Missing Woman’s Body Found After Uber Driver Linked to Disappearance Dies

at 11:30 today November 28th the Victoria County Sheriff's Office received a report of a human body at the 2500 block of Fort Ice Road near Patriot Park in Victoria County a young woman in Texas has been missing for more than a week now authorities believe they have found her body adding to the mystery when police tried to interview a man about it he killed himself in front of them retired FBI agent Colin Schmidt joins us to talk about what this means for the investigation as we look for answers into what happened here welcome to sidebar presented by law on crime I'm Jesse Weber we have a chilling update for you in the story of a missing young woman out in Texas and there are still a lot of unanswered questions here so 19-year-old Amanda Stevenson was last seen in Victoria Texas on November 19th and she was reported missing on November 21st since then she's had a birthday but without her friends and family because they have been part of search parties looking for her and it turns out at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday November 28th the Sheriff's Office received a report of a dead body that body authorities believe is Amanda on Tuesday we were reported a um the fact that the girl was missing that Amanda was missing at 10:30 a.m and ever since then we've been working tired tiredly on trying to find her we've tried social media uh We've searched some property we've uh used technology to try to do some cell phone information and things like that so we've we spent a lot of u a lot of time and a lot of effort trying to find the girl um and then we hear that the Sheriff's Department's out on a out where they are and um that we go out there and we help them with that crime scene or that scene excuse me that scene so so yeah our investigation has resulted in a preliminary identification of the missing person Amanda Stevenson I want to bring in right now former FBI agent Colin Schmidt to talk a little bit more about this first of all Colin nice to meet you thanks so much for coming here on cbar we appreciate it thank you for having me uh I want to start off first with the statement from the sheriff so Sheriff Justin Maher has said quote our investigation has has resulted in a preliminary identification of the missing person he said that her body was found in a creek near a bridge off of a road so let's first start there what are your thoughts on that well it's interesting that that whenever you use a psychic they always say the B's by water so uh in this case generally speaking when somebody if they if they end up murdering somebody generally they're going to they're going to dump the body within approximately 10 to 20 meters of a road or of some sort of area that they have access to um generally speaking the when a body is dumped they're not going to go 40 or 50 or 100 meters into the woods because simply it's inconvenient and and the body is heavy and so in this case they did dump it appears the body was dumped and now uh the the sheriff's department has to undertake the um to officially identify what who is the body through DNA through dental and through frankly photographs if there's if the body is in a state that can be observed by uh family members and not to be too graphic or insensitive about this but we've covered so many of these stories before it would seem to me that whoever did this and dumped this body they didn't have the means to get rid of the body otherwise right I mean how many times have I've seen cases before where people are trying to use dissolving agents or they do you know they dismember the body to leave a body what it seems to be a rather open area um what does that tell you Panic it tells me panic is is this person whoever did it panicked uh it may have been a frankly a crime of passion or reaction to something that uh this young lady did and then it uh her life was taken and then he immediately found a place to dump the body and in in a manner where he's not actually thinking to to actually uh con conceal what he did he just wants to get away from what what he actually did to this person and by the way you you said and look the sheriff said it's a preliminary identification but you kind of listed some of the ways when the body is taken to the and I believe it's taken to the Travis County medical examiner's office to conduct an autopsy uh their first thing I think they're going to try to do is 100% identify that this is Amanda how can they have a preliminary identification what does that tell you well if the body is in a state where it can be observed for example um a family member can buy and and and actually go to the morg and actually appear and look at the body and then it can give it an identification but many times depending on how long the body has been out in the elements uh a decomposition takes hold and then and frankly the body will begin to to um to basically it it goes into riger and then then it essentially kind of melts away and then the other issue is frankly the U animals will start to uh come on to the body and perhaps coyotes or whatever may start pulling the body apart so not to get too graphic but that's simply just the way it happens how confident are you that the medical examiner could determine the cause and manner of death and maybe any forensic material that identifies who maybe did this well also the lawyer answer it depends it depends on how long the body was in the the wild so to speak and in what state uh it was in so um in the unlikely event the the person who did this kept the body somewhere else for a long period of time and then dumped it but it appears the body was intact So based upon the very little information we have I have 100% confidence they'll be a to have a an identification of who this person is you think they're going to release those details uh immediately to the public no because the number one uh objective or goal is to make sure family members are notified and they have time to process what's going on uh and what happened um frankly the public doesn't need to know and in this case it appears the the person who did this may have actually killed himself so he's no longer a threat to society let let's talk about that for people who are unfamiliar with this story so before authorities made this discovery of this body they were able to determine that Amanda may have had a connection with a man who worked for a ride share service and that man has been identified as 45-year-old Kevin bennetton he's also a Victoria Texas and a little backstory here so Detectives interviewed him once they wanted to interview him again and it's our understanding on November 22nd again the day after Amanda is reported missing officers pulled him over in a traffic stop but he killed himself he shot himself before they they were really able to speak with him again what do you think about that well that's and to all your your listeners and viewers that's indicative of guilt um you know it's the law enforcement is standing in front of him and basically it appear that he was overcome by number one going to prison for the rest of his life and I believe in Texas there is a death penalty and having to deal with the guilt of what he did so you know like I said doesn't you don't need to be an FBI agent for 25 years to kind of figure out what happened here are you surpris I don't know the details of this stop or how he was able to do it but the fact that if he was around law enforcement and able to kill himself is that surprising it it is a little bit because generally speaking they would um somebody like that he'd already been interviewed once uh if he had intended to kill himself he would have gone and done it already I I think he was just whelmed by the fact that he was probably thought he this was the time he was going to get arrested because it was a traffic stop versus the other time I think they may have uh found him at his home and they know he probably knew being in a traffic stop he was probably going to be arrested let's expand upon that a little bit more so Amanda's family reportedly believes that she was with beniton when she vanished the reporting indicates that this man had worked as a teacher um he listed himself as the owner of quote beniton organic farms on his LinkedIn page appears to he runs a a rural property he owns and police say that they search that property with dozens of officers dogs drones it doesn't seem that they found anything and his wife is now cooperating with police so it seems to me that when they first interviewed him they might not have had enough to arrest him he might have been a suspect or Person of Interest but not enough to arrest right yeah exactly they didn't have that the probable cause to arrest them and and frankly for something like this she don't want to go in and and for lack of a better term over arrest because the last the worst thing to do is actually have to release him after you have arrested him so they want to get their ducks in a row and they want to do it the right way and it frankly it appears that they're doing they did they did Classic police work and they followed all the steps uh but it's just that it was a tragic outcome for both both families so to speak and it's just horrible what happened here again we don't really understand what connection I don't believe there's been any prior connection between the two um but his wife is now cooperating with police what can we expect well she's going to be able to give a a background on him it's unlikely she's going to have much information about what the what occurred If he if he did in fact kill this person uh the best place to find the evidence is frankly the body the fingernails uh the DNA the DNA just simply does not lie and then the second place to find evidence would be on him to see if there's any trace evidence of her on him I I.E uh hair finger hair or DNA and then of course his car his car is the likely place place where this occurred because frankly he's a ride share driver they had no uh previous connection and you and in any murder or any homicide investigation you look for that that original or Genesis connection and then that's generally where you go from there and then that's where you find all your evidence H speak okay talking about the evidence examination of the bodies his car how long would that generally take before they start to realize what happened well the the the body is going to be examined first when they found it they take all the photographs to see if there's anything obvious believe it or not some people leave driver's licenses or identification documents around a dead body and then the the forensic uh medical examiner is going to be the person who's really going to be doing the investigation there and they're going to be coming through to find any trace evidence and then once they find the DNA under the most likely under the fingernails then that get sent out to a lab and that could be anywhere from two to six weeks to get the the um the results back and it's not slowed down by bureaucracy it's slowed down by simply physics or biology because you have to do there's a process to identify DNA and then the car once again um after he killed himself that's when they I'm sure they seized the car got a warrant for the car then they went in and then they had their evidence people or their crime crime scene technologists or whatever they call them down there to go through and search that car but once again they're searching it but they're not making an determination of what happened they're getting the evidence so it can be forensically tested I.E fingerprints DNA hair anything that can connect the two together talking about a crucial piece of piece of evidence remarkably her phone was found um now it was locked so they have to work to unlock it see who she's been communicating with that feels like that could be a really big uh turning point in the case um a I imagine not just what her Communications say but could they track the location of the phone as well absolutely cell phone forensics I did that for many many years and that was the the the magic uh the magic ingredient to the sauce basically they're going to be able to take that phone get access to it um hopefully it if it's facial she'll be able to act it or maybe have some a passcode unfortunately most people use very date of birth or whatever to get access to the phone once they're in there they'll use a tool to actually extract everything in that phone and most important thing they're going to get out of that is the GPS coordinates because that phone is pinging off of cell sites wherever it's at so that's going to be another connector to this guy or this ride share and literally you're going to be able to follow the phone through uh when she was with this guy and when she um expired quite frankly and then the last part of that will be the ride share information the ride share companies keep extremely detailed information about their drivers and there might even be a possibility that there's video inside that car right and look I think there's a part of it where you said before Panic um you know why the body was disposed the way that it was the fact the phone hasn't been destroyed or or you know was discarded in some way I think you you're on to something there that this could have been a kind of a rush or a panic I I do want to ask you I want to wrap up the conversation we talk about the Public's help so there's so many details we don't know um and right now law enforcement is asking anybody with information about Amanda's death to call Victoria Prime Stoppers at 361 572 4200 how do they weave through the phone calls with potential tips because this is now becoming a very high-profile case and you have to weed out the actual legitimate leads versus those who maybe are not or those that are maybe not how do they go around doing that yeah that that I've worked a few kidnappings and that ends up being part of the the the nightmare of the job because you're you're going to be overwhelmed by leads perhaps not in this case because the body was found and so people are going to take a step back the ultimate objective of this continued investigation is to find out if he had any help and to rule out anybody else doing this because frankly they want to make sure everybody comes to Justice Colin Schmidt thank you so much for giving your perspective on this um I I'm very curious to see what the results are in like you said maybe two to six weeks could be a bit longer uh before the public finds out what's happening but appreciate it really sad case and Hope we'll get some answers Colin Schmid thank you so much thank you for having me on all right everybody that is all we have for you right now here on sidebar thank you so much for joining us as always please subscribe on Apple podcast Spotify YouTube wherever you get your podcasts I'm Jesse Weber speak to you next [Music] time

Channel: Law&Crime Network

Views: 203,241

Keywords: law and crime, law and crime network

Id: p8CxyuL6dp4

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2023