California’s Brian Brimager case: Girlfriend’s remains found in Panama jungle

a young couple sets out on the adventure of a lifetime but only one of them comes back [Music] a trail of deception from panama to costa rica to southern california a history of violence there were reports of incidents both ways from the island a gruesome discovery and a family torn apart he slipped the top of it open with his machete and skull rolled out [Music] it was here among the sun splashed beaches of southern california where yvonne baldali grew up she had one older sister and one older brother she was the baby in the family at the time she was 14 when we got married i just loved her she was very special and she was a very happy person but at nearly 40 years old the passionate dog lover with the infectious smile seemed a bit lost bouncing from job to job unsure of what she really wanted out of life then she met a strong six foot two midwestern man named brian brimmiger he served the marine corps and they're people who liked him he had a gregarious personality i think women found him attractive yvonne baldelli certainly did but just how positive was that attraction she was obviously very smitten with him almost to the detriment of anybody else in her life and there were more than a few little problems with that mr breminger was married at the time and was in other relationships but was seeing her how much yvonne knew about brian's wife or any other women when they met isn't completely certain but at some point during their affair she not only found out she went public she wrote a letter to brimmiger's then wife describing the relationship that brimmager had with her that he had with another woman by the name of kristen wurkhoven so she was aware that brimster was not being faithful to her and that should have been the end of brian brimacher and yvonne baldali instead brian eventually divorced and over the next few years he and davon maintained an on-again off-again relationship then suddenly things were on in a very big way whose idea was it for them to move to panama words to me was that brian came home and he says i'm retiring at that time she had lost her job we told her forget about the job search we're going to panama and she sold everything she had here in california so you knew she meant business she was she was serious she told me she was going to design clothes and sell them on the beach she was she had a plan yes she had a plan and she was so happy and so with only a few sewing machines and georgia may the king charles spaniel she considered her child yvonne took brian's hand all the way to the small expat community of bocas del toro panama they settled in fairly quickly to the island of isla canaro brimmager was playing the guitar at local bars she was attempting to work but according to multiple witnesses thanks in part to a never-ending supply of booze and coke it soon became a paradise lost it wasn't long after they got to panama when things really took a turn and would you say the violence began to escalate absolutely the violence began to escalate almost immediately when they arrived in panama what the landlord said is that every time they were together she observed ms baldelli being jealous and trying to push and prod mr brimager but brian pushed right back and then some we have multiple witnesses who have all corroborated and told us about the numerous times when brian would punch yvonne when brian would strangle yvonne when brian would kick her her neighbor could hear it through the walls did yvonne ever reach out to anyone and say i don't know what to do you know yvonne had multiple people on the island that did come to her and her response wasn't to deny the violence but was to describe it as something that she could handle but handel how on the night of november 8th just over a month after they first arrived yvonne and brian got into a heated argument do you believe yvonne was a victim of domestic violence yes absolutely do you believe brian bremager was a victim of domestic violence absolutely sometime during the fight brian turned his back and yvonne snapped miss baldali took brian's computer they had two laptops at the time took the laptop and smashed it on him after that the couple's neighbor heard yvonne quote screaming bloody murder a series of loud thuds and then nothing at all for two days no sign of yvonne but then both she and brian appear in town yvonne concealing her face behind dark sunglasses there's photographs that she took from her own laptop of her left eye having a massive bruise as records would later show brian punched her in the face after she hit him with the laptop the laptop broke that had an unintended consequence the consequence is that they were now both checking their email on the same laptop ms baldelli had somebody install software on that laptop to get mr brimager's email password and that's when she found out that the entire time brian had been in panama with her he was emailing his other old flame kristen workhoven and not just that he was saying i'll be back home to spend time with you and help raise our daughter and of course this is all without yvonne valdelli knowing about the fact that he even had a daughter apparently while brian was married to his first wife and at the same time dating yvonne he had also fathered a secret child with kristen yvonne just had no idea she had no idea she was blind to the fact that he was living a double life the date was november 26th according to court records yvonne woke brian up screaming about what she'd found she got very angry they got into a fight that fight escalated then at some point during the day yvonne sat down at her computer to write a letter a little over two weeks later a plane touched down in san diego only brian stepped off do people think where's yvonne they do when yvonne baldelli moved to panama with her boyfriend brian she thought it was to start a new life together but apparently they weren't both on the same page and when a return flight touched down in san diego just a few months later they weren't both on that either he flies back to the united states and he eventually goes and gets his truck he has to pick up his trucks right from yvonne's sister michelle valenzuela before brian and devon left brian parked a truck full of his things at yvonne's sister's house and if not for that pickup who knows where this story might have gone so he has to face the sister it does and she asks brian where's my sister in fact no one in yvonne's family had heard from her in weeks not since yvonne found out brian had been emailing a woman named kristen workhoven the mother of a child yvonne didn't even know brian had it was unusual that when brian came back that michelle had not hurt her from her for over three weeks and that concerned her but was everyone just making a big fuss over nothing what brian told people was that she had found out on his computer that he had a daughter with kristen work open and that she had become angry about this information and decided to leave with another man to costa rica and as it turns out just a few days after that big november 26 fight yvonne and bryant's panamanian landlord received an email from yvonne's address confirming as much it read hey nae-nae brian is a lying cheating expletive and i just couldn't stand dealing with it anymore i'm in costa rica for a while with a guy i met at one of brian's gigs when we first moved here we've been talking off and on since then and it's great to be spending time with someone who can be considered a gentleman michelle is immediately suspicious in fact michelle told brian i want to go to the police and report her missing and what did he say he said why don't you just wait on that let me try to reach out to her contact her by email and see if she'll get in touch and not long after that it seemed she did in the email ivan tells michelle she's alive and well and should be home in a few weeks for a big family reunion it was two days after christmas when michelle sent her reply so glad you responded didn't want to pry or bug but i was worried wanted to make sure you weren't kidnapped and someone pretending it was you ha ha after that the emails from yvonne stopped despite repeated desperate pleas from her family to get in touch i said whatever you need we just need you to be okay and we're not gonna judge you just contact us we just need to know you're okay and then came time for that big family reunion the one yvonne said she would try to attend january 12th comes around the family gathering is there avon doesn't show up my heart drops so you knew that was sort of the last stop in all of this if she doesn't show up for this family gathering then it's going to be all hands on deck right almost immediately yvonne's sister starts her own investigation she enlists the help of a tech savvy relative who then starts to look at the origin of where the emails from yvonne's account were coming from michelle found out that the emails had come from california southern california even more specific the emails were actually coming from where brian brimmiger was living and perhaps the most suspicious part of all who brian was living with the woman he'd been emailing in panama the mother of his secret child and most shocking to ivan's family his brand new bride kristen workhoven so brian comes back to the united states gets engaged to kristin just within days yes within days within two days within two days he's engaged and he was married that same month somebody forwarded me the registry from his new wife i screamed i screamed hysterically in the house my husband got up and i'm saying look at this look at this look at this were you enraged i was angry and michelle went to the local sheriff's office and actually filed a missing person's report actually she wasn't gonna report her missing she was gonna report a murder because she had felt that that's what had happened that she was murdered they looked like two people who have been in love their whole lives you'd never know that just a few weeks before these wedding photos were taken the groom brian brimiter was living in panama with another woman a woman now missing and depending on who you asked presumed murdered the last time she was seen alive was when a local saw them going towards a boat dock and they were fighting and bremager was dragging her by the arm back to the boat it was shortly after she discovered brian's secret correspondence with kristin but brian said it was actually yvonne who left him for someone else ran off to costa rica with some mystery man curiously yvonne's bank card had been used at a costa rican atm around the same time something was definitely wrong because not only was she missing but who else was missing with her her dog she couldn't have kids so that was her baby she would have never left her dog so with all the fake emails brian sent posing as yvonne in hand yvonne's sister michelle filed a report with authorities and brian was brought in for questioning he did sit and agree to speak with the fbi when it was still mostly a missing persons investigation but he told them the same costa rican romance he told everyone else what did you do i called the costa rican embassy to see if she really went to costa rica and she said nobody but that passport ever entered the country even more troubling when i called the american embassy in panama they said that she never left panama you know i said we gotta we gotta do something so working in conjunction with american and panamanian authorities yvonne's family flew to bocas del toro to start their own search we by ourselves quietly walked all around the island as far as we could go and then went back the other way as far as we could go and we would do that every day and we would look everywhere grueling work for anyone let alone yvonne's aging parents there hadn't been any proof she had been murdered and certainly no proof that she had been murdered by bremager what authorities did have was a growing mountain of circumstantial evidence for one those fake emails he was flat out asked did you impersonate yvonne yes and he said no that's right in addition to that there were upsetting reports out of panama of brian suddenly flushed with cash after yvonne's disappearance buying everyone in the bar drinks while toasting her name and as for those atm withdrawals tying yvonne to costa rica turns out when brian left panama to come back to the states he made one little stop along the way he purposely took a trip to costa rica to bolster his story to withdraw money from ivan's account to make it look like she had been in costa rica but of all the damning clues there was one that stood out as particularly disturbing apparently yvonne wasn't all brian left behind on the island mr brimajd brought a machete down to panama with him then he had given the machete in exchange for a debt that he owed to a local panamanian person that was there on the island that person then put the machete up for sale on a local website and mr brimager happened to have seen that it was up for sale and he logged into that site and he posted a comment saying don't worry that machete was mine i brought her from the united states it's barely been used i only used it to dismember one stripper a terrible joke or something more police bring the machete to the states for testing but it comes back clean and after over a year of searching for yvonne in panama the family comes back with little more than a collection of traumatic moments like this we get to a shallow area and they were like these garbage bags that were torn [Music] there were bones all over they would later turn out to be animal bones but ivan's parents were forced to leave the island before getting confirmation and when we had to leave the island and when we had to leave the country i could not live with myself thinking that i left her behind and that maybe those are her bones she had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized going through all that not being able to bring yvonne back was just very devastating at this point yvonne's family is sacrificing so much time money energy searching for their loved one brian brimager is back here in san diego doing what he's living the life of riley he is going to school he's golfing kristen and brian then had another kid and through it all brian maintained his same old story one that was rapidly unraveling he denied doing anything other than just knowing she had ran off with another man once we were able to review the contents of his computer and interview him it became very clear to us that he was the one that was involved so at first he's charged and arrested where is he taken down he was arrested in his home in carlsbad california which is actually the home of kristen werko the woman brian married right after coming back from panama without yvonne initially he was charged with obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal officers when he was interviewed he lied about having yvonne's computer lied about beating yvonne lied about impersonating her through emails he lied about multiple things with the intent to obstruct justice it wasn't the charge ivan's family was hoping for but at the very least brian was off the streets still even when confronted with his own lies brian continued to deny having anything to do with ivan's disappearance but then roughly one month after his arrest breaking news out of panama there was a panamanian man who lived out in the middle of this jungle and he was building a trail from his hut out to the coast and he was chomping away with his machete and he came across a military-style duffel bag he slipped the top of it open with his machete and yvonne's skull rolled out in front of him are all of the body parts there no they were not able to find an entire skeleton what was that night like for you because they didn't find all her remains that was hard that was hard to know that there was pieces of her missing large uniformed cuts in many of the bones tell at least part of the gory tale it's just very hard to think that she was chopped up but even with yvonne's remains found brian remained silent while the prosecution worked with ivan's family to build its case [Music] unfortunately for the prosecution star witness time was running out you know this is one of the most tragic parts of this case yvonne's sister michelle valenzuela was diagnosed with breast cancer during the time that she was so desperately trying to find her sister and so desperately trying to find justice for her sister she wasn't taking proper care of herself she was so focused on her sister that she missed a lump in her breast by the time her sister's body was finally found the cancer had metastasized to michelle's brain they weren't certain how much longer she would be available and coherence and so we sought an emergency deposition of a potential witness because we didn't believe that she would be able to make it all the way to trial good afternoon miss valenzuela good afternoon how are you i'm fine for as long as she could this is my sister yvonne baltelli michelle sat across the table from the man she knew killed her sister and set her piece since dropping off at the airport with the defendant did you ever see your sister again no brian said nothing i was saying that he murdered my sister after the deposition we wheeled her back to the hotel room she asked how she did we told her she did great and she went to sleep and she never regained consciousness again you know you couldn't have had a better sister than michelle she's a champion she is a champion to use the last moments of her life to sit down and to give everything she could it uh was one of the strongest demonstrations of strength and fortitude that i've ever seen mr breminger really took both of their daughters but still brian copped to nothing something that was about to become much harder to do because of one key piece of evidence that machete was found it was even after his ex-girlfriend's body was found macheted in the jungle after he sat across from her dying sister during her last moments on earth even with all the evidence pointing right back at him brian brimmiger still denied having anything to do with yvonne baldelli's murder but that was about to become much harder to do over a year after it originally been tested and they had found no blood we were examining the machete in preparation for trial and we found that the handle could be removed they removed the handle and found that there was blood under the handle the same dna as yvonne baldelli when confronted with that news brian bremager sat down with his lawyers and finally started talking we were ready to go to trial and he pled guilty approximately one month before trial it started just as bryant said it had so many years before around the time of her death that victim had logged on to his account and had found out that mr broomager had another relationship with kristen workhoven had a child brian's defense claims that a violent day-long fight ensued culminating in yvonne pulling a knife brian fought back beating yvonne before getting hold of the knife and using it to fatally stab her in the back then things really got gruesome he said that after he had stabbed her in the back he knew that he needed to move her and bury in the jungle and in order to do that he needed to get her to be small enough to fit in a backpack and so in his own words brian bremager dragged his girlfriend into the bathroom and used his machete to dismember her body then to make it look like she really did just run off with all her things he killed her dog were the dogs remains ever found no they were not but what really started that final fight was there a deeper motive evidence found on ivan's computer begged the question she had drafted a letter entitled were coven the name of kristen workhoven we believe that she intended to send that letter and intended to make sure that brian's plans to return and live with kristin or raise his daughter weren't going to happen and he wasn't going to let her talk so he killed her the u.s attorney's office does believe the motive is that he wanted to silence her i don't think that holds water you don't i don't i think this was a fight that escalated and then he had to figure out what to do i think it was a huge mistake he found himself in that moment in panama not knowing what to do and having to make terrible decisions but if it really was all just a heat of the moment situation what about brian's behavior after he got off the island probably the most heinous and cruel acts he committed or what he put that family through in making them believe that vaughn was still alive giving them false hope she was still alive and then there was that facebook comment about using his machete to quote dismember one stripper is there any response for that what he did was in terrible taste it wasn't to denigrate her memory or because he's cold-blooded it was to make everybody look away from him it was a deflection brian i think remains remorseful and remains repentant yvonne's parents have strong opinions about what brian can do with his remorse there's no way i believe that he's sorry in the end brian was sentenced to 26 years in federal prison which means no chance of parole may 25th was the sentencing may 28th we were able to take yvonne back to san diego close to where her home was and give her a send-off that was dignified that was something worthy of yvonne justice has been served for yvonne's killer but what about the woman who even to this day continues to stand by aside the beginning of when some people start making comments about his wife my husband said you know she's a victim like yvonne was a victim let's be patient but now after she knows what yvonne suffered she broke her nose broke her jaw broke her teeth stabbed her over and over and over again and chopped her up in little pieces and threw her in a swamp and she's supporting the man that destroyed yvonne i'm sorry i don't have any understanding for her and we wanted to help ivan's parents find that understanding so we sent our own jason matera to kristen's home to try and get some answers let's see what kristin has to say for herself does she still support her husband after what he pleaded guilty to someone's coming jason matera with crime watch daily is kristin here can you open the door is kristen kristen your daughter is there a christian that lives here jason matera with crime watch daily we're doing a story about kristen's husband's conviction brian she doesn't live here where did she where did no where does she live do you know her miss the woman behind the door refuses to open up but we had to try one more time to get kristen's side of the story just had a question on whether kristen still stands by brian or not brian's attorney says that she still supports him odd considering what she what he's convicted of after several more minutes of knocking we're forced to leave without the answers we came for repeated calls to kristen workhoven by our producers have also gone unanswered so for now this is where we're left two daughters lost a family fractured but not broken we pray and we look forward to one day seeing them again to hug them again and tell them how much we love them and how much we miss them and that's our hope

Channel: True Crime Daily

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Id: d9nNaSjzouk

Length: 28min 15sec (1695 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021