Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - No Greater Betrayal - The Murder of Mason Dominguez

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

February 22, 2022: Four-year-old Mason’s body is discovered hidden in a freezer in his mom’s boyfriend’s garage. In our debut episode, we explore this tragic murder, a case that highlights the devastating impact of domestic violence and coercive control. Join us as we discuss how Mason’s mom and sister were able to escape from accused murderer and domestic abuser, Brandon Toseland.Toseland has pleaded not guilty to 12 felony counts and is facing the death penalty. The case is heading to trial in 2025. https://sinspod.co/episode1sources Domestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag!Apple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.

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Las Vegas every four minutes. What you may not know is that it's also the domestic violence capital of the world. There's an incident of domestic violence in Las Vegas every 17 minutes. Join us as we explore the horrifying reality of domestic violence in the city of Las Vegas and its lasting effects on survivors, their families, and the community. Hi, and welcome to the very first episode of Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast that examines true crime cases in the Las Vegas area with a particular focus on domestic violence. I'm your host, Sean, and with me, as always, is my co-host, the one and only John. I am the only John in the room. Very true. So, John, you are the one who came up with the idea for this podcast. So,

will you share with the audience a little bit about how you came up with this idea? Yeah. So, you and I attended the True Crime and Paranormal Podcast Festival in August in Austin, run by Lainey, which was awesome. And we noticed a common thread in so many of the stories we heard about and all the cases we heard about, and really all the cases we've been hearing about for years now, which is that many of them have an aspect of domestic violence. So I thought, what they're missing in many cases is an expert to really do a deep dive into the topic of domestic violence. And I thought, well, Sean's an expert in this. We both have a strong interest in true crime, and we have an interest in helping and educating victims and everybody, really. So I just saw an opportunity to fill that void. Yeah. And when you shared the idea with me, I really attached to it. And I really wanted to press us to get our first episode out in October because October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

So it was very important to me that we launch as soon as we possibly could. And I know that was very ambitious. And I am so grateful that we had the help from our friends at PNW Haunts and Homicides, True Crime Stories with Lainey Hobbs, and all the podcasts we chatted with at the True Crime and Paranormal Festival. I'm grateful for what I've been able to learn so far from the True Crime Research Training course founded by Haley and Andrea. And I think that really helped give us a strong foundation and a lot of guidance as we put this podcast together. Yeah. Super big shout out to Caitlin

and Cassie from PNW Haunts and Homicides and Lainey Hobbs, of course, who helped inspire this. And of course, the folks over at the TCPT team for helping us kickstart our research methods and really centering our brains on how to really do some proper research on these sorts of things. So just a kind of a quickie list of other podcasts that inspired us with their focus on victim-focused true crime and empathetic, ethical, and overall helpful podcasts, rather than what I saw in the past as somewhat, I'm going to say predatory. That's hard. Yeah, exploitative. Yeah. That was always a big turnoff for me. So, you know, podcasts like True Consequences,

The Survivor Squad, Navigating Advocacy, Voices for Justice, and really so many more really made me realize that there was a space for a podcast like ours, where what we really care about is educating people and, you know, raising the consciousness of the collective podcasting, podcast consuming community. Awesome. Yeah, I agree. I'm with you 100%. And that is, I guess, a good segue into us introducing ourselves. So I guess I'll go first. Hi, I'm Sean. My first internship working with victims of crime was during college. So I would say for at I was in law school, I was able to assist victims and survivors of domestic violence. But after law school, I decided not to go into legal practice because I wanted to work more in crime prevention and addressing factors that either cause crime or correlate with

crime like poverty and mental health issues, substance use disorders, those kinds of issues. I currently work as a grant writer and a policy writer. And I think, like I said, you came up with a really great concept for a podcast here, and I'm excited to see where these conversations take us. Cool. And I am your co-host, Sean. It's clear that I am the co-host. Sean is the host because she is the expert. I am your support staff. So I've been living in Las Vegas about 12 years, and I've been a technology professional for about 25 years. I'm not sure how that happened. But I've always had a side interest in criminology. I became interested in true crime and podcasts with serial, like so many people, whatever. Everybody says that,

and it's true. But like I said before, I was always bothered by anything predatory or exploitative of victims of their families and forcing families to relive their trauma against their will for the sake of podcast content. I'm much more interested in podcasting now that we have the ethical true crime movement and i love to see that it's growing um i've always been interested in martial arts and i've done i've been doing it since the 80s whatever weird flex but i did jujitsu most recently uh when i was in new york i kind of stopped when i came here for reasons i will probably not go into on this podcast. But the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community is fantastic, especially in New York. I studied with a world champion there named Shaolin, who you can Google. He's amazing. And there were a lot of women in the class, co-ed class,

and I always thought it was fantastic that women took Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And I thought every woman in the world should take five years of this because it's really fantastic for self-defense. But it also reminds me that it rather sucks that we live in a world where every woman in the world needs to practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu so that they can get out of a chokehold, which is going to come up later in our very first episode. Yes. And I'm looking forward to your Tech Corner segments over the season as well. Oh, I didn't mention that. I will be doing my own sort of episodes where I'll be hosting every few episodes called Tech Corner. And I will be focused on things like technology as related to domestic violence, things like

cyberstalking and increasing your privacy online. We might talk about the latest release of iOS or Android and what new features it's going to give you to protect yourself, stuff like that. So I think episode three, we're planning to do our first tech corner. Yeah, awesome. So with that, let's dive into our first case. So I wanted to share that when we came up with the concept, we started bouncing the idea off of our friends here in Las Vegas just to kind of see what they would say or what they would think about it. And when you talked about it to one specific friend of ours, one case came to his mind immediately. And he was like,

are you going to cover the Mason-Dominguez case? And to be honest, I did not think that we would cover it so soon in the podcast. But originally, the trial for that case would have started earlier this week. And I think given some of the facts of this case, I'm surprised it hasn't had more attention nationally in the national media. And this is a case that more people definitely need to know about. Horrifically, it has to do with the murder of a five-year-old boy. So yeah, this first case is heavy. So we're jumping right into it. This five-year-old boy, his name was Mason Dominguez. And we've decided that it's important to talk about what an amazing little boy he was before we even get close to talking about, you know, what happened to him.

So let's talk a little bit about Mason. So he was born October 3rd, 2017. So he would have turned seven earlier this month. Mason has one older sister who's about two years older than him. And we're withholding her name because she's a minor. And he also has two cousins that were living with him in the house at the time. His dad, Elijah, or Eli, tragically passed away from pneumonia in 2021 when Mason was about four years old. They both left behind a huge family of aunts, uncles, grandparents who miss them every day and who will never be the same.

Some of the things that we've read about him include that he loved basketball, he loved swimming, he was fearless, he was the first one in the pool, he was on the diving board, absolutely fearless. Being a three or four-year-old, he loved Paw Patrol and Sonic the Hedgehog, which I particularly love because Sonic the Hedgehog was the very first video game that got me addicted to video games. Back in the day, he was the type of kid that created silly nicknames for his family members. And he was really bright. At only age three, he knew all of his letters and numbers. And he knew how to make the sign for I love you in sign language, which his dad had taught him. Yeah. And I want to share with everyone this description of Mason that was a quote from his

aunt, I believe that was on their family's GoFundMe. It says, this sweet child had a precious little voice, an upbeat attitude, and a laugh that would melt your heart. If you were blessed to meet him, you knew he was this sensitive soul who could do no wrong. Those big brown eyes and golden curls So here on Sins and Survivors, we focus on cases with an aspect of domestic violence. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. You can kind of see where this is going. Let's discuss what led up to Mason's murder.

So as we mentioned, Mason's dad died in 2021 of pneumonia. We're not sure if it was COVID-related or whatever, but he did die of pneumonia. According to Mason's mom, whose name we are also withholding per her request, not specifically to us, but we have read that she does not want to be in the media, so we're withholding her name. She and her two kids, Mason and his sister, moved in with Brandon Tozland. So Brandon Tozland is our alleged murderer, alleged and charged murderer. They moved in together a few months later. Tozland was a friend of the family who, and I'm going to quote here, offered his mom comfort after her husband's passing. From the grand jury testimony documents, we have nearly 100 pages of transcript where Mason's mom describes kind of how all this came about.

So at first, everything was going well. Things went very smoothly. They moved in together. But over time, Brandon became even more controlling and possessive over time. And he was about 10 years older than she was, just for reference. He was controlling how she spent her money, where she went, and he would do things like accusing her of cheating, screaming in her face. Yeah, he started taking her cell phone away from her. And he also started separating Mason from her, isolating the two of them. And in September of 2021, he made her withdraw him from preschool. And at the time, she was working a full-time job. And Tozlin stayed home and cared for the kids. So Mason, Mason's sister, and then Tozlin has two biological kids from a previous relationship that he had joint custody with their

mom. So there were four children in the household, two of them full-time, and the other two part of the time. So the relationship with Brandon and Mason, from what we've read, it seemed like Brandon's attitude was that he needed to toughen Mason up, Mason, who was four years old. He always hated when his mom babied him in any way, so he would act accordingly. In September, shortly thereafter, things started turning violent. Mason's mom testified to the grand jury that Tozlin began shoving her at first, and then it progressed to him using chokeholds on her, as mentioned earlier, she started discovering lacerations and bruises on Mason, and she confronted Tozland about it, and he basically copped to it and said he apologized and took it too far, and he admitted that he had been hitting Mason with a spatula.

So all of this is horrific, and according to the family's attorney, Mr. Tozlan, this is a quote from the family's attorney, so Mason's mom and sister's attorney, Mr. Tozlan's house was fortified with locks, window alarms, motion sensors, video cameras, gates, keyhole entrances to every room. You needed a key to go in or out, and the windows were covered. He goes on to say that Brandon took over the victim mother's social media, car keys, and phone and contacted her work via text message to quit her job in December 2021. So this is where it all comes to a head. On December 10th, Mason said he wasn't feeling well, again, from grand jury testimony. So Brandon took him into the master

bedroom with him, and he locked the door. And that was the last time his mom ever saw him alive. When Brandon came out, he knocked the mom to the floor in a rage and put her in a chokehold, all from the grand jury testimony again. Mason's mom several times said in her testimony that she would ask about Mason, but specifically on December 17th, she confronted him asking where Mason was. And Brandon Tozland restrained her with duct tape, put his hand over her nose and mouth and told her that Mason was dead and he didn't want it reported to the authorities because he'd be charged with murder. She said from that point forward, and this is a quote from her testimony, I thought he was going to kill me, so I needed to comply with whatever

he wanted. So he started barricading her in one of the bedrooms of the house, keeping her separated from her daughter. She has stated that he would handcuff her in the car whenever they went anywhere. And as I said previously, he completely took her phone away. And this is another quote from Mason's mom. He would tell me, you know, I'm so desperate right now and murder is murder. One body or 10 bodies, it doesn't matter at this point. And he Googled missing people in the United States. He showed me that over 500,000 people go missing and are never found. And he told me that he can cut me up into a million pieces and they'd never find me. So one thing I don't know if we're planning to cover later, but I'm going to mention that one of the things the police found when they finally did breach the property, get on property, is that there was a grave in the backyard. There are pictures out there and

you can see it where this is just a little house in Henderson, just like every other house, just like our house here in the Las Vegas area. And there was a legit grave, like a six-foot-deep grave next to a trampoline. So this woman is being held captive, living in fear for months, and she's trying to figure out what her opportunity is to escape. So although they pulled Mason out of school, that was one of the things that he did previously, he insisted that they pull him out of school, and it seems like probably that was because it was pretty obvious he was being abused. But her daughter is still going to school, so the mom is now writing notes on a pad of sticky notes using a pen she found in the car. And as we talked about earlier, she's taking little moments to write these notes, so a word at a time, here and there, when Brandon isn't directly watching her.

So on the night of February 21st, 22nd, she's with her daughter long enough so that she can tell her daughter to sneak the notes in her sock and give them to her teacher the next day. Then on the morning of February 22nd, 2022, her extremely brave daughter, at risk of her own safety, gives the notes to her teacher. And the note states that basically her mom is being held captive against her will and has no idea where her younger son is. I can't even imagine what that moment was like for her daughter and also for the teacher to be confronted with what's been going on in this young girl's life. The teacher right away, 830 in the morning, calls the police and the police go to the house and they are there by 10 in the morning and they surveil the home for a

short while and they see Tozland and Mason's mom leave the house. And I mentioned this before, I think this was a good tactic by the police that rather than break the door down when a woman could be in danger or escalate the situation, they waited for an opportunity to do a traffic stop to kind of detain the two of them away from the home. So when they pulled Tozland over, there were handcuffs inside the car. Mason's mom was either cuffed to the seat or the steering wheel inside the car. And as you said, when they searched the house, they discovered a large rectangular hole in the process of being dug in the backyard of the house, about six, eight feet deep. And they sadly, tragically discover Mason's body concealed

in a freezer in the garage of the house. So at this time, they place Brandon Tozlin under arrest. The autopsy of Mason later would reveal that he had suffered horrific abuse, multiple internal injuries, including blunt force trauma to his abdomen, damage to his small intestines, extensive bruising, and a bite mark on his left arm. His death was ultimately ruled a homicide due to blunt force trauma. So, Brandon Tozland was born in 1987 or so. He's around age 36. Different if you Google him and look around. It's not clear exactly how old he was, somewhere between 35 and 37.

He has a long and varied criminal history, which will probably come as no surprise to you. He has past accusations and convictions for domestic violence, allegedly punching his sister in the face in front of her baby. In December 2018, again, battery constituting domestic violence, convicted of punching his then-girlfriend in the face, apparently his go-to move, for which he got a 90-day sentence and eight hours of anger management, which he completed. He also was found guilty of DUI and speeding in 2010 and 2011, drugs and alcohol, so both, and also driving with a suspended license. He's got two children from a previous relationship with a woman named Marilee Ruiz, who has gone on the record several times about this. We'll talk a little about her. She, interestingly, is also Mason's aunt and Elijah's sister. Remember, Elijah is Mason's dad. So Mason's dad's sister, Mary Lee, has two children with Brandon from a

previous relationship. So it is very clear that Brandon was associated with the family and had been for a long time. The family dynamic is honestly very complicated. So there are additional cases against Tozland, two by Ms. Ruiz. She sued him for child support in 2018, which he was not paying. Again, this will come as no surprise. And also sued him for child custody. The charges against him, originally there were 10 counts. There are now 12. I'll mention that in a moment. So obviously, he's been charged with Mason's murder. He has three counts for child abuse, neglect, or endangerment resulting in substantial bodily harm. Two counts for child abuse, neglect, or endangerment resulting in substantial bodily harm.

Two counts of child abuse, neglect, or endangerment. One count of first-degree kidnapping of a minor. Two counts of first-degree kidnapping. And three counts of battery constituting domestic violence by strangulation. So, originally there were ten counts, but the daughter also gave testimony to the grand jury, again, so brave. Like, unreal, this little girl did this. She gave her testimony, which resulted in a superseding indictment in September of 2022, where she described being strangled by Tosland, where he used his arm and a vacuum cord to strangle her unconscious.

And it's important to note here that Mason's mom has not been charged with any crimes, and the grand jury did not come back with any indictments for her. They were all for Brandon Tozland. There was no evidence to indict her. Yes, and Brandon Tozland is currently being held without bond at the Clark County Detention Center. He's pleaded not guilty to all the charges. But it's important to note that the prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for this case. And the trial is set to begin in May of 2024. So in about six months from now, the attorney for Mason's mom and sister has stated that Mason's mom and sister, both of them are getting the help and support they need to heal. There is a second civil case that's also going on involving Mason's mom and Brandon Tozland. Mason's mom has filed suit against him in a wrongful death case. And interestingly, Brandon has countersued her claiming that they conspired together to conceal Mason's body. So I think knowing that

and the other facts of this case, that there are people out there in the world who are going to have questions about this case. Because when we hear stories about this, it's very common to place some of the level of blame or responsibility on the victim, on the survivor, and ask questions like, why didn't she fill in the blank? Why didn't she leave? Why didn't she do something sooner? Why didn't she fight back harder? And I just want to advise all of us and just kind of remind everyone out there listening that when we ask questions like this, we may not mean to, but we are completely invalidating the experience of survivors. And that impacts the specific survivor directly, making them feel alone when they are coping with

trauma. But more broadly, it affects all survivors. First, it's likely that survivors have already heard a lot of these comments from their abusers already. Their abusers may tell them they deserve what happens to them, or they brought the abuse on themselves by their behavior. And secondly, on some level, it removes the responsibility from the abuser. It somewhat excuses their behavior and puts it on the victim. And sometimes the reason why this happens is when a person maybe had a previous relationship with the abuser, they know who he is or she is, and they have a preconceived notion about the kind of person they are. So it's difficult for them to accept the behavior of the abuser. So people find ways to maybe explain or lessen what happened. And a lot of times when we're victim

blaming or asking these kinds of questions, this comes from our own fear. We want to believe that we have some control over the bad things that can happen to us, that if we just act right or make the right choices, that nothing bad will happen to us. So when something bad happens, when horrific abuse like this happens, we have to rewrite the story in our minds so we feel safer to assuage our own fears. And if you're a survivor who's heard messages like this either directly or maybe through the media or on social media, it's important to know that what happened to you wasn't your fault and your story is worth believing. And we as a society should work harder on our empathy because it really matters.

So in this case, unbelievably, it still occurs to people to ask, why didn't she leave? Well, in this case, she was literally duct taped in December and barricaded in her bedroom when Tosin told her that her son had died, had been murdered. And when Tosin was apprehended, she was also literally handcuffed in the car. So we often ask, why didn't she leave? This woman couldn't leave. But more generally, it's important to check your biases when you hear yourself thinking this. It's natural to have thoughts like this. It's natural to have biases.

We all have implicit biases. We have implicit biases about race and victimhood and lots of things. Women. And women and their roles. And that's fine. We all have those. But the thing that can set you apart

is when you are aware of these things and you are introspective about them and you examine them and you fight against them and you don't allow yourself to propagate that. And it's also important to remember in this case that Tosland was threatening her. harm to herself, threatened to maybe kill their victim, harm the victim's children or their pets. So Tozin was threatening her and he had already demonstrated to her deep down inside she knew that something had happened to Mason, like even before he confessed to her a week after it happened. So it really demonstrated to her that he was 100% capable of doing something like that. And I can't imagine how paralyzing that fear can

be when your daughter is in the house and all you're trying to do is act right and wait for your window to get out because she was physically held captive, but also from a person that she knew for sure was capable of carrying out the threats that he was making. And remember, she still had her daughter. And I'm sure she was thinking in the back of her mind, she had to keep her daughter safe. So she had to do what she had to do to keep her daughter safe. So a little more on Mason's extended family dynamic. He has a very large extended family.

You know, he's got aunts and grandparents and cousins who loved him very much, and who are obviously and understandably really still struggling with the loss of him, and even still the loss of his father, which happened, you know, shortly before. So there has been reporting about one of his paternal aunts, Marilee, that we talked about, who has two children with Tozland. And according to an interview with 8 News, now live in Las Vegas, that we saw Marilee has come out and she does blame the mom as well as Tozland for what happened to Mason, stating that she feels that Mason was not

protected. I'm not here to judge that assessment, and I think it's natural to have those types of feelings when you've had such a horrific loss in your life. She also says that since her two biological children were in the house, she doesn't really understand why it went on so long and why no one told her why it was happening so um and according to the family they were told that mason was just with his maternal grandma and that's why he wasn't around yeah um this family is coping like you said with the death of um elijah so their son and brother and at same time, they're mourning the death of their nephew and grandson. So they are, of course, in a lot of pain and asking a lot of questions because I think they really want answers. And what we've seen is that they truly want

to find justice for Mason. Mason's funeral was held on March 19th, 2022. And also in April of 2022 in a local park here in Las Vegas, his paternal family held a celebration of life for Mason. It was more of a party atmosphere with face painting and games. And Marilee is quoted as saying, he was so little and he just loved to give hugs and he was coming into himself and we should probably note that the um the mason's dad's side of the family had this celebration of life because they were not invited to the funeral unfortunately yeah so like you said a really complicated family dynamic and a lot of pain.

So we want to just take a moment to express our heartfelt condolences, love, and support to Mason's family and loved one on both sides, maternal and paternal, and send them strength as the trial begins next year. So we appreciate you listening to this one. This was a really

hard one. I guess a lot of them will be. Over the season, we'll be discussing other cases involving domestic violence and occasionally address other important cases happening here in Las Vegas. And occasionally, we will venture outside of Las Vegas and really Nevada at large and address cases where domestic violence has been determined to be a factor. So please email us at questions at sinsandsurvivors.com with case suggestions or suggestions in general, feedback, and for any collaboration. We're happy to have Sean be your expert in domestic violence.

So let us know. And we're happy to have John be your expert in all matters tech and online safety. So you can email techquestions to tech at sinsandsurvivors.com. And we will plan to bring you updates on Mason's case as we have them. And please subscribe and keep listening because what happens here happens everywhere. To listen ad-free, visit S sinspod.co slash subscribe starting at 2.99 a month you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through patreon or apple subscriptions thanks for supporting the show