The Chilling Case of Kira Steger | True Crime Documentary

today we will look at a case that took place in Minnesota back in 2013. thirty-year-old Kyra Steger was employed as a store clerk at a clothing store located in the Mall of America she was passionate about her job and never skipped a shift so when on February 23 2013 she didn't come to work her co-workers got worried they tried to get in touch with Kira but she didn't return their calls or text messages and the police were soon informed that she was missing Kira k Steger was born November 19 1982 in Des Plaines Illinois she was the daughter of Marcy and Jay Steger who described her as a lively dedicated and sweet daughter Kira was employed at the Mall of America and worked for two stores there Wet Seal and most recently delias her co-workers were not only great friends but Kira considered them part of her family Kira possessed a unique talent for recognizing people's strengths that they themselves didn't notice she planned and hoped for a promising future which looked bright and Serene sadly all her dreams ended in an instant when Kira mysteriously vanished on Thursday February 21 2013 Kira had a shift at work her co-workers said she had been feeling good and planned to go to a nice restaurant with her husband after the store closed Kira and Jeffrey Trevino got acquainted three years ago they immediately ignited a spark between them and started a romantic relationship which ultimately resulted in a wedding generally Kira and Jeffrey seemed to be a happy and stable married couple there might have been occasional disagreements between them but it all was kept within their own Circle neither relatives friends nor co-workers were aware of them at the very least two days later on Saturday February 23rd when Kira did not come to work her co-workers were concerned because such Behavior was not typical of her she was on time strict with herself and others never tolerated being late and adhered to her schedule having failed to reach Kira her co-workers called Jeffrey but he had no idea where his wife had gone as per Jeffrey Kira had left the house the previous morning and had not been back since it wasn't really worrying to him because Kira had a tendency to occasionally disappear for a day or two she would stay the night at a friend's house or go to a relative's place unannounced one thing that might have caused worry was the bad weather that day because it had been snowing heavily Jeffrey suggested that maybe there was something that could have happened to her on the way perhaps her car got stuck and her cell phone battery ran out of power on the same day having received no news from his wife Jeffrey filed a missing persons report and got in touch with Kira's family her family members were surprised by the mysterious disappearance of their loved one and it was a big blow to them having received a missing persons report for Kyra Steger detectives immediately got to work as it is common in such cases the investigation started with questioning the spouse and searching the nearest surroundings this was no exception detectives went to Jeffrey's residence to talk to him Jeffrey informed detectives that on Thursday he and Kira were looking to have some time together they had dinner conversed played bowling and eventually left the mall by Jeffrey's account he and Kira headed home straight away as Kira intended to watch a movie Jeffrey also told detectives that his wife left their house the next day which was a Friday around 8 30 a.m an event was scheduled at work and her mandatory presence was required she was conducting herself as usual and he didn't see anything strange Jeffrey found it nothing out of the ordinary that Kira would disappear from time to time although he didn't even know where she was or who she was spending time with they had been having relationship problems for a few months said Jeffrey however he didn't see it as serious or alarming considering it to be just minor arguments that occur in All Families the detective started asking Jeffrey who Kira might be staying with asking if she might have had a lover the man refused this suggestion as he had personally asked Kira about this and got a negative response in Jeffrey's words he really loves his wife and trusts her the investigators passed on all the information they managed to collect about Kira and her car to the on-duty patrols the detectives went to the Mall of America themselves in order to confirm the credibility of Jeffrey's words and possibly pick up some Clues Mall of America is among the biggest shopping malls worldwide it is situated in Bloomington it features 520 stores theme parks an oceanarium movie theaters a golf course and much more therefore it's not surprising that the mall is fitted with numerous security cameras knowing at what time Kira had left work on February 21st the detectives looked into that moment the footage showed nothing out of the ordinary Jeffrey's account held true he met Kira after work and they hung out at the mall for a while then went down to the parking lot and drove away there were no arguments between them and the evening appeared to have gone fine foreign nothing is as bad as just waiting without any knowledge of what's going on and with each successive day the anxiety for Kira's life was getting progressively worse lacking any news from her and having grown tired of waiting Kira's family traveled to Bloomington in an effort to try to help with the investigation they had Flyers printed with her pictures on them posted them on polls and distributed them to passers-by on the street their objective was to attract as much attention as possible to the search for Kira they realized they could not simply stand by but had to do everything they could to find their loved one while Kira's family was Distributing leaflets the investigators continued their inquiry when interviewing the couple's neighbors officers noticed a surveillance camera installed on one neighbor's house the camera rotated sideways and in one of its angles it captured Kira and Jeffrey's home thus the investigators asked the homeowner to copy the camera footage for them as they hope to uncover some Clues from it in the meantime a cell phone company's records arrived and provided investigators with a new lead according to Kira's phone records she had another man in her life besides Jeffrey he turned out to be Ryan Wendt who was the manager of the same store chain in one of which she was employed they had a very intense and lengthy relationship and corresponded frequently police were able to ascertain that Ryan went was out of state and while a search for Kira was ongoing Ryan was traveling in his car towards Colorado this man was of major relevance to the investigation because in addition to having a romantic relationship with Kira he also moved out of state the same time she disappeared maybe it was a mere coincidence and nothing more or perhaps things were completely different and his Escape hides something behind it it is the investigators who would have to find the answer to that question regardless the detectives managed to reach Ryan and he consented to appear for questioning in Colorado where he was asked many questions he stated that he last contacted Kira while he was driving his car across South Dakota and exchanged texts with her these text messages had been sent shortly before Kira's disappearance upon reviewing the timing of the text messages detectives determined that Kira had been in contact with her new lover just as she was dining with her husband it was abundantly clear from the correspondence that Kira was increasingly becoming distant from Jeffrey the investigators examined Ryan's phone to determine his location with respect to the cell towers and reviewed his credit card statements it appeared he was really out of state that particular evening and had no way of being connected to Kira's disappearance he was released and dropped from the list of suspects on that basis the timestamp of the messages revealed that Kira was still texting with Ryan even when she arrived home with her husband however their communication ended after 11 44 pm and since then Kira's phone has been inactive meanwhile a different team of investigators was getting ready to examine the video footage from the surveillance camera installed on Kira's neighbor's residence this camera captured much of the street sweeping left and right however it was turning much too quickly and that made observation difficult since if the investigator spotted something suspicious the camera would rotate to the other side in an instant Jeffrey and Kira's house was seen only for a brief few seconds as the camera shifted to the right Jeffrey stated that after eating dinner and bowling he and Kira went home watched a movie and retired to bed however when investigators reviewed the video footage they noticed that right after 2 A.M Kira's car reversed into the yard because of the low quality of the footage and the constant motion of the camera from side to side it was hard to tell precisely what was happening on screen at that time but the car soon moved away from their house Jeffrey attributed the night drive to the fact that Kira had told him to pump gas in her car prior to her commute tomorrow so he went to the gas station surprisingly enough his story was true he was really seen at the gas station at around half past three at dawn however the detectives discovered that after leaving the gas station he didn't return home but for some reason made his way towards the highway it is unclear where he headed next the neighbor's camera did not record him coming home but it could have been a mere coincidence as it was rotating constantly thus it is possible theoretically that Jeffrey could have gotten back home later in the day when the camera was facing the other direction when investigators looked at the footage further they observed that Kira's Chevrolet drove away at 9 21 am disappointingly there was no way to see who was at the wheel a missing person report was filed with police on Saturday February 23rd and the police department got a call on Monday February 25th to report the finding of a suspicious vehicle near the shopping center where Kira was employed there are two multi-story parking lots security guards noticed that a certain car had been parked there for several days and requested a tow truck the tow truck driver proceeded to examine the car before picking it up and spotted suspicious looking red smudges on the trunk lid then called the police that vehicle turned out to be Kira's white Chevy there wasn't that much blood just a few small stains but it was there and that was a very bad sign Kira's purse which was recovered from her dumped car had divorce court forms that looked like they had been downloaded from the internet additionally a small dark item lying in the snow behind the car caught the investigator's attention when they got closer they saw a rolled up trunk mat that had dark colored stains on the reverse side DNA testing determined that it was Kyra steger's blood with regret the investigators began to realize that Kira was most likely no longer alive this horrible Discovery was a severe shock to her family and friends their last hope of seeing Kira again was lost but with this Myriad questions arose in their minds how did she die did she suffer and who could have resented her enough to have robbed her of her life the absence of Kira's body compounded the matter for it was much more difficult to endure the sorrow that had befallen them without it the detective's top priority now was to identify the person who abandoned the vehicle in the parking lot the car drove away from the house at 9 21 a.m approximately 20 minutes later the mall's cameras captured it there were no cameras in the lot where the car was discovered but there was a camera directed at the path that led to the car the camera was located near where Kira's car was located after viewing the footage from that camera the detectives noticed that a few minutes after the White Chevrolet drove into the parking lot a man with a hood covering his head appeared in the footage it was fairly cold and it didn't seem odd that the man was in a hoodie but the detectives wanted to track where he was headed it was seen that the hooded man made it across the street and walked to a taxi stand where he had a brief conversation with one of the drivers then got into the car and drove off the police were able to determine which company the cabs parked in the parking lot of the shopping center belonged to based on the time of the hooded man's interaction with the driver it was not difficult for the police to identify the license plate number of that particular vehicle all of the cabs were outfitted with GPS tracking devices which revealed that the hooded man concluded his trip a block away from Kira and Jeffrey's house and then got out of the car after paying cash as it left the neighborhood the cab was caught in the lens of the same camera that had partially filmed Kira and Jeffrey's home after two minutes a hooded man entered the frame the low resolution of the footage made it difficult to see his face but what was striking was the white logo on his hoodie as the investigators kept viewing the footage they saw the hooded man walk into the house where Kira and Jeffrey lived Kira had been missing which made it nearly certain that the hooded man was Jeffrey after securing a search warrant the law enforcement officers headed to the house at first glance it looked like an ordinary unremarkable house but that was only at first glance under closer examination the criminalists started to find dark red stains in the bedroom of the spouses there were a few stains on the wall beside the bed and around a hundred of them on the mattress it was apparent that the bedroom had recently been rearranged and cleaned when the forensics team sprayed luminol the floor carpet was practically glowing it had a lot of blood stains on it that could not be detected by the naked eye these stains originated in the bedroom and extended into the other side of the house forensics confirmed that it was Kira's blood and this further convinced investigators that she was no longer alive besides searching the inside of the house police also examined Jeffrey's car the car itself didn't have any blood in it nor did they notice any evidence of a struggle yet they still managed to find something of Interest a gas station receipt was found in Jeffrey's car issued an hour and 40 minutes before Kira's car was left in the mall parking lot based on the receipt information the purchase was made with Jeffrey's card detectives proceeded to that gas station to review the security footage the footage captured Jeffrey filling up his car then going inside and withdrawing cash from an ATM this footage provided a glimpse of Jeffrey's face and showed that he had a logo on his jacket in the chest area that looked like the logo on the man from the earlier footage on the basis of this recording and all evidence found in the house 39 year old Jeffrey Trevino was placed under arrest he was brought to the station for questioning and was now the prime and only suspect immediately from the interrogation room Jeffrey reached his attorney who advised him to exercise his right to remain silent the police had sufficient evidence to charge him but the most compelling evidence of his guilt would be the body no one had any doubt that Kira was dead the police together with Kira's family and some volunteers spent months searching for her in late March as the snowdrift started to clear volunteers discovered a strange bag by the roadside at Keller Lake a few miles from Trevino's house and called the police the bag contained a bloodied pillow a shirt and a bra the forensics team linked the finding to Kira as her DNA was detected on the items the lake was still encrusted with ice which hampered the search but still divers surveyed the water body still they found no remains in it the area around the lake was searched multiple times using four search dogs trained to find bodies but this too was fruitless two and a half months following Kira's disappearance on May 8 2013 the Saint Paul police department got a disturbing call the mail caller told the operator that he had seen what appeared to be a dead body in the Mississippi River what police officers recovered from the water did actually prove to be a body there were no clothes on it dental records determined that it was the body of Kyra Steger she suffered severe blunt force trauma to her forehead and a fractured index finger on her left hand because of the degree of decomposition the medical examiners were incapable of establishing an exact cause of death using the new evidence investigators tried to reconstruct the timeline of events leading up to Kira's death and the events that followed they speculated that when Kira and Jeffrey came home he became aware or saw that she was texting someone else Kira was unwilling to show the correspondence to her husband at which point he forcefully snatched her phone away from her and broke her finger after seeing the Romantic correspondence Jeffrey grew even more enraged and in a fit of anger took Kira's life and then tried to conceal evidence of the crime he used her car to drive to the house put the body in the trunk then went to a gas station and from there to the river where he disposed of the body he subsequently drove back home dumping the bag containing Kira's pillow and clothes along the way the next morning he went to a gas station and took out cash from an ATM because he knew that after he left Kira's car in the mall's parking lot he would have to pay for a cab and it would be better to do so in cash after disposing of Kira's car Jeffrey went home and worked the rest of the day on cleaning the house with his trickery Jeffrey intended to convey the impression that Kira had driven away in her car by herself that morning and that she was perfectly fine however thanks to surveillance cameras his plan failed in October 2013 a jury convicted 39-year-old Jeffrey Trevino concurring with the defense that his Acts were not premeditated and that the crime was the outcome of a heated and sudden argument following the discovery of his wife's infidelity prior to the sentence being announced by the judge Kira's family members made their statements this monster is a calculated criminal said Carrie Anne Steger Kira's sister he deserves no mercy Kira's mother Marcy stated that Trevino certainly showed her daughter no mercy he dumped my daughter like a piece of trash into the nation's most polluted body of water she said still her father Jay said whatever the punishment it will never make up for the pain Trevino has caused their family no matter how much time you give Mr Trevino it's not enough never enough he said in November 2013 Jeffrey Trevino was given a 27 and a half year prison sentence he will become eligible for parole in 2031.

Channel: True Crime

Views: 1,183,279

Keywords: True, crime, true crime, true crime documentary, Kira Steger, Kira Steger case, true crime channel, The Heartbreaking Case, investigation, detective, disappearance, girl disappeared, crime investigation, case solved, solved, disappearance of girl solved, detective stories, documentary, Case of Kira Steger, Kira Trevino, Jeffrey Trevino

Id: cVknriTulrk

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023