The Deck - REMEMBERING: Marjorie "Christy" Luna (4 of Spades, Florida)

Starting point is 00:00:03 Our card this week is Marjorie Christy Luna, the Four of Spades from Florida. From the outside, Green Acres seemed like a picture-perfect place to grow up. A park, a school, a corner store stocked with sugary sweets and arcade games, all within walking distance. For Christy and her friends, weekends were spent roaming the neighborhood and playing outside barefoot. But this storybook community had darkness lurking just under the surface. and it reared its ugly head one May evening in 1984.

Starting point is 00:00:38 More than 40 years later, Christie's friends are peeling back the layers and piecing together memories from their childhood, finding that what actually lay beneath was much darker than they ever could have imagined. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. It was Memorial Day weekend, 1984, and Greenacre's Small Town Police Department was probably preparing for a bit more action than usual. Hopefully nothing too bad, but it was possible that they would get a call

Starting point is 00:01:42 to shut down some out-of-hand fireworks, bust a rowdy backyard barbecue maybe. But on Sunday, May 27th, at around 10, 15 p.m., police got a call for something far more serious, something I'm almost sure they didn't see coming in their close-knit community. A mother phoned to say that her eight-year-old daughter, Marjorie Luna, who went by Christy,

Starting point is 00:02:05 hadn't come home that evening. Detective William Springer with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office recounts that Christy's mom, Jenny, told police that she, her boyfriend, and her two daughters had just returned home that afternoon from a weekend getaway. They drove up to Titusville, came back, stopped at two parks, Jonathan Dickinson State Park, and then they stopped at the Duke Boys Park.

Starting point is 00:02:30 Then they came home. It was early in the afternoon. They retired because they traveled all night. night, Christy slept because she was a little storm. And they all went to bed. And Christy came in and said, you know, the cats are hungry. I'll go get cat food. And she got some change. And she went to the store, which is right around the corner. Christy's older sister Allison had woken up their mom around 8.30 p.m. to tell her that Christy still hadn't come home since taking off some time between two and three that afternoon. Now, before getting police involved, the family took to the

Starting point is 00:03:04 neighborhood themselves to see if they could find Christy at any of her usual spots, like the store, the park, her friends' homes. But after close to two hours of this, the freckled-faced, hazel-eyed little girl was nowhere to be found. So that's when they called the police. Law enforcement went on to do the same sweep the family had, and since they knew her plan was to pick up cat food, naturally, one of the first places they started at was the neighborhood store, Belks. Green Acres is just a small, sleepy little town with a store downtown that all the kids walked to, because it was right there. It's not that big an area. And you could almost throw a rock from the house to the store.

Starting point is 00:03:48 Everybody's kids walked to the store. And they came home. Clerks at the store told police they remembered Christy coming in, buying cat food, and watching other kids play arcade games before leaving by herself. Based on all of our research, it sounds like Christy could have been there. anytime between 2 and 5 p.m. Right after she left, there were witnesses who placed her outside by a house that was directly across the street within view of the store. We don't have anybody that said they saw her getting into any type of car or anything.

Starting point is 00:04:19 I talked to the people that lived in the house at that time, and they were young kids, too. And they remembered Christy being there talking to them and watching the fireworks. And the one girl told me, yeah, I saw her walking back towards her house. And that's it. In the days following Christie's disappearance, deputies scoured the surrounding areas with canine units and on mounted horses. They searched wooded areas and low-lying bodies of water in and around green acres looking for any signs of Christie. But their findings were about as bleak as the weather that week. It rained for nearly 10 days straight, which I assume made searching all the more

Starting point is 00:04:59 difficult and may have also washed away potential evidence. Of course, like, Like any other missing child's case, the parents had to be closely vetted. Detective Springer told us that Jenny and her live-in boyfriend at the time, Larry, cooperated fully. Police questioned them both, and they also agreed to polygraphs, which Springer said they passed. Investigators also looked into Christy's father, but he'd been living in Atlanta at the time, and they confirmed that he'd been there, hundreds of miles away at the time of the disappearance. In addition, investigators talked to Christy's neighbors and schoolmates, including. including her best friend. Since she was a minor at the time, investigators aren't releasing her name. She was a little girl, just six years old, who bravely shared a disturbing story when police spoke to her. That's when we discovered one of Christy's friends was being molested by Chuck and Willis Rambo. So they then became a primary people of interest. So warrants were obtained. She only gave us Chuck as one. and later on then she said Willis. Both Rambo brothers lived in Green Acres

Starting point is 00:06:09 on the same street as Christy, about a block away. There was Charles, then 31, who went by Chuck, and Willis, who was 26 at the time. Now, it doesn't seem like the little girl police spoke to indicated that she had direct knowledge that Christy had also been sexually assaulted by the Rambo brothers or that they had anything to do with her going missing. From what we can gather,

Starting point is 00:06:31 no one police spoke to described Christy acting differently or distant leading up to her disappearance, the kind of signs that might have been a clue that she too was being abused. But still, these men would have had access to Christy. Detective Springer said that Christy's friend was often over at the Rambo House because their sister was her babysitter. So Christy would come by to visit and play. This made investigators theorized that maybe Christy had wanted to see her friend after stopping for cats. food. Her friend wasn't home at the time, so maybe Christy had pop by the Rambo residents to see if she was there instead. And there was someone else in Green Acres who connected Christy to one of

Starting point is 00:07:14 the Rambo's two. An article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel stated that Ellen Belk, a clerk at Belk's general store, told police that she had seen Chuck Rambo giving Christy money at the store on one occasion in the past. Detective Springer thought that both Rambo, brothers said that they'd been home at least at some point the day Christy went missing, meaning that they would have been nearby since they lived in the neighborhood. But it sounds like no one police spoke with back then could actually place either of them together with her. Still, they had enough to arrest Chuck. And then pretty soon thereafter, Willis. Chuck actually confessed to sexually assaulting Christy's friend during an early taped

Starting point is 00:07:58 interview with police. And although both men ultimately pleaded guilty to loot assault in that case, for one reason or another, neither of them served any jail time, just 10 years probation apiece. Both Chuck and Willis denied ever assaulting Christie or having anything to do with her going missing. We searched the house. We kept the house the whole weekend. I mean, we went through that house, top to bottom, everywhere we couldn't find anything that would indicate that Christy was murdered there. But that didn't mean they weren't still suspects. In an attempt to follow up on every single lead, police conducted several searches for Christie at locations associated with the Rambo brothers.

Starting point is 00:08:41 Willis worked at a retirement place with a golf course, and the rumors were that he put Christy down a well. We went and we dug deep. They had to build a ramp for the front loader to get down in to dig deeper, but we never found anything. While there was nothing directly tying the Rambo brothers to Christie's case, they remained on law enforcement's radar until something else, or rather someone else, shifted their focus. Another child predator who may have encountered Christy the day she went missing.

Starting point is 00:09:25 This new person of interest popped up towards the end of 1984. Police in Florida got a new lead when Exeter PD all the way up in New Hampshire tipped them off about a then 41-year-old man named Victor Winetti. While Victor was out on parole, after serving time for sexually assaulting his 13-year-old stepdaughter, he became a suspect in the disappearance of another young girl up there, eight-year-old Tammy Blanger. He worked close to the area where she went missing. He didn't show up to work that day that she went missing.

Starting point is 00:10:00 And somebody got a tag off a car that was his that was somewhere in the area. When detectives in New Hampshire started looking into Victor, they were able to arrest him almost right off the bat because they realized he'd violated his parole by having previously left the state to go to none other than Green Acres, Florida. In his possession were children's underwear and photos of young girls that appeared to have been taken secretly from outside their windows.

Starting point is 00:10:29 Now, just to be clear, the underwear didn't belong to Christy and none of the photos were of her either. But when detectives in New Hampshire learned of the only girl who went missing while Victor was in the area, they started putting two and two together. According to reporting in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, he was more than just in the general area. They reported that Victor was specifically seen at a party in the neighborhood and matched a description of a man seen outside the corner store the very day Christy vanished. But when we asked Detective Sprintz, about those two specific details we found in the paper. They didn't necessarily ring any bells for him.

Starting point is 00:11:10 He recalled that maybe Victor's family had thrown a get-together at their house at some point that Memorial Day weekend, which would have been nearby but not in the same vicinity as Christy. Either way, I thought that this was important to note in case there is any truth to it. He went back to jail, prevailing his parole, for coming to Florida. In 1990, Victor gets released. from prison, comes to Florida, and as soon as he gets in Florida, the sheriff's office tack team starts following him. They follow him 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They have

Starting point is 00:11:45 pictures and video of him looking in these bedroom windows. Sure enough, there's little girls in that bedroom that he's looking in. So they follow him for almost a month. He never tried to pick anybody out. He had a couple locations he was looking through windows. So anyway, when he started trying to get in through the front door one night. They arrested him. When they put him in jail, there was a group of inmates that said Victor would sit in the chair and watch little girls on TV, you know, like Sesame Street.

Starting point is 00:12:16 And then he would make statements like, well, they'll never find them. And, I mean, he more or less was admitting that he killed both of them and they'll never find it. And these inmates are just having a field day throwing Victor under the bus. I interviewed him, and he swore him down. He never had anything to do with Christy or Tammy.

Starting point is 00:12:35 He said he wasn't even in the same cell blocks, same part of the jail, as these people that were talking and giving them up for all the stuff. This could have been encouraging, should have been encouraging, for a detective like Springer. If these other inmates were telling the truth, it might help in the case against Victor. But Springer remembers that his gut questioned it because of his years watching how convicted predators behave in prison.

Starting point is 00:13:01 In my experience over the years, the child molesters, they don't go to prison and talk about their crimes because they know that the inmates don't like that. So I could not believe that Victor is sitting in a local jail telling everybody how he killed these girls. And nobody did anything to him. I just found that a little bit unbelievable. I thought, I'm going to find out if this is the truth, if what they're saying is the truth. So I found one inmate. I interviewed him.

Starting point is 00:13:30 And he said, oh, yeah, he told us all this stuff. So I said, would you be willing to take a polygraph? And he says, yeah. With polygraphed him, he failed. I asked him, why did you lie? He said, we wanted to give her mother some closure. So he admitted it was all fabricated. And then I tracked down another one and talked to him on the phone.

Starting point is 00:13:52 And he said, yeah, we made all this stuff up. Even though he somewhat saw this coming, it was disappointing nonetheless. way down the line Victor eventually got out of prison and ended up passing away shortly thereafter without ever being charged with anything related to Christy or the other missing girl from New Hampshire, Tammy. And even though those two inmates admitted to Detective Springer that they'd lied about his alleged confession, he doesn't think that we should count Victor out when it comes to Christy's case. I would never say that he didn't. I just don't think that he told anybody he did.

Starting point is 00:14:28 And my whole career, I've never had any child molester or anybody like that really sit down and tell all the other inmates that they did this to some little girl. Despite hitting roadblocks with both the Rambo brothers and Victor, investigators seemed to have a specific profile in mind when it came to identifying potential suspects, men with a track record of grooming and abusing children. It wasn't like it was a dangerous area where guns are. being fired and people were shooting and people were stealing kids.

Starting point is 00:15:01 It was just a nice little quiet neighborhood. Except when we started investigating it, we found that there were a few child molesters in the neighborhood. But back then, there was no record of it. Nobody kept any records. You didn't know until you started running their history. You have to realize something. And I'm not defending families.

Starting point is 00:15:21 But a lot of times back in the day, they would say, don't let your kids around Uncle Bill or don't let your kids around Uncle Ralph. because they all knew that Uncle Ralph was it molester. For some reason, it was like a family secret. They never wanted to do anything. I think it was the embarrassment. We worked and we interviewed so many child molesters back then, and we just couldn't come up with anything.

Starting point is 00:15:48 And then eventually the leads start fading away. But there was yet another sexual predator looming in the area who investigators hadn't known about until, way later, one who didn't surface until their phone rang out of the blue one day with a distressed woman on the other end. She told them they needed to look at her own husband, William Ferris, for Christy's disappearance. See, back in May of 1984, this family lived directly behind Christy along the same path that she may have taken through her neighborhood that day. And the wife said that she would often be out late with the kids on Sundays, giving her husband ample space

Starting point is 00:16:31 and time to commit a potential crime. And now, she had discovered that he may have had the M.O.2. He would have never came on the radar until he got arrested. He got arrested up in Virginia for molesting his grandkids and, I think, another kid. And of course, his wife really, really was upset. As soon as he got arrested, she called us up and said, we need to look at him. And she said that Ferris had made a statement one time to her, that one of these days, one of those girls is going to go missing. And then after Christie went missing, he said, well, they'll never find her. She's down on Alligator Alley.

Starting point is 00:17:13 So I went up to Virginia, and I interviewed him, and he denied knowing Christy. He never admitted to anything. He said, he didn't know Christy, and he never said those things. And his attorney was going to get him off, that he was guilty of this. Well, that didn't happen. Williams since passed away, but he ended up serving life in prison in Virginia on those other charges. And Detective Springer even tried taking another crack at him post-conviction, thinking maybe now that he seemingly had so little left to lose,

Starting point is 00:17:45 he'd be more open this time around. I went up to talk to him. If he ever interviewed a sex offender, especially child molester, It's never their fault. It is never their fault. If you listen to some of these people, I mean, they would make you sick, really sick. That's why I never like working child molestation cases. The sexual batteries were bad enough.

Starting point is 00:18:09 The child molestations were really bad. It's hard for an investigator to hear about, but it's even harder for the children, now adults of Green Acres, who lived it. Our reporting team met up with two. of Christy's old friends, Brenda and Jennifer. They sat down together for their interviews, supporting each other through a difficult conversation as they told us how Christy's disappearance had a major impact on the kids that she left behind. Here's Brenda. Anybody from our childhood, anybody from our era who was born in the 70s in the early 80s and you were growing up in Green

Starting point is 00:18:49 Acres, when someone mentions to them, what do you think of when you think of when you think of Green Acres. Christy Luna. That's it. It's Christy Luna every time. Brenda lived in the same neighborhood as Christy along with Jennifer. The three would rehearse

Starting point is 00:19:04 their cheerleading moves together at the park. But as they grew up, Brenda and Jennifer lost touch. Christy's disappearance had been a poignant part of their childhood. What had happened to her

Starting point is 00:19:15 was never really forgotten, of course, but almost repressed, far in the past. That is until one day in 2007, when the deeply painful memories from May 27, 1984, came flooding back for Jennifer. I was working in healthcare,

Starting point is 00:19:33 and we were getting ready for shift change, and I was preparing my report, and we had a big, long table in the department, and there was a TV right there, and I was on a computer, and I hear Jenny, Christy's mom. If anyone has any information about the disappearance of my daughter, please come forward.

Starting point is 00:19:50 Yeah, she would come out every year on the anniversary, and they would air something. And it was like lightning went through my body. It was like lightning went through my body, and I knew I had to say something. I didn't know if anything that I told them would be helpful. I was afraid that little girl in me was so alive again. Right after I heard that, I had a medical crisis,

Starting point is 00:20:19 and I thought I was going to die, and I knew I couldn't take it to the grave. And that was when I knew what I had to do. Everything in my life changed at that point. I had to make some healthy changes for myself, my kids at the time. And then I eventually went to Jenny's house and knocked on her door. And she listened. Sorry, she listened.

Starting point is 00:20:43 I'm going to let Jennifer tell the story. She told Christy's mom, her own story. It's what she's able to recall from the day that she believes was the same day Christy disappeared. I remember being in the park. And I remember wanting to play. with someone. But, you know, I was, I was just swinging on the swing again, the same spot, and Christy came up to the fence. And I just, I remember this part so vividly because she was always full of energy. And the way I remember it is she came up to the fence and she's bouncing

Starting point is 00:21:15 up and down, you know, like, we want to play, you want to play? And I don't know what she said, but she was bouncing up and down. And I told her I was waiting for the man to finish in the bathroom because he came up, he came up. And he said, did you leave change in the bathroom? And I said, yes. And he said, you can get it when I get out. And I said, okay. So to recap, Jennifer told us a man had approached her at the park asking if she left change behind in the bathroom.

Starting point is 00:21:41 While she hadn't actually dropped any change, the little girl said yes, excited about the prospect of being able to buy herself a treat at Belk's store. Jennifer remembered Brenda also being present there at the park during that first part. But then the man went into the bathroom and Jennifer did what he'd asked. waited for him to come back outside so she could go in and collect the change. But he never did. And I just remember waiting and waiting and waiting. And Christy knew I was waiting for him to get out of the bathroom.

Starting point is 00:22:11 So she took off. I'm assuming as I think back, she probably went to the store because she knew that's where I was going next. And I went up to, eventually I went up to the stalls. And I peek in and I just see. Sorry. go slow. I peeked in the door and I just see this change scattered all across the floor. It was just, it wasn't pennies. It was quarters and dimes and I mean, it was like, it was like a treasure chest,

Starting point is 00:22:42 you know, and I just remember seeing that and I didn't see him anywhere in there. And I went in and I got on my, I was on my knees and I'm scooting across the floor and I was just gathering the change. I could distinctly remember that there was this drain. I just remember this drain. I just remember this drain in the middle of the floor. I was like right smack in the middle of the bathroom, collecting the change, and I hear this sound behind me. And I turned, and that's when I saw him standing there. He wasn't wearing anything. And within like a nanosecond, within like a flash, he grabbed me, tossed me to the side. I think I must have hit my head. At first I thought maybe he hit me in the head with something or whatever. I don't know. But I'm, I smacked my head

Starting point is 00:23:27 on the bathroom floor and he got on top of me and he was trying to get my underwear off. And the next thing I remember is I hear Christy coming in. What are you doing to my friend? What are you doing to my friend? I hear a loud thud. And I don't remember anything after that. And the next thing I do remember is clank, clank, clank, clank on the door. Someone saying, wrap it up, parks closing.

Starting point is 00:23:50 I come to wake up, whatever. And I recollect the change. I get at my hand, I walk out of the bathroom, out of the men's room, and right outside of the men's room, there is a police officer and another man talking by. They had these like half sheds, and the police officer's back was towards me and the park, I want to say it was a park attendant, I don't know. And I just remember thinking I'm going to get in trouble, I'm going to get in trouble, and I walked up to him with the change in my hand, and I said this man left this in the bathroom. He patted me on the back and he said, I guess it's your lucky day, kid.

Starting point is 00:24:26 And that was, that was, I was scared, I was scared to leave. I went over to the slide. I went up on the slide and I put the, I just remember putting the coins down on the top of the slide. And it was one of the slides that had like a cover over, over top. And I was putting the, the change, sorry. I was putting the, I was putting the change in like order, you know, quarters, dimes, nickels. And, and that was, that was it. That was it.

Starting point is 00:24:54 And I never said anything. I never said anything. I never said anything. I never said anything. After Jennifer came forward to Christy's mom, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office got on board, and everything evolved from there. Because Jennifer had recalled Brenda being at the park when the man came up asking about the change, Detective Springer tracked her down. And as it turned out, Brenda did remember an unsettling event involving a strange man and pocket change taking place at the park. But in her recollection, Christy wasn't there, and she and Jennifer got away unharmed. Eventually, Jennifer came to the realization that both incidents had occurred. She'd just been merging bits and pieces from two separate memories together, likely due to the trauma she endured. The time when Brenda and Jennifer were together happened about a year or so prior to Christy's disappearance, and it went like this.

Starting point is 00:25:53 A man came up to them at the park and tried luring both girls into the bathroom using the same ruse with the change. Only this time Brenda recalled that she and Jennifer never actually entered the restroom. Because when they peaked underneath the door grate to see if it was okay to come in and collect the change, Brenda could see that the man was standing there with his pants around his ankles waiting for them. So she and Jennifer took off and got away safely. Brenda alerted her mom, who then called Greenacres PD. Brenda told us that she and her mom returned to the park with a police officer, and the man was still there.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Brenda was able to point him out saying it was him, but it doesn't appear anything ever came from this. Maybe that was because technically a crime hadn't actually occurred since he was behind a door in the men's restroom, so it probably wouldn't have counted as exposure or anything. But looking back, both Brenda and Jennifer see it for what it was, an attempt to bait two children. Brenda said her mom told her that she remembered the officer telling her that the guy claimed to be from out of town and that he'd ridden a bus in. But there's no record of an official police report, so we don't know what name that man gave, if any.

Starting point is 00:27:12 In 2009, before the two women ever reconnected, both Brenda and Jennifer separately worked on sketches with the Palm Beach. County Sheriff's Office in an attempt to identify the men from both encounters. And they put the two, they put the two side by side. And when I said to myself, it's not the same person, but they look a lot alike. And I'm wondering if they're not related. It wouldn't be until 2016 that Brenda and Jennifer would reunite. They were each vaguely aware that they both communicated with law enforcement. But at least for Brenda, she hadn't been fully privy to the details about exactly how this might all be related to Christy. But finally, Brenda reached out to Jennifer through a Facebook post about Christy's case, and

Starting point is 00:27:59 Jennifer responded. They met up in person and dove headfirst into it all. They shared their experiences at the park, Jennifer's devastating assault, and her memory of Christy barging in while it was happening. This reunion ignited a spark that has since turned into a raging fire, a quest to find Christy and figure out who those men were. The two women told our reporters that they'd been shown pictures of suspects in Christy's case before, but as they would have looked more recently, older men, and none of them triggered any epiphanies. I don't need a picture of some 70-year-old pedophile.

Starting point is 00:28:39 It was only until Jenny Christie's mom gave us some of the articles that we were able to, to come across a newspaper article with Charles Rambo and a newspaper article with Willis Rambo from the time in which everything took place and then that's when everything made sense. And Jennifer says she's so sure of this. I mean, you can hear her hitting the photo she was showing us.

Starting point is 00:29:04 If you ask me if this is Charles, what I can tell you is it was that man. If that man is named Charles or Chuck, then yes. That was the man that day in the bathroom with Christy. That was him. And Brenda said she recognized his brother as being the man who tried coercing them both with change during the earlier incident.

Starting point is 00:29:26 I can confidently say from old newspaper articles, looking at Willis's picture, that that's the man that I saw in the park that day when he approached us and asked us if we had thrown any change on the bathroom floor. We'll have photos of the Rambo brothers from these old news. newspaper articles that covered them, along with Brenda and Jennifer's sketches, up on the blog post for this episode. So you can check them out. We think they had no problem with a few children together because maybe one was the luring that day and the other one was... Look out?

Starting point is 00:30:03 Because when Christy came into the bathroom, he was on top of me still. So someone silenced her. As a reminder, the brothers never served time after pleading guilty to lewd assaults on Christy's other young friend. They only served probation. Later on in 1993, though, Willis Rambo was convicted of sex crimes against his own young stepdaughter. He's currently serving life at a Florida prison for that. However, neither man has ever been charged in connection with the allegations surrounding Jennifer, Brenda, or Christy. Our reporter Madison reached out to Willis in prison with a letter, but at the time we recorded this episode, she hasn't heard back.

Starting point is 00:30:42 As far as Detective Springer knows, Charles, Chuck Rambo, never had to register as a sex offender and is now living free in Tennessee. Madison tried writing to him too, tried calling and texting every number she could find associated with him. But so far, nothing. Despite the fresh investigative leads, Jennifer and Brenda's courageous accounts had provided. Investigators would need corroborating evidence to bring any charges. And finding fresh evidence so many years later is hard. In an effort to bring forward additional witnesses, Brenda and Jennifer got Detective Springer's blessing to set up the missing Marjorie Christina Christy Luna Facebook page, dedicated to sharing Christy's story along with their own, hoping to jog memories and encourage others to come forward to. And others have. Jennifer told us that several other women who also grew up in Green Acres have opened up about their experiences with child predators.

Starting point is 00:31:38 Some thought their assailants resembled the men in Jennifer and Brenda's sketches. At least one recounted a similar ploy of a man trying to lure her into the park bathroom with change. In turn, Jennifer and Brenda have been able to connect them with Detective Springer so that investigators can keep track of the different reports and try and glean any potential connections with what may have happened to Christy. And in 2019, investigators received their most promising lead in years, all thanks to that Facebook page. And the tip actually pointed to someone new,

Starting point is 00:32:13 a man named Guadalupe Martinez, who has since passed away. Although it doesn't appear he had a documented violent criminal history, Detective Springer told us a witness did recount one. This person came forward and said that he molested kids and was very violent and that his septic tank was open and that he would always check it. The septic tank lid was busted, and then he would empty it sometimes with a bucket. He would dump it. And get this.

Starting point is 00:32:46 This is the same guy whose family was hosting the fireworks that Christie had reportedly stopped to watch that day after stepping out of Belk's store. So for that reason, this tip felt really promising. Was it possible Christy had a run-in with this man while she was over there? Looking back at old newspaper articles, there was a report from the Orlando's, Sentinel that mentioned witnesses seeing a Hispanic man talking to Christi outside of Belk's door the day she vanished and that she was possibly offered change by that man to go inside and buy fireworks. While that description is way too vague to decipher if this could have been Guadalupe or not, I thought it was worth noting in case there is any connection.

Starting point is 00:33:28 As a result of that 2019 tip, a team of investigators and forensic anthropologists got permission to excavate outside of the home where he'd lived back in 1984, thinking it was possible they'd find Christie's remains. We were there for a good week with them going through every bit of dirt we took out. We had a septic tank company that cleaned out their truck so that it was spotless, and we put everything in there, and then when they dumped it, they went through every bit of it. But they got down inside the septic tank and actually scraped the bottom of that septic tank, and went through everything in that septic tank, and we come up with nothing.

Starting point is 00:34:09 A new lead hit another dead end. It was a huge blow for investigators. But both Brenda and Jennifer feel like the key to all of this could still be somewhere buried in their old neighborhood. Right now we're at the community center because we went to go over to the pavilions in the park and the bathroom and it's all blocked off because they're getting ready to tear it all down and build a, it's a future site of the Green Acres Youth Center.

Starting point is 00:34:44 Our reporters, Madison and Emily, traveled down to South Florida and took a tour of Green Acres with Jennifer and Brenda. And when they arrived at the Ira Van Bullock Park, the site of their own encounters with the men they believed were the Rambo brothers, they were filled with mixed emotions. I have a kit in my chest right now. Like I really do. It's like the weirdest feeling to stand here and look and see.

Starting point is 00:35:09 see that, I mean, I don't know if it's because we're hoping and thinking that the past holds the secret. And by taking this down, you're removing the past from us. And now I don't know if the secret is going to be buried with it or if this is a good thing and something will come from it. Sadly, Christy's mom, Jenny, was diagnosed with leukemia. She wasn't feeling well enough to sit for a formal interview. But as Jennifer and Brenda were showing us around, she popped out of her house to say, Hi. Hi, Jenny.

Starting point is 00:35:43 We're sending you all of our love. The house on Broward Avenue is the same one she lived in back in 1984. She even moved away for a bit, but ended up returning. She wanted to be there in the same familiar spot in case Christy ever found her way home. For about a decade or more, she kept a massive missing poster of her precious daughter displayed in the front yard for all to see. And she's been fighting for more than 40 years. And while she hasn't given up, since she was diagnosed with cancer, she's informally passed the baton to Brenda and Jennifer,

Starting point is 00:36:18 who she's dubbed Christy's Angels. Christy's best friends took over for me. Thank God. We love you. Love you guys, too. It's felt so bad that I couldn't do it. I understand. We want you to rest.

Starting point is 00:36:33 It's also a lot. You're already not feeling well, and this is a lot to also help to relive. Yes. And so I knew I couldn't go back to the beginning and do it all because it takes a big toll on me. So they're my fighters now. I thought of them. I said, I can't do it. Who's better to do it than me as Christy's best friends?

Starting point is 00:36:54 She would be so proud of you guys. Staying in Green Acres is a complicated dichotomy, even just visiting. And Jennifer and Brenda feel it too. Wanting to move on from this place, but still holding on to hope that the truth is somewhere hidden here, just waiting to be uncovered. The mission has always been about Christy, to find her dead or alive and bring her home. Whether it be sharing Christy's story here on our platform, searching for answers themselves or uniting with others who have come forward through the Facebook page, they won't stop.

Starting point is 00:37:30 Even though it can be triggering, she is why they're more willing to relive the trauma. There was an absence of her on TV, and it upset me that her face was not still out there, and it made me question why, and I thought, why did they forget about her, and why is she not in the public eye? I think a majority of it is about awareness and letting everybody know that they're not alone, and they have some place that they can go. Helping just one person is a lot, but if you can help more, it's better. And we just want to make sure that we're making a voice for those who can. can't be heard like Christy.

Starting point is 00:38:07 She can't speak for herself right now. She needs us more than ever. We are her voice right now. We have to be. Not just her voice, but all the other voices of those who are missing and can't be found. The rest of the deck, they don't have voices. We need to be their voices now. And that's how we find them, and that's how we bring them home.

Starting point is 00:38:26 If you know anything about the disappearance of Marjorie Christy Luna in Greenacres, Florida on May 27, 1984, the Sunday of Mom. Memorial Day weekend, please come forward. And if you had encounters with anyone named in this episode or even similar encounters as described with men you didn't know, detectives want to hear from you too. Perhaps you hold the missing piece to solving this mystery and putting a terrible person behind bars for whatever life they have left. You can remain anonymous by calling crime stoppers of Palm Beach County at 1-800-8-477. We'll have a Other ways, you can contact the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office directly in the show notes as well and on the blog post for this episode.

Starting point is 00:39:17 The Deck is an audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit the Deckpodcast.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

The Deck - REMEMBERING: Marjorie "Christy" Luna (4 of Spades, Florida)

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