Going West: True Crime - Regina Krieger // 330

Starting point is 00:00:00 What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host Tee. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello everybody. Thank you for tuning in today. Hope everybody's having a good week, a good day. And thank you so much to Makayla for recommending today's case. And speaking of recommending cases, if you'd like to suggest a case for us to cover, just send us an email. You can send it to going west at gmail.com. That's where we're going to see it. We often get a lot of suggestions on our social media, but we don't always check those messages. So sometimes we miss a lot of cases.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Yeah, we don't really get around to our social messages very much. So email is definitely the best. We get so many recommendations though. So we're really backed up, but still please recommend them. We will get to pretty much everything eventually and try to prioritize recent cases, like anything that's happening now that really needs attention, we try to jump on those if there's enough information as you guys probably have noticed.

Starting point is 00:01:12 So thank you in advance and today's episode takes place in Idaho in the 90s. We usually try to cover cases within the time frame of which we're recording. This one takes place in February. I don't know how I snuck this one in. Yeah, I was gonna say that. Yeah, going through the notes, I'm like, huh, this is a February case. You know, I don't know why I did that, but whatever.

Starting point is 00:01:33 But the good thing is that this case did get some resolution relatively recently. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, just a couple of years ago actually. So yeah, let's dive into today's episode. All right, guys, this is episode 330 of Going West, so let's get into it! In February of 1995, a 14-year-old girl went missing from her Idaho basement bedroom, leaving behind a trail of blood. Despite police believing that she had run away, her body surfaced two months later, proving

Starting point is 00:02:37 that she had actually been murdered. When reports came in about a man showing up to a party covered in blood on the night of her disappearance, a local was arrested, but did they get the right guy? This is the story of Regina Krieger. Regina Lee Krieger was born on March 3rd, 1980 in the city of Twin Falls, Idaho to parents Rhonda and Dan, and she also had a brother named Clifton. Her mom Ronda says that she had a big heart and that she was quote such a joy to raise.

Starting point is 00:03:35 She's remembered as fun loving and social and she was somebody who cherished her many friendships. The Krieger is relocated from Twin Falls to Declo before finally settling in Burley, Idaho, which is about 45 minutes east of Twin Falls where Regina was born and Burley is where today's story takes place. And Burley also is home to about 11,000 people, it sits along the Snake River and it isn't far from the borders of Nevada and Utah. The family attended their local Lutheran church there and Regina was an active member of the snake river and it isn't far from the borders of Nevada and Utah. The family attended their local Lutheran church there and Regina was an active member of

Starting point is 00:04:09 the youth group as well. She also loved to water ski and was even on her school's Water Skying team, which is crazy if your school offers that? Yeah, my school didn't even have a, I don't even think we had a swim team, but that's kind of cool of Water Skying team. Yeah, I've never heard of that. So as Regina got older, her parents' relationship began to sour a bit and they eventually filed for divorce. And according to both Rhonda and Dan, Regina took it the hardest and was devastated at

Starting point is 00:04:37 their decision. And it's really sad because as you guys will come to see, this divorce seemed to really be the catalyst into how what happened to Regina happened. Don't you think you're going to agree? Exactly. Everything was kind of set in motion after this. Which of course, not her parents fault, they could have never projected that that would happen, but she did take it really hard.

Starting point is 00:04:59 And both of her parents admit that she was taking on a lot of stress because of it. Especially since following the divorce came a very bitter custody battle, which left Regina feeling like she was really caught in the middle of it all. And at this time Regina, who was 14 and in 9th grade in high school, she was already navigating a pretty vulnerable time in her life. She had been a very good student leading up to the divorce, but afterwards her grades started to slip. Ron did know that she used to be a happy, positive kid, but that her attitude had turned

Starting point is 00:05:33 moody and angry and her behavior had become erratic, which is very normal for children in the situation for sure. I am a child of divorce. Totally get it. But luckily Regina was seeing a counselor both at her school and at a local hospital in order to work through this stress and talk through this rough time. Now Rhonda remembers trying to talk to her daughter about the transition and her sudden rebellion, but that only seemed to make it worse.

Starting point is 00:06:02 She also suspected that her daughter had been experimenting with drugs, or at the very least just kind of hanging out in the vicinity of friends who were. When Rhonda got in touch with Regina's friends in an attempt to find out what was going on, they told her that they rarely saw her anymore. Regina's childhood friend Nikki remembered quote, she was moody and she seemed stressed. I knew that she really stressed out about her parents getting divorced. I thought I knew her, but apparently she had a whole other life. Her dad Dan even remembers her saying that she had started dating an older man. Now in the late winter of 1995, Regina was staying with her dad in his home in Idaho and a bedroom in the basement.

Starting point is 00:06:42 And on the last evening that he saw his daughter alive, they said good night and she went downstairs to go to sleep. Then the following morning, which was Tuesday, February 28, 1995, Dan checked her room before she was supposed to be leaving for school and found that Regina was gone. Just three days before her 15th birthday. Now alarmingly, as he inspected the room, he saw droplets of blood splattered throughout her bedroom. And leading up the basement stairs and out the back door of the house, there were blood smears along the floor and walls. And this blood led all the way across the yard away from the house, ending at the back fence.

Starting point is 00:07:26 So this was a scene full of terror. But strangely, other than that, there was no sign of struggle and no sign of forced entry. Like Regina's room was definitely messy, but not messier than it usually was for her, and her dad also claimed that there were items of hers missing from a room, including her backpack and makeup bag, as well as some of her clothing and a blanket. Upon his discovery, Dan called the police in a frenzy to report his daughter missing, fully convinced that she had been kidnapped. But the police weren't so sure. So Dan shared with detectives that Regina had actually tried to take her own life only

Starting point is 00:08:05 a month prior to her disappearance, and that she had just really been struggling lately with everything that had been changing within her family. Now given that there was no sign of a break in, that story just solidified the belief of detectives that she had left of her own volition. And to explain the blood, police came up with this theory that she had likely cut herself and then ran away from the home. But especially since she was only 14, police didn't fully give up on the case and they did start probing her life more closely.

Starting point is 00:08:38 But when they did, they came to the conclusion that Regina had likely left on her own, so their beliefs didn't change as they dug deeper, especially with the conclusion that Regina had likely left on her own, so their beliefs didn't change as they dug deeper, especially with the fact that there seemed to be items missing from her room. However, her clothing and her backpack were later located inside her room, and her makeup bag was in her locker at school, which just made her disappearance seem much less premeditated. So, it's not her dad's fault for falsely believing

Starting point is 00:09:06 that her things were missing, but it's definitely unfortunate because this is what helped police believe that she had run away and not really take her disappearance seriously. And because they just had this in mind, even when they did locate the items, they still fully believe that she had run away.

Starting point is 00:09:25 So it just made things a lot more muddier. But then her dad's looking at this, like, oh wait, her items are not missing. Nothing is missing except for her, and he did not change his stance in thinking that she had really been kidnapped. But back to police, so there were other things that really didn't help the situation either because the day before Regina vanished, she had left a message on her mom Ronda's answering machine in which she referred to her as Ronda instead of mom, which Ronda just found very odd and claimed that had never happened before.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Regina also met with her school counselors that very day, wondering if she could drop out of school because she had missed so many days that year. But still, despite their beliefs about what really happened, mounting public pressure forced police to investigate anyway, regardless of what they felt happened. And even though the community felt rocked by her disappearance, it was hard to believe that something nefarious had occurred even to her friends. Like Regina's friend Nikki remembered quote, I didn't think anything had happened to her. It's burly. We're safe here.

Starting point is 00:10:34 And after speaking to Regina's friends, investigators were even more sure of their conclusion. Her friends told police that there were no longer as close with Regina, and that she had been distant in recent months after being so negatively affected by her parents' divorce, and she had a new circle of people that she was spending time with. They also mentioned that she had talked about wanting to go to California or Colorado to start over, despite being only 14 years old. But of course, again, this only solidified the suspicions of the police. And one officer even wrote in his report quote, it appears that she left under her own free will. But in the midst of the assumption of the police that she ran away, again, her father Dan remained

Starting point is 00:11:20 sure that his daughter was in danger, so he continued to bring them theories and new information, including rumors that he heard around town. And he would reach out on a near daily basis. He also implored police to look into a new older boyfriend, the one that Heath mentioned to us, whose name Dan said was a seed row. Dan claims that he didn't know much about a seed row and that they had never met, but

Starting point is 00:11:45 that Regina had told him that their relationship was contentious and that he could have violent outbursts, and he apparently even threatened to kill her. She wrote about him in her journal which police took in as evidence luckily, just trying to see if they could get any leads from it. And according to Regina's description of him, he was between the ages of 17 and 25. Remember, she is 14 years old. He drove a low riding car and had a grandma who lived in Burley, so he visited the area often.

Starting point is 00:12:17 However, police noted, quote, the chance that Regina invented the boyfriend is high. So we're gonna talk about this because this seems kind of strange. It is. So as hard as they looked for this guy named Isidro, police found no evidence that he even existed. They even shared a loose description given to them by Dan with the media in hopes of tracking him down.

Starting point is 00:12:43 Now scatter tips and potential leads came in, but none led to this is Cedro Guy. They were never able to confirm that a Cedro or any boyfriend existed at all. So police began to wonder if Dan had created the persona of a Cedro himself to mislead detectives into believing that his daughter didn't actually run away.

Starting point is 00:13:03 And this, of course, raised suspicions about Dan's own credibility, and even his potential involvement. Various tips came in, including sightings of Regina, but nothing substantial or that could prove whether or not she was okay. Then, Dan's neighbor came forward, and said that she remembered hearing yelling on the night that Regina disappeared. When police spoke to Dan and Regina's neighbor, she claimed that she heard a fight coming from the Krieger House. She remembered hearing Regina crying and apparently then heard an adult male voice saying, quote, get back here. Though the neighbor actually couldn't confirm that that voice did belong to Dan Krieger or

Starting point is 00:13:44 not. Right, so then this is just raising more questions of, did this fight occur? Who was she fighting with? Was it somebody who was kidnapping her? Was it her dad? Like what was going on? Exactly. Then, after the commotion, she says that she heard a car screech away.

Starting point is 00:14:01 And she claims that she didn't report it at first because she just basically thought it was like a simple family matter and that everything was just okay. Exactly because this is before she knew about Regina's disappearance. Right, she just didn't want to get involved, she's like, I'll let them, you know, hash it out, however they need to. So after this, the Krieger family hired a private detective to assist in the investigation, but no new information came from them. But then, six weeks after Regina disappeared. On April 15, 1995, a group of horseback riders stumbled upon a body along the banks of the Snake River that wound through town.

Starting point is 00:14:41 The body was five feet from the riverbank, badly decomposed, and totally unrecognizable. Now, it was in such bad shape that police couldn't even confirm the gender or approximate age of the victim upon first seeing it. The body was found wearing only a pair of underwear and a pair of shorts, and of course, police suspected that it could be Regina, but based on the level of decomposition, they really could not confirm the identity yet. But since they did have this suspicion, police called Ronda to alert them about what they had found,

Starting point is 00:15:15 and then they offered just as much of a description as they could, which pretty much was only that the body was wearing a pair of shorts that adorned the words Dean's Cove. And this is relevant because Dean's Cove is a vacation spot that the Krieger family used to love to visit together. So based on that alone, Rhonda said that she knew the body belonged to her daughter. And sadly she was right because via her dental records, the body was confirmed to be that

Starting point is 00:15:47 of almost 15-year-old Regina Krieger. The injuries that she sustained were shocking and gruesome, so her throat had been slit and she had been stabbed in the chest. She had also been struck in the head and the face, and these injuries were bad enough to render her unable to fight back against her attacker until one of the stab wounds ultimately took her life. A forensic pathologist surmised that she had likely died from an air embolism when her throat was slashed from ear to ear, which had severed both jugular veins, and

Starting point is 00:16:22 the stab wound to her chest was most likely inflicted after she was already dead. Based on the sheer viciousness of this attack, it seemed as if it was probably done by somebody that Regina had already known. Because they lost time and really squandered evidence focusing on the theory that she had run away, police were anxious to restart their investigation and probably feeling pretty bad about their insistence that she had not been met with foul play, despite her dad's strong beliefs

Starting point is 00:16:55 that she had been taken. The sheriff reported, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote,

Starting point is 00:17:04 quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, interviewing witnesses again. Since we had been treating the case with the idea that she was still alive, we're gonna have to look at leads quite differently now. Then, a potential witness came forward in the form of a local 16-year-old boy named Cody Thompson. Cody admittedly struggled with drugs, engaged in gang activity and violence, and hung out with a pretty rough crowd. But please also felt like he may have been one of the only people to have actually seen Regina on the night that she went missing. So when Cody was interviewed by police, he swore that he didn't have anything to do

Starting point is 00:17:39 with it, but that he had seen her body that night, bloody and badly beaten. According to his testimony, he had been at a house party and had gone to use the bathroom when he saw her body discarded in the bathtub. He claimed that he was so petrified that he had declined to tell anyone or do anything about it. When Cody was shown a picture of her, he reportedly broke down in tears and said that he thought the young woman in the bathtub could very well have been Regina. So please latched onto this theory, as it was really the only one that they had at this

Starting point is 00:18:13 point, but they really couldn't find any indication that a party had actually taken place that night, and that Regina's killer had been in attendance along with her body. So please just basically dismissed his claims, and it kind of seems like police didn't do a whole lot of things right in this case. Because sadly, with nothing to latch on to but rumors, the case quickly turned cold. They had interviewed close to 100 people while following tips, but her story was rife with conflicting information and no solid leads. However, Burley locals seemed to know exactly who they believed to be responsible.

Starting point is 00:18:52 In fact, the rumors were so persistent that the local paper even wrote about them, addressing the supposed perpetrator by name. Which is pretty crazy. You need to name somebody who has not been officially considered a suspect or person of interest. It's just like so many people think this guy did it that the newspaper is even putting this guy on blast. Yeah, the town said we're not messing around at all like we we know who this person is. So a local man who was known as a drug trafficker in the area started being mentioned in connection with Regina's brutal murder.

Starting point is 00:19:26 Though Rhonda and Dan weren't aware of who made up her new circle of friends, they were believed to also be a part of Burley's city side, where drug use was rampant. She's believed to have started experimenting with these people herself, which made it likely that she came across local kingpin, Gilberto Rodriguez. Gilberto was well known by local law enforcement already, having been arrested numerous times on felony drug charges. He was also charged with aiding at abetting the delivery of methamphetamine and for the delivery of methamphetamine in front of a minor

Starting point is 00:20:02 because he had done this in front of his son. Almost a year to the day after Regina's body was pulled from Snake River, another murder shocked the area when 31-year-old Blake Morgan was gunned down in his own home. Two young men broke into his house at like 4am, they fired three rounds and killed him almost instantly. And although these guys were apprehended and Gilberto had not been with them, it's believed that he orchestrated the murder because Blake owed him money for drugs. This same assumption was held in Regina's case, and because locals knew that Regina had recently kind of fallen in with the local drug scene,

Starting point is 00:20:46 Gilberto's name became tied to hers. Again, so much so that it was being discussed in local newspapers. One police sergeant told the paper quote, It's very possible. His name has come up, but everybody's name has come up. We have, though, received a call saying that Rodriguez is the one. But when we ask, how do you know that, they hang up. Police knew that they made a mistake when they found her body because her room should have

Starting point is 00:21:16 obviously been secured and processed on the day that she was reported missing. And that kind of happens a lot, you know, when sometimes in cases police will get to the scene, they automatically think that a suicide has taken place. Somebody has run away. Nothing nefarious, no foul play. So they don't secure the scene or treat it like a crime scene because they automatically don't believe that it is one. But then later, if it turns out to be one,

Starting point is 00:21:41 you can't go back in time and re-secure it. You know, you've already contaminated the scene. Exactly. So that's really shitty here because that's exactly what happened. They knew that they had made a mistake, but now they just have to live with that and know that they can't go back and properly process her bedroom to see if his DNA is there somewhere, you know. Yeah, and that's basically what I mean by police kind of dropping the ball here. They really did. So in the throes of grief, Rhonda moved away from the area and just tried to heal. Both she and Dan remarried other people and tried not to let the harrowing ordeal encompass

Starting point is 00:22:17 their lives. But of course, neither forgot about the severe injustice of losing their daughter in such a traumatic way. But with the case going cold, Rhondah swore that she would not give up on finding her daughter's murderer. So for years, she wrote letters to the police urging them to reopen her daughter's case and keep investigating it and investigate it properly. And finally, two whole decades later, they did. Before that break, Daphne was telling us that Regina's mother, Rhonda, spent years trying to get her daughter's case reopened for a fresh investigation, and she even reached

Starting point is 00:23:25 out to the FBI tirelessly to have them brought in as well. And though it took longer than Regina was alive, Rhonda was finally able to do just that. So thanks to her persistence, an FBI agent reached out to her, wanting to take another look at Regina's case. The first lead that the new investigators wanted to take another look at Regina's case. The first lead that the new investigators wanted to take another look at was Cody Thompson's story about seeing Regina's body in a bathtub at a party. They needed more information from Cody. So when they tracked him down, he was actually serving a life sentence in prison on unrelated charges.

Starting point is 00:24:01 Cody had been pretty busy for about two decades. He had been in and out of prison for convictions of burglary, alluding an officer, grand theft auto, assault and aggravated DUI. In 2009, when Cody was 31 years old and already serving a 30 year sentence, he raped a fellow inmate. I know who is particularly strict in its penalties for inmate on inmate assaults, so Cody landed himself with a lifetime prison sentence. According to the prison, he was a member of the Aryan Knights, which is a white supremacist gang

Starting point is 00:24:36 within the Idaho prison system. According to this victim, a member of the Aryan Knights wanted to purchase the medication that the victim took on a daily basis. But when the victim declined, the gang decided to retaliate, leading to Cody assaulting him. After he did, he also beat him and then threatened to harm his family in order to keep him from speaking out about what happened. In addition to assault charges, Cody was charged with intimidating a witness, but despite

Starting point is 00:25:03 his past, he seemed ready to do the right thing when it came to Regina's murder. But the thing is that investigators kind of trusted him despite their hesitancy as he didn't really have any reason to make up a lie. He was already serving a life sentence and was not offered any reduction in sentence for this testimony. So Cody basically explained that he had been haunted by Regina's murder after all those years and just wanted to do the right thing for like the first time. So according to Cody's story, the night started when he was doing drugs and driving around with Gilberto. Gilberto then pulled in front of Regina's dad's house and told Cody that he was getting out for a minute.

Starting point is 00:25:47 He went through the gate to their backyard and then disappeared, and Cody claimed that he was feeling sick to his stomach that night, and he had actually defecated in the Krieger's lawn while he waited for Gilberto to come back from wherever he was. See, and if that's another issue that I have here is that if they had checked around the house for maybe some sort of evidence, they might have found a pile of shit and been able to do something with it.

Starting point is 00:26:13 Yeah, probably would have. So, but then after this, it took like about a half hour he says for Gilberto to return, and then eventually he did emerge from the house, but reportedly had blood on him and came to the car to tell Cody, quote, I messed up. Then he retreated back inside the house and returned carrying a figure wrapped in a blanket who Cody believes was Regina.

Starting point is 00:26:40 Gilberto stashed her in the trunk and then drove them to a now defunct bridge over the snake river, instructing Cody to help him throw her off the bridge. And this is interesting because here Cody is telling a totally different story. His original story, remember, was that he was at a party and he saw this young woman with blood on her in a bathtub. And now he's essentially saying that he's in a complice to covering up a murder. Well, I guess, or at least the reason why he explains

Starting point is 00:27:11 he changed his story is because apparently Gilberto threatened retaliation if Cody didn't actually comply with his demands of helping him dispose of Regina's body. Right, but now that he's in prison for life, he's willing to come forward with this information at this point instead of back in the day when he was just a free man. So after this, Regina floated just a few miles down the river before she was found.

Starting point is 00:27:36 And this was obviously a damning story if it were true. So police were pretty skeptical about it at first, especially because Cody had already been questioned after Regina's death and gave them that totally different bathtub story. At this point, they're like, okay, how do we know what we should believe? But Cody also seemed to have, again, nothing to lose at this point, just already being in the midst of a lifetime sentence. So investigators set their sights on Gilberto. Finally. They brought him in for questioning, but he claimed that he couldn't possibly have committed the murder that night,

Starting point is 00:28:12 because he had been deployed overseas in Afghanistan at that time. So just with him saying this, police decided to release him and they just vowed that they would keep digging. But a quick verification on this claim proved that he had actually not been deployed in February of 1995, so he was very much in Idaho. But with only Cody's testimony as evidence here, investigators needed to talk to more people. So as police reached out to members of Gilberto's circle at that time, they began hearing more and more credible versions of the rumors that had been swirling around the community more than 20 years prior. One informant came forward saying that she had seen the two men on the night of the murder.

Starting point is 00:28:56 They had all been at a house party together in the early morning of February 28th, and at 2 or 3 a.m., Gilberto and Cody had walked in still covered in blood. One woman who was there that night said that Gilberto had been bragging, quote, the Krieger Girl, I Slister. Another witness named Carlos Tena claimed to have heard Gilberto saying that he used this as a warning to others in the community, that it could be them next if they interfered with his drug operations or dared to not pay for his supplies. Carlos actually said that he and Gilberto were related, though it's not really been confirmed how.

Starting point is 00:29:36 But according to Carlos, Gilberto had been working with a Mexican drug cartel and a legal firearm smuggling business for over 30 years. He had heard Gelberto openly bragging about what he did to Regina multiple times, saying that it was, quote, unfortunate for her to have been disposed of that way, and that, quote, the feds were poking at him again. But that didn't stop him from gloating about what he had done with the hubris of a man who was immune to consequences. No clear motive was ever established, but the speculation is that basically Regina owed

Starting point is 00:30:11 him money. So with multiple damning testimonies at this point, police finally had enough to detain Gilberto, and on February 20, 2019, almost 24 years to the day since Regina's murder. Gilberto Rodriguez was arrested for the murder of Regina Krieger. And it's really great that Cody did come forward with this information, you know, like years and years later, despite the fact that he had a pretty long track record

Starting point is 00:30:40 with crimes, but Gilberto's defense team actually tried to portray him as like a vengeful felon. But the court believed his testimony. Yeah, I mean, really, if it wasn't for him, I mean, he's a piece of shit, but if it weren't for him coming forward, who knows if this case would have ever been solved? Because despite there being other people who Gilberto is bragging to, like nobody else is talking about it it's

Starting point is 00:31:05 just turning into rumors and actual facts to police like nobody's coming to police and saying this is what i know and also about it yeah yeah of course and also the fact that people were calling police and saying like we know who did it and then they're like okay what's your name and they're like uh... sorry i'm not trying to get killed by gillberto too so then they would just hang up the phone which is fair because the sky seems

Starting point is 00:31:26 terrifying and he is threatening people saying hey if you fuck with me this is what can happen to you exact so that's that's fair it is but uh... but yeah it's also just really unfortunate that nobody did feel confident enough to come forward and actually give this information to police except for for Cody. So luckily, he did do that, even though he is a white supremacist horrible person. So prosecutors brought in multiple other witnesses who had seen Gilberto and Cody on that evening or heard from Gilberto later that he was involved.

Starting point is 00:32:00 Gilberto's defense team was prepared for this though. And they just again painted Cody as like an opportunist. But Cody was testifying against Gilberto, and his lawyer was grilling him about having lied to investigators when he was originally questioned about Regina's death. He admitted that he previously lied under oath, but Cody argued, quote, I'm not gaining anything here, I'm putting my life in jeopardy. I've been running from this for the past 24 or 25 years. But luckily, the prosecution made a much stronger case. And

Starting point is 00:32:38 because of that, on Tuesday, May 25, 2021, Gilberto was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And this was based solely on Cody's testimony and those of witnesses from over the years. But because Gilberto maintains that he had nothing to do with this, it's just really shitty because it's just one of those situations where the family doesn't get full closure, they don't know exactly what happened and why, but he did get convicted. And obviously Cody coming forward was fantastic, but really the case wouldn't have been reopened if her mom and dad were not just pushing for years and years for her case to be reopened. And because of this, Regina's childhood friend Nikki said this about Regina's mom, Rhonda, quote, and arrest in the case is all because of her

Starting point is 00:33:32 vigilance. I have no words to express how much I admire her strength. What happened was horrible, but she didn't let it break her. And amazingly, Rhonda's actually shown an astonishing amount of grace for her daughter's murderer. She said in an interview, quote, who had killed her and towards so many other people over the years, and that's not who I am, but I was able to forgive, and if I'm able to forgive, other people should be able to forgive too. I feel lighter now, and not so heavy. My forgiveness had to start with the act of itself. Every human being has the option of hurting others. When Regina was at the moment when her life was taken, God was

Starting point is 00:34:25 present. I want all those people who have children that were murdered to not give up hope. I want them to stay strong and faithful and live a life that would make their child proud. I want them to not dwell in the agony of that particular event, and that's not easy to do. When a tragedy like this happens, you can either stay in that dark place and die in it, or open your mind and spirit, and that's what I did. There are a lot of people like the man who murdered my child in the world. A conviction would give me back to my family, because I won't have to fight this fight anymore. I think I deserve it.

Starting point is 00:35:03 Rhonda also doesn't blame Cody Thompson for his role in what happened to Regina, and actually sees him as another one of Gilberto's victims. Like her daughter, she sees what he did through the lens of a teenager, hurting, confused, and struggling with drugs. She believes that he only did what he did because he was so terrified of Gilberto. Ron depended memoir about her harrowing ordeal, which she's described as unforgettable stories of hope, entitled Snake in the Grass. She also speaks at grief support group meetings about losing her daughter and the profound effect that it's had on her. She said peacefully, quote, My daughter's spirit surrounds me daily.

Starting point is 00:35:45 Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and on Tuesday we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into. Yes, thank you for listening so glad that this case saw resolution after so many years. If you guys would like to see photos from this case and every other case that we cover, head on over to our socials, or on Instagram at GoingWestPodcast,

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Starting point is 00:36:30 I haven't really been on X, they're much lately, but. Yeah, me either. But it's kind of weird now, yeah. But then Facebook, we are also on going West true crime, check it out. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you in a few days. Have a great weekend. All right, guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you

Going West: True Crime - Regina Krieger // 330

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