disposed of in the desert

Three bodies buried in the desert

An off-roader discovered a torso protruding from a shallow grave in the desert on the east edge of Las Vegas on March 25, 1996. When police arrived, they discovered the bodies of three women in a shallow grave covered by about a foot of dirt. The burial site was in the desert about 200 yards from a waste treatment center bordering the Las Vegas Wash not far from the intersection of Hollywood and Vegas Valley. The women had each been wrapped in a 30-gallon green garbage bag and bound with packing tape. Children’s clothes were found inside the bags with some of the victims, and a suitcase containing bloody clothing was found near the grave.

Two of the women were nude and the third was wearing only panties. All three women had shoulder-length dark hair, though one of the women had a few strands of gray hair, and all were described by police as “very slender.” The coroner determined one woman was in her late-30’s to 50’s, and that the other two women were about 25 years old. The older woman had dentures. One victim had died of blunt force trauma to the head and suffocation, while the other two died of strangulation. Police ran the victims’ fingerprints through national databases, but no records were located.

Detectives ran down different leads, with the most popular theory among investigators being that the three women had been brought to Las Vegas as part of a sex trafficking operation and had been murdered by their captors.

For nearly two decades, this was the end of the story.

Domestic Violence in Downey

Years passed and it seemed the three women found in their unceremonious final resting place in the desert surrounding Las Vegas would remain forever unknown.  But in 1999, a police officer nearing retirement in the southern California town of Downey decided to review the department’s cold case files to see if something might have been overlooked by his predecessors.  Sergeant Jim Elsasser sat at his desk and sifted through page after page of unsolved missing persons reports when one case presented such a bizarre set of circumstances it made the veteran officer stop in his tracks.

A mother and her two teenage daughters went missing in the fall of 1994.  Luz Maria Mucino and her daughters, Edith Mucino Gonzalez and Gabriela Mucino Gonzalez, were last seen at their apartment that they shared with Luz’s common-law husband, Estanislao Prado Gonzalez, and twin four-year-olds that he had conceived with Luz.  The family had moved into their new residence on Old River School Road in late-November of 1994.  The neighborhood was quiet and featured several sprawling blocks of two-story modest apartment buildings across the street from stereotypical southern California single-story ranch-style homes.

However, within days of signing a yearlong lease, Estanislao Gonzalez and the four-year-old twins he had with Luz abandoned the apartment for whereabouts unknown.  A friend of Luz became suspicious after not hearing from her and filed a missing persons report after spotting a toy kitchen set that belonged to the couple’s twins still sitting on the apartment patio.

Police investigators searched the vacant home.  At a glance it was clear there had been a hasty relocation from the premises.  But there were no signs of foul play – that is until crime scene investigators were able to use Luminol to identify the remnants of blood splatter on the premises.  The forensic team was also able to determine that someone had used bleach and other powerful cleaning agents in an effort to sanitize the scene.  The empty apartment and missing family now took more ominous tones.  But this was still the early days of DNA technology, and the Downey Police were only able to determine that the blood in the apartment was human.

The case file showed that detectives with the Downey P.D. ran down the leads they could to locate the missing family.  Both Estanislao Gonzalez and Luz Mucino worked together at a warehouse operated by a costume supply company.  The busy Halloween season had just ended a few weeks before the Gonzalez family’s disappearance when the manager of the warehouse received an unexpected call from Estanislao. 

Gonzalez told his boss that he and Luz had to quit due to immigration issues.  Not wanting to lose two good employees, Gonzalez’s manager offered to assist in locating an immigration attorney and even said the company would foot the bill for the legal fees.  The manager was shocked when Gonalez rejected this generous offer and instead informed him that he would be stopping by to pick up the final paychecks for himself and Luz.  Police became suspicious and set up a sting to detain Gonzalez for questioning.  Several Downey police officers waited in hiding for Gonzalez to arrive at the warehouse to pick up his check.  But he never showed.

Sergeant Elsasser, his curiosity now piqued, searched databases for California and neighboring states to locate any reports about Luz or her daughters, but there was nothing but dead-end after dead-end.  The sergeant then ran the vehicle identification number for the van Estanislao Gonzalez owned when he lived in Downey. 

There was a hit.

Gonzalez had registered the van at an address in Las Vegas, which was just about a four-hour drive from Downey.  Sergeant Elsasser contacted the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department who then confirmed that Estanislao Gonzalez and the twin children were now living in a trailer park on the southeastern side of Las Vegas. 

But that was where the case again grew cold.  Gonzalez had informed acquaintances of the couple in California that his wife and stepdaughters had left their home abruptly after Luz informed him of her intent to separate.  Without more evidence, there was nothing that could be done but wait.

Hunting a Killer from Downey to Vegas

As fortune would have it, the wait wasn’t long. 

By 2002, advances in DNA technology had finally resulted in being able to make a match with the blood samples found in the abandoned apartment on Old River School Road.  Further, analysts could now say that the blood splatter found in the apartment came from two women that were likely related.  Now detectives with the Downey Police Department needed a relative of Luz or her daughters from which to obtain a DNA sample for comparison with the blood samples in police evidence.

The obvious choice was Luz’s twin children that now resided with Gonzalez in Sin City.  But now the conundrum for police was how to obtain the comparison sample when the kids were in the custody of the man police suspected had murdered their mother and sisters. 

That lead to Downey Police contacting detectives assigned to the southeast area command of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to develop a plan that would allow investigators to make the crucial connection needed to obtain an arrest warrant for Estanlislao Gonzalez. 

A sergeant with the Downey Police made the journey from the California coast to the desert and linked up with two Vegas detectives.  The quandary the law enforcement officers now faced was how to make their approach without raising the suspicions of Gonzalez.  After all, he had already managed to flee southern California and remain under the radar of the police for five years after the sudden disappearance of his wife and stepdaughters.  The last thing anybody gathered at the southeast area command wanted was for Gonzalez to once again hit the road for parts unknown.

Then one of the gathered officers proposed a plan that would allow them inside Gonzalez’s home under the guise of helping him financially. 

After his sudden departure from Downey, Gonzalez settled into new quarters with his young twin children in a trailer park along Boulder Highway.  An early artery linking Boulder City to downtown Las Vegas, the no-man’s land section of Boulder Highway between Henderson and Downtown has long been a stretch of dusty desolation where the more unseemly aspects of a twenty-four hour town for pleasure and sensory delights are not concealed behind the doors of hotel suites but instead laid bare on either side of the expansive six-lane road.  This particular expanse of Boulder Highway is where fancy bars with complex themes and designer cocktails that only an experienced bartender can mix give way to dingy barebones dives that give real meaning to that descriptor.  Mobile home parks with narrow and haphazard streets stand in contrast to well-manicured lawns and the orderliness of newer Las Vegas neighborhoods.  Bottom-tier casinos where tourists dare not venture – even with the allure of a ninety-nine-cent breakfast – punctuate the eclectic landscape of dreariness along this lost portion of Sin City.

It was in the first part of 2003 that Detective Gil Toledo along with two detectives with Metro knocked on the door of the trailer where Gonzalez now lived.  The officers were out of uniform and introduced themselves to Gonzalez as social workers that were there to see what additional financial assistance could be provided to help with the care of his two children.  The officers complimented Gonzalez for taking on the responsibility of being a single father, with one detective later saying that they “made him feel like father of the year.” 

Gonzalez was receptive to the prospect of receiving some financial aid, particularly since the state of the mobile home he shared with the young twins was squalid.  Gonzalez invited the “social workers” into his home where the stench of rotting food and animal droppings instantly assaulted the detectives’ nostrils.  Exposed electrical wires and various other hazards were present inside the tiny quarters occupied by the family of three. 

Gonzalez didn’t become suspicious with the detectives’ questions that appeared to him to be of the sort typical of social workers.  When he was asked the whereabouts of the twins’ mother, Gonzalez responded that the children’s mother had abandoned the family years before.  When the “social workers” asked the kids about their mother, they responded, “We don’t have one.” 

Playing a long game can be hard.  The detectives that visited the rundown mobile home where the Gonzalez twins now resided wanted to remove the children from their fetid residence right then and there.  But without enough evidence to make an arrest, all that removing the children would accomplish would be to permit their father to once again evade the persistent questions about his role in the disappearance of Luz, Edith, and Gabriela.

And so, the officers left the trailer park on Boulder Highway that day without the Gonzalez children.  But they were now armed with more information they could use in their hunt for evidence that would tie Estanislao Gonzalez to the disappearance of Luz Mucino and her daughters.

captured and convicted

A few days passed after the police visited the Gonzalez home on Boulder Highway before the two detectives that had pretended to be social workers stopped by a Boys and Girls Club where the Gonzalez twins regularly spent time.  The detectives continued with their ruse that they were social workers and requested that the children brush their teeth as part of a health check.  The detectives then took the toothbrushes used by the kids and compared their DNA to that of the blood found in the apartment back in Downey.

It was a match.  The blood that the killer had tried to bleach out of existence belonged to Luz Mucino or one of her two missing daughters.

In a new twist, by this point detectives had come to identify Gonzalez’s sister who resided in Los Angeles as a potential source of additional evidence to support an arrest and conviction.  Downey police detectives made contact with Delia Gonzalez Mora at her home while Las Vegas police kept an eye on Estanislao Gonzalez to ensure he did not flee the jurisdiction.  A warrant was obtained to tap the phone of Gonzalez where conversations were later picked up between the murder suspect and his sister.  Shortly afterwards, police knocked on Mora’s door and asked about her brother’s connection to Luz’s disappearance. 

Though Gonzlez’s sister claimed to know nothing about Luz Mucino, the wiretap revealed that she immediately drove to a payphone and tipped her brother off that the police were asking questions about his missing wife.  Gonzalez’s sister even offered to pick up her brother and drive him to Mexico where he would likely be beyond the reach of the Downey and Vegas police.  Detectives feared that Gonzlez might take his sister up on her offer, so they moved quickly to make an arrest based on the evidence they had.

Gonzalez was apprehended in the parking lot of the Boys and Girls Club as he was picking up the twins.  The children were taken into protective custody and eventually placed with a foster family while their father was booked at the Clark County Detention Center.

In the police interrogation room, Gonzalez maintained his innocence.  At least at first.  He tried spinning a yarn for detectives that two movers had stabbed Luz and her daughters to death, and that afterwards Gonzalez had helped dispose of the bodies near Los Angeles.

Once it became clear that his original stories were not adding up, Gonzalez eventually agreed to confess to the triple murders of Luz, Edith, and Gabriela.  In exchange, prosecutors would not pursue the death penalty.  Unfortunately, a term of the plea agreement reached with Gonzalez was that he simply had to confess to the murders – he did not have to offer an explanation of how he committed the murders or how he disposed of the bodies.  This was a particularly troublesome aspect of the deal because investigators on the case long believed that Gonzalez had help in disposing of the bodies.

As one of the detectives on the case commented, “How does one person kill three people and dispose of them like that?  Someone had to help him.”

Police also arrested Gonzalez’s sister in relation to the murders of Luz Mucino and her daughters, but the District Attorney for Los Angeles County ultimately determined there was insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction.

Gonzalez received three life sentences for his crime.  As for the twins that he absconded with to Las Vegas after fleeing California, they adjusted as best as possible to the horrible news that their father had been responsible for the death of their mother.  The twins, now in early adolescence, invited the detectives that had helped crack the case to the memorial service for their mother and sisters that was held in Las Vegas in 2005.  Even years later, the twins remained in touch with the detectives that had helped solve the disappearance of their mother.

Unknown Motive

Among the questions that remained unanswered after Estanislao Gonzalez’s arrest and conviction was the chain of events and motives that resulted in three women being slain in a suburban California apartment.  While there will likely never be a definitive account of the tragic actions that occurred in late 1994 at the Gonzalez residence, a blog post written by the manager of the costume shop where Gonzalez and Luz both worked sheds some light on these questions.

The manager described Estanislao Gonzalez – who went by “Tani” – as a pleasant and intelligent fellow that had taught himself to speak fluent English and read often.  The manager remembered Luz – who went by “Lucy” – as a hard worker, in fact a far harder worker than her husband.  The manager remembered that Tani Gonzalez would often idle away his time at work by daydreaming or listening to the radio, all while Luz pulled double duty to make sure the work in the warehouse was complete by day’s end. 

Another interesting memory of the manager that potentially offers insight into Gonzalez’s mindset is the recollection that Gonzalez was often passive and quiet – with one exception.  Gonzalez would frequently use a sharp tone when speaking with Luz and maintained an aggressive posture toward his wife.  The manager thought that Gonzalez exerted “a sort of control” over Luz.  More troubling, another employee at the warehouse suspected that Gonzalez physically abused Luz as she would occasionally show up to work with black eyes.

The broad motive behind the murder was tragic but sadly not uncommon.  Gonzalez and Luz’s relationship appears to have been punctuated by routine domestic violence.  Who knows what occurred on the night of the murders that caused the carnage Gonzalez wrought, but it could have been Luz telling her husband that she and her daughters would be leaving to start a new life.  Gonzalez may have reacted to this news by claiming Luz’s life, as well as those of her daughters that witnessed the murder. 

We also will likely never know how the murders occurred.  But with blood splatter from Luz and one of her daughters present in the apartment and the lack of neighbors reporting the sound of gunshots, it seems likely that Gonzales used a sharp or blunt instrument to commit the slayings.  Also, no neighbors in the apartment complex reported screams or the sounds of a struggle, indicating that the attack by Gonzalez must have been swift.

Regardless, the specifics about this heinous crime are likely maintained only in the mind of a killer.

resolution and more bodies in the desert

For two decades, the exact circumstances surrounding the murder of three women found buried in the desert outside of Las Vegas remained largely unknown with the exception of a handful of law enforcement officers.  This is largely due to an order from a California court sealing substantial portions of the criminal case file related to Estanislao Gonzalez.  The lockdown on information surrounding the case was evident in a 2014 article by veteran Las Vegas crime reporter Cathy Scott, where she noted that the triple murder case remained unsolved and that the best guess of law enforcement was that the victims had been prostitutes disposed of in the desert.

Through the diligent efforts of detectives unwilling to give up on a cold case, the three women found buried in the Las Vegas desert once again have their names restored to them.  And their killer has been called to answer for his crimes, resulting in him spending the remainder of his days in a California prison cell. 

While the initial hunch of Las Vegas police that the murdered women were the victims of sex trafficking proved to be incorrect, the case remains that the Las Vegas desert hides amidst its stark beauty a significant amount of human wreckage stemming from a city and society where certain lives are more disposable than others, a reality borne out by the fact the nude bodies of two sex workers, Victoria Magee and Charlotte Combado, were found in the desert not far off of Boulder Highway just a year after Luz and her daughters were laid to rest in a Las Vegas cemetery.