Law&Crime Sidebar - Drug Lord Flew Out Hitman Friends to Burn Dancer Alive in Car: Cops

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Mercedes Vega died in April 2023 after someone hit her, shot her, poured bleach down her throat, and burned her alive in a car along I-10 in Arizona. Investigators provided major updates to the case, including the arrest of more men believed to be involved. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber spoke with forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan about the investigation so far.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you received Depo-Provera birth control shots and were later diagnosed with a brain or spinal tumor called meningioma, you may be eligible for a lawsuit. Visit https://forthepeople.com/lcdepo to start a claim now!HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Three men from across the country are now suspected of hatching a plan to travel to Arizona to torture and execute a 22-year-old woman. Investigators say Mercedes Vegas suffered horrific abuse before she was burned alive in a car on the side of a highway. We have updates on how the three suspects are connected and what could be at the center of this alleged sadistic plot. Welcome to Sidebar.

Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. Hey, everybody, this is another Law and Crime Eagle Alert. You received Depro-Provara birth control shots and were later diagnosed with a brain or spinal tumor called meningioma. You may be eligible for a lawsuit. That's right. Morgan and Morgan, they're investigating claims that patients weren't properly warned about this risk. It's free to check, just takes a few minutes, and you don't pay unless they win.

So scan the QR code on screen, click the link below, or go to 4thepeople.com slash LC Depot to see if you qualify. Let's talk about 22-year-old Mercedes Vega, an exotic dancer living in Tempe, Arizona, last seen on camera heading into our apartment complex's parking structure in April of 2023. Blood was found on the parking garage floor. Blood was also. found in the passenger seat of Mercedes car, which was abandoned not far from her apartment complex. This is according to court documents that were reviewed by outlet Arizona Central. And what happened to Ms. Vega, what happened to Mercedes after her abduction is horrific. According to the medical examiner, again, this 22-year-old woman had bleach in her throat,

she was shot in the arm, she was hit in the head, and then she was burned alive in a car that wasn't her own. The burning car was found near tonapots around 60 miles away from where Mercedes had lived on the side of I-10. Her body was in the back seat. The medical examiner linked her cause of death to burns and smoke inhalation. And now there has been an update in this case. Want to talk about it all? Let me bring in my good friend, forensic death investigator from Jacksonville State University, Joseph Scott Morgan. Joseph, really, really great to see you.

Thanks for taking the time. Thanks for having me, Jess. We cover a lot of really disturbing cases. We cover a lot of disturbing deaths. When I just laid out for you what happened to her, what stands out to you? Well, I got to tell you, just the mention of the bleach to me, it actually smacks the Christopher Newsom and Shannon Christian case out of Knoxville, Tennessee. I don't know if you recall that several years ago.

And it was the only way, you know, the one word that you use. to describe, you know, that case from those many years ago up in Knoxville is torture. And that's completely what this sounds like. This was not a quick death. There was a lot of suffering that went on here. It was not something that was done in an instant. Even if you take into account that they had blood deposition at the scene, my thought was the blood that may have been found, say, in the parking garage, was probably to get her to comply. I don't have any way of really sensing, you know, what type of injuries she would have sustained, but she would have had to have gotten her to comply in order to get into a vehicle with them. And then from there, it goes from

bad to evil. It's the only way I can describe it. Anger, too, right? I mean, it gives you a progression of events, too. Like, I don't know if it was shooting first or- Yeah, you don't, it's not like a randomized thing. And, you know, look, who's going to target a young lady like this? You know, let's just face it, it's not like you've got a couple of big burly guys that are going at each other, and, you know, they're just hammering away at each other, punching, slashing, kicking, maybe even shooting at one another. Why is it that this one young lady would be targeted? And the end result is truly stuff that, as even a practitioner, are these little vignettes

that make up your worst nightmares, all right? This is stuff that these investigators will relive in their minds. 80 years from now or 60 years from now, when they're sitting back reflecting on their careers, they'll say, I remember this case. This will be a benchmark case for them. Are you surprised they're able to determine what happened to her, given the environment she was in, given that she was burned? I mean, the fact that they can detect the bleach, they can detect the gunshot wound. Is that abnormal to you? Is that what does that tell you? No, no, it's not. First off, I would have to say that the burning that went on, though it's bad,

it's not to the point where her body has disintegrated to the point where you can't appreciate trauma, maybe in wound tracks because, you know, they're talking about, for instance, like you've got a gunshot wound. Let me kind of break it down for you how this works. First off, fire-related deaths, those deaths that are associated with fire are some of the most complex cases to work because you do have a lot of destruction. So the first thing you have to do is x-ray the body, you know, once the body comes in. And in doing so, you're looking at those radiographs to see if you see like any radio opaque bodies. And I'm talking about not a body, but like a lead core projectile that's in there.

And you can actually, Jesse, and this is kind of fascinating, our listeners may really be interested in this. You can actually see a lead storm many times with wound tracks where the bullet will fragment. You can actually track it on x-ray. And you can see where it entered. and maybe where it comes to an end, you can find the round if it's still in the body, or you can see where it exits. That's one of the things you're going to be looking for because you have to, before you go through the process of an autopsy where you're actually going to open the body,

you want to keep the body as pristine as possible, examine it as externally, thoroughly as you can, and then internally with radiographs. There are even some offices that you see T's that have that kind of technology at their disposal. And that's what you need to do in a case like this. Another thing, when you get a body that comes in that has been burned, we see this in household fires and car fires many times, is that there will be debris that will come in with the body that's literally melted to the body or attached.

Like I found springs, screws, all kinds of things to get attached to the surface of the body through burning. And so you have to be able to delineate between, is this a bit of evidence or is this something that came up as a result of being in this environment? The chilling part of this, Jesse, is two things other than the torture, this kind of torture she went through, is that there's evidence that she had bleach on board, which my estimation is that it was probably poured down her throat. You may have even had bleach in her stomach, which we would take stomach contents in a case like this. And secondly, they're talking about being burned alive, all right, and that the cause of death was smoke inhalation.

We draw blood in all cases, but particularly it's important in fire-related cases, because we'll run a test called a carboxy-hemoglobin level. And with carboxy-hemoglobin level, that tells you that there's carbon monoxide that is in the body. Here's why that's important, because as your body uptakes this product, it's actually trying to metabolize it. That's evidence of life during the fire. So the tox-draw is actually telling you, yes, this person was in fact alive while they were on fire. It's unimaginable. It's unimaginable to think which he went through. It really, really is. And you asked before, well, who would have done this, okay? Well, let's talk about who allegedly did this because we now know that evidence from inside Mercedes abandoned car helped investigators connect multiple suspects to the crime and three men are now facing charges. So one of those men is Kudjo Young. He was already facing, by the way, armed robbery charges for targeting Mercedes back in 2020. According to prosecutors, Young had apparently targeted. multiple dancers at the same club, following them home, demanding money at gunpoint, and Mercedes actually picked this suspect out of a photo lineup, wrote a victim impact statement

for the court. According to Mercedes family, she planned to testify against Young. And they have long suspected that her later killing was connected to this armed robbery case. Now, it's our understanding that the Maricopa County Attorney's Office told Arizona Central that it's reviewing recommendations from the sheriff's office to charge Young with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. And the sheriff told ABC-15 that Young was out of custody when Mercedes was murdered in April 2023. He had an ankle monitor on him. So last November, we told you that a 22-year-old man named Sensera Hayes had been arrested thousands of miles away in Tennessee. He was extradited to Arizona. And ABC 15 reports, he was charged with four counts of

first-degree murder, one count of vehicle theft, one count of armed robbery, and one count of kidnapping involving a death. And last month, prosecutors filed court paperwork that indicates they plan to seek the death penalty against Hayes. And now we have a third man. 25-year-old Jared Gray has been linked to Mercedes horrific murder as well. He was arrested in Georgia, and his extradition is still pending. The sheriff's office plans to recommend charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, theft. Joseph, before we even get into the forensic data, and there's, you know, substantial forensic data, multiple parties here, you have a potential motive, you have a potential ringleader. This is now starting to potentially, the pieces are

starting to come together. Yeah, they are. And, you know, I think that two of these individuals were approximating each other geographically in Tennessee. What are the odds, right? And as an investigator, Those are the types of things, those little data points that you're looking for when you're trying to piece all of this together. It's not just a matter of questioning somebody and getting information from them. It's actually doing your own legwork, and geography plays a huge part in this. Downrange from this, I'm really wondering where else these individuals have been associated over a period of time. All three of these subjects coming together where you've got some kind of confluence here. And I think that that's something that probably law enforcement and the prosecutor are looking at to try.

to establish this because I think you just said that charged with conspiracy. So if they're charged with a conspiracy, I guess they're entering into some kind of criminal confederacy or whatever the case might be in order to perpetrate this crime. Again, it comes back to that essential question. Why this young lady and why to this degree? Well, the motive, if it really was so she wouldn't testify and there was an anger built up, you can start to see. You can start to see what might be happening. Now, by the way, even though they're innocent until proven guilty, we're going to get into the forensic evidence. Joseph hosts this podcast. It's called Bodybags. I want everybody to check it out. It's phenomenal. As we're talking together, he breaks these kinds of issues down in such a

granular way, not only easy understand, but you can also understand why the evidence is so important, how it ties back to the suspects or the defendants, because it's this science that tells so much other stories, so I encourage everybody to check out body bags with Joseph. So let's talk about it here, okay? Our team is still working to get the court documents from Maricopa County, but here is what news outlets, ABC 15, and Arizona Central have reported from the criminal complaints. So it turns out the Chevrolet Malibu that was spotted burning alongside I-10, that was in the parking garage, that car, where Mercedes left for the last time and reportedly exited the garage around the same time. So we're talking about this crime scene. When police found

Mercedes car that was parked near her apartment complex, they found blood, as well as the large purse that Mercedes was carrying in the surveillance video. And underneath that was a plastic grocery bag that had blood near its handles with a second grocery bag inside it. This is according to the court filing. Investigators then find a fingerprint on the plastic. But when they put it into the nationwide fingerprint database, they didn't get any matches. And then it was a year before a possibility finally popped up, allegedly matching Senser Hayes, who was arrested in May of 2024 in Tennessee and had his prints added to the database. Gray's fingerprint was reportedly found on the bottom of a plastic cup inside the Malibu. Joseph, over to you. What do you want to talk

about first? You want to talk about what was found in her car, the blood? You want to talk about the fingerprints? There's a lot of material here. to get into. Start, maybe the fingerprints is the most appropriate. Yeah, yeah. Let's do start with the fingerprints. And it's interesting you talk about grocery plastic grocery bag. It takes me back all those years ago with the Madrid bombing, terrorist bombing,

Madrid, Spain. And that whole case famously hinged on a fingerprint on a plastic bag at that particular time. So plastic bags tend to be non-porous. Just think, I'm not saying they're non-porous like glass, but they're certainly not like wood. But you have to be very careful with them. when you're recovering these things, because the slightest movement of the bag, the inappropriate collection of it,

can eradicate that print. These are very fragile. They are generated as a result of the fatty lipids that we produce in our skin that leach out onto the surface of our skin and our fingertips, which we have friction ridges here. We don't have fingerprints on our fingers. We leave fingerprints behind, right?

And so when you touch that non-poor surface, you're going to leave a negative image of that print there. I think my question would be, was it a latent print that they found? You had mentioned deposition of blood. I wonder if there was a bloody print on there that goes back to an individual. Because you can have both, and dependent upon how it was collected, that could be very evidence-wrench. And also, whose blood was it? Is it the victim's blood or is it somebody else's blood?

So there's a lot to be gleaned from this bag, also the position of the bag in the vehicle. And then on top of that, you have blood evidence in the vehicle. So this dynamic that's going on inside of there, people don't just spontaneously start bleeding, do they just? Something has to happen. You have to open up an injury on a person, popped in the mouth, popped in the nose, hit in the head, shot. You don't know what the origin of any of this stuff is. And so you have to find out what the source is of the blood, also the source of the fingerprint within her vehicle. that's going to be very important because if it is one of these suspects that is involved in this

and they've had no prior contact with her intimate contact in her circle how do you explain that their print is inside of her vehicle i don't know about you man my vehicle is like my little kingdom right it's it's almost like being in my home uh i don't just invite anybody into my home i don't invite just anybody into my vehicle how did it wind up there and that's not the only evidence by the way So according to the court filings, Hayes, Young, and Gray, despite being arrested in three different states, they were all from Tennessee originally. And when police flew across the country to arrest Hayes back in November, they also reportedly spoke with Gray, who denied ever traveling to Arizona and didn't indicate that he knew the other men. But Hayes allegedly told officers he knew young from back in Tennessee, according to ABC 15. So a lot of contradictory information for police to sort through.

But the criminal complaints, according to Arizona Central, indicate that police were also able to get their hands on travel information, including purchases for plane tickets for Hayes and Gray to fly out to Arizona. And it is believed that credit card information connects back to Young. Hayes reportedly told police he had business with another man out west, but wouldn't say who. Now, cell phone location evidence is likely going to be critical in this case as well. Why? Because according to court records, the plane tickets were connected back to a cell phone number and police were able to track it, showing that the phone was following the path the Malibu took on the day that Mercedes died and was in the area where her body was found. Want to talk about another layer to this, Joseph? I mean, now the phone data is key and the travel records are key. Boy, it is. And this is, I think, for you and I have this discussion, I think this first time we've had a discussion where we've got a phone that's connected, say, the purchase of a ticket like this or the purchase of something oh and by the way the data that's

coming off the phone is tracking the movement again i i guess i'm very reflective today jesse i'm thinking about the young uh menonite woman do you remember her out of sasha krause yeah out of new mexico remember they were able to track those phones both the perpetrator and sasha's phone simultaneously going down the road that's the world that we live in that's the world that these criminals live in now. It's sloppy, right? Wouldn't you say this is sloppy? Yeah. And the reality of this is a real coal cup of coffee for them because they're going to have, it's very, very difficult. Two things that are very difficult to explain away in the present world of crime science. And that is digital data and DNA. All right. Now, they've hit the digital data jackpot right here.

It's going to be very hard to get past this. The only way they're going to be able to get past is what you and I've seen over and over. again and that's where the defense may actually say well you know what it's it's they collected it inappropriately or they processed it in a wrong way the numbers just don't lie jesse that's going to be a real tough mountain for them to climb so the maricopa cam again they're innocent so proven guilty but when you're listening to this evidence you you also have to be thinking oh my gosh so the maricopa county investigators they also reportedly talked to a man whose cell phone location was near the scene of the car. Get this? He apparently tells authorities that Young called him to go, quote, pick up a package, which turned out to be two men, likely Hayes and Gray. So the court paperwork

indicates that the man told detectives he was given the location as well as a car. He picked up two men, drove them back to the Phoenix area, and the man and Hayes' phones both show them on I-10 in the hours after Mercedes death. And police were also able to confirm that the phone number connected to the plane ticket purchase was the same number that called this unidentified man around 2 a.m. Now, there's no word on whether the man who allegedly gave maybe Hayes and Gray a ride will face any kind of charges, but it's a significant development nonetheless. And authorities believe that Hayes and Gray took a Greyhound bus together back to Chattanooga, Tennessee, but now they're going to be back in Arizona this time in jail and eventually a courtroom. Another snippet to this,

Joseph, it seems like the more people you include, right, taking the... the allegations is true. The more people you include, yes, it might, you know, help with the plot, but it makes another link. It may, it's another breadcrum. Yeah, it is. And it's, it seems, I'm glad you said this. I was thinking the same thing a second ago. It's like, yeah, in in the immediate, it seems like, okay, I can get this, I can get this crime or crimes pulled off if I have a group of people helping me. But for every person that you add to the equation, that becomes problematic for you down the road. And again, I don't want to step off into your area. The first thing I'm thinking about is if you get all of these individuals metaphorically in the same room together,

somebody's going to break, somebody's going to roll over on the other person, and it's a house of cards. It folds pretty quickly. So you combine that with all of this forensic evidence that plays into this. One of the thing that I'm quite fascinated back, and if I can just go back to the forensic evidence for one second. The fact that they found another fingerprint on the bottom of a plastic cup within the cabin of a burning car, that speaks a lot to me at least. And again, we've discussed her injuries and also the results from the autopsy. It almost seems as though that this was a flash event, a flash fire. Well, what do you get, how do you get a flash fire like this? Well, first off, commonly, motor vehicles, they don't burn very well. You wouldn't want to

start a fire, a bonfire with a car, all right? It's just not very flammable. You have engines that blow up, they go out pretty quickly, but if you're talking about within the cabin of the car, let's say that the fire doesn't start in the engine block itself. What's going to be burning in there is generally going to be the seats, if they're fabric, and those are going to be burned. It's not going to be very sustainable, so that means you have to have accelerant in there. It's going to flash over. It flashes over so quickly that a plastic cup is not consumed and you can still recover a latent print off of it. To me, Jesse, I've got somewhere I'm going with this, if you're in possession of an accelerant, okay, that's another big piece of the puzzle when you're trying to put together

a case when you're trying to prove intent. I don't know about you. I don't generally walk around a gallon gasoline in my hand, okay? Was it your intent? I think this is a question that has to be asked, to set the car on fire with her in it. Why would you want to do that? What were you trying to to destroy where you're trying to destroy their body, the body that might be in there, where you're trying to destroy some kind of peripheral evidence. And most of the time, in my experience, relative to these arson cases, most of these perpetrators believe if I just dump a cup of gas or even a gallon gas on something, it's just going to be completely consumed. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's an accelerant. It's not a fuel. It burns off

pretty quick. You'll get that big sound like this. It'll burn for a few seconds. maybe a few minutes, and then it's gone. It's completely gone. And so the fact that you try to burn something up just merely with gasoline, it's not going to work. And there's no telling what other kind of evidence they might have in this vehicle as well. Well, I'll tell you this much. Before we end things, I'll just circle back to Cut Joe Young for a second, because we have

learned more information about his ongoing criminal cases that paint him allegedly now as the leader of a nationwide drug trafficking ring. That's right. So media outlet, Arizona family took a look at court documents that lay out this sophisticated and sinister alleged operation. According to documents from the Attorney General's office, Young is facing 10 charges connected to this alleged enterprise, including money laundering and misconduct with weapons. Prosecutors believe Young was organizing drug deals in Arizona and beyond sending alleged co-conspirators to the airport in Phoenix with suitcases full of things like fentanyl pills and then to sell in places like New York City and Atlanta. So while other people involved in this supposed operation have been given plea deals, the government hasn't offered a deal to Young because of his alleged involvement in other

crimes like the armed robbery of Mercedes and now the murder. So a lot of moving parts, a lot of different players. Joseph Scott Morgan, so happy to have you on to talk about this. Again, hope everybody can check out body bags. It's a great, it's a great program. It's a great podcast if you're interested in this. Obviously, if you're listening to this, you're interested in the space. there's no one better than Joseph.

Thank you so much, my friend, for coming on. You bet, my friend. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. long crime series, ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.