The Missing Instagram Model - Esmeralda Gonzalez

April 21, 2025

In this episode, Payton and Garrett explore the chilling case of Esmeralda Gonzalez, an Instagram influencer who mysteriously vanished from her Las Vegas neighborhood.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

Okay, I'm pretty sure I have really great news—we have new Strangey Dangey merch available right now! I'm not going to lie...

No, no—listen to me.

They're not going to believe you. You say every time, "It's my favorite Strangey Dangey merch."

Oh, it's my favorite merch hands down.

Really?

Yeah, it's my favorite one we've ever done. Extremely comfortable. Sizes are good. Boxy fit. Oversized. Cute freaking sweatshirt. You can wear it anywhere.

Yeah, I know. It's actually... it's nice. I wore it yesterday. It looks trendy.

You're going to love it. New Strangey Dangey merch—check it out in the description. It'll be everywhere on all of our social medias.

We love you guys, and we hope you love it. Strangey Dangey has been highly, highly requested—probably, I think, our most requested merch option. So, um, yeah, if you wanted it and you didn't get it, go get it right now.

You got 10, 15, 20 seconds for us?

Well, hockey season is over—unless your team made the playoffs. Ours didn't. So hockey season's over, and now we're getting into golf season.

For all those who golf out there, the Masters was on recently. It was so good.

Honestly, it was—it was such a good Masters. Loved it. Watched the majority of it.

Congrats, Rory!

Yeah, dude. Golf is so hard. Golf season's coming up. I'm gonna try to golf a couple of times, lose a bunch of balls, and wait for the winter to come.

Basically what happens every single season. One of these days, I'll be really good at golf—but today's not the day.

I don't think you're bad.

No, I'm not bad, but I don't go enough to be good. Like, I'd have to be going three times a week—four times a week. I don't do that.

Yeah, that's just like... not really attainable. Like, sustainable. Like, could I do it? Sure. Is that a lot of time? Lot of time.

I don't know. Maybe I'll try golf more. Pick up a lesson here and there. I—I wouldn't consider myself bad, but I also wouldn't consider myself good.

I'd say I'm mediocre when it comes to golf. But I'm not going to lie, I can drive the ball pretty well.

Me too.

That's what we've got going on. Also, there is a golf company that recently sent me some stuff.

We—we did an ad.

We did an ad for them. They're called PXG. So if you want to check it out, go check it out.

Okay, you guys, reminder—we have two other shows in Oh No Media. My solo show Into the Dark and our true crime news show Rise N’ Crime.

It's just been a second since I talked about them, and sometimes I forget not everyone knows.

Yeah, so Rise N’ Crime is current news—true crime news—twice a week. And then Into the Dark is basically Murder With My Husband minus the husband, once a week.

So yeah, go check them out if you need more content to binge.

That being said, let's get into our case.

Sources for today's episode:

oxygen.com, newsw3v.com, 8newsnow.com, halfpricelawyers.com, people.com, wpde.com, reviewjournal.com, lawandcrime.com, sinssurvivors.com, and ktnv.com.

So I think it's safe to say that for most of us listening to this, social media feels unavoidable these days. I'm always shocked when someone tells me they've managed to stay off social media, because I think—how? It just doesn't even feel possible.

And the way I see it, Instagram and TikTok are ways to stay updated with people in our lives. For others, it's a way to make new friends and connect with people who have similar interests. And sometimes, it's just a way to not feel alone in this world.

But the thing with social media is, you sometimes never know who is looking at your profile—who is waiting for your updates, looking to connect with you through a screen. Especially when you're someone with a big following.

Which is why, when an influencer goes missing these days, the police often turn to social media to see what was happening in their DMs. But today's case is a reminder that, while social media and the people we encounter on it can certainly be unpredictable, the real threat doesn't happen online—it happens in the real world.

So for today’s case, we are turning back the clock to 2019, and we are heading to Las Vegas to meet 24-year-old Esmeralda Gonzalez.

Now, unlike a lot of people living in Vegas, Esmeralda’s not a transplant. She's actually spent most of her life there. She and her two brothers grew up in the historic neighborhood of West Las Vegas. Maybe not a place you'd venture to if you were looking for casinos and nightclubs, but for Esmeralda and her family, this was home.

Her family was from Michoacán, Mexico, and came to the States in the '90s looking for opportunities. I looked it up, and that’s how you say it—I’m pretty sure that was good.

Michoacán?

Yeah babe, that's how it said. But if I did say it wrong, don’t blame me—blame the internet.

So, born on May 26th, 1995—

Wait, my birthday is May 26th, 1994!

That’s kind of crazy, I'm not going to lie to you.

The year after you! That’s Esmeralda.

All the May 26-ers unite!

Also, interesting time to be an influencer—2019.

Mhm.

I feel like that was definitely before influencing really blew up. But still like, "Oh wow, you have a lot of followers on Instagram? That’s crazy, how did you do that?" sort of thing.

Yeah, but not really like, "Oh, I'm making tons of money" blow-up yet.

Maybe 2020?

Yeah, I feel like 2020–2021 is when all of a sudden the crazy money maybe started coming in for influencers. Maybe they were making good money before—I don't know, I'm not an influencer, don’t ask me.

Yeah, I definitely feel like influencing was well-known in 2019, but not maybe as common.

Yeah.

As in, like, everyone trying to be an influencer-type thing.

Until TikTok came along and—

Right.

Yeah, so she's born in Mexico, and then her and her family come to the States in the '90s. So Esmeralda really couldn’t have been older than five when the family found the small community in Vegas and decided to go there and call it their own.

So while the Gonzalezes strongly believed in working hard and keeping their heads down to achieve the American dream, Esmeralda wasn't exactly the kind of girl who was, you know, keen on living a quiet, modest life in the shadows.

She had big plans for her future, and she knew that with the perfect cocktail of brains and beauty, the right doors would open for her in time—exactly how she wanted.

As Esmeralda got older, she began participating in beauty pageants while also staying after school for the chess club. And while Esmeralda was the only female in the chess club, that sort of spoke to the kind of person she was. She wasn’t someone who was easily intimidated or willing to back down.

After graduating from high school, Esmeralda knew she wanted to stay local. Her family meant the world to her, and she never wanted to venture far. So she chose to attend the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she began studying for her bachelor's degree in communications.

But even during her college years, Esmeralda kept her eye on the prize. She became a member of UNLV's chapter of the National Society for Leadership and Success, and actually had plans to go on to law school after finishing her undergrad degree.

Now, Esmeralda—like many girls her age—also had dreams of becoming a mother one day, starting her own family that she could be proud of, much like the life her parents had built for her. But for the time being, Esmeralda was content just being a dog mom to her miniature poodle, whom she named Bonita.

Especially because she wasn’t in a rush to settle down. Quite the opposite, actually. In 2018, Esmeralda’s Instagram started growing—hopping off. Her following started building. And you have to think, this was similar to the time we were going through college.

Yes. And it was really that time when influencing started becoming just really well known.

It was like, “Whoa, there’s people making money off Instagram with tons of followers. Like, Instagram famous.”

Uh-huh.

And so she was getting to enjoy plenty of the perks that came along with being this influencer. If you think about it, Esmeralda was already in the perfect place to grow a following. She had the backdrop of one of the craziest cities in the world, and she was candid about sharing her nights out—and the outfits and accessories she sported while doing it.

Safe to say, Esmeralda was a little ahead of the game. So by 2018, she had close to 300,000 followers.

In 2018?

Well, that’s a lot.

Yes.

And her profile included credits like: BA in Communications, Entrepreneur, Real Estate Investor, Social Scientist, and Foreign Model.

I think back then, Instagram bios were a little bit more like a LinkedIn profile instead of an Instagram bio.

Yeah.

You know?

Uh-huh.

So Esmeralda was definitely doing well for herself as an influencer, because it seems this helped her bring in quite a bit of cash in 2018. Suddenly, she was sporting designer shoes, bags—she had a $40,000 Rolex. And when she turned 23 that year, she was even able to purchase her first house on her own.

At 23?

Twenty-three.

Meanwhile, Esmeralda’s love life also seemed to be blossoming. She had been seeing her boyfriend, Luis Merllo, for some time now, though the two hadn’t taken the step to move in together yet.

For now, Esmeralda was still enjoying her independence and soaking up any chance she could to spend time with her family—including on the day of her 24th birthday. That’s May 26th, 2019.

Now, little did Esmeralda's family know, everything was about to change for her—and not for the better.

On the afternoon of May 31st, just a week after celebrating her birthday, Esmeralda's brother Juan went by her house to check on her. He hadn’t heard from his sister for the last day or so, which wasn’t normal, and he was starting to get worried.

He gets to his sister’s house, goes up to her front door, knocks, and no one answers. But even more alarming, he realizes that his sister’s front door is unlocked. Juan is able to let himself inside, which is completely unlike Esmeralda. She’s usually very responsible and would never leave her front door unlocked—especially because she lived alone and valued her privacy.

Juan starts calling her name around the house. At first, he thinks she couldn’t have gone far, because when he pulled in, he noticed her car was still in the driveway. Plus, her purse and wallet are inside the house—but he can’t find her phone.

There’s one thing about the house that really scares Juan the second he goes inside: it’s a disaster. And it’s not that he necessarily thinks someone has kidnapped Esmeralda when he sees the state of the house, because he’s actually seen her belongings in a state like this before.

What it had been in the past—and what it looks like now to Juan—is that Esmeralda might have had another mental health episode. This was something she had been struggling with on and off for a while, according to Juan.

A little bit of a breakdown, maybe throwing stuff everywhere—something like that.

Esmeralda had actually been diagnosed in the past with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I'm not sure how long she had been battling these illnesses, but I know she had been prescribed medication for both of them, and they really did seem to help her, according to Juan.

But just a week ago, at her birthday party, Esmeralda had actually confided in her brother that she had been struggling again. She wasn’t sure if her medications were working anymore—maybe she just needed to get her dosage changed.

So when he didn’t hear from her, and then he goes to her house, sees her car, sees her stuff, no phone, and sees the state the house is in—he’s worried.

He’s immediately worried, which is why he’s even there in the first place. He actually thinks Esmeralda might be in Vegas somewhere, in an unhealthy state of mind. He knows that without her medication, Esmeralda has a hard time grappling with her perception of reality—which, as we know, can be dangerous for any human being.

But before he lets the panic set in, Juan decides to get in touch with Esmeralda’s newish boyfriend, Luis, to see if maybe they’re just together somewhere. Only this conversation leaves Juan even more unsettled.

Luis tells him that the last time he saw Esmeralda was actually yesterday—so, the day before—and things didn’t go well between the two of them. They weren’t really talking. He noticed that Esmeralda wasn’t acting right. Whether or not he knew about her mental health history, I’m not sure, but he said he could tell something was definitely off with her.

Then Luis admits he took Esmeralda’s cell phone and her car keys, trying to help keep her safe because she just wasn’t in a very good frame of mind.

Now, knowing that Esmeralda isn’t with her boyfriend either—and doesn’t have these personal items—Juan gets the police involved.

What a good brother, by the way. Like, really following the steps, trying to figure everything out.

He tells the police the last time he saw Esmeralda, and also shares the story he got from Luis, her boyfriend. He’s like, "This is what her boyfriend told me."

And for a police officer investigating a case, the first people you're going to consider in a situation like this are those close to the missing person—especially the boyfriend.

When they decide to look into Luis’s past, immediately—like, right off the bat—they pull him up and find he’s not exactly squeaky clean. Just a couple of weeks before, police had been called to Esmeralda’s house over a domestic violence incident involving Luis.

I don’t know the details of what happened that night, but obviously this is going to be an immediate red flag for detectives. A couple of weeks before, there’s a domestic violence call—and now she’s missing?

So, they call Luis to try and get him to come down for questioning, or at the very least, to hand over Esmeralda’s cell phone and keys so they can dig further into her call and text history—and maybe even get into her car.

But Luis doesn’t do himself any favors at this point. He’s not very cooperative. He actually gives the evidence to his attorney to hand over to the police. I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad idea—but to the police, it seems a little shady.

No, it’s not a bad idea. I mean, if you went missing, that’s exactly what I would do.

Oh, yeah. I mean, especially in this day and age, right? I know it’s hard because it does raise red flags for police, but I think by 2025, detectives and police in general need to realize—people do it more for safety now than to hide something.

That was 2018. So, by 2019, things are a little bit different.

Meanwhile, investigators realize there’s something inside Esmeralda’s house that might actually help them get to the bottom of her disappearance: security cameras.

But once they pull the footage from the security cameras at Esmeralda’s house, they find... nothing. It’s just Esmeralda wandering her house, going about her business—which is great for Luis. He’s not pictured in the house at all before Esmeralda disappears out the front door alone on May 30th and doesn’t come back.

So, the question now is: nothing happened to her at the house. Where did she go? And is Luis involved?

Days pass as detectives dig deeper into Esmeralda’s life, looking for any clue. What they’ve put together so far is a brief timeline:

Esmeralda argued with Luis the afternoon of May 30th. She leaves her house that same night and doesn’t come back. She’s never seen again on camera. Then her family reports her missing the following day—the afternoon of May 31st.

Without much to work with this early in the investigation, police turn to a new pool of suspects—a pretty big one: Esmeralda’s social media following.

I mean, when a celebrity is murdered, it’s not that weird to ask, “Did they have any stalkers?”

So they haven't ruled out the boyfriend for sure—they're just trying to look at other people, too.

When someone attracts that much attention online—she had close to 300,000 followers—you have to consider whether someone might have taken an unhealthy interest in her. Especially because she wrote one very obvious thing on her Instagram profile: "No DMs."

She didn’t want to talk to people. She made that clear.

So they start to wonder—why? Why all of a sudden is she closing off her DMs? Was there someone in the past who had been harassing her?

She was probably no stranger to people messaging her online, and I doubt it was always kind or appropriate.

I also can’t remember—Instagram has changed so much from then until now—what filters were in place, what restrictions, safety features, blocking tools...

I know that stuff existed, but I don’t know to what extent, especially in 2018 and 2019. It’s just been so long.

I’m trying to think... because I worked in social media.

Yeah, you ran that from 2018?

No, 2019.

No, 2018 to 2020.

Well, 2022 actually.

Oh, you’re right.

Yeah, so maybe you did start in 2019. I’m trying to think if the “requests” feature for people with a high number of followers was a thing, because I’m pretty sure it used to be that anyone could DM you.

Yeah—anyone could DM you. There weren’t restrictions. You couldn’t really block people unless you did it one by one.

Now, if you have a certain number of followers—if you didn’t know—your message actually goes into a “requests” folder. That person has to check it separately, scroll through, and then accept a message. And some people don’t even check their request folder, so they might not even see your DM at all.

Mhm. So, I don’t know if that was a thing at this point.

And I mean, police are going through her comments on her photos, and there were just random, you know, creepers commenting stuff like, "You should marry me," or "We should go out sometime."

Normal—unfortunately normal with social media. Nothing really out of the ordinary.

And it wasn’t just that. She did have some very—I don’t want to say risqué—but... I mean, some people would have considered her pictures risqué. So that can draw a certain kind of attention.

Didn’t she have “foreign model” or something in her bio?

Yeah, and she also posted a lot about her luxurious lifestyle. She posted that she had a $40,000 Rolex. That’s like catnip to robbers.

So, they have to take that into consideration too. Was someone keeping an eye on Esmeralda? Did they find out where she lived and wait for her to leave?

As police dig into this very large suspect pool, Juan is doing his own due diligence trying to locate his sister. He and the family are posting flyers around town, spreading the word through Facebook—anything they can to find Esmeralda.

And it works.

A neighbor of Esmeralda comes forward to say they actually noticed something odd around 2:30 a.m. on May 31st. She didn’t even realize it was that strange until she heard Esmeralda was missing.

Security footage caught Esmeralda lingering in the neighbor’s driveway before approaching their front door and knocking—at 2:30 in the morning.

In the footage, Esmeralda is dressed in only lingerie and high heels. She’s not walking steadily. She seems very confused—out of sorts, drugged, or drunk.

When the neighbor wakes up and sees Esmeralda at the door, they tell her, “Hey, you have the wrong house,” and Esmeralda quickly responds, “Oh, I do? Okay, thank you,” and leaves the property.

She doesn’t put up a fight. She isn’t combative—just apologetic, and she moves on.

And you have to think, the neighbor’s like, “Who is this person?” You know?

But that’s not the only tip police receive after that. There’s another one—one that starts to help them build an even more concrete timeline.

So Luis takes Esmeralda’s car keys sometime on the morning of May 30th because they’re in a fight, and she’s not acting normal.

Later that day, someone reports seeing Esmeralda at a local BMW dealership.

Police follow up, and they find video footage that confirms the tip. Esmeralda is walking through the lobby of this dealership—in lingerie and heels.

Same outfit, but this time during the day. This is the same outfit she’ll be seen wearing later that night at the neighbor’s front door.

Okay... that’s kind of weird.

But this is Vegas. The people who worked at the dealership didn’t kick her out. Honestly, they didn’t even find it that strange. They figured maybe it was her work attire—maybe she’s a dancer on her way to work.

But Esmeralda is there for another reason. She wants to get another key to her car since her boyfriend had taken hers. The catch is, she's not alone at this BMW dealership. She's with another man, a gentleman in his 40s or 50s, who seems to be walking with her, but he's not acting suspicious in any way. He looks more like a friend trying to help her out.

So, police sound the alarms on this. They have to figure out who this stranger is with Esmeralda, basically the day she disappears. The family doesn't recognize him, so they start posting photos of him on the local news and they get a hit. The guy himself comes forward and says, "Uh, I saw that you're looking for me. My name is Brent Smith."

Now, Brent Smith lives very close to Esmeralda. He's actually another neighbor of hers, okay, but he didn’t know her before that day. From what I can tell, he didn’t know her very well. Though, he says plain and simple, “Esmeralda approached me on the 30th and told me that her boyfriend took her keys and she needed a new set. She asked me if I could give her a ride to the dealership. And me being a good neighbor, I said, ‘Sure.’”

Now, Brent would of course be considered a person of interest in all of this, except after that trip to the dealership, Esmeralda got dropped back off at home and she was seen on her interior surveillance cameras after that. This is before she leaves the house for good later that night. So, he's cleared basically.

Yes. This means Brent probably is the good neighbor he claims to be, 'cause he did drop her off. And then hours after that, you think he was like, "Dang, I’m dropping her off and she’s wearing lingerie or I don't know. Is this normal in Vegas?" Like, I just don’t know. I don’t live in Vegas. But he also, I mean, he's probably like, "Wait, you're telling me that I meet her for the first time, I take her, and now she’s, like, missing missing." That’s kind of freaky.

So, as we know, she’s going to leave the house and then hours after that drop-off, around 2:30 a.m., she’s going to be seen at a different neighbor’s door, being told she’s at the wrong house but never actually going back to her own house, even though she’s in her own neighborhood.

So, police are now wondering, okay, what’s the next step? Where did Esmeralda disappear to after that? There’s been no usage on her credit cards, no activity on any of her social accounts, including her Instagram profile. That’s not good. Nothing that shows proof of life from Esmeralda after May 31st at 2:30 a.m.

Yeah, the police are starting to hit dead ends. It is now July 18th. So, she went missing May 30th. It’s now July 18th, and another tip comes in, and this one really hits the gas. So, that day, an anonymous caller gets in touch with Las Vegas police to say they have a name of someone that they are certain is connected to Esmeralda Gonzalez’s disappearance. Let’s hear it.

And the tipster says, actually, it’s two names: 45-year-old Christopher Pipino and his roommate, 39-year-old Cassandra Garrett.

Don’t bring me into this case. Keep me out of this. Please keep my name out of this. Keep my name out of this crap.

So, we have 45-year-old Christopher and 39-year-old Cassandra, and they are roommates. This tipster, this anonymous tipster, says that back in May, Christopher and Cassandra mentioned having killed a woman.

And what—sorry, that was very… that was very aggressive.

Well, the tipster tells police that, according to these roommates, after they killed this woman, they took her out to the Nevada desert in a U-Haul and left her body out there.

Give me a break, dude.

Now, if this tip is accurate, it means that Esmeralda's case is no longer a missing person's case. It's a homicide.

A homicide, yeah.

And because the tip is just so specific, it'd be foolish of them not to look into Christopher's background. I mean, the two names that were brought to them. So, they do, and they find that Christopher works as a stagehand at the Paris Hotel, working for one of their shows there. But he also has a criminal background. He's been arrested before on charges related to drug use, though there’s nothing violent on his record, so police have to take that into consideration as well.

Drug use to murder is a pretty big jump.

But here’s the thing that really worries the police: Christopher Pipino and Cassandra Garrett, their house is in the same neighborhood as Esmeralda’s—actually, just a few doors down. Now, remember where Esmeralda was last seen alive? In her neighborhood, on camera, at 2:30 a.m. at a different neighbor’s house, being confused, looking very out of it. And then they get a tip that two of her other neighbors are the ones who killed her. And that’s where she was last seen—her own neighborhood. I mean, this really lines up for police. This makes the most sense.

I mean, I guess these cases never make sense when someone kills somebody, but like, why would they kill her? Where is this going? I think, to police, it’s like, how did she die in her own neighborhood, just steps away from her house? This is really the only option: one of the other neighbors got her before she got to her actual house.

So, knowing that Esmeralda was last seen wandering around the neighborhood, Chris and Cassandra are climbing to the top of the suspect list quickly. So, the investigators' next move is to follow up on another little detail from that tipster: the fact that Chris rented a U-Haul to get rid of Esmeralda’s body.

So, they start calling local U-Haul stores. And sure enough, one of them finds that a rental was made to a Christopher Preipino just days after Esmeralda went missing.

Okay. And on that contract is Christopher's phone number, email, and home address. He did not even try to use a fake name renting this U-Haul. Nothing.

Now, just as the police are making some moves on this case, another anonymous tip comes in telling police, "If you want to find out what happened to Esmeralda, you should speak to this woman named Trisha." And police are like, "Oh my gosh, how many freaking tips can we get?"

I don’t understand why so many people know about the murder except the police.

But it would be shoddy police work not to follow up every tip. So, they track down Trisha even though they feel like they’re on the right path. And when they speak with her, they realize that this tipster actually was being helpful because she begins to connect the dots even more for police.

She tells the police that in early June, a week or so after Esmeralda went missing, her friend Christopher Preapino called her in the middle of the night. He told her he needed her help moving something large and asked if she could come over to the house right away. Trisha got out of bed, made the drive over, and when she got there, she found her friend Christopher blasting music and the TV so loud that she could barely speak to him.

But also, Christopher was acting really paranoid. He was going on and on about a woman who had come over to his house, and he had tied her up and maybe accidentally killed her. This is now the second person he’s opening his mouth to. Christopher cannot keep a secret.

This is what I’m trying to say, though. Like, I mean, no one can comprehend it. The fact that this girl was out there and all this random guy was like, "Oh, I’m going to tie her up and I’m going to kill her." I’m saying, like, how does that possibly go through somebody’s mind? It’s gross. It’s insane.

But that’s not even the half of it, because Trisha sees some other really shady stuff while she’s there that night trying to help her friend, I guess, move a body. For starters, that U-Haul is sitting there in the driveway just waiting to be loaded up. And meanwhile, Cassandra, Christopher’s roommate, is frantically cleaning out their garage. And according to Trisha, she’s high on drugs.

And the most chilling detail is there is a giant handmade wooden box in the garage. From pictures, it looks a little bit bigger than like a chest freezer. And apparently, that wooden box is what Chris needs help moving into the U-Haul, getting it in. He said that he and his roommate Cassandra had been trying for hours but were unsuccessful. So, they called Trisha to see if the three of them could get it up.

Now, later, having heard the news about this missing Esmeralda, Trisha was pretty certain that it was her body inside the box that she had helped move that night.

Now, I want to be clear, Trisha is being forthcoming with police, but they came to her off of an anonymous tip. Yeah. Because, I mean, I’m not saying that she’s guilty of collusion. She should have gone to the police, but come on. Like, come on. Let’s not be naive here. The second you even had a premonition or thought—sorry—that it might have been this missing woman who disappeared in that exact neighborhood, and you might have helped move her body into a U-Haul, you should have contacted police.

So, after this, police feel pretty certain that Christopher is their guy. So, they subpoena his phone records next, and they find something else that sort of confirms Trisha’s story. So, needless to say, they are just gluing everything together. They’re just getting some backend behind their evidence.

Christopher spent a lot of time at Home Depot. There’s a specific Home Depot by his house after her disappearance. So, they reach out to that store where his phone was constantly pinging. They ask for security footage, and sure enough, Christopher Preapino takes multiple trips in and out of Home Depot, buying all of the supplies that someone would need to build a wooden box just like the one Trisha described: wood, cement mix, lime, drills, mixing paddles.

And then, on June 8th, Christopher’s phone records placed him somewhere else. That’s kind of suspicious. That day, he spent multiple hours out in the middle of the Nevada desert. So, police assume Christopher must have found a way to get that box inside the U-Haul, and he was out there dumping it that day.

So now, investigators are getting closer to finding out what happened to Esmeralda. The issue is they only have Christopher’s cell coordinates to work off of, and the Nevada desert is a pretty big place. So, while they do multiple searches of the area, spanning hundreds and hundreds of miles of desert, they don’t find anything. And that’s when they realize, as badly as they wanted to find Esmeralda before arresting Christopher, they were going to need to go directly to Christopher to find Esmeralda.

So, it’s September by this point, and police decide that they’re going to actually start with finding Cassandra, the roommate, first. Only, they quickly realize she’s not even in Vegas anymore. She actually ran off to Wisconsin to her boyfriend’s house. So, police hop on a plane and knock on her boyfriend’s door. And Cassandra’s pretty good at playing dumb. She says she knows nothing about a U-Haul or a missing girl, even though Trisha said she was there cleaning out the garage. In fact, she’s really combative, which, of course, is not helpful. But for now, it’s not enough to arrest her.

So, they move to the next phase. They need to get a warrant for Christopher’s house back in Vegas. So, on September 20th, they knock on his door. And as much as I hate to say it, they find nothing. They find no evidence that Esmeralda was ever inside his house, let alone killed there. Surprising.

And Christopher insists over and over that he has no idea who Esmeralda is. He’s never seen her before. So, police are getting frustrated. They feel like they have a lot of circumstantial evidence and a lot of tips against these people, but just nothing to prove it.

So, this is when they realize that Christopher and Cassandra might actually just be roommates, because Christopher has a girlfriend named Lisa Mort, who is in prison at this time. She’s at a nearby detention center on some unrelated charges—I’m not sure what—but police had heard that she and Chris spoke over the phone regularly. So, they actually wondered if maybe they could cut a deal with Lisa to kind of get more information and maybe even to testify against her boyfriend Christopher. But when they question Lisa, she’s also saying she knows nothing about the crime. It’s just dead end after dead end.

But police feel like they’re so close. So, they throw one final Hail Mary. In October, they connect with Cassandra, the roommate, again.

They say to her, "Look, we're just willing to make a deal with you at this point. We're hot on your trail. We're inches away from making an arrest, but if you cooperate with us and you lead us to Esmeralda's body, we will fly you back to Vegas and let you get all of your affairs in order before we arrest you."

Now, this is not a conventional arrangement by any means, but it seems like maybe the guilt was just too much for Cassandra to bear, because that's when she caves and says, "Okay, let's do it. I'll do it."

So, on October 8th, Cassandra flies from Wisconsin to Nevada. And that same day, she gets in the car with detectives. She drives them out to the desert. But for hours, it seems like Cassandra's just leading them on. She keeps saying she doesn't remember exactly where it was; nothing was looking familiar until they come to one particular rock formation and she says, "Oh, this is it."

So, that's when a detective gets out of the car, climbs up to an embankment, looks down, and sees a giant homemade wooden box lying there in the Vegas sand.

Found it.

So, police actually have to call in for a crane to come and lift this structure out of the desert. And when they get it back to the lab, they have to call for firefighters to drill into it to see if the remains are inside. And sure enough, they find a body.

But the level of decomposition is so bad that they can't even perform an autopsy. Oh, gosh, man. It's clear to investigators that foul play was involved with this body, though, because the victim's hands are still bound with rope.

The only thing left to do is confirm that this is, in fact, Esmeralda, which doesn't take long because that Rolex watch—the one she's pictured wearing on Instagram—is in the box with her. And once her brother Juan locates the receipt, they are able to match the serial numbers, confirming this is definitely the Rolex that belongs to Esmeralda.

And if that wasn't enough confirmation, the coroner's office also used some of the bone fragments to test the DNA. And when compared to Esmeralda's parents, it's a match.

After more than five months, the mystery of Esmeralda's disappearance has been solved. There were a few questions that remained. Was Christopher a follower of Esmeralda? Did he kidnap her? Did they know each other? What happened the night she went missing? What led to her death, and how did she die?

Well, now that Esmeralda was found, they were quickly able to get a warrant for Christopher's arrest. Problem was, his girlfriend Lisa Mort—the one in prison—had given him some advice a few days before. She told him that the police were on to him. They had called her and he'd better leave the country while he still had time. No way he left.

So, he did exactly that. When police went to find him, they learned that he had taken off to Boise.

Wow.

Which means police have to find another way to get him in handcuffs now. So, they bug his phone and start listening in on his conversations. And just a few days after finding Esmeralda's body, they get lucky.

On October 11th, Christopher gets a call from Lisa, his girlfriend in jail. She says she's going to be getting out soon, and Christopher insists he needs to get back to be there to pick her up. So, he flies back to Vegas the following day, October 12th.

That's hilarious.

And because police were listening to the phone call, they know this. And the second he lands, he gets a welcoming party. A handful of cops are waiting there to arrest him.

By the way, Lisa Mort doesn’t even make her way out of prison that day. She doesn’t actually get out. She’s arrested again on the day she was supposed to be released for being an accessory after the fact.

Mhm.

About a week later, on October 20th, Cassandra Garrett also gets a knock on the door and a set of silver handcuffs. And now, with all of the offenders in custody, police finally learn what happened to Esmeralda in the final hours of her life.

Cassandra should have made a deal with them.

So, it’s no secret that Esmeralda was likely off her medication and struggling. And it was no secret that she was wandering around the neighborhood asking for help from strangers. But apparently, one of those strangers was a friend of Christopher and Cassandra’s, and he found Esmeralda on the street that night, likely in the early hours after she rang the other neighbor's doorbell, so after 2:30 a.m.

So, they invite her into the house. They’re all partying. And I think at some point shortly after, the friend who had gone outside and invited her in left. But then Christopher—this is all according to them—got Esmeralda high on methamphetamines. This, of course, only worsened by her current mental state.

And when she started behaving strangely, it scared Christopher. He grabbed some rope and tied her to a bedpost. According to him, as Esmeralda got more erratic, she began screaming and thrashing. But Christopher and Cassandra said they were afraid to let her go at that point, thinking that she might call the police and turn them in.

Eventually, as Esmeralda starts calming down, instead of untying her, she starts fighting back. She attacks Christopher, punching him in the face. Christopher retaliates by trying to strangle her, ties her back up, throws some blankets over her, and then he goes downstairs, comes back up with a syringe filled with pool cleaner.

Oh, and he kills her.

He injects it into her, and then he and Cassandra go downstairs. They come back up to check on her later and they find her dead. Christopher panics, devises his complicated plan to get rid of the body, which, as we know, doesn't work. Christopher Prestipino is indicted on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. Cassandra Garrett faces the same charges, while Christopher’s 31-year-old girlfriend, Lisa Mort, is also charged with accessory to murder.

Both Cassandra and Lisa, however, take a plea deal. Lisa's given 24 to 60 months with 151 days of credit for time served. Cassandra's sentenced to voluntary manslaughter and given 20 years with parole after eight. Christopher, on the other hand, thought he could fight the charges, at least at first. Early on, he entered a plea of not guilty, but later changed his mind to plead guilty via an Alfred plea. We’ve talked about this before. It basically says, "You’re maintaining your innocence while pleading guilty."

So, as a result, Christopher was sentenced to 10 to 25 years for second-degree murder and 5 to 15 years for kidnapping. His sentences will run concurrently.

Interesting. Okay. Curious to see when he gets out or if he gets out.

It is kind of interesting because it appears that, although a stranger, Christopher wasn't one of Esmeralda's online followers. After all, Esmeralda just happened to find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people in her own neighborhood.

Which ultimately goes to show that while the internet may seem like a scary place at times, sometimes it really is no match for what's lurking out in the real world.

Sad.

And that is the case of Esmeralda Gonzalez. 'Cause at the beginning, you think it's the boyfriend, but he had nothing to do with it. Nothing. He had been trying to protect her.

I'm just really confused why they wouldn't just let her go. Like, I feel like they're still lying about stuff. Did they torture her? Did they?

I think they thought she was going to turn them in for having methamphetamines, and they would get drug charges. Well, a lot better than getting murder charges.

Also, just like... that makes no sense. The syringe. It's just weird.

Yeah, the whole thing's weird. I guess they were high on drugs, probably.

Doesn’t make sense. So sad.

All right, you guys, that is our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another one.

I love it.

I hate it.

Goodbye.

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