Law&Crime Sidebar - Haunting Words of Teen’s Alleged Killer Caught on Camera Before Brutal Slaying

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

A home security camera caught what may have been some of Marissa DiNapoli’s last moments alive. After her family reported her missing, her body was found not far from the home where her ex, Martin Mendoza, was living. Mendoza, who police said was “uncooperative,” was arrested at the US-Mexico border. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber takes a closer look at the investigation with California police sergeant Kyle Shoberg.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST: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.

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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. I would you do that something. I think you love me. I don't know. Why would you text your eggs? A camera caught what may have been some of Marissa Dinappoli's last. moments and the video helped police catch their prime suspect in her murder. We are taking a closer look at the investigation into a California missing persons report that quickly turned into a homicide case. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber.

A 20-year-old man is on his way back to the Bay Area accused of killing his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend. Marissa Donapoli was last seen on June 29th in Morgan Hill. California. This is south of San Francisco and San Jose. And according to family members, she was officially reported missing on June 30th and her body was found two days later during a search. Her own family and friends, by the way, reportedly found her body near a bridge at Anderson Lake and Morgan Hill. Talk about how upsetting and distressing that is. So to get into this, to talk about the investigation so far, some claims of possible police missteps from Marissa's family. I want to bring in Kyle Schoberg, police sergeant, and host

of the shots fired podcast. Kyle, good to see you. Thanks for coming back here on Sidebar. Always great to see you, Jesse. Thanks for having me. You got it. So right off the bat, talk to me about a missing persons investigation. Why are those different? And what are the initial first steps in a missing person's investigation? So one of the first things we do in law enforcement, usually patrol will get sent out to a missing person's call. And I want to throw out there, there's a false narrative out there that someone has to be missing for a certain period of time before you can report them missing. And that is completely false. So you can report somebody missing at any time.

And law enforcement, at least in California, is required to legally take that report. So the first things you're going to do is get that person entered into the missing unidentified person system so that if they're contacted anywhere in the nation, if their name is around, they would pop up as a missing person. And then from there, you just want to start building a case and try to figure out, track that person's last step, where they were last seen, who did they last contact, go as far as you can until you hit a roadblock. And then once you hit that roadblock, depending on what kind of missing person's case we're talking about, that's when you might want to call in additional resources, get detectives involved. It all just depends on the circumstance. How can you tell whether someone's in danger or whether it's, you know, they went missing, there's a fight, they ran away.

What are the red flags to determine whether there's someone's in danger? There could be foul play because someone could come back. That's the main goal. That's the main hope that they come back and it wasn't as serious as you initially thought. So what are the red flags that law enforcement looks at? Yeah, well, the number one thing is age. Number two, has this happened before? Does this person have a prior history of running away if it is a juvenile? If it's an adult, you know, people do have the right to go missing without telling anybody where they're going. That is a thing. And so that does happen. Usually you can determine that, you know, if people are in a relationship, a lot of times we'll get husband or wives that call and say, hey, I haven't heard from my spouse in X amount of days. And you'll determine, hey, look, that person just doesn't want you to know where they're at. And so they chose to go missing. Where I think your question is, is when do we really dive deep and like what red flags are we looking for and that's you know just like I said the pattern if this is something that's not

in common for that juvenile or that girl to go missing like this and she just falls off the face of the earth then yeah we're gonna take that very serious and we're gonna look into who this person was last seen with and what what was she doing when she went missing so those are all things that you just have to take in consideration when you're dealing with a missing person's case is there any reason for anybody listening to this or watching this is there any reason not to report someone is missing right away or to wait no absolutely not i would say you can't get a hold of somebody that you're used to getting in touch with or you

had a common practice of speaking with somebody and you no longer know where that person is i would suggest immediately call your local law enforcement agency file the missing person's report it's very easy to do get that person entered into the missing person unidentified system and let that investigation start the longer you wait then the longer that investigation is going to fall behind. Why is it true the first 48 hours are the most important? Is that a true statement? Well, I think in anything, I think the moment someone goes missing,

the sooner you can start investigating and dabbling into that, then yes, I would absolutely agree that the first 24 hours are crucially important. I think finding out exactly where that person last was, and if you can get a hold of their cell phone or start getting into their cell phone data records, that's where the that's where law enforcement needs to start looking into where this person was last seen and who that person was last with by the way we saw this case we

definitely wanted to bring it to you here on sidebar this is an important one to tell and one of the reasons that we can do that is because of the incredible support that we get from our sponsor Morgan and Morgan this is America's largest injury law from it honestly they have an amazing track record in the past few months Morgan and Morgan secured a 9.3 million dollar verdict for a car crash victim in Florida, a $5.6 million verdict for another car accident victim in Atlanta. And not to mention $1.8 million in Kentucky after insurance offered them just $5,000 in that case. And even if you think your case isn't worth millions of dollars, why not start a claim

and fight for what you deserve? Morgan and Morgan makes it so simple. You can start a claim from your phone in just eight clicks and everything, from signing contracts, uploading documents, talking to your team, it can all be done through the phone. So if you're injured, you can easily start a claim at for the people.com slash L.C. Sidebar. So according to police, Marissa, it was last seen at a home on trail drive just a few miles away from where her body was found days later. And her car, this Mustang, was also found in the same area, according to police. Before we move any forward, God, when you hear that, when you think about where she was last seen, okay, and then you think about where her car was

found. What does that initially tell you? That would tell me that there's a high probability that something bad has happened to her and we need to find her very quickly. Okay, well, let's talk about it. So there's ring camera video from that home, and it apparently shows Marissa and 20-year-old Martin Mendoza Jr. arguing as they leave on June 29th. but Mendoza seems to say, why would you do that to me if you love me? Why would you text your ex? And it sounds like Marissa says something along the lines of, I didn't. Okay. Kyle, how critical is that footage?

Oh, that's very telling. That's very critical because I want to say in reading this article, there was prior witnesses who came forward and said that she had claimed that he had threatened to kill her in the past and she was already scared of him. And so now that they've linked back together and he's now jealous that supposedly she had texted her ex, yeah, that's very alarming. And you need to find this guy and have a conversation with him to try to figure out what exactly happened after that conversation or wherever they went after that ring footage. We'll get into what happens next. But generally speaking, love, anger, jealousy, these kinds of things in relationships, they're motivators, right? I mean, why do we see such a prevalence of the violence committed against partners or ex-partners or ex-wives, ex-husbands?

Why is that in your experience? Well, I think it just comes down to people's emotions. I mean, you start talking about domestic partnerships, marriages, relationships, all of those things. I mean, you factor in jealousy into that, you know, people breaking up. I mean, as law enforcement, we go to domestic violence calls daily. And those are the most dangerous calls to go to because people allow their emotions. to overcome thinking rationally. And so that's why you see such violence

in domestic violence relationships. And by the way, 18 years old, when somebody's a younger victim, you also have to say, who else in their life would they be enemies with? Who else in their life did they have some sort of conflict with? The younger they are, you also wonder

they might not have as much life experience or the people in their lives. They might have a more smaller knit community and more smaller knit unit. That's a factor I imagine investigators look at as well. I mean, who else would have done something to her? It could be a stranger. Oh, yeah.

Could be a stranger. It absolutely could. And that's why you need to find this gentleman and, you know, start there. I think you, cops obviously already have this motive that's that's built up over jealousy. And so you know what? At the end of the day, it may not have been him, but they need to start somewhere. And I think you start there because that's the last person that they've known to be with her. they were in this some type of relationship and had an argument just prior to her disappearing.

So that's all crucial information. By the way, if this goes to trial, and we'll talk about what happens next and the charges and everything and the arrest, but if this goes to trial, this is going to be a key piece of evidence, which always makes me wonder, people don't realize there's ring camera video all over the place, there's surveillance video all over the place. Does that ever surprise you? Every day. Every day at work when you're dealing with these types of crimes, yeah, you can't help the thing. Do people not understand the level of technology that's out there? I mean, with the amount of cameras on people's homes, like you said, video surveillance on light poles, businesses. I mean, you're virtually on camera anywhere you go nowadays. That's why when we talked about the Coburger case, there was so much digital evidence, cell phone surveillance, you know,

put aside the DNA, but it's very hard for somebody to not leave a digital footprint and not be seen. Several of the Napoli's friends told NBC Bay Area that Mendoza was her ex-boyfriend and that the two were just friends when she disappeared. But a woman named Jasmine Gutierrez told the outlet that Marissa had said before that Mendoza was dangerous. She told NBC, quote, Marissa has told me firsthand in the car with my friends outside of my house, that he kill her, that he would not stop, that he's obsessed with her, that he's crazy, and that he's willing to go to that extent. News outlet KSBW reports that one day after that video was taken the day that Marissa was reported missing, Mendoza was seen leaving the house carrying some sort

of plastic bag. According to NBC Bay Area, Marissa last communicated with family members via text on Saturday telling them she was going to stay overnight with a friend, but then she didn't come home the next day. Kyle, let's stop there. Text message. What do you think about that? Well, who knows? I mean, you know, I don't know if she sent that text message. If some, this perpetrator got her phone and he sent that text message, but you know, that you talked about a digital footprint. And here's what's going to be crack this case wide open. And that's going to be both of their cell phones. I mean, they're going to get into both their phones. And wherever they win is going to leave that digital footprint. And even if they happen to be

in some rural area, you just can't escape that. And kids today, They don't go anywhere without those phones, and they're not thinking about that. So that's going to be the biggest piece of evidence in this case to crack that wide open is once they get into those phones, that's going to be extremely telling. Him leaving carrying a bag, allegedly, a plastic bag? What does that tell you? Yeah, I mean, that's obviously suspicious. You know, why are you carrying out this plastic bag?

You know, what was in that plastic bag? And can you tell us where that plastic bag is and just see where his answers go from there? You know, is he going to lie or is he going to be a true? truth teller. And so that's all, those are all things that detectives are going to need to figure out once they get in a room with this gentleman and and have that conversation. So what happens? While her family and friends, they quickly rallied to try to find her. According to a statement from Marissa's family that was posted to Facebook, Marissa's sister Monica gave police Mendoza's location and Morgan Hill police reportedly spoke with him. But they didn't detain or arrest him. Police said he was uncooperative with them, quote, we did want to have him provide a statement. We gave him every opportunity out there to provide a statement to us, to provide his story,

and he refused to take that opportunity. Okay, Kyle, what does that mean exactly? What does that mean he didn't provide a statement? They gave him an opportunity. He refused, and why wouldn't they arrest or detain him if he's refusing to cooperate? Yeah, and that's a question we always get asked. And here's the thing. If they were to have made an arrest for this suspected homicide, then the clock starts for the district attorney's office to gather as whatever evidence

they can to then move this to a trial, right? Because the defendant has the right to have a speedy trial. No district attorney is going to do that without all of the evidence that they can gather to put a solid case beyond a reasonable doubt to put in front of a jury. So what happens is investigators are going to try to get his side of the story. He's either going to or not going to cooperate. If he doesn't cooperate, that's well within his Fifth Amendment right. They then have to start doing their homework and figure out put all the puzzle pieces together figure out exactly what happened from the time she went missing to the time her body was found and everything in between and build their case from there and that's going to happen that just takes a little bit of time

but that's why arrests are not made immediately now if you were to sat down in a room gave a full confession hey here's what I did here's where I did it here's the crime scene they already found the body well then at that point you're they're obviously safe to make that arrest because they can take that evidence, present that to the district attorney's office, who then can move forward with a trial and present that to a jury. But without that, you're not going to make an arrest on just an assumption. So in other words, you're saying what they did was standard. There's nothing that they did that was wrong because here's the thing, Marissa's family claims that after speaking with them, after speaking with police, Mendoza fled south, headed for Mexico. And he was

and the police actually referred to him as a person of interest. So again, does your conclusion stay the same even if he fled or allegedly fled there was not much more they could do at that point or or again you talk about the difficulties the uh the district attorney would have to try to gather evidence in time yeah absolutely and i and i know that's really hard for family to understand that and unless you're in this world of you know law enforcement or or the legal world that is hard to comprehend because you you want to look at a case like this and go you know what man this is this guy's dead to rights you know he was the last one with her he's we've seeing all this footage, most people would agree, but to do things proper and to get an

actual conviction on somebody, these are the steps that have to be taken. And albeit he fled to Mexico, there are ways to be able to get him back should they obtain a warrant for his arrest. And that will happen. When someone's labeled a person of interest as opposed to a suspect, what does that mean? Well, it just means that you're interested in this person, that you believe them to possibly somehow be involved in this crime. You're not saying that, hey, this is our suspect. Once he becomes a suspect, that's when they're going to have all their evidence to prove, you know, hopefully beyond a reasonable doubt that he's the one that did it.

But right now, he is a person of interest. They're definitely keeping an eye on him. They're keeping tabs of him, where his whereabouts are. And again, putting all the puzzle pieces together. And just to be clear, police, when they get reports from family members or friends about a couple, potentially volatile relationship or saying that someone's dangerous, what police listen to that, but they can't just base their decisions on that, on that, right? Yeah, no.

I mean, that's a huge point. And really with any suspicious death that we have, the number one thing you're going to ask is, were they in a relationship? And what was that relationship about? Was it healthy? Was it not? Those are those are the first steps that we do take. So let's talk about what happened next, all right?

So after family members found Marissa's body near the bridge, the manhunt for Mendoza intensified. Morgan Hill police say 30 investigators from 15 different law enforcement agencies, including Homeland Security, the FBI, Border Patrol. They were all involved. U.S. marshals ended up arresting Mendoza at the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, July 6th, as he was making his way back into the United States. Kyle, first of all, all those different agencies, why do you need all those different agencies, is that, for something like this yeah I think it depends on the size of the department you know if I remember correctly Morgan Hill's not too far for me and and that's a fairly small agency and so working a large case like this you're gonna need as much

resources as you can and you're you're gonna have to involve the US Marshals as a federal agency to be able to extradite him if he was down in Mexico and bring him back so if it were my guess they just didn't have the resources to be able to manage everything that they had going on and so they shoulder taps either some outside agencies or some federal agencies to come in and help them, and that's why they're there. What do you think about the fact that he was picked up at the U.S.-Mexico border as he was trying to come back into the United States?

Yeah, well, again, I mean, that's just another, you know, a question that needs to be answered. You know, why are you fleeing to Mexico as soon as this girl goes missing and is found dead, and you're the last one to know to be seen with her. And so I don't want to speculate, but again, as law enforcement, we get paid to be nosy and those are questions that need to be answered. It doesn't look good. It doesn't look good. And Mendoza, he was held in custody in El Centro that's near the border. He's being extradited back to Santa Clara County where he's expected to face a murder charge. And while Marissa's manner

of death is believed to be homicide, KSBW reports that the coroner's office has not released a cause of death and an exact motive is not known. Kyle, is that unusual at this point? We don't have that information. No, I don't think that's unusual that the public doesn't have that information. I would believe that the police department has that information from the corner's office. They wouldn't make that arrest and start putting that motion into play unless they knew that the corner was going to come back with a cause of death as homicide. I mean, law enforcement knows that answer. The corner's office just probably has not released that to the public yet. Because it could jeopardize the investigation or could jeopardize a potential prosecution.

Yes, that is absolutely correct. By the way, how much is the family told during the course of this by law enforcement? That's the hard part. You want to keep them in the loop as much as you can, but you also want to keep the integrity of the case because at the end of the day, you do want to bring closure to the family and friends and get a solid conviction on this person. And the reality is the more information you release to anybody, there's the likelihood that that could weaken the case. And so unfortunately, sometimes in law enforcement, you have to keep that. close tight once you've established enough and you feel comfortable that you want to go then speak to the family about things that's when it would be appropriate to do that but i know it's hard and in dealing with these types of cases i work in investigations family members call all the time

wanting updates daily on on the case and sometimes there are no new updates and these things just take a little bit of time but at the end of the day all we want in law enforcement and as detectives is to get a conclusion for the family and get a conviction on people who deserve it you talked about the release of information while in the wake of the discovery of marissa's body her family released a statement through police quote we appreciate the love and support from those who have reached out to us in honor of marissa's memory we kindly ask that no go fund me accounts or donation pages be created if you wish to show support please do so through your prayers kind words and cherished memories now Later, a family member released a lengthier statement on Facebook.

The post explained that Marissa was the youngest of eight children, all of whom ended up in the California foster care system. Marissa was adopted by the Dinappoli family, who the statement says gave her a loving home. She had recently graduated from high school, was looking forward to a bright future. But here's the thing, as we've been talking about, Marissa's family believes that when her life was cut short, Morgan Hill Police dropped the ball. Part of the statement reads, quote, racial and systemic bias contributed to their interaction, costing us precious time. Their delay compromised not just Marissa's safety, but public safety as a whole.

We are calling for an independent investigation and formal audit of the Morgan Hill Police Department's handling of this case. The statement continues our community deserves answers. Morgan Hill deserves better. Marissa deserved better. We've launched a petition calling for an independent investigation and audit of the Morgan Hill Police Department. And the department hasn't responded to calls for an investigation, but did ask that anybody with any information about the case, call into their tip line, 1-800-2-2-2-2 tips.

Kyle, what do you make of that statement? Well, sad. I can understand the family's frustration. They're heartbroken over this. But, you know, I can honestly say as hard as that is to hear or to read something like that, in law enforcement, nobody cares about skin color, race, nothing. When you are handling calls like that, a lot of us have kids, you know, especially hooray. And so there's a lot of deep emotion that goes into that and and cops take that personally. So do cops make mistakes, do investigators make mistakes, you know, handling, you know, major crimes like this?

Yeah, absolutely they do. Mistakes are made. Are they intentional? Absolutely not. And so it is heartbreaking to hear the family say that and to think that because of the race of their daughter that things were misappropriately handled. I just, I don't believe that to be true. I can understand that where the cops are coming from in that I know that they would do everything they possibly can to figure out what happened to this girl.

It's really sad case. What do you think would call, what do you think would justify an independent investigation like that? What would actually trigger that? Well, I think if they can determine, you know, a lot of mistakes were made. Maybe the department does need to be audited and have special training, you know, for these investigators moving forward. But I don't know what would spark an audit of the entire department. I mean, if they could obviously prove that this was somehow racially motivated to, you know,

not fully investigate, then absolutely. But I don't, I just don't believe that to be true. And I don't know what would cause some federal agency to come in as like an oversight or, you know, audit. I don't, this department isn't one that you're constantly seeing in the news for doing corrupt or bad things so that might be very challenging i can understand their frustration completely understand their frustration but i think you make a really good point about what the realistic expectations are and what the procedure is in these kinds of cases kyle showberg thank you so much if you want to hear more of kyle check out the shots fired podcast thanks so much my friend all right thanks guys i appreciate you 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.