Transcript
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Jessica Betancourt (0:30)
The new Wegovy pill is now available through weight watchers. Powerful GLP1 results in a simple pill at the lowest price available. And with Weight Watchers, you can get doctor support and personalized nutrition programs. See if you qualify@weightwatchers.com ad not reviewed or approved by Novo Nordisk. In the mid 2010s, Detective Gary Sweet of the Garland PD reopened the Barbara Villarreal investigation. He recognized that there was DNA testing that could be accomplished. Blood on the interior of the sliced handball glove and from the blood drips on the front porch still remained in evidence. Sweet arranged for updated testing of these items, which confirmed that the origin of the blood was from an unknown male for whom a profile was obtained. Sweet arranged for the probability entry into CODIS and the Texas State DNA database. I imagine he was surprised when no hits were obtained, but on second thought, I'm not sure how surprised he was. He was the first modern investigator who began to question the whole faux identity of Barbara's husband and and what it meant for the case. Garland PD Detective William Elstrom was also assigned to the FBI's Violent Crime Task Force, which at the time was starting to tackle cold case sexual assaults and homicides. Using DNA, SNP testing and igg, the Garland PD reached out to FBI Special Agent Randy White, who identified Barbara's case as one that would qualify. They had blood samples and evidence that could be subjected to modern testing. Agent White facilitated the development of a snip profile from the blood on the inside of the cut glove and the drops on the porch. And the snip information directly undercut the story that Domingo Villareal had told the police all those years ago. He had maintained that a white man and a black man invaded his home and killed his wife. But the snip profile of the suspect showed that he was Hispanic. The investigators decided that in order to pursue Barbara's case, they needed to identify Domingo once and for all. On July 30, 2020, Garland Police forensic investigator Katie Tucker and Detective Lucas Shoup met with DPS Ranger Daniel, Detective Hill and Lieutenant Hunt. At this meeting, they discussed the fact that Barbara's husband had been using the name Domingo Villareal. But there were two men in the state of Texas with the same name and date of birth. And two different driver's licenses had been issued with different numbers. Barbara's husband had been declared the impostor. So who was he really? These cold case investigators were now trying to reinvestigate a case without knowing the real name of the suspect they were investigating. Investigator Tucker located the old set of fingerprints taken from Domingo Villareal by the Garland PD when they arrested him back in November 1986 for Barbara's murder. He had been released quickly, but the prints remained on file. And when Investigator Tucker ran them through the APHIS system, the prints matched to prints collected in Sterling, Illinois ten years earlier in 1960, 1976, after a local PD arrest of a Jesus Canales. Jesus Canales's booking photo from Sterling in 1976 was pretty much identical to the booking photo of Domingo Villarreal in Garland in 1986. Investigator Tucker contacted the Sterling, Illinois Police Department. This from the police report, quote, she was able to obtain fingerprint cards. Multiple fingerprint cards from Sterling, Illinois were provided for arrests in 1973 and 1976, where the source was Jesus Canales. Another fingerprint card was provided for an arrest in Illinois in 1978, where the source was identified as Domingo Villareal. Well, all the fingerprints were from the same person. Investigator Tucker directly compared the Sterling, Illinois prints of Jesus Canales to the prints taken from Domingo Villareal the night of his arrest in Garland in 1986 and found they were identical. Barbara's husband was not named Domingo Villarreal at all. His name was Jesus Canales. And looking back, there was evidence of this. For one thing, former neighbor Nancy B. Recalled that Domingo had two daughters that lived in Illinois and that their names were Jessica and Jennifer. They lived with their mother. Garland investigators obtained birth certificates for both these girls from Sterling, Illinois, and their father was listed as Jesus Canales, a citizen of Mexico. Also, Domingo Jesus had gotten into a car accident in March 1985 in Garland, and police reports noted that one of his passengers was Barbara Villarreal and one was a 12 year old girl named Jessica Canales of Sterling, Illinois. Domingo Jesus had identified himself as her father. Further in the search of the Villareal home, the police had found two documents of note, two Social Security cards with the name of Jesus Canales, and the couple's wedding invitation. Announcing the upcoming nuptials of Barbara Carr and Jesse Villarreal. And in Barbara's purse found in her home, police located paperwork that had the last name of Canales on Seems the original investigators knew that Domingo sometimes went by Jesse next door neighbor. Nancy S affidavit about her interactions with both Barbara and Domingo during the week of the murder referred to him as Domingo. But in his affidavit, her boyfriend Mike called him Jesse. Modern day investigators tracked down Barbara's former friend Nancy S. She told them she knew Barbara's husband at the time to be called Jesse. She believed his actual name was Jesus. And the name Domingo didn't sound familiar to her at all. But it wasn't only friends and neighbors who knew Domingo was really Jesus. Barbara's family also referred to Domingo as Jesse. And Barbara had to know her husband was using a fake name because she was too. Remember, her wedding invitation named her fiance as Jesus Canales. But when she died, she was using the name Villarreal. Barbara's family, for some reason, had accepted the name change as well. Barbara's obituary in the Logansport, Indiana paper listed her name as Barbara Faye Car Villarreal. Who knows what Jesus told her and her family about why this subterfuge was necessary. On August 5, 2020, investigator Tucker confirmed that Barbara's mother recalled that the Carr family called Barbara's husband Jesse, which is a nickname for Jesus in Spanish. Detective Shoup located and reviewed the Texas Department of Public Safety reports regarding their investigation into the two men using the name Domingo Diaz Villarreal with the same date of birth. The investigation had concluded in 1988 with a finding that the Domingo Villareal and Barbara's case was an imposter. I have to say I don't really understand why this was not all sorted out by the homicide investigators back in 1986. Yes, it's true that even after the murder, Jesus maintained the charade that he was Domingo Villarreal, coming into RMV branches and insisting that he was the real Domingo. But all the evidence pointed to the contrary. They had written proof, Social Security cards that he was Jesus Canales. So why on EARTH did the 1986 investigators not figure this out? I think maybe they did, but the investigation petered out once it was shown via blood evidence that Domingo had not been the one who bled at the crime scene. The investigators could not place the blame for Barbara's murder on Domingo Jesus. And then he evaporated into Mexico, never to be seen again. The whole thing fizzled out as the investigators could not find or talk to him, had no idea who had killed Barbara, just knew that he did not, and soon had to pursue active investigations into current crimes. Okay, so the modern investigators had solved one mystery. The true identity of Barbara's husband, Jesus Canales. It was all very confusing and made them question everything. Could he possibly have been Barbara's murderer after all? They decided to use science to either exclude or include Jesus as a suspect. They already had a SNP profile showing that their subject was Hispanic. They commenced an IGG analysis, uploading the suspect's SNP profile and into the open source databases. The matches they received there were very, very low level fourth and fifth cousins only. Remember that Hispanics, especially first generation Hispanics, are often not well represented in these databases. So there was insufficient information to determine whether Jesus Canales was connected to these matches. So the Garland investigators and the FBI decided to try something clever. Remember that Investigator Tucker had uncovered a Garland PD motor vehicle accident report from 1985 that reflected that Domingo Villarreal and Barbara had been involved in a car crash and a passenger named Jessica Canales of Sterling, Illinois was identified as the driver's daughter. So the investigators contacted the city clerk in Sterling and got birth certificates for Jessica and her sister Jennifer. Then, in April 2022, Garland Police investigators contacted the women who they believed were Domingo Jesus's daughters, Jessica and Jennifer, both of whom lived in Iowa. They both confirmed that their father was Jesus Canales of Rodeo, Mexico, and that he had been married to Barbara and had lived with her in Garland until she was killed. Both women recalled Barbara fondly saying they had really liked her. They both confirmed that they had been told their father had died in Mexico in 1988 in a shooting. Both Jessyca and Jennifer agreed to assist the investigators in trying to learn their father's relationship, if any, to the man who had killed Barbara. Both women agreed to take Ancestry DNA tests. Now, I know what you're thinking. Law enforcement is allowed to use only the open Source DNA databases, GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA for IGG purposes. So why did they have these women take an ancestry test? The answer is they needed SNP profiles from Jessica and Jennifer to compare to that of the suspect. And for that, they needed commercial DNA testing kits. Ancestry's kits were selected. Jessica and Jennifer's kits were submitted to Ancestry and tested. And while the police could not access those results, they then facilitated the upload of both profiles to GEDmatch, where they had also uploaded the suspect's profile. GEDmatch's relatedness algorithms provided the information they needed. Jessica and Jennifer matched to the suspect profile at a very high centimorgan rate. The amount of DNA they shared with the suspect indicated he was not a close enough relative to be their father, but he was likely a biological uncle. So they were looking for one of Jesus Canales brothers. Reports from Barbara's family about Domingo Jesus and from his daughters told them that he had two brothers, Juan Canales and Liborio Canales. Now it all made sense. Jesus had conspired with one of his brothers to kill his wife and and had protected him when the investigators questioned him. And in reviewing the case files, the investigators noted that way back in 1987, Barbara's stepdad, Alan Dunderman, had reported that Jesus told him that someone named Laborio Canales had killed Barbara. He had also mentioned Juan Canales. So investigators dug into Juan and Liborio. Open record searches told them that Juan lived in Mexico, which matched what Barbara's family had told them back in the 1990s. He had a DUI arrest in 1991. Liborio, though, lived in Mexico and would be more difficult to probe.