Disappeared - Season 8 Episode 12

[Music] a startling disturbance in the dead of night all of a sudden this loud yelling woke me up and i hear this voice said go ahead break it but it sounded like my son's voice the next morning a young man and his dirt bike have vanished no bike no cell phone no id absolutely nothing rumors fly only deepening the mystery josh had claimed a jeep cherokee had driven past them and then began to chase them investigators exhaust every lead but end up baffled it's hard to to tell his mom we don't have any answers for her we can't give her what she wants and that's her son leaving a family devastated and desperate for closure i have nowhere to go i have nowhere to look that's my only son [Music] october 2011 19 year old angel garcia is in the kitchen trying out a new recipe ever since his girlfriend moved in he's taken on a new role in the household family cook all of a sudden i see him cooking pasta chicken breakfast i'm like what's going into you so then you want to cook i like cooking i like to eat so i have to know how to cook a lot of the times when i used to get home from work dinner was already done so it's a good thing for me angel and his girlfriend omyra met on facebook 14 months earlier they've been together ever since i've never really hooked up with anybody from social media so that was like the first time and it actually kind of worked out angel and omira's relationship got serious pretty quickly and omira and her two-year-old son joxl moved in with angel and his mom he told me that she didn't have nowhere to go so let us stay here with us soon omyra and joxl become a cherished part of the household we include her in our family not just me my son my daughter but the entire family angel's parents separated when he was 10 years old since then he and his mom have grown especially close whenever they can the family eats together we always make sure we sit around the table when it was dinner time that's one little ritual that we pretty much had i really enjoy that it was important to all of us [Music] angel tries out his parenting skills with omayra's son joxl and the two really hit it off the situation i was in when we first met i thought he would be so judgmental and would push him away but he was there and he understood angel is just as attached to his sister rose's six-month-old daughter amani every time she cries he will pick her up and be like you're gonna spoil you'll be playing video games and she'll be on his arm i always taught my children that the most important thing is family and we can never allow nothing or anyone to break that bond on thursday october 20th laura comes home late from work angel has a plate of chicken with macaroni and cheese waiting for his mom he said ma you're gonna come eat i said no baby i'm sorry i'm too tired i'm going to bed and he said okay goodnight i love you and i said okay i love you and i went to sleep laura heads to bed around 10 p.m the next morning as she gets ready to leave for work she sees that her son is still sleeping angel will go to school whenever he feels like going to school and sometimes i would get him out of bed before i left to work he will get up and he will get dressed i will leave to work and then find out that he didn't go to school his mother says that since third grade he didn't like the medication because he used to tell me mine makes me feel like a zombie although he's fallen a couple years behind angel is still determined to earn his high school diploma and he also said my a lot of people think i'm not gonna finish high school but i'm gonna finish high school that friday morning laura leaves for work assuming her son will soon be heading to school but he has other plans for the day a month earlier angel got a red honda dirt bike which has become his pride and joy at first his mom wondered where he got the money to buy the bike then when i saw him on the bike that's when i was like whose bike is that it's my bike what do you mean your bike where do you get the bike from oh i bought it my dad gave me the money to buy your dad gave you the money yeah i said okay i left it alone [Music] he used to ride him on the streets almost every day he was always watching it [Music] he used to always say hello speed i love speed that's what i used to say [Music] like many teens in hartford angel and his friends indulge their need for speed by cruising the streets and park trails there's not really a lot of places to ride especially in the city of hartford so you'll see this kind of riding literally on main street sometimes you get on your bike and you ride and you ride anywhere you can the streets the parks everyone gets together and it's fun for them [Music] that friday morning angel has plans to go riding with his friend joelle angel went to joelle's house maybe by 10 30 in the morning they like to use the field behind joel's uncle's house and it's a big field and you can tell it's it's a field that you would use a dirt bike on once angel and joelle met up there wasn't a problem with in that area [Music] but the fun comes to an abrupt halt when joelle's atv runs out of gas as the two friends push the quad back to joelle's uncle's house they talk about the rest of the day angel told joelle that he was going to continue to ride uh go over to east hartford joel said he had other plans so he couldn't go with him around 1pm joelle watches angel ride off alone heading east [Music] that night around 9 30 p.m laura is ready to turn in when she notices angel hasn't come home yet i was tired so i decided to go to bed i had to work the next morning then in the middle of the night angel's mom hears a chilling voice echoing in from the street all of a sudden this loud yelling woke me up throws open her bedroom door in a panic and runs into angel's girlfriend omyra in the hall looking just as frightened as she is when i ran out the room his mom ran out right behind me so i'm like i was i'm not just hearing stuff because she heard it too so right away we ran to the front porch but when we looked there was nothing there not a soul not a card there was nothing there whoever was yelling is long gone and then i asked her where's ito that's what we call him i said where's it she said i don't know i've been calling him all day and he doesn't pick up his phone that's when we started to like get a little worried oh myra tells laura that angel never came home that night the last time she talked to him around 11 that morning angel was out riding with joelle so he was like i'll give you a call back in a few cause i'm behind joel's uncle's house and we're writing i don't have much service i said all right that's fine angel never called her back omayra kept trying to reach him throughout the day he don't have service according to cell phone records the call from his girlfriend that morning was the last time angel spoke on his phone his mother stays up the rest of the night calling anyone she can think of who might know angel's whereabouts i kept making phone calls and making phone calls six in the morning and i was still trying to figure out who i can call or text i was just going back and forth from the phone making phone calls that's pretty much what i was doing throughout the night a 19 year old boy who lives with his mom who's close to his mom just doesn't go missing [Music] something happened to him [Music] nineteen-year-old angel garcia's family expected him home for dinner instead angel and his dirt bike have disappeared and his family has no idea where he could be or where he was going to be his mother laura says she knows angel was a little frustrated with school but she's certain he'd never take off without telling her he didn't even like traveling out of the state he wouldn't go because he doesn't like the long trips so the possibility of him just getting up and leaving to me they're very very very slim if he had plans to spend the night with a friend or at a relative's house she'd be the first to know it's out of character for him even to not answer their calls you know even if he was somewhere where he shouldn't have been should still be answering the phone or at least responding via text or what have you and there was simply no response by saturday night at 6 00 p.m laura realizes she has a crisis on her hands you know they say you need to give them 24 hours to report a person missing so i went ahead and i called the police a patrol officer responds and takes a missing person report at laura's house angel's girlfriend omayra tells him what angel said about police immediately follow up with joelle joel verified he said yes angel was with me we were at my uncle's house we rode and he wanted to keep on writing but i couldn't go with them joelle tells investigators angel planned to ride the trails in east hartford behind a row of car dealerships he says he turned angel down for two reasons he had errands to run and he doesn't like riding to east hartford because it means crossing over the connecticut river there's something about riding the bikes on the highway to getting over there kind of scared him but angel was interested in riding by the east hartford trail he was a little more adventurous than joelle it might not have scared angel but crossing the connecticut river on a dirt bike can be a very risky maneuver the connecticut river here separates harford from east hartford so we knew obviously he's got to pick where he's going to cross two road bridges span the river but cross treacherous what his other option is is to ride over the train trestle that's common you know we see a lot of dirt bike and atv riders will use that avenue to get across the river due to recent heavy rain the river was at flood stage running high and fast at the time he went missing the water was very very very high much higher than it is now probably 15 to 20 feet over what you see police wonder could angel have lost control of his bike and fallen from the railroad bridge it's their best guess despite a lack of evidence nothing has washed ashore in fact there's no proof that angel even went to east hartford you know the train trestle on riverside park is covered by video so we really have no way to know if you made it there or not if angel did ride in east hartford behind the car dealerships surveillance cameras there should have captured his image on the east video to see if we could see him ride by to go into this area where he was going to ride but footage from multiple cameras doesn't show angel or his distinctive red dirt bike because he disappeared on a fast-moving highly maneuverable dirt bike the potential search area for angel is massive so in 10 minutes time on a dirt bike you can go very far if he did have an accident angel could be out on any one of dozens of trails around hartford injured and helpless i mean even an experienced rider in the woods on a dirt bike can can get in a bad place very fast and if he was hurt the nights are cold that's all i kept thinking was it maybe nice during the day but at night it's getting chilly investigators know that every hour spent in the october chill diminishes angel's chances for survival something's wrong something's really wrong angel for me was he's hurt he's out there and he's hurt and we have to find him one what that allows us to do is if that phone is active we can through the phone company gather real-time information as to what towers that phone is accessing it's not a perfect science it won't get us to within a foot of where this phone is but it'll give us a general idea investigators find evidence that angel's cell phone last pinged off a tower at 3 28 p.m on friday near some railroad tracks in west hartford that was more than two hours after he told joelle he was headed across the river to east hartford so on saturday night 33 hours after he was last seen they target searches for angel in both locations we walked around calling out angel's name thinking if he was riding around here he could be hurt you know we were looking for any signs of tracks dirt bike tracks atv tracks that night searchers find no sign of angel or tire tracks in either location the following morning sunday investigators decide to search the area where angel rust harford or maybe he was cutting through that area on his way news cameras capture the scene as police search teams ride the trails on atvs and comb rough terrain on foot it included detectives from from hartford pd family members from angel his friends patrol officers we had specialized units that helped out it was it was a big big surge the harford police marine unit tows sonar gear in the river to see if they recognize anything that looks like a bike but frustratingly all the searches come up empty no bike no cell phone no shoe no id no wallet absolutely nothing angel garcia seems to have vanished without a trace causing his family untold anguish like there's nothing i could do like i tried my best and try to do everything i could and it was just not working it was like a slap in the face every single time and there's no leads there's no trace nothing [Music] in the midst of the confusion a friend of angels comes forward with a remarkable and seemingly credible tip he says he saw angel riding his bike on thursday the night before he disappeared and it looked like somebody was after him josh claimed that as their riding under britton avenue the street past them did an abrupt u-turn and began to chase him [Music] three days after he vanished new information has just come in in the disappearance of angel garcia angel's friend josh says that the night before angel went missing he was chased on his dirt bike by an unknown vehicle and as they're riding joshua claimed a tan jeep cherokee had driven past them and then done a sudden u-turn and began to chase them according to josh angel turned and rode into a field where the jeep couldn't follow him then the jeep circled back to josh [Music] the operator of the jeep pulled up to josh and today where'd your friend go josh says the suv was carrying two white men with blonde hair his story opens up an urgent new line of investigation for police who could have been after angel and why hearing that there's a chase the day before he went missing we're starting to lean towards there may be a suspicious aspect to his disappearance the revelation prompts police to follow up on a startling lead from angel's best friend lewis he's been keeping a big secret he was afraid to talk to the police about it lewis admits that angel's red dirt bike was actually stolen property and lewis joelle and angel were the ones who stole it it was a some decision that they had made and his friends were willing to admit to that if it meant helping find angel and that's what they did according to lewis angel found the dirt bike for sale on craigslist a month earlier and recruited his friends to help him with a scheme [Music] angel met the owners at their house and asked to take the bike for a test ride after the owners agreed angel hopped on the bike and roared off down the street and his friends had been waiting around the corner with the truck and they helped him load it up in the truck and they took off [Music] angel's mother laura finds it hard to believe that her son was capable of stealing anything i was shocked shocked to the streets as if he bought it like he said i always taught my kids since they were little i have to earn things i was shocked i was angry very disappointed angel was the only one in his circle of friends who didn't have his own bike but for his mother that's no excuse just because everybody else has it doesn't give you the right to go and steal one so it doesn't make any sense police discover that in nearby east windsor a bike with a similar description was stolen a month earlier investigators tracked down the victims a 15 year old and his stepfather thinking they could be the man in the suv who chased angel the night before he disappeared so that was something that we looked at right away because we figured could be a motive behind his disappearance detectives tell the bike owners what's at stake and get their side of the story i explained to the owner of the bike that it's a missing person investigation a guy that rode away on the bike their account of the theft exactly matches what angel's friends had told police and nothing else about the owners appears suspicious to investigators the stepfather is cooperative he doesn't drive an suv or have blonde hair did he match the description of the people that were chasing this group of bikes in that gold jeep cherokee he did not in any way shape or form detectives can make no connection to the alleged suv chase or to angel's disappearance but one fact remains the same angel's friend joelle still appears to be the last person to have seen him investigators decide to take a formal statement from joelle this time at the police station he came in told us what we already know he didn't change his story on that he told us about friday about how he didn't go riding with angel into the east hartford trails and then we decided to have joelle show us on them and then we start moving the map a little bit west investigators noticed that pointing out the railroad tracks near his uncle's house where angel's cell phone had pinged on friday afternoon seems to make joelle uncomfortable joel did seem to get a little nervous he did get a little fidgety in his seat and took a big gulp his demeanors change when he talks about that area and he tells us that angel did ride there but he insists he never went to that area to ride with him so it sparks a little suspicion joelle maintains that he had nothing to do with angel's disappearance but to summon angel's family aspects of his story don't ring true for one thing they say angel would never ride the trails to east hartford alone but just for him to say oh i'm leaving to the trails all right i'll see you that just doesn't sound right angel doesn't write by himself first of all his dad always told him never go riding the connecticut river by yourself to see how he reacts under pressure police ask joelle to show them the railroad tracks where angel may have been on friday afternoon we were met with he's like i don't know how to get in here i don't come here joelle does nothing to provoke any further suspicion at that point i really didn't question his level of cooperation he was he was doing everything that we asked him to do police don't believe joelle has anything to do with angel's disappearance it's another dead end in a case that's beginning to pile up with them each day that he's missing angel's family finds it more and more painful to deal with the lack of answers in most cases when somebody goes missing a phone is found or a last location is found a surest on our clothing is found that would lead to some type of thoughts of what could have happened or what might have happened i'm trying to understand [Music] how can someone go missing and brought daylight with a bike at that ain't nobody sees anything no one then an unexpected lead suddenly surfaced in her collision could it be the same tan jeep that angel's friend josh said chased angel the night before he vanished as the officers investigated that accident they locate this jeep unoccupied and learn that it was stolen in a carjack uh on the day that this chase allegedly occurred so that's immediately something i wanted to know you know is this our car and who was driving the car before the hit and run was it the same person who allegedly chased angel it would make sense to me that this could be our car and it gives some validity to what josh is telling me because it's the car that he described so we wanted it processed because that's our only shot at this point of any physical evidence investigators seize the vehicle and get a search warrant to process it detectives check the car thoroughly for weapons dna and fingerprints for once they catch a huge break a traceable print that may belong to the carjacker why it's there um you know in this case this fingerprint should not have been there [Music] a week after angel garcia disappeared investigators may have their strongest lead in finding him they've discovered a fingerprint in a stolen vehicle like the one that was allegedly chasing angel the night before he vanished it behooves us to figure out who's driving this car to one solve the carjacking and two possibly figure out who's chasing angel investigators run the print through the criminal database but forensic results often take weeks to come back in the meantime tips continue to flood into police including a new one that threatens to upend the entire timeline of angel's disappearance we had gotten information that angel had been seen riding his dirt bike with another friend of his name anthony and phil's friend joelle was the last person to see him at 1pm on friday [Music] but this tipster claims to have seen angel with anthony a full four hours later at five in the afternoon detectives track down anthony to get his side of the story and immediately there are issues when we went to interview him he admitted yeah i was riding with with angel but it was on thursday and he was adamant that he had ridden with him on thursday this other witness is adamant that it was friday anthony says he knows it was thursday because at 5 pm on friday he was with his girlfriend and after that he went home early but there's a problem when police interview his girlfriend to confirm her account of friday doesn't match anthony's like anthony she says they were together at 5 pm but she adds that they stayed out late on friday evening contradicting anthony's story about going home early so now it's a matter of who's telling us the last person to be with angel and he may have all the reason in the world to lie to me about that on the verge of what looks like a breakthrough investigators confront anthony with the discrepancies in his timeline if he really was with his girlfriend on friday why don't their statements about the evening match up and suddenly his story changes he admitted to me that he did lie about his whereabouts that friday but simply because he was not supposed to be out and he violated his curfew and he was on a court-ordered curfew at that time due to an earlier juvenile offense anthony was supposed to be home by 10 pm on friday for curfew and he thought he'd get in trouble if he told the truth about being out late with his girlfriend his story doesn't match his girlfriend it's really starting to come together against him and then all of a sudden it just implodes [Music] investigators soon determine anthony's lie has nothing to do with angel's disappearance he's no longer considered a person of interest another seemingly pretty it's hard to to tell his mom we don't have any answers for her we can't give her what she wants and that's her son and we can't even give our answers as to where he could have possibly went weeks pass tips on angel's whereabouts continue to come into police but none appear to be credible for angel's mother hearing the gruesome scenarios of what might have happened to her son becomes almost impossible to endure my son was shot in the head and thrown in the connecticut river my son was burned in some type of dumpster my son got kidnapped i had to train myself to not listen to no one else but the detectives because if i would have kept listening to people i think i would have lost it as the christmas holidays approach with angels still missing his family is consumed by the enormity of their loss it's hard to not know it's just something no one deserves to go through i used to always have thanksgiving dinner christmas dinner new year's day dinner in my house [Music] but not anymore finally in mid-december almost two months after angel disappeared the results on the fingerprints from the stolen suv come in it's not what investigators were hoping for the print belongs to a hispanic man with a criminal record but no apparent connection to the suv that allegedly followed angel right off the bat i see that he does not match the description that josh had given us of the person that was driving the jeep that had chased angel uh not even close as far as detectives can tell the man and the suv his print was found in have nothing to do with angel's disappearance [Music] the investigation is once more when everything suddenly changes again [Music] a convenience store clerk calls police with a remarkable story angel garcia the missing hartford teen was just in her store in new britain 15 miles from hartford she said he came in and i recognized him because they've seen the flyer they look just like him there's no doubt about it she explained to me that this person she saw had a tattoo on his neck of angel the name angel and she said it was a fresh tattoo not only that but she says his visit was captured on security camera video three months after he vanished without a trace could angel really be alive and okay when i took a very closer look at the picture i was like oh my god this kid looks like my son [Music] three months after he vanished 15 miles from his home leaving investigators mystified could angel have been in the hartford area the entire time it's not really that far away he's not really hiding the fact that he's that far away if he's just walking into a convenience store why according to the store clerk who spotted him angel has a fresh tattoo on his neck we knew from interviewing angel's mom that he didn't have a tattoo on his neck but at this time several months had gone by and could he have gotten a tattoo absolutely the circumstances don't make sense to investigators according to his family angel would never run away but photographs don't lie i couldn't explain it but i'm looking at a picture of somebody that i believe is him regardless of the fact that i can't explain why so my initial goal is let's find this person we'll answer the why later let's find them within a week investigators get the break they've been waiting for i did get a call a few days later and the clerk told me hey i saw him again he got into a car that traced the partial plate but they set up surveillance on the convenience store and a few days later they happened to be in the right place at the right time we drove maybe a quarter mile from the store that's there there he is there's the guy he was walking on the sidewalk and i drove by him and i said to my partner that's him but where that's him we turned around and it was him detectives can't believe their eyes the man on the street is the spitting image of angel but police confirmed that his name is nelson and he's never heard of angel garcia it was not angel there's no doubt about it it was not angel but it looked like him it turns out the tattoo on nelson's neck actually reads ashley not angel it was incredibly disappointing but it was also satisfying in that we ran it out definitively we know that wasn't him [Music] five long years pass and tips continue to come in but none lead investigators any closer to aim that i was never able to do that when i drive by areas that we searched i can't help but question you know did we search them good enough or was there somewhere here that we missed so let's face it these are big areas to search [Music] you don't need to miss very much of it to miss what we're looking for years of false leads and dead ends make investigators wonder was their first theory about what happened to angel right all along if he did tragically fall from the railroad bridge into the connecticut river the sheer lack of evidence would make sense it explains everything explains why we don't have a bike why we don't have him detective tony rykowski has always been frustrated by the fact that a proper search of the powerful river was never possible it's too deep and too dark to effectively search with either divers or sonar e you really you'd be hard-pressed to see your hand in front of your face you'd have to literally dive right onto this bike to find it if it's there we don't have the technology to search that part of the river to the degree where i'd be comfortable saying he's not there or wasn't there and it just kind of remains i know he's focused on that river i know of course you don't want to accept that because if he's focused on that river everybody knows what that means i literally keep this case on my desk so every day for me to come in and do anything i have to see it i think about this case all the time did i miss something is there something that came to me that you know i could have done more with the mystery of angel's disappearance has taken a devastating toll on his family it destroyed my mom she lost everything she loves her job she lost couldn't eat physically she just looked destroyed and it's getting better now but i can still see the pain in her the last time angel saw his niece amani she was just a baby but his mother and sister keep her uncle's memory alive in her heart what did we do with all those lives put to my trees put them on trees right why did we do that so then people might find them he loves you very much [Music] it's been a long time since angel offered his mom a home-cooked meal every year on his birthday all she can do is shut herself in her bedroom i spend a lot of time by myself now my family dinners are mostly by myself [Music] unfortunately they say time heals that's that's not right you just learn how to deal with life one that no one is allowed to answer with me i get through my days denying myself that he's missing [Music] he's gonna walk through that door later on what you doing you cooked and although i know it's not like that it's a lie it helps me get through my days i've always been the rock for my family and i know that i need to let it out but i can't that's my only son [Music] angel's loved ones are convinced someone out there knows what happened to him all i need you to do is just make that phone call and just say where he's at that's it you don't have to give your name you have to say [Music] if you have any information about angel garcia or his disappearance please contact the hartford police department at 860-757-4212 [Music] do [Applause] do [Music] you

Channel: Disappeared

Views: 5,977

Rating: 4.7590361 out of 5

Keywords: Disappeared, Disappeared Season 8, Disappeared Season 8 Episode 12

Id: XDIBBmq1kkA

Length: 38min 26sec (2306 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 19 2020