REOPENED: Daddy Dearest

Summary

Cold Case Files: REOPENED – Daddy Dearest

Hosted by Paula Barros, "Cold Case Files" delves into the most perplexing unsolved murders, exploring the tenacity of investigators and advancements in forensic technology that breathe new life into stagnant cases. In the episode titled "Reopened: Daddy Dearest," the disappearance and presumed murders of Lucy Mucino and her two teenage daughters, Edith and Gabriella, are meticulously examined.

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1. Introduction to the Case

In 1994, the tranquil life of Lucy Mucino and her two teenage daughters took a horrifying turn when they vanished without a trace from their apartment in Downey, California. The circumstances surrounding their disappearance suggested foul play, leaving friends and authorities bewildered.

Brooke Giddings sets the stage by emphasizing the anguish of not knowing a loved one's fate:

“[00:07] Brooke Giddings: People can't just disappear. I think that's what makes missing person cases so frustrating. The idea that the person you're looking for is out there and you just can't find them.”

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2. Initial Investigation and Evidence Collection

Detective John Lynch led the initial investigation, discovering unsettling evidence at the scene. The apartment showed signs of a struggle, with blood stains compelling the authorities to consider that Lucy and her daughters were victims of a violent crime.

Bill Curtis narrates the scene:

“[01:05] Bill Curtis: Detective Lynch enters Busina's apartment and finds it empty except for a few small signs of foul play... around the baseboards, around the door and the floorboard area there were what appeared to be blood spatter marks.”

Criminalist Steve Renteria corroborates the findings:

“[02:13] Steve Renteria: In the closet they showed me a stain that pretty much took up the whole area of the interior of the closet.”

Chemical analysis confirmed the presence of human blood, heightening suspicions of homicide.

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3. Challenges and Case Goes Cold

Despite the initial evidence, the investigators faced significant hurdles. Estanislau Gonzalez, Lucy's live-in boyfriend, emerged as a primary suspect after being seen moving out abruptly. His sudden departure raised red flags, but locating him proved elusive in 1994. Forensic limitations of the time further impeded progress, leaving the case unresolved.

Bill Curtis explains the forensic constraints:

“[03:36] Bill Curtis: ...the technology at the time, we could only show that that was human blood. You know, we suspected who it belonged to, but we just still have to prove it.”

With Gonzalez out of reach and insufficient evidence to prosecute, the case slipped into dormancy. Sergeant Jim Elsasser, nearing retirement, grew increasingly determined to solve the mystery:

“[05:01] Bill Curtis: Sergeant Jim Elsasser is closing in on retirement when he decides to take a shot at one of Donnie PD's most puzzling cases.”

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4. Reopening the Case with New Technology

Years later, advancements in DNA technology offered a glimmer of hope. In 2001, a fresh wave of forensic analysis revisited the blood evidence, now capable of providing more detailed insights.

Steve Renteria discusses the pivotal breakthrough:

“[07:21] Steve Renteria: ...we were able to do it, that this would be a perfect case to do future work. The results we got from blood stain one... told us that... from two females.”

This revelation pointed to the blood belonging to two related females, potentially narrowing down Lucy and one of her daughters.

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5. Tracking Down the Suspect

Sergeant Elsasser utilized vehicle identification data to trace Estanislau Gonzalez to Las Vegas. A strategic stakeout led to Gonzalez’s location, setting the stage for a decisive confrontation.

“[06:21] Jim Elsasser: I ran his vehicle identification number... he had just registered that vehicle in Las Vegas.”

Detectives approached Gonzalez under the guise of Child Protective Services, successfully gaining access to his residence and initiating contact.

Brooke Giddings describes the tense encounter:

“[14:02] Brooke Giddings: He was very cooperative... but the trailer was dirty... there was dog feces inside the trailer.”

However, Gonzalez remained evasive about the whereabouts of Lucy and his daughters, heightening suspicions.

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6. Gathering New Evidence and The Arrest

Two weeks after initial contact, detectives secured DNA samples from Gonzalez’s living children. The genetic comparison confirmed that the blood at the crime scene matched the DNA of the children, implicitly linking Gonzalez to the crime.

Steve Renteria expresses the significance of the DNA match:

“[16:04] Steve Renteria: ...we were able to establish that that is where the mother bled out in that particular crime scene.”

Armed with this evidence, detectives set a trap by placing a wiretap on Gonzalez’s phone, leading to his apprehension as he attempted to flee with his children.

“[20:19] Brooke Giddings: Gonzalez walked out of the Boys and Girls Club with the twins... as soon as he got in the vicinity of his vehicle, we stopped him.”

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7. The Confession and Resolution

During intense questioning, Sergeant Elsasser employed psychological tactics, confronting Gonzalez with the incontrovertible DNA evidence. Initially, Gonzalez maintained his innocence, but persistent interrogation led to a confession.

Jim Elsasser recounts the breakthrough moment:

“[25:04] Steve Renteria: The thought of that made him enraged...”

Gonzalez eventually admitted to the murders and the subsequent disposal of the bodies:

“[28:54] Bill Curtis: In a one page statement as Stanislau Gonzales admits to the murders and to dumping the bodies in the Nevada desert.”

Further forensic analysis confirmed the identification of the victims, and the bodies were given a final resting place at Palm Cemetery in Las Vegas.

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8. Aftermath and Legacy

The resolution of this case brought closure to a haunting cold case, though it underscored the challenges faced by law enforcement in the pre-DNA era. Lucy Mucino’s surviving twins were placed in foster care, and Gonzalez faced life imprisonment for his heinous crimes.

Brooke Giddings reflects on the bittersweet outcome:

“[29:35] Brooke Giddings: I'm happy that they've been identified and they have a final resting place. But it's hard to come out here and know that she could be with her twins and see them as they grow up.”

Cold Case Files highlights the unwavering dedication of detectives like Jim Elsasser and the transformative power of forensic advancements in bringing justice, even years later.

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Conclusion

"Reopened: Daddy Dearest" is a poignant testament to the relentless pursuit of truth in the face of enduring mystery. Through meticulous investigation and technological progress, the tragic story of Lucy Mucino and her daughters found resolution, reaffirming the critical role of cold case units in the justice system.

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For more gripping true crime stories, visit [e-mail] or explore related content on the A&E RealCrime blog.

Transcript

[Brooke Giddings]

People can't just disappear. I think that's what makes missing person cases so frustrating. The idea that the person you're looking for is out there and you just can't find them. The not knowing what happened must be so upsetting. In 1994, 37 year old Lucy Mucino and her two teenage daughters went missing. It was like they had just vanished from their apartment in Downey, California. It was unlikely that Lucy would leave her husband and two younger children behind and disappear with her teenage daughters. That plus the signs indicating a struggle in the apartment made it likely Lucy Messino and maybe her daughters had been victims of foul play. From A and E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke and here's the distinctive Bill Curtis with a classic case. Daddy dearest.

[Bill Curtis]

I came to this location on a follow up on a missing persons report. Detective John lynch is looking for three people of a missing mother and her two teenage daughters who had basically fallen off the face of the earth. 37 year old Lucy Mucino and her daughters Edith and Gabriella with were reported missing by a friend the day after Thanksgiving. And this was the last location that they were known to be at. Detective lynch enters Busina's apartment and finds it empty except for a few small signs of foul play. And checking the carpet, I noticed a brownish red which potentially could have been blood. I then noticed around the baseboards, around the door and the floorboard area there were what appeared to be blood spatter marks.

[Steve Renteria]

Detectives saw or noticed a very large red brown stain.

[Bill Curtis]

Steve Renteria is a criminalist with the LA County Crime Lab.

[Steve Renteria]

In the closet they showed me a stain that pretty much took up the whole area of the interior of the closet. Closet.

[Bill Curtis]

Ranteria runs chemical tests on the stain and determines it to be human blood.

[Steve Renteria]

After that, the detectives pointed out a certain area in the second bedroom. In this area here was the second stain about 4 inches in diameter.

[Bill Curtis]

The second stain also tests positive for human blood. Renteria decides to coat the apartment with luminolo.

[Steve Renteria]

We started in this bedroom and we sprayed the entire carpet area. Obviously the area where there was blood gave a positive result. But then we started noticing a trail or a path about 2ft wide that came from that blood stain through the doorway. A continuous reaction all the way down the hallway and it looped around all the way back into the closet where the larger stain was located. My gut feeling is somebody probably bled out and somebody either had died or was near death. But without doing any scientific experiments as far as how much blood volume it would have to Take to see that pattern. We weren't really able to say that to the detective, but inside I knew something bad had really happened.

[Bill Curtis]

We didn't really know if we had their true names. Detective Lynch's missing persons case is beginning to look more and more like homicide. Again, no relatives on Lou's side at all. We found no one that was interested in these people besides their friends. Lynch's only lead is Lucy's live in boyfriend, Estanislau Gonzalez. At the time of the disappearance, Gonzalez was seen packing up and moving out of the apartment by the building manager. She was real surprised by this because he had signed a year lease for this place and less than a week later he's moving out. So she asked him what was going on and he said, well, we're not getting along and she's going back to Mexico and I'm leaving. Detectives are unable to locate Gonzalez in 1994. Forensic technology cannot identify the blood found in the closet. And so the investigation hangs in limbo. You have to prove that a crime has occurred. And we weren't able to show that from the blood that we had at the time and the technology at the time, we could only show that that was human blood. You know, we suspected who it belonged to, but we just still have to prove it.

[Jim Elsasser]

This is the cold case homicide room of the Downey Police Department.

[Bill Curtis]

Sergeant Jim Elsasser is closing in on retirement when he decides to take a shot at one of Donnie PD's most puzzling cases.

[Jim Elsasser]

We had no idea where the suspects were. And maybe the biggest stumbling blocks is we had no idea where the bodies were. We just had three missing persons with a lot of blood evidence at the scene that we were unable to analyze last.

[Bill Curtis]

Like many in the department, Alsesser suspects Lucy Mucino and her daughters are dead and that the key to the case lies with Mosino's boyfriend, Estanislau Gonzales.

[Jim Elsasser]

I knew that there was a good likelihood that this man had killed those children. And when I was doing my investigation on it, I ended up getting photographs of these girls. Eight by eleven photographs. And I had one for each child. And every time you get a little tired and discouraged or something, you look at the pictures of these children and you just realize, hey, you know, this guy killed him and he's getting away with it and he's got away with it for five years. And I was going to do what I could do to find him.

[Bill Curtis]

On the morning of September 9, 1999, Sergeant Elsesser sits down at a computer terminal and begins to search for A Stanislau Gonzalez. Six hours later, he develops a lead.

[Jim Elsasser]

I ran his vehicle identification number and I ran it through usdmv, which is a. We can get license information from all across the United States. And even though his license plates no longer were on file, the VIN came up and he had just registered that vehicle in Las Vegas.

[Bill Curtis]

El Sasser gets on the phone with Las Vegas police who are able to confirm Gonzalez's whereabouts.

[Jim Elsasser]

They did a stakeout on the house. They saw him come home, they saw his vehicle. I knew he was there.

[Bill Curtis]

Finding Gonzalez is one thing, building a case for murder quite another.

[Steve Renteria]

We're at the LA County Sheriff's Department crime lab where we analyzed evidence in the Gonzalez case.

[Bill Curtis]

By 1999, DNA technology is advancing rapidly and bringing detectives ever closer to identifying the blood found at the scene of the disappearance.

[Steve Renteria]

A lot of these cases that we get, if we don't get results right away, some of these cases, in fact most of them we always have in the back of our mind, you know, if a future technology develops, this might be a good case to bring back out. In fact, in this particular case, I had portions of the carpet actually in my work area all the way back from 1994. And on a daily basis I would actually see them in my work area. And it would remind me that when this new technology was in place and we were able to do it, that this would be a perfect case to do future work. The results we got from blood stain one, which was from the closet, and blood stain two, which was from the bedroom number two, told us that the two different blood stains originated from two different individuals, that they were related to each other and that they were from two females.

[Bill Curtis]

The blood of two related females, sisters perhaps, or a mother and daughter. The results are consistent with foul play and the disappearance of Lucy Mucino and her daughters, but not specific enough to be conclusive.

[Jim Elsasser]

Anytime you try to prove a homicide with no bodies, that's a difficult case.

[Bill Curtis]

In the fall of 1999, Jamel Sasser retires after 30 years on the job. And the disappearance of Lucy Mucino and her daughters once again goes cold.

[Jim Elsasser]

Bottom line is, city of downey, we have 100 plus thousand people. We have three people working robberies, homicides, and they're extremely busy. And we have robberies all the time. I know one year we had 19 homicides. And cold case files get a back seat sometimes to active cases.

[Bill Curtis]

It will take a new round of DNA testing and a fresh set of cold case detectives to turn up the heat on Estanislau. Gonzales.

[Brooke Giddings]

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[Jim Elsasser]

I first looked at this case in June of 2000.

[Bill Curtis]

Detective Gil Toledo is reviewing cold cases when he comes across the 1994 disappearance of Lucy Mucino and her two daughters, Edith and Gabriella.

[Jim Elsasser]

It was very intriguing. No bodies, and these people had been.

[Bill Curtis]

Missing for several years by 2001. Detectives have developed DNA profiles from a trail of Blood found in the apartment.

[Steve Renteria]

The two different blood stains originated from two different individuals. They were related to each other, and they were from two females.

[Jim Elsasser]

So we wanted to try to identify them. And one way was to locate a relative that could provide us with some DNA through blood or saliva to compare with the blood we found in the apartment.

[Steve Renteria]

And what we learned after talking to the investigators, that there were two living children from the missing mother that were possibly with the suspect in Las Vegas.

[Bill Curtis]

The suspect in Las Vegas is Estanislau Gonzales. Gonzalez fathered two of Musino's four children and abruptly skipped town with them when Lucy went missing.

[Steve Renteria]

And we told the detectives if they would be able to get a sample from those two living children, we would be able to compare the genetic profile from those children to the blood stains found at the crime scene. And it would tell us, number one, if one of them could be the mother of the living children. And by default, the second stain would possibly be the daughter to that particular mother.

[Bill Curtis]

Downey detectives pack up and head for Vegas, gambling on a hunch that saliva samples from Lucy Mucino's children were will help unlock the mystery of her disappearance.

[Brooke Giddings]

We came to the trailer and we decided to knock on the door and use a ruse that we were Child Protective Services.

[Bill Curtis]

Linda Turner is a detective in Las Vegas, called in by Downey PD to help make contact with Estanislau Gonzales and his children.

[Brooke Giddings]

He was very cooperative. He told us that we could look around his trailer, that we could talk to him, that we could talk to the kids.

[Jim Elsasser]

And I began questioning him about the conditions of the mobile home, the children, whether they're attending school regularly. Normal questions that a social worker following up on something like this would normally ask.

[Brooke Giddings]

The trailer was dirty. There was food, but it was very disorganized. There was dog feces inside the trailer.

[Jim Elsasser]

I asked him, by the way, where's the mother of these children? And he appeared extremely startled.

[Brooke Giddings]

And we asked them, where is your mother at? And I remember the twins just staring at us kind of blankly. They said they didn't have a mother. And I asked them if they remembered their mother. They said they did not.

[Jim Elsasser]

I asked questions about what happened to her. He said that she left him long ago. I asked her if he knew where she was. He indicated that he didn't. He really wanted to avoid that line of questioning.

[Bill Curtis]

Gonzalez doesn't give up any new information. But detectives come away from the meeting with a connection they had hoped for.

[Jim Elsasser]

And I pretty much laid the groundwork for a follow up that I was Going to come back in the near future to check the children's health, make sure they're okay, they're being fed, they're going to school. And that was the time we were planning on. On actually getting the saliva sample from the kids away from him.

[Brooke Giddings]

So we knew the twins came here every day after school.

[Bill Curtis]

Two weeks later, detectives re established contact with Gonzalez's children at a local boys and girls club.

[Brooke Giddings]

So we came here, told the twins we needed to do a health check on them. They remembered us. They were very cooperative. And we took one swab from the female and one swab from the male.

[Bill Curtis]

Back in LA County, Steve Ranteria compares the children's DNA to profiles developed from the blood stains found at the suspected crime scene.

[Steve Renteria]

What we found out was the DNA results from the two living children were consistent with being the natural children of the blood stain we found in closet number one. So by doing that, we were able to establish that that is where the mother bled out in that particular crime scene.

[Bill Curtis]

Cold case detectives believe they know where Lucy Mucino died. Now they prepare to take down the man they suspect killed her.

[Steve Renteria]

At that point, we were excited. I mean, we were jumping out of our seats, wanting to go down there. And obviously, as investigators, you want to arrest this guy and get him off the streets as fast as we can.

[Bill Curtis]

Before making an arrest, detectives place a wiretap on Gonzalez's phone and approach his sister, Delia Mora, in hopes of stirring the pot.

[Jim Elsasser]

We asked her if she had seen or spoke to her brother, whether she knew the whereabouts of Luz Musino and the girls, and she denied any knowledge of them.

[Steve Renteria]

We had a team, Sri Lanka's team, on her watching the house, and immediately, within minutes, she packed up her car with another male, got on the freeway, and drove maybe about 20, 25 minutes out of where they lived.

[Bill Curtis]

Detectives keep a tail on Maura as she pulls off the freeway and gets on a payphone.

[Steve Renteria]

The team that was watching her called us and said, hey, she's on painful right now. She may be calling our guy. Sure enough, our guy asked a wire call say we got a call coming in.

[Brooke Giddings]

Hello?

[Jim Elsasser]

There was a pause in his conversation almost again, as if it sounded if he was startled, he didn't know how to respond to it. During the conversation, she offered to take him to Mexico, help him escape to Mexico. Once she made contact with him, we were not going to let him out of our sights. We just wanted to see what his reaction would be.

[Bill Curtis]

With Gonzalez now talking about a run for the border, detectives need to move Quickly.

[Brooke Giddings]

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[Steve Renteria]

We didn't want him to get the children in fear of maybe. There may be. If we end up trying to take him down, we'd have a hostage situation or maybe even harm the children.

[Bill Curtis]

Detectives know Gonzalez is headed to the Boys and Girls Club to pick up his children, and that's where they plan to take him down.

[Brooke Giddings]

Gonzalez walked out of the Boys and Girls Club with the twins. He walked towards his car. As soon as he got in the vicinity of his vehicle, we stopped him.

[Jim Elsasser]

When I first mentioned to him that I wanted to talk to him about disappearance of Luis Muscino, like his jaw dropping, everything came tumbling down on him. He was very startled.

[Brooke Giddings]

Detectives took him away across the parking lot to another vehicle. And my partner and I stayed with the twins as we already had a rapport with them. They were obviously upset seeing their dad being taken away. We stayed with them, comforted them.

[Jim Elsasser]

You are going to be booked out of a triple murder that's involved in that. We're going to show it.

[Bill Curtis]

Gonzalez is arrested and taken in for questioning.

[Jim Elsasser]

So we're going to deal with it that way. Do it. You are. Do it. Attain fast to there.

[Bill Curtis]

The detectives will find the suspect to be less than contrite.

[Jim Elsasser]

My friend, you're done. What if I told you that I had evidence that you did something to this woman? Me? Yeah. I don't understand what you're saying. What are you talking about?

[Bill Curtis]

An interview room in Las Vegas, cold case detectives Gil Toledo and Duane Cooper turn up the heat on Estanislaw Gonzalez, a man they suspect of murdering Lucy Mucino and her two daughters, Edith and Gabriella.

[Jim Elsasser]

What if I told you that when we went into that apartment, we found evidence of something happening to some people in that apartment? How would you answer that? How would you answer that, Tanya? He denied for the good majority of our interview. I became very accusatory. I accused him of murdering Them. I want you to tell me what happened, Tiny. What happened? I want you to tell me, Tanya, because you don't. You want me to tell what happened? Why? I want to happen with their bodies. What happened to these girls? What happened to your ex wife? What did you do with them? Are you accusing me? Did I kill them or. I'm accusing you of murder, Tawny and I want to know what happened. I laid some things out to make him believe that we had a whole bunch of evidence that would implicate him in these murders. Let me tell you something. You do a lot of things for body to burn it, dismember it, do all kinds of things to get rid of a body. But you know what, Tiny? Minute particles of DNA will still be around even if you bury it. We find stuff like that all the time, Tiny. Okay?

[Bill Curtis]

DNA. Three little letters that appear to have a big impact on the suspect's demeanor.

[Jim Elsasser]

You did something to these bodies. You did something to these women. Okay? We can prove it now. Okay, now you can prove that I killed these people? Yeah. Did I did this with my own hands? Did I kill these people? Yes, you were involved in their murders. He stated, you think I killed them. You think I killed them? Well, he did that. He was motioning in a stabbing manner. Did I personally kill them? You would ask, what's this? With a knife or whatever. Did you kill with a knife? Okay, With a gun? We don't know. I don't know. I mean, you motion like this. What does that mean? Okay, I'm sorry for this. Okay? Next time I'm gonna go like this and then you go like this. How about that? You made the motion. Okay.

[Brooke Giddings]

Okay.

[Jim Elsasser]

Well, we are talking about people being murdered. People being murdered all kinds of different ways. Why did we go to that? During point of that interview, he became very angry with me. You're gonna apologize to me one day. I'm not gonna apologize. You're gonna apologize for what you are doing right now to me unless you tell me where their mother is.

[Bill Curtis]

Dennis Flynn is a detective with the Las Vegas Police Department. As questioning of Gonzalez reaches an impasse, Flynn is called in to transport the suspect to the county jail.

[Steve Renteria]

The ride to the jail was about a 15 minute drive.

[Bill Curtis]

Using the opportunity to do a little questioning of his own, Flynn takes on the classic good cop Persona.

[Steve Renteria]

We were both divorced fathers that we had.

[Jim Elsasser]

Both had two children.

[Steve Renteria]

We knew it was like for someone.

[Jim Elsasser]

To try to take your children from you.

[Bill Curtis]

The suggestion that Lucy Massino was attempting to take the twins away seems to strike A chord with Gonzalez.

[Steve Renteria]

He then started to agree with me that the mere fact that she was.

[Jim Elsasser]

Going to take his children, the two twins, away from him made him.

[Steve Renteria]

The thought of that made him enraged.

[Jim Elsasser]

And he began to start to confess.

[Bill Curtis]

As Gonzalez begins copying to knowledge of the murders, Sergeant Flynn heads back to the police station, back to the interview room.

[Jim Elsasser]

I want to know what you can tell us about this incident. Well, we pick up these two guys. He told us that these two workers that he hired to help him move things out of the apartment that day were the ones that actually murdered loose Mosino and the girls. And the two guys turn back and they push it inside of the apartment. And his story just didn't make sense because he kept giving us some cockamamie reason why they would murder them. Okay, so you just kind of ignored their screams and cries for help in that moment. Okay, so they were crying every. Screaming for help. They were beating, beat up. You know, something was happening to them. Correct. And you decided, I didn't want no part of this. I'm leaving with. I'm getting out of here. That's pretty much what happened. Right.

[Bill Curtis]

Gonzalez is trying to spin the facts to minimize his involvement, but can't avoid placing himself at the scene and providing detectives with details only the killer would know.

[Jim Elsasser]

And at this point, you see bodies lying on the ground with blood. Yes. There's blood on the carpet. Yes. Okay. And you know they've been killed. Okay.

[Steve Renteria]

At least for us, we got him to admit that these bodies were in fact, they weren't missing, they were in fact dead. Murdered. And that he was forced to help them clean the bodies up and dispose of them in a riverbed.

[Jim Elsasser]

You're trying to tell me now that they forced you to take them into your van?

[Bill Curtis]

It's closing in on 10pm and detectives aren't buying Gonzalez's tale of furniture movers turned cold blooded killers.

[Jim Elsasser]

Know how much sense that makes? 0. It doesn't make any sense. People aren't that way. And you're saying these guys held you at bay with a knife and threatened to kill you? They were so concerned about getting those bodies out of that apartment. Apartment. They have no connection with apartment that they've never even been to people you don't even know. They were so concerned about getting these bodies out that they had you drive them 15 minutes away, dump the bodies, and they jumped out with those bodies. Forget about that. Okay? Don't forget that. Then go through there. I didn't kill them. I was not present when they were killed. I Didn't witness anything. Okay. I only wanted my kids. Okay. Okay. And I'm tell you something.

[Steve Renteria]

Yes.

[Jim Elsasser]

You are going to be booked. Okay. Triple murder, that's fine. We're gonna show it. Okay.

[Bill Curtis]

Okay.

[Jim Elsasser]

So we're gonna deal with it that way. Do it. You already do it. Okay. Fast to this whole thing. Short of saying you kill them, you move them bodies, you're responsible, out of your way. You know what you're talking about? You dump the bodies in a riverbed and you're trying to tell me you had nothing to do with it. This guy, my friend, you're done. You're done. You've already.

[Bill Curtis]

Gonzalez is booked on the triple murder and enters a plea of innocent. As his trial date approaches, however, the suspect has a change of heart.

[Jim Elsasser]

It was a death penalty type case and his attorney approached this attorney's office and eventually he confessed to these murders.

[Bill Curtis]

In a one page statement as Stanislau Gonzales admits to the murders and to dumping the bodies in the Nevada desert.

[Brooke Giddings]

I think that was the biggest surprise of the whole case was when we.

[Bill Curtis]

Found out details of Gonzalez's confession. Square with police department records of three Jane does discovered on March 26, 1996.

[Steve Renteria]

The burial site is is right here on this corner.

[Bill Curtis]

Teeth and bone samples from the three Jane does are tested and confirmed as belonging to Lucy Mucino and her two daughters, Edith and Gabriella.

[Brooke Giddings]

It's bittersweet when I come out here today.

[Bill Curtis]

Their bodies rest here at the Palm Cemetery in Las Vegas.

[Brooke Giddings]

I'm happy that they've been identified and they have a final resting place. But it's hard to come out here and know that she could be with her twins and see them as they grow up. But I'm glad that there's been some kind of resolution to the case and that they finally have someplace to be and the twins can come out and they can visit their mom whenever they want to.

[Bill Curtis]

Lucy Messino's surviving twins are currently living in a foster home in Las Vegas. As for their father as Denis La Gonzalez, he will be spending the rest of his life in a California prison.

[Brooke Giddings]

Tane Gonzalez is currently serving out his sentence in Chucka Walla Valley State Prison in California. He's 64 years old. The twin children from Lucy and tanny are now 19. But I couldn't find any information on their current circumstances. Cold Case Files, the podcast is hosted by Brooke giddings, produced by McCamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie Magruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples, this podcast is distributed by Podcast one. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me brookegiddings on Twitter and rookthepodcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group Podcast for Justice. Check out more Cold case [e-mail] or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E RealCrime [e-mail] RealCrime.

[Steve Renteria]

Foreign.

[Bill Curtis]

We'Re celebrating Black History Month with our curated collection of black content all streaming for free. Find groundbreaking films including Selma, Django, Unchained Ali and Coach Carter.

[Jim Elsasser]

You have an incredible gift up here.

[Bill Curtis]

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