Park Predators - The Stepfather

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

When a teenage boy with special needs in California disappears without a trace, authorities are up against the clock to find him. However, once his remains are discovered in a shallow grave in a national park amongst some of the most unique plants on earth, investigators set their sights to find a killer much closer to home.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-stepfather Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators  | /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today is one that, as a parent, absolutely wrecked me. Just a warning up front, it deals with criminal violence against a child by a caregiver. So if that is subject matter you find yourself particularly sensitive to, please take care while listening. The story centers around Sequoia National Park in California, a recreation space that's been referred to as the land of the giants because of the famously tall and famously old sequoia trees that exist there. According to the National Park Service and Britannica.com,

these mammoth trees grow in groves and are some of the most unique plants on Earth. They require high elevation environments like the Sierra Nevada Mountains to thrive, and at one point they were considered to be the oldest living things on the planet, though that fact has since been disputed. Winding all around these natural marvels are hundreds of miles of paved and unpaved trails that traverse through Sequoia National Park as well as neighboring Kings Canyon National Park. In addition to the staple sequoia trees, there are also many different species of wildlife in this rugged part of California, including mule deer, varieties of fish and birds, 14

different types of snakes, and of course, apex predators, you know, mountain lions and black bears. In November 2013, though, a different type of predator visited Sequoia National Park, and they used the land of the giants to cover up an unspeakable act. When the truth was finally revealed, some people in Central California would never see the sacred innocence of that region the same. This is Park Predators. ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ Around 7.30 p.m. on the evening of Monday, November 18, 2013,

Andrea Villegas Pacheco walked into the front door of her house after working her shift as a nurse and plugged in her cell phone. Lately, the battery on her device had been cutting on and off, so she'd gone several hours that day unable to receive or make calls. Once she got a charge built up, though, she powered it on and checked to see if she had any missed calls. And sure enough, she did have one. Earlier that day, she'd received a call from the automated phone system for Valley Oak Middle School in Visalia, California. The voicemail message informed her that her 14-year-old son,

Damian Gulley, who everyone referred to by the nickname Luke, had not shown up for classes that morning. Court documents state that Andrea immediately asked her husband, 32-year-old Miguel Pacheco, who was unemployed and a stay-at-home dad, to the couple's two toddlers if he'd seen Luke at all, to which Miguel replied he hadn't. He told his wife that the last time he'd seen his stepson was around 6.30 a.m. when he'd left their house for school. Now, naturally, Andrea did what I think a lot of parents who find themselves in a similar situation like this would do. She went over to the neighbors on their street to ask if any of them had seen her son.

When nothing fruitful came from those conversations, she asked her husband to call the Visalia Police Department so that they could report Luke missing. Shortly after receiving that phone call, an officer from the department came to the couple's house in Visalia and took a report. The police department wasted no time in getting the Tulare County Sheriff's Office and the FBI involved. Eric Woomer reported for the Visalia Times-Delta that Andrea and Miguel told investigators Luke always walked or biked the same way from their house to get to his school, which took him on a trail past a nearby body of water called the St. Johns River. The couple said it was out of character for Luke to take a different path than his normal one or stop somewhere along the St. Johns River. The couple said it was out of character for Luke to take a different path

than his normal one or stop somewhere along the way. Miguel described the outfit he'd last seen Luke in as shorts, a blue hoodie, gray shoes, and a black backpack with red stripes. Kyle Harvey reported for the Visalia Times-Delta that Luke had what was medically recognized at the time as Asperger's syndrome, which the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders states is one of the five forms of autism. He was also on medication to help with his diagnosis. And because of this, Andrea and Miguel wanted law enforcement to treat Luke's case with a bit more urgency,

considering the fact that he had a disability. And over the next few days, the searches for Luke did kick into high gear. From Tuesday, November 19th through Thursday, November 21st, the sheriff's office used its airplane to scour terrain near the St. John's River, looking for any trace of Luke. Some of his middle school classmates got involved too and went out on foot to the trail along the St. John's River that Luke should have taken to get to his school. Police also did things that seem kind of routine in cases like this.

They checked local bus stations and parks and even knocked on the doors of all the nearby registered sex offenders and questioned them. Other resources used in the search for Luke included the sheriff's office's all-terrain vehicles, which were a big help when it came to covering more rugged, hard-to-diverse areas in the county. While Luke's mother and stepfather watched everything that was unfolding in front of them and waited for updates, they reached out to local newspapers and TV stations to get the word out that Luke was missing. They also drove around the county posting handmade information flyers to try and get as much attention on the case as possible. Back at the Pacheco's house, detectives searched Luke's bedroom,

and they discovered that a pair of his shoes were missing, along with his backpack and some clothes, which indicated that he had left for school on Monday morning. And it's this detail that introduced some friction between Luke's loved ones and law enforcement. You see, according to Eric Woomer's reporting for the Visalia Times-Delta, Andre and Miguel voiced that they felt police seemed to want to treat Luke's case more like a runaway situation rather than a potential abduction or serious crime.

They told media outlets that they were unhappy with how law enforcement was approaching things and didn't think the investigation should have been assigned to the department's youth services division. At least one article I read in the source material reported that the official label police put on Luke's case was that he was a missing endangered juvenile. Nothing specifically said that detectives believed he'd been abducted or anything like that. But regardless of how police presented Luke's disappearance to the public, or how much his mother and stepfather begged the community for information, no sign of the 14-year-old turned up in those first few days.

However, that all changed on the evening of Thursday, November 21st. The Isalia Times-Delta reported that as the sun was setting that day, an off-duty park ranger for Sequoia National Park, who was walking her dog on a dead-end dirt trail near an area known as Ash Mountain near Buckeye Flat, stumbled upon an area of disturbed ground and what looked like a partially buried red blanket. The makeshift grave was about 10 miles outside one of the park's entrances and about five to six feet down an embankment. Inside the blanket were decomposing human remains that were barefoot.

And just from the looks of it, the body appeared to have been dumped there recently because it was just barely covered with loose dirt, which I think probably told the off-duty ranger that no significant weather event or scavenging wildlife had gotten to the body yet. Not long after making this gruesome discovery, the ranger walking her dog called some colleagues with the National Park Service, and right away those folks radioed investigators with the FBI

and the Visalia Police Department, who were in charge of Luke's case. It was dark by the time the local and federal detectives made it out to the park to view the body, so they decided to hold off processing the scene until the next morning, Friday, November 22nd. According to the source material, authorities didn't publicly come right out and confirm who the victim was. However, Eric Woomer reported for the Visalia Times-Delta that on the night the body was discovered, Thursday the 21st, Miguel Pacheco happened to mention to the newspaper

that he and his wife Andrea were deeply saddened to learn that Luke was dead. So I think that comment kind of unofficially confirmed, at least to the media, that the body in the park was in fact Luke. The following day, November 22nd, a doctor with the local coroner's office conducted an official autopsy. The physician found concerning injuries almost immediately. There were very clear ligature strangulation marks on Luke's neck, which told police investigators everything they needed to know. Luke had not gone into the park on his own free will and died.

Someone had brutally murdered him and then callously dumped him down that dirt embankment like garbage. The doctor who did the autopsy told investigators that most likely Luke's killer had used some kind of rope or cord to strangle him. But it was unclear from the injuries exactly how long it would have taken for the young man to die. It could have been anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes. A heartbreaking thought to consider, I know. Now, at the time, these autopsy findings weren't seconds to several minutes. A heartbreaking thought to consider, I know. Now, at the time, these autopsy findings weren't released to the public. This was information that only law enforcement knew. And with it, they were on a much better

track to identify Luke's killer. And as it turns out, they weren't looking very far from home. According to court documents filed in this case, as soon as Luke's body was found, law enforcement investigators set their sights on Andrea and Miguel to provide them with some much-needed answers about what had happened to him. On Sunday, November 24th, one week after Luke had last been accounted for, and Miguel to provide them with some much-needed answers about what had happened to him. On Sunday, November 24th, one week after Luke had last been accounted for, detectives separated the couple for questioning. Both of them denied any involvement in the teen's death, and that's where things sort of halted for the time being.

However, three days later, on Wednesday, November 27th, the Visalia Police Department announced they'd arrested a suspect. And that person was none other than Miguel Pacheco. I know, I kind of moved fast there, but trust me, I'll explain more. Because all the questions you might be having right now, I'm pretty sure people living in Visalia, California back in 2013 also had too. It wasn't immediately clear to the public why law enforcement had made this move to arrest Miguel, but it seems like from reading the source material that it might have had something to do with the fact that local law enforcement officers had been to the

Pacheco household numerous times in the past for domestic incidents between Miguel and Luke. And they'd also learned that Miguel had previously worked as a bus driver for a transportation service that shuttled visitors in and out of Sequoia National Park during the summers. So at least to investigators, that seemed like Miguel could have had a more in-depth knowledge than the average person of roads in the park that were not well-traveled, aka roads that were dead ends with embankments and would be great places to try and hide a body. On top of that, there was a pretty clear inconsistency in his testimony when he told the police initially that he'd only heard Luke leave

for school, but then upon further questioning, was able to give a description of what clothing Luke was wearing, which would indicate that he saw him and not just heard him leave. The same day as Miguel's arrest, the department held a press conference to update the public about what was going on and emphasized in broad terms why they were so confident he was their guy.

According to articles by Eric Woomer for the Visalia Times Delta, the police chief told reporters that detectives had believed almost from the start that Miguel was somehow responsible for what happened to Luke. The chief said, quote, based on the location and evidence at the scene, we knew there was foul play. It became apparent that Miguel Angel Villegas Pacheco was responsible for this death and was arrested, end quote. Now, among other things mentioned in that announcement, investigators also revealed that they had narrowed down the time frame they felt Luke had been killed.

But there was just one glaring problem. That window of time was huge. Detectives thought the crime had happened sometime between Monday, November 18th and Thursday, November 21st, so quite literally days. Now I imagine with such a big date range like that sticking out like a sore thumb, the prosecutor's office knew that was not going to play well to a future jury, which meant the pressure was on law enforcement to dig their heels in a bit more and really try to figure out exactly when Miguel could have committed the crime and when he would have disposed of Luke's body in the National Park.

I read in several articles that initially authorities weren't sure exactly how long Luke had even been dead when his remains were found, but I imagine logic told them that most likely he'd been killed shortly before or after he first went missing, which would have been sometime on either Sunday, November 17th or Monday, November 18th. Anyway, after police made this newsworthy arrest, the local prosecutor had to actually charge Miguel with a crime. Most of the source material states that when Miguel was first arrested, he was just held on suspicion of homicide, but not actually charged with murder. Eric Woomer reported for the Visalia Times-Delta that the district attorney in Tulare County had 48 hours from the moment of Miguel's arrest

to decide whether or not to formally charge the 32-year-old with Luke's murder. If the prosecutor waited any longer than that, he would walk free. Interestingly, it seems like that 48-hour deadline didn't take into account the weekend, though. And so on Monday, December 2nd, with Miguel still in custody, the district attorney's office officially filed a first-degree murder charge against him. And later that afternoon, he was arraigned into Larry County Superior Court. He pled not guilty to the charges against him and told the judge that he didn't have a lawyer and wasn't expecting anyone in his or Luke's family to pay for one.

He was denied bail and remained behind bars for the time being. The serious nature of the charges he was facing meant if he was eventually convicted, he could have gone to prison for the rest of his life. A woman named Elizabeth Lopez, who showed up at the arraignment and claimed to the Visalia Times Delta reporter Eric Woomer to be Luke's aunt, said, quote, I am not really happy with Miguel right now, end quote. On Saturday, November 30th, almost two weeks after Luke was first reported missing and nine days after his remains were discovered, his loved ones held a service for him at Sierra Baptist Church in Visalia. From what I was able to gather from the source material, it doesn't seem like Miguel attended the funeral or burial because he was still being held in jail

at the time. Luke's obituary explained that he got his nickname Luke from his grandfather, who had started calling him that just a few months after he was born. The reference was a shout-out to the well-known Star Wars character, Luke Skywalker, from the popular film franchise. The teen had always gone by that name, instead of his real first name, Damien. Court documents detail that Luke's birth father was never a part of his life and had no involvement raising him. The source material doesn't go into a ton of detail about if Luke had a robust social life,

but according to his obituary, he did have a girlfriend at the time of his death, and he played several sports, including soccer, basketball, and football. He also enjoyed reading, spending time outdoors, and playing video games. And even as busy as all those activities kept him, he also found time to give back and

pour a lot of his energy and kind personality into making other people happy. For example, in Kyle Harvey's piece for the Visalia Times-Delta, it was reported that as young as 9 or 10 years old, Luke volunteered at Tulare Nursing and Rehabilitation, a senior citizen home that his mother worked at as a nurse. There, he'd spend his afternoons and weekends visiting the elderly residents, cooking meals for them in the facility's kitchen, hollering out bingo numbers, and entertaining them with his dance moves to Michael Jackson's songs. He also had a special connection with some of the residents who'd been diagnosed with dementia.

Luke reportedly had a special bond with these folks and was a big help whenever they had outbursts or bad reactions to things that upset them. One woman who lived at the facility and knew Luke well told reporter Kyle Harvey, quote, we've all been real sad about it. He was good to us older people. He beat me at checkers every time we played. He was a good kid, end quote. On Wednesday, December 4th, two days after Miguel's arraignment and four days after Luke's funeral,

the employees and residents at the senior citizen facility held a celebration of life event to remember their favorite teen volunteer. After a short ceremony, they released red balloons, which was Luke's favorite color. The home also contributed $3,000 of donated money to a fund that had been set up to pay for Luke's funeral expenses. And it was at this community gathering where Visalia Times-Delta reporter Kyle Harvey got what appears from the source material to be the first public interview with Andrea Villegas Pacheco about her son's murder and her husband's arrest. She told Harvey that essentially her entire world had been turned upside down.

She said her two younger kids, Rosie and Miguel Jr., whom she shared with Miguel, and were also Luke's half-siblings, were only two years old and three years old at the time. She said they were having a really hard time understanding what had happened. She told the newspaper, quote, They're emotional, scared, confused.

They've lost two family members in the last couple weeks. I can't even go to another room without taking them with me. They say, I miss my Luke and I miss my dad." She also clarified during this interview that despite being frustrated early on with how the police department had investigated Luke's case, she was thankful for everything that detectives had done to try and find answers. She told the publication, quote, I may not have understood some of their tactics, but we will forever be grateful, end quote.

At Miguel's next court hearing more than a week later on December 13th, which was a Friday, he and his public defender conferenced with the prosecutor's office ahead of a preliminary hearing, which was scheduled for the following Monday, December 16th. The goal of that hearing was to let the judge over the case rule on whether there was enough evidence to move forward with the murder case and eventually take Miguel to trial. By that point, law enforcement had been working behind the scenes more and narrowed down the time frame in which they believed Miguel had killed Luke. They thought that sometime on Sunday, November 17th, the day before Luke was reported missing,

Miguel had murdered him at the family's house in Visalia. According to reporting by the Associated Press, Fresno Bee, and court documents I received from Tulare County Superior Court, it was statements that Miguel had made to investigators shortly after Luke's body was found that had sealed his fate. A lot of the details from those interrogations came to light during the December 16 preliminary hearing. A detective from the police department took the stand and told the court that while initially being questioned, Miguel had confessed that while watching his two toddlers on the night

of Sunday, November 17th, he'd argued with his stepson about the teenager's attitudes and actions toward him. That fight had carried over from an argument Luke and Miguel had gotten into earlier that day when Luke hadn't been at a park that he'd told Miguel he was going to be at, and the two of them disagreeing about whether he could go over to a friend's house. According to the investigator's testimony, Miguel had said that shortly before Andrea got home from work on Sunday night, he and Luke had gotten into a verbal and physical altercation

while they were both in Luke's bedroom. Miguel said Luke had hit and kicked him twice, and in retaliation, he'd flown into a fit of rage, gotten on top of Luke, grabbed a nearby electrical cord from a portable fan, and tightened it around the 14-year-old's neck. When that didn't seem to work, Miguel said he'd then looped the cord around Luke's head a second time and pulled it even tighter. The same detective that testified about all this said that Miguel had estimated he kept the cord around Luke's neck for more than three minutes until the teen stopped moving entirely.

Now, according to court records, Miguel was a 5'8 former high school wrestler who weighed 180 pounds, so way bigger than his teenage stepson, who was at most 130 pounds. bigger than his teenage stepson, who was, at most, 130 pounds. With that reality in mind, it was pretty clear for everyone who was hearing the details of this crime to imagine just how horrific Luke's last moments on Earth must have been. Immediately following the attack, Miguel said he put a blanket around his stepson's body and left him wrapped up in that blanket and propped up in bed, so that when Andrea got home, she'd just think her son was sleeping or had called it an early night. He told investigators that evening he and Andrea had cooked dinner for themselves and the two younger children,

tucked the toddlers into bed, and then sat out on the sofa alone and watched TV. Around midnight, after everyone in the house was asleep, he said he removed Luke's body from his bedroom by dragging it through the house and he stuffed it into the family's van before driving over an hour away to Sequoia National Park to dispose of it. He also admitted to cleaning up some liquid

that had come out of Luke's mouth during the crime and getting rid of his stepson's backpack, eyeglasses, shoes, and clothing to throw police off track and make detectives think that Luke had left voluntarily or run away. He said when it was all said and done, he'd arrived home around 3.15 in the morning on November 18th and went to bed.

Now, court documents state that Andrea, Miguel's wife, was completely unaware of what had taken place in the family's house during the night of November 17th. Her story was that she'd gotten home from work around 7.30 p.m. that Sunday after working a 12-hour shift, and she'd gone to check on Luke in his bedroom. She'd noticed he was lying in his bed covered with a blanket, and so she didn't disturb him. At the time, she thought that it was unusual for her son to be in bed so early, but she didn't think too much of it. Later that night, she said she woke up alone in bed

and heard a noise that sounded like something being pulled across the hardwood floors in their house, as well as the squirting sound of their Swiffer mop being used. However, once again, she didn't get up and investigate further. She figured it was just Miguel messing around and cleaning in the middle of the night or something, or maybe tending to their wood-burning stove. In addition to his confession, Miguel had led FBI agents and local investigators to the exact spot in the national park where Luke's remains had been located by that off-duty park ranger. An article by Cheyenne Romero for the Visalia Times Delta reported that a key

piece of evidence that led police to put the pressure on Miguel in the first place was that they'd retrieved surveillance video from Sequoia National Park that showed him in his family's minivan driving through a park entrance in the early morning hours of November 18th. So right around the time he would eventually confess to getting rid of Luke's body. Now, what Miguel's defense attorney argued to combat all this damning evidence and the detailed confession threw some people for a loop. He outright admitted that his client was a killer, but not in the way anyone thought. Once it came out in court that Miguel had confessed to brutally killing his stepson, his court-appointed public defender argued that the 32-year-old had not intended to murder Luke,

but instead had just accidentally killed the boy in an act of self-defense because he was trying to protect himself and his two toddlers, who were also inside the family's home at the time. Basically, the lawyer painted a picture that portrayed Luke as the main aggressor in the incident that had led up to his death. And because of that, the defense wanted the charges against Miguel to be changed from first-degree murder to voluntary manslaughter, which would come with a much lighter prison sentence. The Visalia Times-Delta reported that the defense attorney told the court, quote, it's a horrific, horrific accident. He's extremely

remorseful. Damien attacked him, and he didn't think. It spiraled out of control from there, attacked him, and he didn't think. It spiraled out of control from there." But the judge presiding over the preliminary hearing didn't buy that story, and he ordered Miguel to stand trial for first-degree murder, not voluntary manslaughter. Andrea's reaction to the defense's self-defense strategy and all the gruesome details that had come out in court during the December 16th preliminary hearing was visceral. She told the Visalia Times-Delta, quote, I am very angry. This was very hard to hear, end quote. A few months later, in April 2014, Miguel's trial date was delayed so that his defense attorney could conduct a thorough investigation of the crime and get through all the discovery materials that the state had provided.

The trial was delayed again in late 2014 and rescheduled for late January 2015, which was more than a year after Luke's murder. During that time, Andrea and Miguel's marriage went south. A lot of the source material I found repeatedly refers to the couple's spousal relationship as estranged. Under California's Marcy's Law, which protects victims of crimes of being contacted by persons who have allegedly committed crimes against them, Andrea exercised her right to refuse to speak with the investigators that Miguel's public defender hired to work on the case. She told the Visalia Times-Delta that she didn't want to be asked questions by her husband's legal team or visited by anyone who was representing him for

the murder of her son. She was not exempt from being called as a witness, though, when the case did eventually go to trial in early November 2016, three years after the crime. One particularly powerful family member witness who testified in front of jurors was one of Luke's aunts, Katie Matthews. She told the court that right after Andrea and Miguel got married in 2011, the relationship between Luke and Miguel had been fine.

The pair had gotten along well and did things like play video games together and hang out. However, over time, she'd heard stories from Luke that Miguel had become verbally and physically abusive toward him, and this had happened shortly after Andrea had become pregnant with Rosie, the first of her and Miguel's two younger children. There were little things that had made Katie suspect Miguel wanted Luke out of the picture, things like excluding him from family photos and yelling at him at home. According to Katie's testimony in court, before his murder, Luke told

her that Miguel was quote, like a drill sergeant at home, end quote. Katie also said that the 14-year-old had expressed that he felt unwanted by his stepfather. Court documents also detailed how Miguel would purposely damage the discs that Luke's video games were on and sometimes keep his bedroom door closed so that the teen would get cold during the wintertime. There was also another heartbreaking account from an after-school program coordinator

for Luke's middle school who said that after she'd notified Luke at the start of the 2013-2014 school year that he would need to be put on a waiting list for a popular after-school program. He'd begged her to let him stay anyway, just so that he wouldn't have to go home and be around his stepfather. The staff member told the court that Luke had tried to convince her to just not count him on the program's attendance sheet so that she wouldn't get in trouble for having too many kids in the program.

After several days of more witness testimony and opposing arguments from both sides, the case went to the jury on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 8th. The next morning, November 9th, the panel returned with a guilty verdict. Cheyenne Romero reported for the Visalia Times-Delta that Andrea's reaction to the news was gratitude. Outside of the courtroom after the verdict was read, she and her supporters received the long-awaited justice they'd been looking forward to with tears of joy. Andrea told the newspaper a concern that had weighed heavily on her mind was the thought of Miguel getting acquitted and then coming after her and her two youngest kids.

She told the reporter for the article, quote, this gives us so much security. We can finally sleep at night, end quote. In early January 2017, Miguel was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The judge who presided over the sentencing hearing threw the book at him and remarked in court saying, quote, Are you kidding me? A 14-year-old boy and you're claiming self-defense? Maybe you need to look in the mirror. You're a bad man. You deserve to go to prison for the rest of your life. End quote.

Right before that decision, prosecutors had filed some additional paperwork before the sentencing hearing to explain in more detail why they thought Miguel should receive the maximum penalty of 25 years to life. The state said there were a number of aggravating factors associated with the crime, which included the fact that he'd acted with a high degree of cruelty, viciousness, and callousness towards a victim who was particularly vulnerable. viciousness and callousness towards a victim who was particularly vulnerable. They also made sure to point out that Miguel had purposely staged his stepson's dead body inside the teenager's room for hours after the crime, just to trick his wife into thinking Luke was still alive, but asleep.

Andrea also publicly condemned her ex-husband's cruel actions. She told Eric Woomer with the Visalia Times-Delta that she didn't think Miguel felt bad at all about what he'd done to her son. She expressed how disturbing it was to watch him during his trial as he smirked and laughed and was even chided by the judge for lying to the jury. By the time Miguel was sentenced, she and her kids had severed all ties with him. In fact, Cheyenne Romero reported for the Visalia Times-Delta that little Miguel Jr. had asked his mother if he could legally change his name to Andrew

instead of carrying his father's first name. Andrea fully supported this move, and from that point on, Miguel Jr. was Andrew. Today, Miguel Pacheco remains behind bars, and according to California's inmate records website, he will not be eligible for parole until the year 2029. He appealed his conviction shortly after his trial ended, but a higher court denied it a few years later in 2019. Regarding her son's murder, Andrea had previously told reporter Kyle Harvey in a written statement, quote, She emphasized to reporter Eric Woomer that it was heart-wrenching to watch her two other kids

continually mourn losing their favorite big brother. She said they often asked about Luke and gazed at pictures of him, trying to remember the good times they had with him. Several family members told the Visalia Times-Delta that in hindsight, they felt they could have done more to protect Luke. From as young as 10 years old, which would have been about a year after Miguel came into his life, Luke's teachers had noticed him coming to school with deep bruises on his body.

And they reported those incidents to police. Officers had interviewed Luke about where the injuries came from, but at the time, he'd brushed it off and come up with a reasonable story. After his murder, loved ones found letters Luke had written to himself, stashed away in his bedroom. One of those notes detailed a time where Miguel had punched him so violently, he'd left the teenager with a noticeable black eye. Referencing this incident in a letter Luke wrote to himself and then later hid, he penned,

quote, He asked me to tell my mom that I was hit in the face with a baseball at school, putting his arm around me and told me that he loves me like his own son. I told him I wouldn't tell, so I think it's going to be okay, end quote. I imagine Luke's words tragically haunt the family members who still grapple with guilt. In the end, his mother ultimately got the final word about her son when she said to the Visalia Times-Delta, quote, I want to make sure it is known by Miguel and the judge and the world

that this boy was absolutely amazing. He had a life and a light, a smile a mile wide. His smile was so big his ears would raise up at the same time. He would do anything for anybody, end quote. And in the end, I hope that the memory I've left you with regarding 14-year-old Damien Luke Gulley is one that you'll never forget. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?