anyone where she was headed. She didn't even bother her to say simple bye to her coworkers who didn't have the slightest idea that it was the last time they would see Monica alive. She didn't return to the office that day, but she did go home to their cozy Pecan Valley house that Monday afternoon.

In the days that followed, Monica became reclusive. She didn't go to work nor answered any incoming calls, which left her boss and coworkers understandably worried for her, especially after seeing her lost pounds and suffering from bruises just weeks ago. Their suspicions grew, and thankfully, after eight days of a hiatus, Monica answered her manager's call. It wasn't to reprimand her of an offense, nor to serve her firing orders. Instead, the department manager inquired how she was,

and Monica said she was still not feeling well. and opted to be absent for the rest of the week. She promised to return to work the following Monday, May 19th, but no Monica Rizzo showed up that day. Unbeknown to her boss and office mates, Monica had vanished, and her husband Leonard asserted that he simply woke up one morning and she was gone. Any highly concerned husband would immediately report the alarming incident to the police with the hope of finding his wife as soon as possible, but Leonard's, surprisingly did not. He said, I was very confused and made no sense. My wife and I were very close.

There was no reason for me to believe she wouldn't be coming back wherever she'd gone. I just, I have faith in her. I just chose to wait. Thus, it wasn't entirely clear the exact date of Monica's disappearance. It distrapped the Rizzo's sons, who were already adult. and carving their own lives away from Leonard and Monica. It also created a rift between Leonard and his in-laws, Bill and Monica McKinney. Efforts to search for Monica were few and far between, but an unexpected turn of events paved the way for startling discoveries that led authorities very close to the truth of Monica's fate.

June 5, 1997, marked the start of an attempt to shed light on what really happened to Monica Rizzo. The San Antonio police received a strange anonymous phone call, claiming that Monica had been murdered by her husband Leonard and that her bones were buried in their backyard. Police arrived at the Rizzo House roughly 30 minutes later, and they were answered by the couple's oldest son, Leonardo Antony, who was just visiting that day. Unfortunately, the patriarch of the house was having apparent seizure attacks. Leonard was rushed to the hospital where he would recover while investigators got permission to search the property from his visiting son. As Leonard was being taken to the hospital, police questioned Leonardo Antony.

He said that he lived across town and had not seen his mother who had been missing for over a week. Then the investigators started to search the house. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Monica's car was still parked in the driveway and her clothes. were still tucked neatly inside the closet. While searching the backyard, multiple small bone fragments were found, but they were reported to it belonged to an animal.

Did the police fall prey to a prank call? The unidentified caller seemed wrong, but his next call proved that he was right after all. About a month later, on July 5th, the anonymous tipster contacted the police and reiterated that Leonard did. in fact to kill Monica. This time though he provided a more specific detail. Her bones would be found in the yard underneath some piles of tires by the fence. Once again, authorities searched

the Rizzo backyard and sure enough, they found additional chopped-up bones, hair, and a skull which was overgrown with weeds and sunflowers. Police unearthed more than two to 300 pieces of evidence including garbage bags of human remains, a backyard barbecue pit containing finger bones, an assortment of knives and garden tools, a bench grinder, and a garbage disposal. Leonard Rizzo claimed he had no idea how the bones got there, and offered no reason for the deplorable discovery in his own backyard. He said, these bone fragments that are in my yard are an absolute mystery to me. As big a mystery as a mystery as a mystery as a my wife's disappearance.

To me, someone is trying to draw attention away from themselves. Someone is doing this to me. However, evidence inside the Rizzo home disputed Leonard's claim. Police found potential evidence of a violent struggle as seen in broken drywall and blood splatter throughout the house. When Mr. Rizzo was asked about the bone fragments in connection to the proof of alleged violence, he claimed that he became emotional and disappointed about. about Monica's disappearance, took his distress out on the house and beat it up.

It took a mysterious call from an unknown person for these horrendous skeletons in the closet or more aptly, boneyard, to be uncovered that may lead to exposing the truth behind Monica's vanishing. But who was the man that tipped the police? Well, he was later identified as Robert Hakala, a family friend of the Rizzo's. One day after Monica had gone missing, Robert was at the Rizzo home when he noticed a dog playing with what seemed like a human jawbone. It had overlapping teeth, like Monac's, and it dawned on him that the remains probably were those of the missing wife and mother. Thus, Robert decided to call the police without disclosing his identity. Robert wasn't believed to be a suspect in the case, but Leonard Rizzo, unfortunately, but expectedly,

became the primary person of interest in his wife's disappearance and presumed death. Following the unearthing of the human bones and other evidence that may provide leads to Monica Rizzo's disappearance, a team of archaeologists from the University of Texas, headed by Dr. Robert Hart, was brought in to excavate the site. It was a daunting task, as they literally crawled across the backyard using trowels in order to move the roots and grass blades, and looked down beneath the grass. And every time they found a bone fragment or something was detected that might be considered as evidence,

an orange-pin flag was put on top of it. Soon, dozens of orange flags sprouted like mushrooms in the Rizzo's backyard. After eight days, Dr. Hart and his men collected a total of more than 200 bone fragments from the property, including within the family barbecue area. A charred rock, stick,

and a piece of aluminum foil also were found, giving credence to police accounts that the barbecue pit may have been used to burn dismembered limbs and chopped human bones. The seasoned archaeologist explained what they discovered. When you find bones in an old archaeological site, the bones are very dry. These bones still had a greasy feel to them. So we knew they had not been there very long, but at the same time they had been there more than a week or a couple weeks. There were no soft tissues still attached to them, but the most gut-wrenching part was finding out that most of the bones had been chopped into pieces less than three inches long.

In an effort to put logic into this, Dr. Hard formulated a theory. We felt it was some kind of machine. Some type of chipper or shredder had been discussed quite a bit It's the only machine that we can come up with that could possibly account for this type of breakage. You wouldn't get it with a saw, you wouldn't get it with a knife, you wouldn't even get it with a lawnmower. We can't think of anything else that would break up bones like this. Police then turned to Leonard for questioning, but, as expected, he told them he'd never operated nor rented a wood chipper. He continued to insist that he had nothing to do with his wife's disappearance or

the bones in the backyard. He stated, those bone fragments and such, where they came from, I don't know how they got there. I don't know, and I adamantly did not kill them or anyone else. But investigators didn't believe that Leonard wouldn't have noticed the remains that were scattered across his backyard. Due to the overwhelming number of bone fragments that they had unearthed, investigators initially believed they belonged to different individuals. When DNA testing at the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office and the Dallas-based Gene Screen Labs Incorporated was conducted, it revealed that a portion of the bone fragments were, in fact, those of Monica Rizzo's, and the remaining others belonged to at least one other woman and two other people.

At that time, Monica had not been declared dead because the bones found belonging to her were insufficient in number based on the DNA examination. Although police believed foul play was involved in her disappearance, they didn't have enough evidence to assert she was murdered or even dead. Leonard questioned the DNA results and maintained his conviction that Monica was alive. On the other hand, the other victims remained unidentified. Police have received a few calls since a sketch was released of one victim, a young woman with a curved chin, overbide, and a prominent nose. despite the DNA results of the unearthed bones. The San Antonio District Attorney still lacked enough evidence to file charges against Leonard, whom they had acknowledged as the main suspect.

Thus, no one had been arrested in the case that police officials have called the most complicated and bizarre in decades. The years-long investigation that followed Monica's disappearance was riddled with contradictory DNA tests and erroneous public statements by the San Antonio police. Authorities did eventually confirm that the skull found in the Rizzo's backyard was the missing woman's and deemed her death a homicide. It was inevitable when the case drew massive media attention. Leonard, perhaps in his attempt to clear his name and gain sympathy, did a number of interviews, including one in which he drew an analogy between himself and O.J. Simpson.

He stated, I feel like O.J. Simpson. I feel like all of a sudden there is a nightmare all around me, and it's completely beyond my control. Around a year after a disappearance, police homicide sergeant, Daryl Volz, in 1998 said that Leonard Rizzo wanted to make a deal with investigators

for a 10-year probated sentence. The sergeant stated that the husband suspected of his wife's disappearance and possible murder, offered to make a deal several times during a police interview on July 5th, 1997, the day 200-plus bone fragments were dug up in his backyard. Sergeant Volz divulged that Leonard said he would confess everything if police could guarantee him 10 years probation without jail. But the officer replied that they couldn't make such a deal

because it's not within their powers. During that said interview, Leonard submitted a written statement in which he denied any involvement in Monica's disappearance. Of course, Leonard had a different version of this story. That was favorable to him. He disputed Sergeant Bowles' claims and instead turned the tables on the police. He said the detectives were the ones who suggested several options of light sentences if he would just confess to killing Monica. Leonard then suffered a number of murder. Leonard then suffered a another blow on June 9, 1998, when his 23-year-old son, Leonardo Antony, died due to leukemia.

Unfortunately, no new leads had surfaced, and the case had grown stagnant. The sad fate of Monica was brought to the grave when she was buried in 1999, without the decent closure it deserved. Her case became part of the news again in June that year, when Leonard was involved in a domestic dispute that quickly escalated and required SWAT team intervention. He figured in a violent argument with his 38-year-old girlfriend, Susan McDaniel, at his trailer on the 5,400 block of Copperhead Trail. Their dispute was over crucial information Susan allegedly knew about the whereabouts of Monica, who had been missing for more than two years now. Leonard said,

She claimed to have basically run into Monica here and there and a couple other places even out of state, but she refused to specify the locations. The conversation escalated into a fight when he pressed Susan for more information, but she kept changing her story. The girlfriend, however, denied taunting Leonard with knowledge about his missing wife. Neighbors then made a domestic disturbance call, and police who responded found Susan, covered in blood and running down the street three blocks away from their home.

Leonard was then arrested, charged with assault, with bodily injury, but was freed just six hours later after her friend had posted a $3,500 bond. When Leonard returned to the trailer, a second fight then erupted between him and Susan in the wee hours of the morning. He demanded to know where Monica was, and he subsequently accused Susan of killing the mother of his sons. Shaken and bloody, Susan went to a convenience store and called police to escort her back to the trailer to retrieve her belongings. Then Susan made a critical remark that would remind everyone of Monica's predicament. According to the police report, she told authorities that Leonard

threatened to kill her, chop her up, put her in a garbage bag and bury her. But Leonard refuted this, saying his girlfriend had stabbed herself, an allegation which Susan denied. When a police officer escorted Susan back to the trailer to get her things, Leonard opened the door with a derringer in his hand. Susan and the police officer retreated, and officers cleared out the surrounding homes. Leonard stood on his porch, drinking a diet R.C. Cola, pointing the derringer at his head while laughing at the police.

Then, he fired around in an unknown direction and reportedly pointed his gun at a SWAT officer who swiftly shot Leonard once in his abdomen. The four-hour standoff ended, and the 47-year-old distraught Leonard was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer. When paramedics did first aid treatment to the wounded man, they found a small plastic bag containing a substance believed to be methamphetamine in Leonard's pocket. Thus, he was also charged with possession of a controlled substance. Once again, Leonard was in denial and said he wasn't on drugs at the time and said that Susan just concocted the story that he threatened a chopper into pieces.

He later showed remorse after fully recovering from his wound and claimed that he intended to shoot himself and not anyone else. He was convicted on four criminal accounts, including assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping. Leonard paid his dues for his offense against his girlfriend, but he has been off the hook from any criminal liabilities for Monica's disappearance and apparent death, which is dated as May 28, 1997 on her tomb, which sits at Mission, Burial Park South, and San Antonio. With no development, her case is still a puzzle that needs to be figured out. The pain and disappointment over the unresolved and highly publicized case of his adoptive daughter, Monica Rizzo,

had convinced Bill McKinney to write a book about it in 2011, titled The Raw Truth. Mr. McKinney said his book is a synopsis of his daughter's life and death and the investigation that followed as seen through her family's eyes. He has been openly critical of the San Antonio County Police investigation and unwavering in his belief that Leonard, Rizzo killed his daughter. He said, it's still an open case down in the basement of the police station, just collecting dust. There's been a lot of confusion, a lot of screw-ups, and a lot of circumstantial evidence. By publishing the tale of his daughter, Bill hopes that attention will once again be given to Monica's case and may finally lead to a rightful conviction. Only then

will the heart-wrenching story of Monica get its final page. Thanks so much for tuning in, and if you want even more creepy stories from us, then check out our YouTube channel and podcast called Scary Mysteries. Over there on the YouTube channel, you'll find each episode of Everytown as well, complete with a cool video component

if you'd rather watch it like a show. And if you really want to show us some love and support and watch truly terrifying videos, then check us out at patreon.com slash scary mysteries. There's a new video every week over there, plus the chance to get involved with ideas and picking the videos that we post each week. So head on over there to get involved, and I'll see you soon.

So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Tune in next week for another one filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because who knows? Maybe your town will be next. Thank you.