Snapped: Women Who Murder - Sonia Mitchell

Episode Date: June 23, 2024

When a young father goes missing, authorities suspect his illegal activities, but a revelation about the mother of his children turns the investigation upside down.Season 23 Episode 02Originally aired: January 28, 2018Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

She was a romance mystery writer. They glommed on the fact that she writes stories like this. There are murders in all of the books. From Wondery, the makers of Ghost Story and Feta, this is a story about a murder that rocked my little community. Binge all episodes of Happily Never After ad-free right now on Wondery+. I'm Ted Concafe and this is a man. The whole world knows who you two are. This summer... Julian Norton and his lover were found dead at Hagerty's Waterhole. A mystery thought buried...

They've been hiding for months. Only strikes when there's a need. ...comes back to the surface. When my boy's autopsy came back, there was something in his blood. Not any of the usual shit, something else. Two detectives will stop at nothing. No, no, no, no, there is only room for one bat-shit crazy in this spring.

I am not crazy, I'm angry. To bring the darkness to light. You start talking or I give the police the biggest drug bust this town's ever seen. You believe in karmic justice? I need to see people pay for what they do in this lifetime. Who did this? It feels personal. I got no idea.

Ted, you're never gonna believe this. He's been under our noses this whole time. Ted? Ted! Sonya Mitchell was just a teenager when she met Brian Swartz. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But after 10 years, Sonia would suddenly be a single mother. Brian Schwartz had gone missing. There might have been some foul play involved. The search for answers would expose all of Brian's secrets. Brian Schwartz apparently made his living by selling drugs. But the secret Sonia was keeping would horrify everyone. Something very violent had happened in that house. He was gonna set me on fire. We were like, wow.

And the authorities would be left wondering, was it really foul play? This mattress was just this stain of blood and tissue and bone. Or was it justice? It was either him or her. I stopped, sir. I don't know what to tell you.

Pueblo, Colorado, September 4, 2009. It was Labor Day weekend in this blue-collar town of 100,000, an hour and a half south of Denver. Pueblo's an industrial city, unlike many Colorado cities, because we have a steel mill here. But there are also plenty of wide-open spaces just outside of town. And one resident, a retired wildlife officer,

was dove hunting up on the prairie west of Pueblo when he spotted something curious. Animals were digging around in the area, which interested him to find out what they were digging up. He went and began digging a little further and found what he believed to be human remains. Investigators with the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office were soon on the scene. We pulled up and the wildlife officer pointed out to me

where he had been digging. We walked over to the site, where I saw what appeared to me to be a human skull. And considering where it was found, how the dead body got there wasn't much of a leap. It would not be common in any way for, you know, a person to be buried in an extremely small, very shallow grave under two feet.

So you have to suspect that there's potential for foul play. But before they could figure out just who put the body there, the authorities would have to identify it, which led the investigators at the scene to make a couple of calls. One was to a forensic anthropologist. A forensic anthropologist uses clues from the skeleton to, first of all, identify somebody or help identify somebody. The other was to the Pueblo police. I contacted the Pueblo Police Department investigation

sergeant and asked him if he had any missing persons cases. They were working. And the answer the investigator got just might have been the break he needed. They did have a missing person under some suspicious circumstances. The Pueblo police were currently investigating the disappearance of 30-year-old Brian Swartz,

the victim of an alleged kidnapping. His girlfriend, Sonia Mitchell, had reported that Brian was taken by some Mexican nationals. She said they were gonna basically, you know, whack him out. Could the two cases be connected? And if so, did the body in the shallow grave mean the kidnappers had carried out their threat?

Or was there another reason that someone would want Brian dead, a secret that only his 24-year-old girlfriend Sonja knew. Born in 1985, Sonja Mitchell started life in El Paso, Texas, the middle of three sisters. Me and Sonja are three years apart. Me and Priscilla are five years apart. It wasn't a happy childhood. Their father was on drugs.

I don't know. I kind of gave up there for a while. It was scary. It was depressing. It was frustrating, you know, seeing the abuse. And I didn't know what really was going on or what was happening next. And when Sonia's father went to prison on drug charges in 1993,

Margaret was determined to give her kids a better life. He had a three-year sentence. My mom took the opportunity, and she left. You see your mom getting hit. It's not right. Somebody talks to you bad, it's not right. I was trying to break the chain. To make that break, Margaret took the girls to Colorado.

My mom wanted to be with her family. So she moved back to Pueblo, Colorado. I got my apartment, I got a job at the nursing home and we started doing good. However, while her mother was able to make a fresh start, the transition was difficult on 10-year-old Sonia, who had a hard time adjusting to her new town and new school. Sonia felt kind of like an outcast.

People look at you different. And as a result, she formed a tight bond with her younger sister, who was only eight. Sonia and Priscilla were really close. They always took care of each other. And eventually, they not only adjusted to life in Pueblo, they excelled. They were ahead in school.

I loved it. Sonja and her sister also did well after school. I put them in gymnastics, ballet. But raised by a single mother, they had to help out at home. I taught the girls to do their own laundry because I was working two jobs. And that was how in 1999, 14-year-old Sonia first met Brian Swartz.

Six years older than Sonia, Brian's family had been in Pueblo for generations. It's kind of a sixth generation town where your great, great grandparents grew up here, and now you grow up here. And we were always going on family reunions, and there was probably between 150 to 200 of us. In his immediate family, Brian was one of three brothers.

Brian and his brothers and father were close, worked on cars all the time. They were our family mechanics. And in 1999, after graduating high school, the aspiring mechanic got his own apartment, which is where he met Sonia. She was doing the laundry and she met Brian in the laundry room.

She apparently made quite an impression too. Brian came over with candy and flowers at the door and he wanted to see Sonia. But could he win over her mother? He's begging me to date my daughter. I told him you're too old. What business does a 21-year-old want with my 14-year-old sister?

I tell him to stay away from her. But despite being forbidden to see him by her mother, Sonia and Brian's relationship blossomed. I had to work. So after school, she was meeting him that I didn't know. She thought he was everything. He's older and has a car, and she was easily impressed with all that.

And by the time she was 15, Sonia was pregnant. Of course, she said she was in love, and she wanted to have his child. It appeared that Brian was just as ecstatic too. They were very happy, very, very just excited and very loving. And despite her family's objections, Sonja moved in with Brian.

As long as she was with Brian, nothing could phase her. Sonja gave birth to a daughter in 2000 and dropped out of school to take care of her little girl. Sonja let go of everything, and the baby and Brian were her priority. And in 2002, at the age of 17, Sonja gave birth to a second daughter. Brian was a proud father of two little girls, and Sonja was a mother raising her two children.

And despite her initial objections, Sonja's mother warmed to Brian, and after the birth of her grandchildren, gradually accepted him as part of the family. They were very happy, I'd say, for the first two years. Just normal, you know? Being a couple, taking care of the babies, it was great. They may have been happy,

but the young couple did have some issues to overcome. Despite having two children to take care of, Brian seldom held down a regular job. The only job I knew of Brian having was at Walmart, and he briefly worked for the newspaper. He did earn some money as a shade tree mechanic. My grandma had a couple of cars fixed by Brian and his dad. And at one point, Sonia had to take a part-time job

to make ends meet. I worked at Domino's Pizza. I told her, come on out and be my pizza maker. Although since she dropped out of high school, Sonia had a hard time advancing beyond minimum wage. She tried several times to get her GED. But with two kids to raise, she struggled to make all the required classes.

She'd get those two steps ahead and then she'd be knocked back three. And at the age of 20, after getting pregnant with their third child, Sonia put finishing her education on hold once more. Sonia seemed happy about being pregnant. Sonia had the baby, a little boy, in 2005.

Brian was over the moon. Brian was ecstatic to have his son to carry on the last name Swart. According to Brian's cousin, Sonia seemed content, too. She kind of felt like her life had became complete. She had her two little girls, and Brian had his little boy, and life was going to be this happy-go-lucky life from there forward. And by the time they'd been together nearly 10 years,

Sonia and Brian had built a family and seemed to be planning their future. But in reality, was their happy-go-lucky life haunted by a host of dark and deadly secrets? Coming up, the police get an anonymous call about Brian. They felt like there might have been some foul play involved. But is there a logical explanation for his disappearance? It's not illegal to be missing.

Some individuals don't want to be contacted. MUSIC On August 11, 2009, the police in Pueblo, Colorado, received a curious call concerning Sonia Mitchell's boyfriend. Got information that a gentleman by the name of Brian Schwartz had gone missing. Somebody is reporting. They hadn't seen Brian Schwartz for a couple,

two or three weeks. Exactly who reported the 30-year-old mechanic missing remained a mystery. Crime stoppers, everybody that calls in is the report. two or three weeks. Exactly who reported the 30-year-old mechanic missing remained a mystery. Crime stoppers, everybody that calls in, remain anonymous. But the caller did say they suspected Brian

hadn't just disappeared. They felt like there might have been some foul play involved. And when the investigators did a quick check, running Brian's name through their database, it looked as if the caller might have had a point. He had an extensive history with the public police department. When I was looking into his lifestyle, he had some drug charges. Brian's rap sheet included charges for possession of marijuana and cocaine, a few distribution

arrests and a few assault charges, though he'd never spent more than a day or two in jail. However, the fact that Brian had a record immediately had the investigators wondering, could the Crimestoppers caller be right? Was Brian's sudden disappearance the result of foul play? Because of his lifestyle, there's a high likelihood of something bad that could have happened.

Especially since he had a history of selling drugs. Certainly being in the narcotics business like Brian was, that's a very unpredictable lifestyle. Or could it mean there was another explanation for his disappearance? Maybe Brian was simply laying low for some reason. It is always the possibility that Brian doesn't want to be found.

It's not illegal to be missing. Some individuals don't want to be contacted and it's not illegal to do that. Or could he have gone out of town on a drug run? When the investigators ran Brian's vehicle registration, they got the first clue about his possible whereabouts, or at least the whereabouts of his van. The van was found abandoned on I-25 south of Reto, New Mexico. Was the abandoned van more evidence of foul play?

The authorities in New Mexico didn't think so. When I spoke with the New Mexico State Police, they said it apparently broke a fan belt and probably overheated. So it was left on the side of the road. Brian's abandoned van appeared to be a dead end. Running the registration did give them his address, though. But when the investigators went to check it out,

it wasn't Brian or Sonia Mitchell, Brian's 24-year-old girlfriend and the mother of his three children, who met them at the door. When I first arrived at the house, I knocked on the door and there was a male by the name of Eloy Varos who answered the door. He was a friend of the family, according to what he told the investigator.

He had a girlfriend, common-law wife, and they had kids. And their kids and Sonja and Brian's kids, they would all play together. Eloy at the time said that Sonja wasn't there. And as we were speaking, Sonja pulled up in a vehicle. And when the investigator explained why he was there, that someone had called Crime Stoppers to report Brian missing, Sonja said that was more or less true.

She says that they had gotten into an argument a couple weeks prior to that, and he loaded up a bunch of his stuff in his van and left. According to Sonja, she hadn't heard from Brian since, and she said that was just fine with her. And his drug dealing wasn't the only reason she was glad he was gone. She tells me that they did not have a good relationship. There was a lot of domestic violence.

She spelled out some pretty horrific treatment from Brian. At one point, she told us that he had started choking her out and was telling her that he was gonna kill her. Then he stopped choking her right when she was about ready to pass out. She said that he looked at her and told her he didn't want to kill her by choking her because when people die like that,

they defecate on themselves and they vomit and he didn't want to have to clean up all her mess. But if Brian had done such terrible things, could that mean Sonja had something to do with his disappearance? She reassured me that she still loved him and she would never hurt him. For the moment, at least until they could verify her claims,

the investigators didn't see any reason not to believe her. I didn't feel like Sonia was overly nervous or anxious by any means. That's why I took what she told me as being truthful. And when the investigators spoke to Brian's father, he didn't seem all that worried about his son being missing either. According to the father, he would go missing for weeks at a time.

In fact, according to his father, Sonia wasn't the only one who'd parted with Brian on bad terms. He tells me that the last time he had seen Brian, they had gotten into an argument, a fairly heated argument about a vehicle that they co-owned together. And I guess Brian had gotten upset and mad and left and hasn't spoke with them since.

Alongside what Sonia had already told them, his father's story had the investigators wondering whether Brian was missing at all. With those two stories, it sounds like that Brian's just not getting along with a lot of people in his life. And maybe he did choose to put some distance between himself and the people that he seemed to be having

rocky relationships with. And both stories seem to fit with the investigators already knew about Brian. He had a history. There was some drug dealing history. He was a violent person. His volatile past and previous run-ins with the law might have tempted the authorities to simply stop

looking into Brian's disappearance. It's not something that you're going to call out the troops and start searching a grid search somewhere for him. But there was still that nagging possibility of foul play. It heightened our awareness a little bit more about the case. Therefore, the investigators made one final attempt to track down Brian's whereabouts via his cell phone records.

Selling illegal drugs, they rely heavily on their phones for their business. And if Brian was still using his phone, it offered the police a chance to find him. Cell phone data could not necessarily get an exact location, but you could find a particular cell tower was essentially sort of transmitting data to a particular phone. And based on that tower, you could kind of

estimate the location of a particular call. When the investigators pulled Brian's phone records, it revealed what they expected. The small-time drug dealer all but lived on his phone. The biggest thing that really stood out to me, there was hundreds and hundreds of hours of use. Right up to July 27th, approximately two weeks before the crime stoppers call that kicked off

the missing persons case. From that day on, all that activity stops. That's a huge red flag. One that sent a loud and clear signal to the investigators. At that point, we suspected it was a homicide case. Coming up, Sonia changes her story. He's in trouble and he needs some money. And the investigators make a gruesome discovery.

Decomposition is consistent with somebody who hasn't been seen for a month. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history. Inspired by the hit podcast American History Tellers, The White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history. Inspired by the hit podcast American History Tellers, Wondery and William Morrow present the new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, the world-altering decisions, and shocking scandals that have shaped our nation. You'll be there when the very foundations of the White House are laid in 1792, and you'll

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or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of the rise and fall of Ruby Frankie early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. By August 27, 2009, it had been more than two weeks since the Pueblo, Colorado Police Department had received an anonymous Crimestoppers call reporting 30-year-old Brian Swartz missing. We talked to his father, who said he hadn't heard from him for a few weeks. And Brian's girlfriend, 24-year-old Sonja Mitchell,

said she hadn't seen him either, not since he'd stormed out during an argument. It appears that him and Sonja had a very rocky relationship, because there was many reports of domestic violence type calls. The rocky relationship could have given Brian a reason to simply leave, but the investigators were starting to wonder if there might be another explanation for why he had apparently abandoned his van and stopped using his phone. We began to kind of think well maybe foul play was involved. his phone. We began to kind of think, well, maybe foul play was involved.

But if so, was Brian's criminal activity to blame? Brian Schwartz apparently made his living by selling drugs. He was selling anything from marijuana to cocaine and using the products himself. Or could his alleged abuse of Sonja have something to do with it? Anytime you hear that kind of activity, there could be some motivation for maybe some retaliation. That's one of the first things that comes to your mind is, all right, you know, is there some sort of abuse

spouse or battered woman syndrome? Not that Sonja had given any indication she might have had anything to do with Brian's disappearance when police questioned her at her house. And when she dropped by the police department on August 27, she seemed genuinely concerned about him. She started off by asking me if I had heard from Brian, and I told her I hadn't.

And that's when Sonja dropped a bombshell. She said, well, look, I haven't been 100% honest with you. According to Sonia, what she told them earlier about Brian leaving after an argument wasn't true, because she'd been reluctant to tell the police what Brian had really been up to. She then goes into telling me how Brian makes runs to Mexico, picking up drugs, bringing them back to Cuba and selling them.

And on his latest trip, according to Sonia, Brian had gotten into a serious jam. She receives a call from him saying that he's in trouble and he needs some money. There was a big narcotics transaction taking place, and he'd messed that deal up. So he was into these guys for some money. Sonia said that she tried to round up some cash,

but couldn't. And a few days later, Brian had come home. Escorted by four henchmen of the drug dealer, he owed money. Sonia told us that four Mexican nationals showed up at their house. That Brian loaded some of his personal property in his van. A gun safe that contained several firearms,

large screen TV, some tools, some kind of a refrigerator that she called a decagorator. And then once all the loot had been loaded up, Brian and the drug dealer's henchmen had driven off. She said that was the last time she'd seen him. It was a frightening story, but was it true? His drug dealing background lent a little credence to her story.

And so did the fact that his van had been found ditched along the road between Pueblo and Mexico. Makes sense it might have been in transit down there, or they may have taken Brian down there. But when the investigators, hoping to get some clues about the drug dealer's henchmen, went back and spoke to Brian and Sonja's neighbors, one neighbor had seen something quite similar to what

Sonja described. She had seen, I believe, a black Ford Bronco a number of days prior, pulling up with a number of people loading what appeared to be personal items to include TV and a large gun safe into this Ford Bronco and then drive off. However, according to the neighbor, Brian was nowhere to be seen.

The neighbor says, well, I saw Sonja and some other people loading these items. And that wasn't all the neighbor had seen either. It turned out that Sonja hadn't been lying when she said Brian had disappeared after a fight. One of the last times that they had seen Brian, they witnessed Brian and Sonja in a argument, a screaming match out in the street,

and then it turned physical. Brian was dragging Sonia back to the house by her hair. That kind of piqued everybody's interest. Maybe, you know, she had done something self-defense or something had happened. But it was a few days later, on September 2nd, when the investigators tried to get back in touch with Sonia that things really got interesting.

She had moved out of the house. She had apparently left in a hurry, too. The cupboards were open. There were, you know, canned goods on the counter. There was clothes thrown about. It's like they were gone, you know, in the middle of the night and just out the door they went. The fact that Sonja appeared to be on the run gave new urgency to the investigation into Brian's disappearance.

But then on September 5th, a call to the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office would move the investigation into a disturbing new direction. The call came from a retired wildlife officer who'd been out hunting that morning and stumbled onto a gruesome discovery. They found possibly human remains buried in rural western Pueblo County. The remains were badly decomposed, but sheriff's investigators were able to tentatively identify the gender of the deceased. We were able to determine it was potentially a male. And hoping for a lead on the dead man's identity, the sheriff's investigator started reaching out

to area law enforcement. You immediately begin looking at missing persons. Which eventually led them to the investigator looking into Brian Swartz's disappearance. The Lieutenant Don Leach contacted me which eventually led them to the investigator looking into Brian Swartz's disappearance. The Lieutenant Don Leach contacted me and told me about some remains that were found in a rural area west of Pueblo.

But was it Brian? Hoping for confirmation, the sheriff's investigators brought in a forensic anthropologist to examine the remains. The decomposition pattern is consistent with somebody who hasn't been seen for a month. And whoever the dead man was, it appeared that he had been murdered.

There's a peculiar blunt trauma pattern, injuries on this cranium. There were three impacts that I could identify. There were two on the front of the face, and there was one just behind the ear. And when it came to identifying the corpse, the investigators got lucky. On his hand, there was enough skin

that they could get a fingerprint, and they were able to identify the remains as Brian. Five weeks after he disappeared, the search for Brian had become a homicide investigation. So I was saying Sonia's a potential suspect. But where was she? Word on the street was that to find her, the police should track down 29-year-old Eloy Varos.

A so-called family friend, he'd answered Sonia's door back in August when the police first went looking for Brian. We've been told they're spending a lot of time together, even to the point that they're living together. And that left the investigators wondering, was it a new relationship, or did it have something to do with Brian's death?

When we dug into Brian Swartz's life, we could tell he was a very jealous person, very violent person, not somebody that would put up with another man possibly being with the mother of his children. Whatever had happened, the investigators were anxious to talk to Eloy, and they would get their chance on September 14th. Nate walks into the police department, wanted to talk about the case.

Obviously, the word got out to Eloy that the police were looking for him. Once Eloy sat down with the investigators, he claimed that he had nothing to hide, opening up about how he knew Brian Swartz. Eloy even went as far as to tell us that he would help Brian with his narcotics business.

Brian would bring the loads of marijuana to Pueblo, and Eloy Varos helped him sell the marijuana. However, Eloy also admitted that he'd gotten more than a little extra cash out of the deal. Him and Sonia were having sexual relations when Brian was making these narcotics trips to Texas. He was living with Sonia while Brian was gone. And then as soon as Brian would show back up,

Eloy's out of the picture. They just had a love triangle. And Eloy ended up falling for Sonia a little bit more than anybody just messing around with somebody, just a one-time thing, you know what I mean? So he ended up with Sonia. He wanted to take care of her. He really genuinely cared for her.

And he told the investigators that Brian treated her horribly. He was a witness to the abuse. He was definitely a witness to the violence that Brian was prone to. However, he denied having anything to do with Brian's death. I think he's trying to outsmart us and outthink us.

And he's trying to put himself in a position to not get in trouble. I think he was trying to, in some ways, try to protect Sonja by explaining the violence that De Bruyne was capable of and the violence that he had witnessed. But if he was trying to protect Sonja and himself, Eloy may have made a serious mistake.

At one point in the interview, he made a passing reference to something that immediately caught the investigators' attention. He gave us a piece of information that frankly ended up, you know, making this case just basically turned upside down. He told us that he had rented a storage unit and that Sonia had stored some of her property in there.

That was one of those aha moments that, you know, every detective wishes for. And we got it from Eloy. Because when the investigators got a search warrant for the storage unit, they made a surprising discovery. Items that she tells us that he had taken with him with the Mexican nationals. However, the tools, TVs, and other valuables the drug dealer's henchmen had allegedly taken

weren't even the most damning thing the investigators found. We opened up the storage unit, and I pulled a mattress out, and there it was. Right on this mattress was just this stain of blood and tissue and bone. Coming up, Sonia's arrest leads to a tense standoff. All the cops came, their guns were drawn.

And she makes a startling confession. I can't live like this. It's all white. On September 14, 2009, nine days after finding Sonia Mitchell's boyfriend, Brian Swartz, buried in a shallow grave outside of town, the Pueblo Colorado police made a major breakthrough in the case, one that came courtesy of Sonia's lover, Eloy Varoves. It's kind of this weird love triangle going on there. During an interview with the police, Eloy had accidentally mentioned that he'd

rented a storage unit for Sonia. It wasn't his intention. I, you know, I think he slipped up. And to be honest, I don't even know that he understood until it was all said and done what exactly he had told us. We went into the storage shed and searched it, and they found a mattress that appeared to have

large blood stain on it. As soon as we saw that, we were like, wow. And the day after finding the mattress, the investigators went to Brian and Sonia's house with another search warrant and a chemical called luminol. Luminol is used to detect blood that's not necessarily visible to the naked eye. It will even reveal where blood has been cleaned up.

And when the investigators sprayed the chemical in Sonja and Brian's bedroom, the results were astonishing. We also found what's called cast-off blood on the ceiling. Something very violent had happened in that house. The bloody ceiling coupled with the bloody mattress from the storage unit led the investigators to an inescapable conclusion. Obviously that was the murder scene. And from there, the investigators moved quickly to take Sonja and Eloy, who'd rented the storage unit, into custody.

Once we find the blood in the house, arrest warrants go out. But could the investigators find them? It had been almost two weeks since Sonia and Eloy had moved out of her house and gone into hiding. When they left that house, they left in a hurry. So it was a welcome surprise when shortly after the judge signed her arrest warrant, Sonia and her mother showed up at the storage unit, totally unaware that the police had just searched it. Obviously, they were there to remove the stuff that was in the storage unit, totally unaware that the police had just searched it.

Obviously, they were there to remove the stuff that was in the storage unit. While we were getting into the garage, that's when all the cops came. The detectives, their guns were drawn. I was in shock. I didn't know what was going on. They put Sonia in the car, and she was just staring at me

and crying. And she told the detectives, take the handcuffs off my mom. She had nothing to do with it. Sonia had a look of resignation on her face and said that she wanted to talk and tell us the truth about what happened. And she didn't want anybody else to get in trouble. Taken into custody and brought in for questioning,

Sonia didn't deny killing Brian. She told us that, of course, the story about the Mexican Nationals was absolutely not true. But mostly, she wanted to talk about the abuse she'd suffered over the years. One incident in particular that stands out is he laid out some plastic on the floor of the house, stripped her of her clothes,

and so she was naked on this plastic. And he poured some type of accelerant on her. He rolled over the top of my head and told me it was gonna set me on fire. That level of violence, and it was just, it was crazy to hear her talk about that. on her. That level of violence, and it was just, it was crazy to hear her talk about that. And yet she never left Brian, who she'd been with since the age of 14.

He would tell her he would, and then he would go back to the old violent Brian. He'd been charged with domestic violence before. Nothing had ever happened. Law enforcement, in her mind, they hadn't done anything to protect her from Brian. In fact, as Sonia pointed out, the police couldn't even make drug charges stick. I'll make you touch her.

We have a giant record of just doing whatever we want in full in this life. Sonia said she hadn't considered running away an option either. He was always all, I'll kill your family. I'll kill your sister. I'll kill your mom. And I thought even if I ran away and he goes like, I'll just kill my mom, how could I live with that?

Right? So according to Sonia, she'd suffered in silence for years. I can understand how Sonia was so demoralized and mentally abused, physically abused, and just dominated by Brian. Eventually, though, the discussion turned to the beginning of August 2009. She said that on the night that he died, Brian was in a particularly foul mood.

He told her that he wanted to have sex, and she didn't want to have sex. I was like, no, get away from me. I don't want to be with him. Are you f***ing brain feed? I was like, no, get away from me. I don't want to be with him. He f----- raped me. She said that once that whole episode of violence was over, he took a bunch of pills and he went to sleep. Sonia didn't sleep, however.

Instead, she told the police that Brian's brutal rape had been a wake-up call. that Brian's brutal rape had been a wake-up call. Once Brian had passed out, she tells us that she knew that was her opportunity. According to Sonia, while Brian was passed out, she picked up the heaviest thing she could find. Sonia said that she used a weight bar to beat Brian. I hit him real hard once, and he was moving,

but, like, he wasn't up. So I hit him again and again, and he didn't move no more. Sonia said that Brian's death had sent her into shock. I couldn't believe it. I kept waiting for him to get up and to get me, and he didn't. I thought it was like, like fake, like it wasn't really happening. It's not a dream.

She kind of described to us that it almost felt like she wasn't there. You know, like it was in a fog or a dream or she didn't really believe it was taking place. But eventually, the fact that Brian was really dead had sunk in, leaving Sonja in a dilemma. I didn't know what to do. I found, like, the biggest thing I had. It was a large plastic storage tub, according to Sonia. I pulled him off the bed and I put him in it.

And I stuffed him in there. Then she said that she dragged the storage container into the back of the van and drove it out to the edge of town. I just pulled over and I started digging. And I got tired. So I just stopped. And I just threw him in there and covered him up and walked away. Sonia said she was also the one who ditched Brian's van

along the roadside in New Mexico. I drove it by myself and I drove it and drove it, but it broke. Something broke and started smoking. I had to turn my way back. And once back in Pueblo, Sonia said she'd come up with the story about Brian and the Mexican drug dealers in order to cover her tracks. Right away from the murder beginning, everybody believed me. Everybody believed me. Because he had been doing the drug trafficking for so long.

And Eloy, did he have anything to do with the murder? According to Sonia, the only thing he'd done was help her move Brian's things into storage. Well, Eloy tells he helped you get rid of Brian. And while the investigators were moved by what she had been through, they doubted that part of her story that she had acted alone was true. Miss Mitchell was a slight woman, I think 5'5", maybe 120 pounds.

Mr. Schwartz was a pretty big guy, 6'5", 2 plus. I still had kind of in the back of my mind that, you know, maybe Eloy was involved as well. But for the moment, Sonia's confession was more than enough to charge her with murder. To be able to take her statement, match it up with what we were seeing at the crime scene and the stuff we recovered from the storage unit was good for us.

It was perfect. But one question remained. What would a jury make of Sonia's heartbreaking confession? It was good for us. It was perfect. But one question remained. What would a jury make of Sonia's heartbreaking confession? Coming up, Sonia tells her story in court. There were things I was shocked to hear about. But will sympathy for what she endured be enough to sway the outcome?

Murder was committed. We can't just look the other way. By August 5, 2011, it had been almost two years since Sonia Mitchell admitted to killing her boyfriend, Brian Swartz. She had been physically assaulted and then sexually assaulted by Mr. Swartz. And as he was sleeping, essentially just bludgeoning to death. However, contrary to her confession, Sonia hadn't acted entirely alone.

Questioned after Sonia's arrest, her sister Priscilla told police that she, her husband Perry, and Sonia's lover, Eloy Varos, had all helped dispose of the body. Sonja confided in Priscilla, and Eloy, Perry, and Sonja end up going over to the house. They do put Brian's body in this tote, like Sonja described. And by August of 2011, all three had pleaded guilty to accessory to murder charges, and all but Priscilla received three-year sentences. Priscilla, in exchange for what she had told us, we gave her a sentence of probation.

But what would Sonia's confession end up costing her? The first murder could carry a life sentence. Taking Sonia's case to trial could be risky, though, considering the circumstances. Sonia a deal. She agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder. Which left the 26-year-old mother of three facing anywhere from 10 to 30 years in prison. The sentence was essentially left open to the court, the judge.

And at her sentencing hearing on August 5th, Sonia made a plea for leniency. The sentence was essentially left open to the court, the judge. And at her sentencing hearing on August 5th, Sonja made a plea for leniency. She could present her side of the story, essentially offer witnesses and testimony to the nature of her and Branch's relationship. There was a few things I had heard and a few things I was shocked to hear about. Some of the incidents of abuse that Sonia described were sickening. The most heartbreaking one.

As he was asking her questions, he would heat this knife up. And if she responded with the wrong answer, that knife went against her back. And she had the scars to prove it. I never knew until she stood up in court and showed up. against her back. And she had the scars to prove it. I never knew until she stood up in court and showed up. It's obvious she's a long time victim of abuse. Which in the end did stay the judge's hand,

at least somewhat. The court imposed a sentence of 20 years for the charge of second degree murder. 20 years was a bitter disappointment for Sonia's family. It was either him or her. That's how she felt. She felt like he was really going to kill her,

like she had nowhere to go. Sonia had been through a lot. It should have been a lesser sentence for Sonia, especially with all that abuse. Perhaps, although the prosecutors disagree. We all sympathized with what she went through, but at the end of the day, you know, murder was committed. We can't just look the other way on that.

Had she just come forward after it happened, obviously she wouldn't have protected her if it had gotten off, but I think things would have been different for her. Sonia Mitchell was released on parole in May 2021. She was discharged from parole in March 2024. She was 38 years old. Abuse is never okay. If you or someone you love is in an abusive relationship, there is help available.

Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. Answers for Claudia, a new podcast available exclusively on Wondry Plus, explores a 15-year-old mystery, the disappearance of Claudia Lawrence on March 18, 2009. Claudia was a seemingly happy 35-year-old when she vanished without a trace. There was no crime scene, no CCTV of Claudia leaving her home and nobody found. She simply finished her shift, phoned her mum for a chat and was never seen again. Claudia's mum Joan is now 80 years old and she thinks this might be her last chance to find answers. I'm journalist Tom McDermott and when I offered to help Joan, I had no idea what was in store.

In Answers for Claudia, I speak to the people who knew Claudia, interview past suspects and investigate the rumours and theories that surround this case. Why are the residents of the village Claudia lived in still so frightened and what can we find out about the people who were closest to Claudia? You can binge Answers for Claudia exclusively on Wondry+. Join Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app.